Monthly Roundup – April 2018

12 Saturday May 2018

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Action, Adventure, Alain Guiraudie, Alberto Cavalcanti, Amen Island, Animation, Anthony Russo, Assassin, Avengers: Infinity War, B-movie, Babak Nafari, Bank robbery, Barbara Britton, Billy Brown, Blaxploitation, Blue Sky, Brad Peyton, Bullfighting, Burglars, Carlos Saldanha, Children of the Corn: Runaway, Children's Film Foundation, Chris Evans, Christina De Vallee, Comedy, Crime, Danny Glover, David Paisley, Drama, Eugeniusz Chylek, Ferdinand, France, Genetic experiment, Hafsia Herzi, Horror, Jake Ryan Scott, Jeffrey Dean Morgan, Joe Russo, John Cena, John Gulager, Johnny on the Run, Kate McKinnon, Le roi de l'évasion, Lewis Gilbert, Literary adaptation, Ludovic Berthillot, Maggie Grace, Marci Miller, Mark Harriott, Marvel, Marvel Cinematic Universe, Mike Matthews, Naomie Harris, Pine-Thomas, Proud Mary, Rampage, Reviews, Rival gangs, Rob Cohen, Robert Downey Jr, Robert Lowery, Romance, Ryan Kwanten, Sequel, Sydney Tafler, Taraji P. Henson, Thanos, The Hurricane Heist, The Monster of Highgate Ponds, They Made Me a Killer, Thriller, Toby Kebbell, Unhappy Birthday, Video game, William C. Thomas

They Made Me a Killer (1946) / D: William C. Thomas / 64m

Cast: Robert Lowery, Barbara Britton, Lola Lane, Frank Albertson, Elisabeth Risdon, Byron Barr, Edmund MacDonald, Ralph Sanford, James Bush

Rating: 5/10 – a man (Lowery) drives across country after the death of his brother and gives a lift to a woman (Lane) who tricks him into being the getaway driver in a bank robbery, a situation that sees him on the run from the police but determined to prove his innocence; a gritty, hard-boiled film noir, They Made Me a Killer adds enough incident to its basic plot to keep viewers entertained from start to finish without really adding anything new or overly impressive to the mix, but it does have a brash performance from Lowery, and Thomas’s direction ensures it’s another solid effort from Paramount’s B-movie unit, Pine-Thomas.

Proud Mary (2018) / D: Babak Najafi / 89m

Cast: Taraji P. Henson, Billy Brown, Jahi Di’Allo Winston, Danny Glover, Neal McDonough, Margaret Avery, Xander Berkeley, Rade Serbedzija, Erik LaRay Harvey

Rating: 3/10 – a female assassin (Henson) finds herself protecting the teenage boy (Winston) whose father she killed years before, and at a time when her actions cause a murderous dispute between the gang she works for and their main rival; as the titular Proud Mary, Henson makes for a less than convincing assassin in this modern day blaxploitation thriller that lets itself down constantly thanks to a turgid script and lacklustre direction, and which has far too many moments where suspension of disbelief isn’t just required but an absolute necessity.

Children of the Corn: Runaway (2018) / D: John Gulager / 82m

Cast: Marci Miller, Jake Ryan Scott, Mary Kathryn Bryant, Lynn Andrews III, Sara Moore, Diane Ayala Goldner, Clu Gulager

Rating: 3/10 – arriving in a small Oklahoman town with her teenage son, Ruth (Miller) attempts to put down roots after over ten years of running from the child cult that nearly cost her her life, but she soon finds that safety still isn’t something she can count on; number ten in the overall series, Children of the Corn: Runaway is yet another entry that keeps well away from any attempts at providing anything new, and succeeds only in being as dull to watch as you’d expect, leaving unlucky viewers to ponder on why these movies still keep getting made when it’s clear the basic premise has been done to death – again and again and again…

Johnny on the Run (1953) / D: Lewis Gilbert / 68m

Cast: Eugeniusz Chylek, Sydney Tafler, Michael Balfour, Edna Wynn, David Coote, Cleo Sylvestre, Jean Anderson, Moultrie Kelsall, Mona Washbourne

Rating: 7/10 – after running away from his foster home in Edinburgh, a young Polish boy, Janek (Chylek), unwittingly falls in with two burglars (Tafler, Balfour), and then finds himself in a Highland village where the possibility of a new and better life is within his grasp; an enjoyable mix of drama and comedy from the UK’s Children’s Film Foundation, Johnny on the Run benefits from sterling performances, Gilbert’s astute direction, excellent location work, and a good understanding of what will interest both children and adults alike, making this one of the Foundation’s better entries, and still as entertaining now as when it was first released.

Ferdinand (2017) / D: Carlos Saldanha / 108m

Cast: John Cena, Kate McKinnon, Anthony Anderson, Bobby Cannavale, Peyton Manning, David Tennant, Jeremy Sisto, Lily Day, Gina Rodriguez, Daveed Diggs, Gabriel Iglesias

Rating: 8/10 – a young bull called Ferdinand (Cena) whose disposition includes a fondness for flowers and protecting other animals, finds himself temporarily living with a supportive family, until events bring him back to the world of bullfighting that he thought he’d left behind; the classic children’s tale gets the Blue Sky treatment, and in the process, retains much of the story’s whimsical yet pertinent takes on pacifism, anti-bullying, and gender diversity, while providing audiences with a rollicking and very humorous adventure that makes Ferdinand a very enjoyable experience indeed.

The Hurricane Heist (2018) / D: Rob Cohen / 98m

Cast: Toby Kebbell, Maggie Grace, Ryan Kwanten, Ralph Ineson, Melissa Bolona, Ben Cross, Jamie Andrew Cutler, Christian Contreras

Rating: 4/10 – thieves target a US Treasury facility during a Category 5 hurricane, but don’t reckon on their plans going awry thanks to a Treasury agent (Grace), a meteorologist (Kebbell), and his ex-Marine brother (Kwanten); as daft as you’d expect, The Hurricane Heist continues the downward career spiral of Cohen, and betrays its relatively small budget every time it sets up a major action sequence, leaving its talented cast to thrash against the wind machines in search of credibility and sincerity, a notion that the script abandons very early on as it maximises all its efforts to appear as ridiculous as possible (which is the only area in which it succeeds).

The Monster of Highgate Ponds (1961) / D: Alberto Cavalcanti / 59m

Cast: Sophie Clay, Michael Wade, Terry Raven, Ronald Howard, Frederick Piper, Michael Balfour, Roy Vincente, Beryl Cooke

Rating: 6/10 – when his uncle (Howard) returns home from a trip to Malaya, David (Wade) gets to keep a large egg that’s been brought back, but little does he realise that a creature will hatch from the egg – a creature David, his sister Sophie (Clay), and their friend, Chris (Raven) need to protect from the authorities until his uncle returns home from his latest trip; though the special effects that bring the “monster” to life are less than impressive, there’s a pleasing low budget, wish fulfillment vibe to The Monster of Highgate Ponds that allows for the absurdity of it all to be taken in stride, and thanks to Cavalcanti’s relaxed direction, that absurdity makes the movie all the more enjoyable.

Rampage (2018) / D: Brad Peyton / 107m

Cast: Dwayne Johnson, Naomie Harris, Malin Akerman, Jeffrey Dean Morgan, Jake Lacy

Rating: 5/10 – a gorilla, a wolf, and an alligator are all exposed to an illegal genetic engineering experiment and become massively bigger and more aggressive thanks to the corporation behind the experiment, leaving the gorilla’s handler (Johnson) to try and help put things right; based on a video game, and as brightly ridiculous as any movie version of a video game could be, Rampage uses its (very) simple plotting to bludgeon the audience into submission with a variety of exemplary digital effects, while also trying to dredge up a suitable amount of emotion along the way, but in the end – and surprisingly – it’s Johnson’s knowing performance and Morgan’s affected government spook that trade this up from simple disaster to almost disaster.

Unhappy Birthday (2011) / D: Mark Harriott, Mike Matthews / 91m

aka Amen Island

Cast: David Paisley, Christina De Vallee, Jill Riddiford, Jonathan Deane

Rating: 4/10 – Rick (Paisley) and his girlfriend, Sadie (De Vallee), along with their friend Jonny (Keane), travel to the tidal island of Amen to reunite Sadie with her long lost sister, only to find that the islanders have a secret that threatens the lives of all three of them; a low budget British thriller with distinct echoes of The Wicker Man (1973) – though it’s not nearly as effective – Unhappy Birthday highlights the isolated nature of the island and the strangeness of its inhabitants, but reduces its characters to squabbling malcontents pretty much from the word go, which makes spending time with them far from appealing, and stops the viewer from having any sympathy for them once things start to go wrong.

Avengers: Infinity War (2018) / D: Anthony Russo, Joe Russo / 149m

Cast: Robert Downey Jr, Chris Evans, Mark Ruffalo, Chris Hemsworth, Chris Pratt, Josh Brolin, Scarlett Johansson, Don Cheadle, Benedict Cumberbatch, Tom Holland, Chadwick Boseman, Zoe Saldana, Karen Gillan, Tom Hiddleston, Paul Bettany, Elizabeth Olsen, Anthony Mackie, Sebastian Stan, Idris Elba, Danai Gurira, Peter Dinklage, Benedict Wong, Pom Klementieff, Dave Bautista, Vin Diesel, Bradley Cooper, Gwyneth Paltrow, Benicio Del Toro, William Hurt, Letitia Wright

Rating: 8/10 – Thanos (Brolin) finally gets around to collecting the Infinity stones and only the Avengers (and almost every other Marvel superhero) can stop him – or can they?; there’s much that could be said about Avengers: Infinity War, but suffice it to say, after eighteen previous movies, Marvel have finally made the MCU’s version of The Empire Strikes Back (1980).

The King of Escape (2009) / D: Alain Guiraudie / 90m

Original title: Le roi de l’évasion

Cast: Ludovic Berthillot, Hafsia Herzi, Pierre Laur, Luc Palun, Pascal Aubert, François Clavier, Bruno Valayer, Jean Toscan

Rating: 6/10 – when a middle-aged homosexual tractor salesman (Berthillot) falls in love with the daughter (Herzi) of a rival salesman, this unexpected turn of events has further unexpected repercussions, all of which lead the pair to go on the run from her father and the police; as much a comedy of manners as an unlikely romance, The King of Escape is humorous (though far from profound), and features too many scenes of its central couple running across fields and through woods, something that becomes as tiring for the viewer as it must have been for the actors, though the performances are finely judged, and Guiraudie’s direction displays the increasing confidence that would allow him to make a bigger step with Stranger by the Lake (2013).

The Villainess (2017)

12 Sunday Nov 2017

Posted by dullwood68 in Movies

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Action, Ak-Nyeo, Assassin, Drama, Jung Byung-gil, Kim Ok-bin, Review, Shin Ha-kyun, Sleeper agent, South Korea, Sung Jun, Thriller

Original title: Ak-Nyeo

D: Jung Byung-gil / 123m

Cast: Kim Ok-bin, Shin Ha-kyun, Bang Sung-jun, Kim Seo-hyeong, Jo Eun-ji, Lee Seung-joo, Son Min-ji, Min Ye-ji, Kim Yeon-woo

Beginning with a bravura Hardcore Henry-style action sequence where a lone female takes on a warehouse full of goons before despatching their boss (who may have killed her father), The Villainess makes one thing very clear: this isn’t going to be the kind of generic, Hollywood-style action thriller we’re all used to. Instead, this is going to continue the trend where the Far East shows us just how to put together an exciting, pulse-pounding, and above all, gob-smacking slice of mayhem, with its shoot/stab/gouge first, don’t even bother with questions afterwards characters lashing out in all directions and sending blood flying all over the place (even on the camera lens). This is brutal, uncompromising, stunt-filled stuff that combines excellent fight choreography with sometimes astonishingly fluid camera work, and yet still finds the time to tell a compelling story of love and revenge, as well as layering the action with an emotional weight that is expertly expressed by its cast.

Our heroine is called Sook-hee (Kim Ok-bin), a young woman whose father is killed over his possession of a rare and valuable jewel. She witnesses his death as a young girl, but is saved from being killed herself by aspiring gangster Joong-sang (Shin). He raises her as his own and trains her in the art of assassination. When she becomes an adult, her feelings for Joong-sang lead her to marry him. But shortly afterwards, he’s killed, and apparently by the man we see Sook-hee kill at the beginning. Having avenged both her father’s death and her husband’s in one fell swoop, Sook-hee allows herself to be arrested, but instead of being put on trial she finds herself being recruited into a secret South Korean government agency. There, under the watchful eye of her commander, Chief Kwon (Kim Seo-hyeong), Sook-hee’s skills as an assassin are added to, and she is offered a chance at a normal life if she works for the government for ten years as a sleeper agent. She agrees, and is soon set up with a new life as an actress, and with an apartment for her and her daughter, Eun-hye (Kim Yeon-woo) (Sook-hee was pregnant with Joong-sang’s baby when she was arrested).

Sook-hee moves in on the same day as her neighbour, Hyun-soo (Bang), and they soon strike an easy friendship. But Hyun-soo also works for the agency, and is there to keep an eye on Sook-hee. Their relationship becomes gradually more and more romantic until he asks her to marry him, ostensibly as part of his cover but because he has fallen in love with her for real. She’s sent on a couple of missions, neither of which is entirely successful, but it’s the third assignment she’s given that makes all the difference. Tasked with carrying out this assignment on her wedding day, Sook-hee is shocked to discover that her target is someone from her past, someone who she believes is dead. With her loyalties potentially in question (the hit is botched), Sook-hee is watched even more closely by the agency, while also coming to the attention of her target. Soon, no one is safe as Sook-hee’s past comes back to haunt her, and no one in her present day life is safe from harm…

The Villianess tells the bulk of its story in non-linear fashion, skipping backwards and forwards between episodes of Sook-hee’s life as a child, her time with Joong-sang, and her time working for the government. Thanks to a taut script by director Jung Byung-gil and Jung Byeong-sik, there isn’t an ounce of narrative flab on the movie’s carefully constructed bones, and each development and revelation in the script is expertly crafted to provide the maximum effect as Sook-hee first tries to adjust to a “normal” life and at last finds a measure of true happiness, and then sees it all put at risk. As she fights to preserve life instead of wantonly despatching it, the movie invests Sook-hee’s character with a desperate craving for the peace she’s never truly known. And though when that peace is destroyed she reverts to the crazed killer instincts she has managed to keep under wraps, for once it’s entirely understandable that she does so. Revenge is an easy motive in too many action thrillers, but here there’s an emotional element to it all that makes Sook-hee’s murderous retaliation all the more credible.

As with so many of the best action movies coming out of South Korea these days, the movie isn’t just about the action, and there’s strong character development to offset some of the more predictable aspects of the script (it’s not an original story by any means but it is better assembled than most). As the tormented Sook-hee, Kim Ok-bin gives a terrific performance, tough as nails when in a scrap, and yet tender and vulnerable in her scenes with Bang and Kim Yeon-woo. Bang portrays Hyun-soo as a bashful romantic with a floppy fringe, and his role is a nice counterpoint to the testosterone-fuelled bellicosity of his other male colleagues, as well as some of Sook-hee’s fellow students. In the pivotal role of Joong-sang, Shin is equally as tough and tender as Sook-hee, and this ambivalence in the character makes him more intriguing than expected.

But when all’s said and discussed, and despite the need for a compelling narrative to fill in the gaps between the action sequences, The Villainess is still a movie that stands or falls on the quality of said action sequences. And it doesn’t disappoint at all. The opening sequence is a blast, slickly choreographed and edited (and with yet another bloody showdown in a corridor; what is it since Oldboy (2003) about corridor fights?), and as brutal as anything you’ve yet seen. Individual set pieces punctuate the rest of the movie, and maintain a similar intensity despite being briefer, but then Jung ups the ante and provides viewers with an incredible final showdown that includes Sook-hee and the principal villain fighting on the outside of a building, and a section involving a bus where bodies are flung all over the place, even through the rear window and onto the bonnet of a car. It’s impressively bonkers, and shows more visual invention and technical prowess in roughly twenty minutes than most Hollywood action thrillers manage in two hours (even John Wick isn’t this outrageous). If there is to be a Hollywood remake, rest assured it won’t be as good as it is here. But then, we all know that already, don’t we?

Rating: 9/10 – with a great deal of heart and soul amidst all the blood and broken bones, The Villainess is fierce, imposing stuff that has plenty of OMG moments as well as quieter, more character focused moments that help elevate the material throughout; bold in its visual design and enervating cinematography (take a bow, Park Jung-hun), this is everything you could ever want from a South Korean action thriller, and a lot more besides.

The Hunter’s Prayer (2017)

09 Tuesday May 2017

Posted by dullwood68 in Movies

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Action, Allen Leech, Assassin, Drama, For the Dogs, Jonathan Mostow, Kevin Wignall, Literary adaptation, Odeya Rush, Review, Sam Worthington, Thriller

D: Jonathan Mostow / 91m

Cast: Sam Worthington, Odeya Rush, Allen Leech, Martin Compston, Amy Landecker, Verónica Echegui

A couple enjoying a quiet evening at home. A man (Compston) lurking in their garden. When the couple’s housekeeper lets out their dog, the man comes out of hiding, shoots the housekeeper and then heads straight into the house. He shoots the wife, and then the husband. He listens for any sound that might indicate there is anyone else in the house. Soon he is pouring something flammable over the furniture, and then setting it alight. As he drives away, flames in the house can be seen through his car’s rear window. The man has remained impassive throughout, and hasn’t said a word.

It’s a classic opening for a thriller: a hit that serves two purposes. It gets the audience asking themselves, what is going on; and it acts as notice from the makers that their movie is going to be tough and uncompromising. Except that here it also prompts another response, one that the makers won’t want audiences to think about, and piggy-backs off of that first purpose. That response is: why has this man gone to all the trouble of burning the bodies? It’s a question that’s never answered, but it’s indicative of a script that gets its characters to do lots of weird things on lots of different occasions… and by doing so, it robs the movie of any validity. If you see The Hunter’s Prayer, watch carefully and you will see all sorts of odd things going on, and where some movies can make these moments part of the fabric of the narrative, here, in Jonathan Mostow’s first movie since Surrogates (2009), all they do is draw attention to the deficiencies of a screenplay that no one thought to read more carefully.

However, this being a thriller with a degree of ambition, those deficiencies are overlooked while the plot lumbers on in search of a reason to exist. Adapted by Paul Leyden from the novel, For the Dogs (2004) by Kevin Wignall, The Hunter’s Prayer (which isn’t referenced once during the whole movie) concerns itself with the couple’s daughter, Ella (Rush), and the assassin, Lucas (Worthington), who was meant to kill her. That’s right, meant to kill her. The turgid plot that this hinges on is as follows: Ella’s father stole £25m from English businessman-cum-crook Richard Addison (Leech), and Addison wanted Ella killed first but Lucas didn’t do it in time, so her father and stepmother were killed instead. Now Addison still wants Ella killed, and Lucas has taken it on himself to protect her from the man (whose name is Metzger) and anyone else who might be hired to make it three out of three. Makes sense? No, of course it doesn’t.

To be fair, the script does address this issue, but then it quickly ignores it, preferring to see Ella and Lucas pursued across Europe in a pale imitation of The Bourne Identity (2002), whose wintry, isolated feel it tries to emulate. As usual in these kinds of movies, the pair is found easily whenever the script calls for an action sequence, and whatever efforts Lucas makes to keep them safe always opens them up to the potential of being killed instead. At one point, Ella and Lucas are on a train; he’s been shot in the leg and he’s arranged for a friend, Dani (Echegui), to treat his wound while they’re on the train. She does so, persuades Ella to get off at the next stop, and then attempts to kill Lucas by giving him a drug overdose (did you know Lucas was a high-functioning addict whose drug of choice is supplied to him by Addison? Don’t worry, there’s more). Thank God that the script’s choices of adversaries for Lucas are as dumb as a box of spanners, otherwise he would have been dead within the first fifteen minutes.

Despite the occasional attempt to intercept and kill them, Ella and Lucas make it to England, where Lucas has a hideout that’s conveniently in the same city, Leeds, that Addison has his business HQ. By now, the movie has decided to be as reckless with its own (limited) internal logic as it wants to be, and it sends Ella off to kill Addison at his offices. You can guess how successful she is from the image above, and while Lucas goes cold turkey in a matter of hours, Ella is put in the care of FBI Special Agent Gina Banks (Landecker), who is in Addison’s employ (don’t ask. No, really, don’t). There’s some guff about the £25m being hidden in a bank account only Ella has access to, and then everyone shows up at Addison’s country estate for the final showdown, which handily involves just three security guards for Lucas to get past, and Addison’s young son popping up with a bow and arrow (again, don’t ask).

There’s a real sense as you’re watching The Hunter’s Prayer that it’s all being made up on the spot, and that the movie has been shot in sequence with everyone improvising everything from character motivation to dialogue. If true, it explains why there are so many little ironies dotted throughout, or as on one occasion, a giant irony when Addison decides to spare Lucas because he’s not worth it, but still intends to kill Ella as an example to others. There are more – a lot more – but they all go toward making the movie feel like a terrible waste of everyone’s time and effort. Worthington isn’t the world’s best actor, and there are moments where his “skills” are cruelly exposed, as in the scene where Lucas explains to Ella that he can’t kill her. His expressions are bad enough, but what he does with his hands? Wow. Just – wow.

The rest of the cast run Worthington a combined close second in the bad acting stakes, with Leech overdoing his smarmy crook routine, Landecker struggling to make her FBI agent look and sound convincing, and Rush labouring under the optimistic impression that Ella is more than just a tired plot device. By the movie’s end it’s only Compston who gets off lightly, and that’s because he has so little dialogue. Attempting to organise it all, Mostow does what he can but most dialogue scenes are flat and don’t build on anything that’s gone before – at least not in a meaningful way – and the movie plods from action sequence to action sequence with all the intensity of a skin care advert. Only the action sequences themselves prove diverting enough, with Mostow and editor Ken Blackwell atoning for the poor choices made elsewhere and making them genuinely thrilling.

Somewhat inevitably, The Hunter’s Prayer is another movie that has sat on the shelf waiting for a distributor brave enough to take it on and give it a belated release. Shot in 2014, it’s further evidence that some movies really should be cancelled at the pre-production stage. It’s hard to believe that Saban Films saw enough in this to release it three years on, and it’s even harder to believe that this will gain any kind of an audience outside of the merely curious, or fans of Sam Worthington. Forgettable and beyond second-rate, it’s a movie that should be avoided at all costs. Seriously, if it’s a choice between this and a rectal exam, choose the rectal exam. It’ll be a lot less painful and it’ll be over sooner.

Rating: 3/10 – the kind of movie that should win a Razzie Award, The Hunter’s Prayer undermines itself at every turn, and wastes more opportunities than most movies of its type; banal, derivative, trite, depressing – it’s all these things and more, and a movie that you can bet will not be one that anyone involved in it will be highlighting on their resumé.

Angel of Death (2009)

25 Monday Jul 2016

Posted by dullwood68 in Movies

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Action, Assassin, Brain injury, Crime, Drama, Jake Abel, Justin Huen, Lucy Lawless, Paul Etheredge, Review, Stuntwoman, Thriller, Vail Bloom, Web series, Zoë Bell

D: Paul Etheredge / 77m

Cast: Zoë Bell, Jake Abel, Vail Bloom, Justin Huen, Doug Jones, Lucy Lawless, Brian Poth, Ingrid Rogers, John Serge, Lucy Lawless

The career of Zoë Bell is one you could charitably and fairly say is all due to the influence and intervention of one Quentin Tarantino. If he hadn’t picked her to a) be Uma Thurman’s stunt double in both Kill Bill movies, and b) to do the “ship’s mast” stunt in Death Proof (2007), then it’s unlikely she would have the acting career that has followed in the wake of those movies (prior to Death Proof, her only big screen appearance – believe it or not – was in Billy Elliot (2000). A short stint on Lost (2008) followed, but Angel of Death was the first movie to put Bell front and centre.

Except that Angel of Death was originally a web series, ten episodes that aired on Crackle in March 2009 and which ran eight to ten minutes per episode. The series had limited success (a second season was considered but has yet to be made), but it provided Bell with a showcase for her obvious physical talents, while at the same time highlighting her limitations with dialogue and characterisation. For every kick-ass moment where she punches and kicks people in the face, there’s another that sees her mangle her lines as if the effort of disguising her New Zealand accent is too difficult when combined with speaking like an American.

However distracting Bell’s limitations may be though, Angel of Death provides the stuntwoman-turned-actress with a platform on which she can showcase her tremendous physical presence. Bell plays Eve, an assassin working for shadowy fixer Graham (Poth). The pair are partners in both their professional and private lives, and there’s an edge to their relationship that has more to do with Eve’s unwillingness to be treated like an employee rather than an equal. A straightforward hit is initially successful, but goes wrong when Eve finds herself facing two unexpected bodyguards and their charge, the target’s teenage daughter. Eve dispatches all three, but not before one of the bodyguards manages to stab her in the head (leaving the blade in her skull).

How you react to the sight of Bell with a knife sticking out of her head will set the tone for the rest of the movie. Keep a straight face, and you’ll find yourself accepting the movie’s more perverse developments with an ease that will probably surprise you. Laugh, and you’ll find yourself deriding those selfsame developments with the same amount of ease. And if that image isn’t enough to sway matters one way or the other, then the later image of Doug Jones’ mob-related Dr Rankin pulling it out without benefit of anaesthetic or proper surgical procedure, will decide things once and for all (clue: your ribs should be aching).

But to paraphrase Peter Parker’s Uncle Ben: with great cranial relief, comes great responsibility, because Eve begins to have disturbing visions of the teenage girl she killed. Worse yet, these visions have the effect of causing her to go after the people involved in hiring her. This leads her to Arthur Max (Serge), an underworld fixer in the same vein as Graham but with less of a conscience. Eve takes the first of several beatings before she manages to kill him. This brings her to the attention of Max’s boss, the young but suitably psychopathic Cameron Downes (Abel). Downes is the son of an ailing crime boss, and has designs on inheriting the business sooner than his father may have planned. He’s a nasty piece of work whose weapon of choice is a cutthroat razor.

With Eve trusting no one, everyone is out to find her, including Graham, Cameron, the FBI, and a former colleague, Franklin (Huen), who winds up working for Cameron’s duplicitous sister, Regina (Bloom). With Eve’s hallucinations having an increasingly deleterious effect, she soon finds herself face-to-face with a bloodthirsty Cameron, but with the odds stacked massively against her. (You can guess the outcome, especially given a second season was mooted.)

Amongst all the bone-cracking fight scenes, the script by Ed Brubaker makes random attempts to give Eve and Graham’s relationship a sense of poignancy, and gives Huen a chance to humanise his character – even though he’s supposed to be a hitman (who instead comes across as a bit of a whinger). Etheredge directs things with an eye for making Eve’s world a low-budget film noir (the action seems to take place in and around the seedy tenement building in which Eve lives), but beyond the visual look of the movie he has no control over the actors or the vagaries of Brubaker’s credibility-lite screenplay.

But this is an action movie first and foremost, and Etheredge does know where to put the camera during the numerous fight sequences. Alas, and despite Bell being her own stuntwoman for these sequences, these scenes are perfunctory and Ron Yuan’s fight choreography isn’t particularly thrilling, leaving them looking and feeling brutal, but without the emotional connection to Eve that would have you willing her on when things aren’t going her way. The episodic nature of the material doesn’t help either, or the way in which Eve recovers from each bout as if it’s never happened (really, she has powers of recovery that would embarrass the Wolverine).

But in the end, none of this is Bell’s fault. Brubaker’s script is a mess, Etheredge’s direction is cumbersome at best and lazy at worst, and the cast go about their performances as if each of them were appearing in a completely different movie. There’s a short, filmed-in-a-day performance by Lawless that is meant to provide some comic relief, but by the time she appears, there’s been too much comedy elsewhere for her ex-hooker character to register as anything more than a cameo for Bell’s benefit (Bell was Lawless’ stunt double on Xena – Warrior Princess). Bell does her best, and she’s surprisingly watchable, but only seems comfortable when she’s kicking ass, and not trying to approximate the kind of PTSD her character is suffering from.

Rating: 4/10 – Bell is the star attraction here, but like so many low-budget action thrillers, Angel of Death is strong on mood but weak on plausibiity; there’s some unnecessary comic strip transitions between episodes, some equally unnecessary attempts at providing depth, and a nagging sense that no one really felt there would be a second season.

Trailers – The Accountant (2016), Billy Lynn’s Long Halftime Walk (2016) and The Light Between Oceans (2016)

13 Friday May 2016

Posted by dullwood68 in Movies

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120fps, Alicia Vikander, Ang Lee, Assassin, Ben Affleck, Derek Cianfrance, Drama, Forensic accountant, Gavin O'Connor, Joe Alwyn, Literary adaptation, Michael Fassbender, Movies, Parenthood, Previews, Rachel Weisz, Thriller, Trailers, Vin Diesel, Warfare, Western Australia

NOTE: The current For One Week Only is taking a well-deserved break after its Disney sequel marathon yesterday; it’ll be back tomorrow.

Once he’s reprised his role as Batman in Suicide Squad, Ben Affleck will next be seen in this odd thriller about a maths savant who works as a forensic accountant by day and is a hired assassin by night (of course). Working for the bad guys works out okay, but when Affleck’s character, Christian Wolff, takes on a legitimate client, things take a more deadly turn. It doesn’t help that Christian is also being pursued by the Treasury Department (led by J.K. Simmons). Whether or not this will be any good is open to conjecture, but Warner Bros. have put back its original release date from 29 January to 14 October, suggesting that there’s not the complete confidence in it that you might expect. It does have a great cast, with Anna Kendrick, Jon Bernthal and John Lithgow in support, and director Gavin O’Connor did a good job in taking over on Jane Got a Gun (2015), so this does have bags of promise at least. Perhaps a bit of finger-crossing is in order, then.

An adaptation of the novel by Ben Fountain, Billy Lynn’s Long Halftime Walk has a lot to recommend it. It’s the first feature from Ang Lee since Life of Pi (2012), it has a supporting turn from Vin Diesel which should remind people that away from muscle cars and a certain genetically-enhanced murderer he’s a much better actor than he’s given credit for, and has been filmed in 4K, 3D and 120fps. Early footage shown at the National Association of Broadcasters show in Las Vegas last month was greeted with the kind of superlatives that make this a shoo-in at next year’s round of awards ceremonies. Away from the technical side though, this looks to be an emotional and compelling look at the differences between the realities of war and perceptions reached at home, and features a break-out performance from newcomer Joe Alwyn as Billy Lynn.

Another literary adaptation, this time from the novel by M.L. Stedman, The Light Between Oceans is the latest from director Derek Cianfrance, who gave us Blue Valentine (2010) and The Place Beyond the Pines (2012). It’s a heartfelt tale of impassioned romance, parental loss, uncontrollable grief, and a gift from the sea that brings with it a painful moral dilemma. Michael Fassbender and Alicia Vikander are the couple making a difficult choice in the midst of overwhelming grief, while Rachel Weisz is the widow whose recent loss threatens their regained happiness. The movie looks beautiful thanks to Justin Kurzel’s go-to cinematographer Adam Arkapaw (he also shot the first series of True Detective), and the period settings – post-World War I Western Australia – appear to have been lovingly recreated. If everything turns out as hoped, then this too will be sparring for awards come the beginning of 2017.

Ashby (2015)

27 Sunday Sep 2015

Posted by dullwood68 in Movies

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Assassin, CIA, Drama, Emma Roberts, Football, High School, Mickey Rourke, MRI scanner, Nat Wolff, Old people, Review, Sarah Silverman, Tony McNamara, Wide receiver

D: Tony McNamara / 103m

Cast: Mickey Rourke, Nat Wolff, Emma Roberts, Sarah Silverman, Kevin Dunn, Zachary Knighton, Michael Lerner, John Enos III

Seventeen year old Ed Wallis (Wolff) and his mother, June (Silverman), have moved into a new neighbourhood following June’s divorce from Ed’s father. Ed is a self-contained, quietly determined, well-read teenager who is struggling to make sense of his life and where it’s going. When his English teacher instructs Ed’s class to write a report about an “old person” – one they actually have to talk to – Ed decides to write his report about his neighbour, Ashby Holt (Rourke).

Unknown to Ed, Ashby has a brain tumour that has left him with only three months left to live. When Ed knocks on his door, Ashby tales advantage of the situation, and in return for talking to Ed about his life, gets him to drive Ashby around. On their first trip, Ashby tells Ed he was a napkin salesman, but later, when Ed helps Ashby through a potential seizure, he discovers that this particular “napkin salesman” has a small arsenal of weapons in his basement and a clutch of passports in different names. Despite Ed’s attempts to cover his tracks, Ashby knows what’s happened, and the next day he and Ed go for a drive where he reveals that he was actually a CIA assassin, and has killed over ninety people. When Ed asks him if he has any regrets or doubts about what he did, Ashby’s response isn’t as unequivocal as Ashby himself would have liked.

Back in high school, Ed attracts the attention of Eloise (Roberts), a student whose class project involves her studying the effect of violent collisions on the brains of the football team. Ed wants to be a part of the team, but his slight frame and nerd-like appearance doesn’t inspire much confidence, but when he reveals his talent as a wide receiver, he wins his place. Meanwhile, Ashby becomes concerned that one of the people he killed wasn’t as deserving as he believed at the time. When he looks into the man’s life and career, Ashby discovers that his bosses lied to him, and he determines to make amends before he dies, even if it means their deaths. While Ashby searches for redemption, Ed tries his best to deal with his mother’s habitual dating (and inferred one night stands), his father continually failing to visit him, his fear of being hit during a football match, and navigating the tricky waters of his relationship with Eloise. And then he learns about Ashby’s latest “mission”…

A coming-of-age tale that features a handful of winning performances, and an uneven but engaging storyline, Ashby is an independent feature that just about works thanks to the spirited commitment of its cast and the relative originality and quirkiness of the script by director McNamara, who also made the wonderful The Rage of Placid Lake (2003).

As a coming-of-age tale the movie relies heavily on making Ed a bit of a coward, and he’s whiny too, justifying his reluctant behaviour at every turn and always making excuses for the people around him, such as his father, whom he always speaks well of, even when they don’t deserve it. Ed is continually defending these people, even the jock who assaults him; he spends so much time understanding why people treat him so badly, this very “understanding” marks him out as one of Life’s perennial victims. He also complains too much when things don’t work out as he’d like them to, which leads to Ashby telling him he’s got to stop “bitchin’ like a sheep on crystal meth”. With all this, it’s a tribute to Wolff’s performance that the viewer doesn’t dislike Ed on principle, and it’s a further tribute that when things do start to go right for him, the viewer is completely on his side and urging him on.

But while Ed’s journey is paved with good intentions rarely achieved, Ashby’s is more soulful and melancholic. As he helps Ed manoeuvre the minefield that is becoming an adult, Ashby looks to put his affairs in order before he’s reunited with his wife and daughter in the afterlife (even though he knows there’s no guarantee he will be). There’s a sombre, religious and philosophical consideration here that doesn’t quite fit in with Ashby’s character as a whole, and there’s a scene where he visits the local priest (Knighton) for absolution that holds up the movie and feels out of place, mostly because this takes place during the period he’s looking to “take care” of his old bosses. That said, Rourke is on terrific form as Ashby, his usual mannered approach to a role here left off and replaced with a restrained, careful take on a character that could so easily have been a caricature if it weren’t for the combination of Rourke’s portrayal and McNamara’s writing (and for once, it looks like Rourke is really enjoying himself).

Where McNamara does stumble though is in his treatment of the secondary characters, with Roberts’ Eloise possessing the kind of confidence and self-awareness that only teenage females in the movies have, while Silverman’s love-hungry June openly admits to Ed that she likes sex in a scene that again, is only likely to happen in the movies. The writer/director also has trouble judging the length of a scene, leaving some to run on (the locker room scenes), while others feel truncated (the early scenes between Ed and his mother). But even though these problems intrude from time to time and break the movie’s rhythm, they’re not enough to ruin the mood of the piece as a whole, which finds clever ways to celebrate both the beginning of one adult life and the end of another.

First and foremost a drama, Ashby finds room for some much-needed and relishable humour, from some terrific one-liners to occasional visual gags that are as unexpected as they are hilarious, and McNamara is often on surer ground in these instances. But it’s Rourke and Wolff who make this work so well, their scenes together displaying a keen sense of timing with both actors sparking off each other to great effect. Aided by some very crisp, stylish photography from Christopher Baffa, and a succinct, gently supportive score by Alec Puro, the movie overcomes many of its failings to become a heartfelt, meditative examination of an unlikely but mutually rewarding friendship.

Rating: 7/10 – some viewers may feel that Ashby is too good-natured or lightweight to be entirely successful, but it has a likeable, winning nature that’s hard to ignore, and what it has to say it says without too much prevarication or pontificating; with Rourke giving one of his best performances for quite some time, and Wolff reminding audiences just why he’s one of the best young actors working today, the movie is a small-scale treat that would have benefitted from some judicious script editing and a more streamlined storyline, but still retains a charm all its own.

American Ultra (2015)

08 Tuesday Sep 2015

Posted by dullwood68 in Movies

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Tags

Action, Animation, Apollo Ape, Assassin, Chip the Brick, CIA, Comedy, Connie Britton, Jesse Andrews, John Leguizamo, Kristen Stewart, Nima Nourizadeh, Review, Stoner, Thriller, Topher Grace, Tough guys, Ultra program

D: Nima Nourizadeh / 96m

Cast: Jesse Eisenberg, Kristen Stewart, Topher Grace, Connie Britton, Walton Goggins, John Leguizamo, Bill Pullman, Tony Hale, Stuart Greer, Monique Ganderton

Mike Howell (Eisenberg) is charitably known as a stoner. He works in a mini-mart that rarely sees any customers, and he lives with his girlfriend of five years, Phoebe (Stewart). Having made plans for a romantic trip to Hawaii, Mike doesn’t make it further than the airport as he always gets panic attacks when he tries to leave the sleepy town of Liman, where he and Phoebe live. Mike was going to propose when they were in Hawaii, and has kept the ring, waiting for the right moment.

At the CIA’s headquarters in Langley, Virginia, veteran agent Victoria Lasseter (Britton) receives a mysterious phone call that warns her that “Tough Guy is moving in on Little Man”. This refers to two separate CIA programs: the Little Man referred to was part of the Ultra program that was shelved several years before, while Tough Guy is the brainchild of fellow agent Adrian Yates (Grace). Lasseter confronts Yates who tells her he’s cleaning house and the one remaining participant in the Ultra program is regarded as a liability. Blocked by Yates’s seniority, she decides to take matters in her own hands.

That night, Lasseter visits the store where Mike works. She tells him some coded phrases that are meant to reactivate him, but they appear to be ineffective. But later, when he sees two men tampering with his car, he finds himself being attacked. Without thinking, he defends himself and kills both men. Freaked out he calls Phoebe and tells her what’s happened. When she arrives, she’s just ahead of the sheriff (Greer), who arrests them both. Mike is unable to explain how he was able to kill the men, but his newly realised (or reawakened) skills prove useful again when Yates sends two Tough Guys – Laugher (Goggins) and Crane (Ganderton) – to finish the job the other two couldn’t. In the process, the station is destroyed and all the police force killed; Mike kills Crane and he and Phoebe get away.

They head for the home of Mike’s dealer, Rose (Leguizamo). There they learn that the town has been quarantined and that Mike and Lasseter are being labelled animal rights terrorists who have released a deadly virus in the area. Two more Tough Guys arrive and start to flood the place with a deadly gas. Phoebe and Mike get out but not before he ingests a dangerous amount of it. She saves his life, but in the process Mike realises that she knows too much about what’s going on. Phoebe is forced to confess that she’s been hiding something from him, and this changes things between them. While Phoebe tries to explain things, Laugher pushes their car off a bridge. Mike is trapped, but Phoebe is captured by Laugher who takes her to Yates – but not before he’s poured gasoline on the overturned car and set it alight…

An uneven mix of stoner comedy and action movie, American Ultra is the kind of late summer crowd pleaser that will likely please fans of both genres as it comfortably combines both to generally good effect. It’s a movie where lots of things happen coincidentally and predictably, but this is one occasion where it doesn’t really matter, as whatever flaws it has are compensated for by the huge sense of fun to be had, from Mike’s drug-fuelled paranoia – at one point he thinks he might be a robot – to the moment where he finally proposes to Phoebe.

It’s a deliberately offbeat, totally ridiculous slice of escapist fantasy that knows exactly what it’s doing, and if screenwriter Landis and director Nourizadeh between them can’t quite wrestle the whole premise into a manageable whole, it’s still comforting to know that they get it right more times than not. On the plus side, there’s the relationship between Mike and Phoebe, a touching, believable couple with minimal ambitions and secure in their love for each other (even if Mike can’t make an omelette without nearly burning down their home). As played by Eisenberg and Stewart, reuniting at last after first appearing together in Adventureland (2009), Mike and Phoebe provide the sweet-natured heart of the movie, and you root for them when Yates and his operation come to Liman. Even when Phoebe’s revelation threatens to come between them, there’s enough investment in their relationship made already that even though their reconciliation is inevitable, you still want it to happen sooner rather than later.

Another plus factor are the inventive fight scenes, particularly a standout sequence at the mini-mart that is shot almost like a first-person video game, and sees Mike using anything that comes to hand to ward off over a dozen Tough Guys. Eisenberg makes a convincing action hero, his slight frame and long hair at odds with the muscular attributes of most action stars, and he’s a revelation in these scenes, kicking ass in a way that the portrayer of Mark Zuckerberg wouldn’t usually be thought of. Stewart also has her moves, and she too is surprisingly effective as a bad-ass. There’s still a tendency to shoot the action sequences and fight scenes with too much of a nod to rapid editing, though there is a fair amount that’s seen in long shot, and is all the better for it.

On the downside, Leguizamo has an awkward role that sees him using the N-word too often, while Grace mugs and overacts in a way that suggests he’s read a different script to everyone else. The real script’s implausibilities threaten to derail the narrative at times, and Landis can’t always resist the temptation to throw in a few unnecessary curve balls (the character of Laugher and his eventual fate is a case in point), but as mentioned above there’s more than enough to make up for it all, including some very humorous moments that show Eisenberg’s complete ownership of his character (Mike’s reaction to a call from Yates is the best example, and very funny indeed).

And lastly, there’s Apollo Ape and Chip the Brick. Who are they? They’re characters Mike draws who have adventures – very violent adventures – in outer space. They make an animated appearance at the movie’s end that’s hopefully not the last time we see them.

Rating: 7/10 – too messy at times to be entirely effective, American Ultra is still a worthwhile view, ably enhanced by the pairing of Eisenberg and Stewart, and feeling fresh when concentrating on the action; if the machinations of the plot are too far-fetched to work as well as they should, it’s still good to know that there are far worse, similar movies out there that aren’t half this enjoyable.

Hitman: Agent 47 (2015)

03 Thursday Sep 2015

Posted by dullwood68 in Movies

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20th Century Fox, Action, Agents, Aleksander Bach, Assassin, Drama, Hannah Ware, Jim Gianopulos, Memo, Review, Rupert Friend, Stacey Snyder, Tattoo, Thriller, Zachary Quinto

D: Aleksander Bach / 96m

Cast: Rupert Friend, Hannah Ware, Zachary Quinto, Ciarán Hinds, Thomas Kretschmann, Angelababy, Dan Bakkedahl, Jürgen Prochnow

Excerpted text from a memo sent by 20th Century Fox co-chairman Stacey Snyder to CEO Jim Gianopulos:

… and now that the dust has settled, it might be time to reboot Hitman, which we made and released in 2007. I think enough time has gone by that people will have forgotten just how bad/disappointing/clumsy the original was, and how we nearly sabotaged Timothy Olyphant’s career. I would suggest we get the original writer back on board, Skip Woods, and get him to fashion a Hitman movie that combines an original story with references and elements from the video games. I know he penned the original script, and I’m further aware that it wasn’t the best received script we’ve ever produced, but I believe that even in Hollywood, everyone deserves a second chance (don’t they?).

Perhaps we can entice a more well-known actor to the main role, Paul Walker for instance, or Vin Diesel (either of those Fast and Furious guys) as Olyphant has made it clear he doesn’t want to return to the role as “his house is fully paid for now”. Other casting will depend on Woods’ script and the availability of non-A list stars for the secondary roles, while it might be best to hire a British actress with little experience to fill any lead female role.

In terms of hiring a director, and in order to keep costs’ down, I would advise we give the job to someone with a background in commercials, and who hasn’t actually directed a movie before. This will allow us to bring a (hopefully) fresh approach to Woods’ script, and a visual look to the movie that will remind people of movies such as Equilibrium (2002) and the Resident Evil series. In terms of budget, and again in order to reduce costs, we should film abroad – Singapore, maybe – and keep the budget to between $30 and $40 million dollars. That way, and allowing for foreign distribution rights, DVD and Blu-ray sales, and any further revenue, the movie should be a financial success even if it is slated by the critics.

That’s all for now. Let me know how you want to proceed with these particular projects, and once things are in place, I’ll get back to you.

Excerpt from a memo sent by 20th Century Fox CEO Jim Gianopulos to co-chairman Stacey Snyder:

We made Hitman?!

Rating: 4/10 – professionally made tosh, Hitman: Agent 47 retains a modicum of credibility but only because it exists in a parallel world where the police don’t get involved in any gunplay, and where someone can be said to have subdural body armour – and no one blinks an eye; Friend is efficient though too remote, and Ware is blatantly awkward, leaving no one to carry the film on a human level, and allowing it to get by on badly edited action sequences that would have been even worse if they hadn’t been orchestrated by John Wick (2014) directors David Leitch and Chad Stahelski.

John Wick (2014)

15 Thursday Jan 2015

Posted by dullwood68 in Movies

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Tags

Action, Adrianne Palicki, Assassin, Chad Stahelski, David Leitch, Dead wife, Drama, Keanu Reeves, Michael Nyqvist, Revenge, Review, Russian Mafia, Thriller, Willem Dafoe

D: Chad Stahelski, David Leitch / 101m

Cast: Keanu Reeves, Michael Nyqvist, Alfie Allen, Willem Dafoe, Dean Winters, Adrianne Palicki, Toby Leonard Moore, Daniel Bernhardt, Omer Barnea, Lance Reddick, Ian McShane, John Leguizamo, Bridget Moynahan

Having lost his wife, Helen (Moynahan), to an unexpected illness, retired assassin John Wick (Reeves) receives a posthumous gift from her: a puppy called Daisy. They begin to bond, and Wick takes her with him when he travels anywhere. At a gas station one day, Wick encounters a trio of Russian gang members; their leader, Iosef (Allen) asks to buy his car but Wick rebuffs him. Later that night, the trio break into Wick’s home, beat him up, kill Daisy, and make off with his car. While he recovers, Iosef takes the car to a chop shop run by Aurelio (Leguizamo) but he refuses to have anything to do with Iosef or the car. Wick visits Aurelio and learns that Iosef is the son of his former boss, Viggo Tarasov (Nyqvist). When Viggo finds out what his son has done, he’s less than happy; he tells Iosef that Wick was the best hitman in the business, not the boogeyman, but the man you sent to kill the boogeyman.

Viggo attempts to placate Wick but has no luck. He sends a hit squad to kill Wick at his home but Wick despatches them all. Viggo then puts out an open contract for $2 million on Wick, and approaches Marcus (Dafoe), Wick’s mentor, directly; Marcus agrees to take the job. Meanwhile, Wick checks in to the Continental, a hotel run by Winston (McShane) that caters to assassins. Wick learns that Iosef is being protected at a nightclub called Red Circle. He goes there but is stopped from killing Iosef by the intervention of Viggo’s enforcer Kirill (Bernhardt). Wounded, he returns to the hotel where he is attacked by fellow assassin Ms Perkins (Palicki). Overpowering her, he forces her to tell him where Viggo keeps both his private papers and the bulk of his personal cash.

The papers and cash are in a church vault; Wick burns it all. When Viggo arrives, Wick ambushes him and his men, but Kirill uses an SUV to knock Wick unconscious. Taken to an abandoned warehouse and tied up, Viggo remonstrates with Wick over his idea that he could ever lead a normal life. He leaves Wick to be killed by Kirill, but things don’t turn out as he expects.

A revenge movie with a distinctive visual style, John Wick is a huge breath of fresh air in a genre that often feels stodgy and underwhelming, and which often relies on rapid cross-cutting and headache-inducing editing tricks to give energy to its action scenes. This definitely isn’t the case here, with directors Stahelski and Leitch’s background as stunt coordinators bringing an impressive edge to the fight sequences, as they bring a whole new meaning to the phrase “gun-fu”.

Even more impressive than the action is the world created by the directors and writer Derek Kolstad. It’s at such a remove from our own world that it seems to operate independently, with its own rules and hierarchies. The Continental is a case in point, an establishment that allows no “business” on its premises, and inflicts the severest of penalties if that rule is ignored. It’s a world where respect and a person’s reputation carry as much caché as money, and where John Wick has the most respect of anyone. It’s also a world that appears bleached of positive feeling, where people hide behind polite, expressionless façades but are quick to display fear, anger and mistrust. And it’s a criminal underworld that mixes old-fashioned codes of conduct with a modern disregard for them when necessary. Against this, Wick acts like an old time vigilante, dismantling Viggo’s business and men with grim determination and no shortage of inner rage. And even though he’s not as invulnerable as he once was, he’s still the ne plus ultra of assassins.

With the world he inhabits so clearly defined, Wick strides through it like a colossus, giving Reeves his most commanding role for years. After non-starters Generation Um… (2012), Man of Tai Chi (2013) and 47 Ronin (2013), it’s good to see Reeves back on form, playing Wick with a taciturn, single-minded demeanour that suits him perfectly as an actor. His brief scenes with Moynahan also show convincingly the other John Wick, the loving husband and all-round “normal” guy. It’s a great performance, and one that’s given more than adequate support by the likes of Nyqvist, Dafoe and Palicki, all relishing their roles and the wonderfully expressive dialogue Kolstad has provided them with. The cast are obviously having a great time with the material, and it’s not surprising that this helps boost the audience’s enjoyment as a result. The interplay between Wick and Viggo is particularly effective, operating on several levels at once, and imparting more emotion than would normally be expected.

As for the action scenes these are tremendously shot and edited, full of fluid tracking shots, and with Reeves in the thick of it all, punching, kicking and blasting away with vicious, yet detached intent, and shooting more people in the head than probably any other hitman in movie history. One extended sequence, at the Red Circle nightclub, is as inventive and as thrilling as any action sequence in recent memory. Using their experience as stunt co-ordinators, Stahelski and Leitch (who thanks to the Directors Guild of America isn’t credited on the movie), keep the fight scenes breathtaking and immersive, and there’s not one moment during any of them where the viewer isn’t fully aware of what’s happening and who’s doing what to whom (something that Taken 3, for example, avoids doing throughout its disheartening running time).

In keeping with the overall mise en scene, the production design by Dan Leigh helps to reinforce the idea of a separate world where all this takes place, and is gloriously lensed by Jonathan Sela. The action is complemented by a pulsing, propulsive score by Tyler Bates and Joel J. Richard, and at times feels like it could be another of Wick’s opponents.

Rating: 8/10 – a modern day noir thriller that doesn’t pull its punches and has an emotional core that resonates throughout, John Wick is a wonderful surprise; with not an ounce of fat on it, and one of the tightest scripts of recent years, this is an action movie that constantly surprises and rewards in equal measure.