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American Made (2017)

04 Monday Sep 2017

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D: Doug Liman / 115m

Cast: Tom Cruise, Domhnall Gleeson, Sarah Wright, Jesse Plemons, Caleb Landry Jones, Jayma Mays, Lola Kirke, William Mark McCullough, Alejandro Edda, Mauricio Mejía, Benito Martinez

Yet another true story where the emphasis is on reinventing the story, American Made arrives in the wake of possibly Tom Cruise’s worst movie ever, a movie so bad it may just have killed off an entire franchise before it’s even begun. In many respects, The Mummy (2017) was a little outside of Cruise’s comfort zone, and the movie’s attempts to shoehorn Cruise’s increasingly broad style of acting into its mix foundered after his first scene. But the true story of Barry Seal, however much it’s rewritten and reinvented, is a project that does give Cruise the chance to redeem himself for recent mistakes. So – does he?

Predictably, the answer is both yes and no. When given a script and a character that stretches him as an actor, Cruise always finds a way to meet the requirements of the role, but in the past decade the only movie that’s come anywhere near to pushing him as an actor has been Valkyrie (2008), where he played another real life person. Otherwise, Cruise has been content to, well, cruise his way through a number of high concept features that may have cemented his credentials as an action hero, but have also allowed people to forget that, once upon a time, he was an actor who took quite a few chances with his career. Now, he works to protect his action hero status, while taking the occasional time out to play the likes of airline pilot turned drugs smuggler Barry Seal. Here, Cruise gets to turn on his megawatt smile, have a lot of fun, and give his fans exactly what he thinks they want to see: a man in his mid-Fifties behaving as if he was twenty years younger (thank goodness there’s only Seal’s wife, Lucy (Wright) to worry about on the female side).

While Cruise is still able to play the fun-loving ne’er-do-well with a heart of gold and a winning smile, here it’s in service to a real-life person who wasn’t exactly the charming good ole boy which is Cruise’s – and the script’s – interpretation. But like a lot of movies “based on a true story”, the makers are only concerned with getting it right when they do so accidentally, and where the “spirit of the thing” is more important than telling a factual story (which would have been more interesting). Barry is outed early on by outwardly diffident CIA agent, Monty Schafer (Gleeson), when he’s a TWA pilot smuggling Cuban cigars into the country for peanuts. Faced with an offer he doesn’t want to refuse, Barry goes to work for the CIA using one of their planes to take reconnaissance photographs over South America. When the Medellin Cartel becomes aware of Barry’s activities, they persuade him to transport drugs back to the US. Thus the next few years of Barry’s life involve him trying to ensure that neither side finds out about what he’s doing, while he stashes away his ill-gotten gains by the trunkload.

Of course, things begin to get out of hand, whether it’s the cartel’s demands for more smuggled product, or the arrival of Lucy’s wastrel younger brother, JB (Jones), whose light fingers eventually cause Barry more problems than he’s worth. Soon, a whole raft of law enforcement departments descend on Barry and they all try to claim jurisdiction. But in a twist that nobody, let alone Barry, could have anticipated, certain jail time is replaced by community service, and the chance to juggle gun-running with drugs smuggling and money laundering proves too much of an opportunity for Barry to pass up, and though there’s the small matter of providing evidence against the cartel – one of whose members is the easily irritated Pablo Escobar (Mejía) – Barry goes along with whatever he’s asked.

The tone of American Made is one that says it’s okay to be a criminal if you’re having fun while you’re doing it, and as long as you’re providing for your family then that’s okay too. It’s hard to take a movie like this seriously when it won’t take the basis of its real-life story seriously either. It’s a movie that wants to have its cake and eat it… or in this case fly its drugs and snort them. It’s a cavalier approach that wants to attract audiences with its freewheeling approach and carefree attitude, and though there’s nothing wrong with a bit of harmless escapism from time to time, this is ultimately a movie that glamourises crime for the sake of it, and which encapsulates its approach to the material in the scene where a recently arrested Barry promises Cadillacs to a group of law enforcement officers before being allowed to go free. “Should have taken the Caddies,” he quips as he leaves, and in doing so, reveals for anyone who wasn’t sure, just how serious the movie is about celebrating its hero’s misdeeds and moral laxity.

But while Cruise is clearly having fun, the same can’t be said of the rest of the cast. Gleeson’s spook pops up every now and then to drive the plot forward and give Barry his next set of Government-sanctioned shenanigans, while Wright plays his long-suffering wife with some style, but remains as vapid at the end as she is at the start (and she adapts to her husband’s new “career path” with undue haste). Jones is the only other character to make an impact, and strangely, his pale, lank-haired appearance gives the narrative a much-needed boost whenever he’s on screen. In comparison with the rest of the cast, Jones is practically a major supporting character, and everyone else does a perfunctory job of playing to the script’s demands for a host of generic role players. Liman, reuniting with Cruise after Edge of Tomorrow (2014), keeps things moving, and tries to imbue Gary Spinelli’s script with an energy that he believes can only be achieved in fits and starts. And with so much of Barry’s story remaining at odds with official versions, it remains a frustrating movie to watch, and not just for the awkwardly structured narrative, but for the compelling notion that Barry Seal’s story would have been better served as a straight-up drama than as a low-key comedy.

Rating: 6/10 – another movie built around Cruise’s action comedy persona (but with the action dialled right down), American Made is a lightweight, easily forgettable look at a period in US law enforcement where deals were struck with almost anyone if it provided even the slightest benefit to the US; with too many scenes that pad out the already generous running time, the movie has a tendency to coast when it should be sprinting, and it never really puts its central character through the wringer – until the end, that is.

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Mini-Review: Unlocked (2017)

08 Monday May 2017

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D: Michael Apted / 98m

Cast: Noomi Rapace, Orlando Bloom, Toni Collette, John Malkovich, Michael Douglas, Philip Brodie, Makram Khoury, Brian Caspe, Tosin Cole, Aymen Hamdouchi, Michael Epp

In 2008, Peter O’Brien’s script for Unlocked made it onto the Black List. In order to make it onto the Black List that year, a script had to receive a minimum of four “mentions”. These “mentions” were tabulated from the responses of around two hundred and fifty movie executives, each of whom had to nominate up to ten unproduced screenplays that were relevant to 2008. Unlocked received five mentions, and though that keeps it quite a ways down the list, the idea that it’s on the list in the first place gives the impression that the script has some merit, that if it were to be produced, and if it did make it to our screens, then it would be a worthwhile movie to watch.

Well, Unlocked has been produced (by seven collaborating production companies), it has made it to our screens, but it’s far from being a worthwhile movie to watch. It’s yet another generic, cliché-ridden action thriller where loyalties are betrayed every five minutes, where the hero (or in this case, the heroine) goes it alone to prove their innocence, where jumps in credibility and logic are allowed to happen without any thought as to how they might harm the narrative, and where Noomi Rapace continues to show why the role of Lisbeth Salander will always be the high point of her career. It’s a movie that starts off moderately well – Rapace’s interrogator is called on to interview the go-between for an imam who’s sympathetic to terrorism, and an associate looking to release a biological weapon in Central London – and which quickly abandons that early promise by failing to connect the dots in any menaningful way, and by offering Tired Thriller Set Up No 387 as the basis of the action.

Such is the tired nature of the whole endeavour, it shouldn’t come as any surprise that this is a movie that was shot over two years ago, and which makes it to our screens now purely as a mercy release, a way of allowing those seven production companies a chance to earn back their investments. And it’s yet another movie where the quality of the cast and crew should ensure some measure of critical acclaim, but despite everyone’s involvement, this fails to happen, and the measure of the movie can be found in Bloom’s risible performance, Apted’s uninterested direction, a principal villain who sticks out like a sore thumb, and the kind of twists and turns that we’ve all seen in other, sometimes much better movies.

It’s hard to explain from the finished product just why O’Brien’s script made the Black List. Maybe since then it’s suffered from a pronounced case of rewrite-itis, and any subtleties it once had have been removed. Whatever happened between then and now, none of it has helped Unlocked become anything more than a weary, lukewarm slice of hokum. Rapace plays her character with grim determination and little else, Collette adds another high-ranking spook to her resumé, Malkovich provides the humour (welcome but still out of place), and Douglas is Mr Exposition, a role it’s unlikely anyone could have made anything out of. It’s a disjointed mess, providing few thrills and laboured fight scenes, along with a misplaced sense of relevance (chemical weapons smuggled into Britain from Russia? Really?). Ultimately, once it’s seen, this is a movie that fades away at speed, and is soon forgotten.

Rating: 3/10 – a movie that struggles to make an impact, but when it does, does so in ways that induces groans instead of applause, Unlocked could be re-titled Unloved and it would mean absolutely no difference to anyone; with too many scenes that provoke laughter – and often not deliberately – this is yet another reminder that low-key, low-budget action movies deserve more care and attention than their makers are willing to provide.

Snowden (2016)

27 Sunday Nov 2016

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D: Oliver Stone / 134m

Cast: Joseph Gordon-Levitt, Shailene Woodley, Rhys Ifans, Melissa Leo, Zachary Quinto, Tom Wilkinson, Joely Richardson, Timothy Olyphant, Ben Schnetzer, Scott Eastwood, Lakeith Stanfield, Logan Marshall-Green, Ben Chaplin, Nicolas Cage

By now, most of us have heard of Edward Joseph Snowden (Gordon-Levitt), the NSA whistleblower who revealed the extent of the US’s surveillance programme both at home and abroad. In June 2013, Snowden flew to Hong Kong to meet with documentary movie maker Laura Poitras (Leo), and Guardian journalists Glenn Greenwald (Quinto) and Ewen MacAskill (Wilkinson). There, at the Hotel Mira, Snowden explained his reasons for disclosing the documents he appropriated from NSA data banks, and why he felt that the extent of the US’s “eavesdropping” was both inappropriate and damaging to the integrity of the US and its intelligence-gathering agencies. Following the publication of the files Snowden provided, he was charged with offences under the 1917 Espionage Act*, and though he tried to reach South America via Russia and Cuba, his passport was revoked while he was en route to Russia, and he was forced to remain in the transit area of Moscow’s Sheremetyevo Airport. And Moscow – though not the airport – has been his home ever since.

Snowden’s story is one that seems tailor-made for an Oliver Stone movie. Anyone who’s seen his documentary series The Untold History of the United States (2012-13), or read the accompanying book, will know that Stone is largely unimpressed with the way in which his country has become a land run by self-serving neo-conservatives for whom “by any means necessary” is a proud motto. And while you could argue that this has been the status quo in America for a lot longer than the last fifty years, what is without doubt is the extent to which the intelligence agencies have abused their remits post-911 to eavesdrop not just on suspected terrorists but everyone. But with all this now out in the open, and Snowden’s place in history assured – and already explored in Laura Poitras’s excellent, Oscar-winning documentary CITIZENFOUR (2014) – what is there left for Stone to bring to the screen that hasn’t already been explored? Unfortunately, the answer is not much.

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Watching Snowden is a somewhat dispiriting experience. Stone does what he does best over two and a quarter hours: exposing the clandestine activities of several branches of the US government, highlighting the insidious effects these activities are having on an individual’s human rights, and revealing how those same human rights aren’t even protected by the courts (who seem to be bypassed at every opportunity). But Stone’s usual passion and sense of outrage seems to be muted here. This is like watching a movie made by someone who’s intellectually aggrieved by what the NSA has been up to, but doesn’t quite feel the need to get emotional about it as well. This is Oliver Stone in restrained, almost reflective mode – and it doesn’t feel right.

What all this means is that Snowden feels like objective reportage for much of its running time, with scenes placed and set up to impart relevant information, allowing Stone and co-screenwriter Kieran Fitzgerald to give audiences all they need to know about Snowden himself and the secret world he was a part of. But it’s this matter-of-fact way in which Stone has decided to present both the man and that world that curtails any tension, and thereby lessens the drama. The scene where Snowden downloads a mass of files right from the heart of the NSA’s base in Hawaii, a scene that many directors could have made into a nerve-shredding exercise in trepidation and anxiety, lacks all those elements and plays out with a minimum of fuss and bother.

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Watching as Snowden becomes increasingly aware of the extent of his country’s malfeasance – and the ways in which he’s unwittingly contributed to that malfeasance – Stone shows Snowden’s baffled disbelief, and his somewhat naïve demeanour, but there’s a distance between the viewer and the beleaguered whistleblower that stops any real sympathy or connection from forming. As Joseph Gordon-Levitt goes about the process of making Snowden’s initial commitment to the NSA appear noble and necessary, he can’t quite overcome a lack of personality that keeps the man from registering as more than a name most people will recognise, but few outside the US will truly care about. This is partly due to the script, which, instead of showing the man behind the name through his commitment to the truth, attempts to do so through his relationship with his girlfriend, Lindsay Mills (Woodley). Would that these scenes had more of an impact, but there’s a pedantic, going-through-the-motions feel to them that Stone can’t quite shake off. There are times where they also border on soap opera, as Mills’s frustration with Snowden’s work leads to several moments where she invokes the whole “it’s me or the job” ultimatum.

Elsewhere, the movie plods along, only occasionally engaging with the material in a way that appears earnest or committed, but doing enough to keep interested viewers interested, while not doing enough to keep viewers new to Snowden’s story on board for the duration. It’s not that Stone is doing anything particularly wrong – he still has a strong visual sense (bolstered by crisp, insistent cinematography from Anthony Dod Mantle), and the movie is expertly edited by Alex Marquez and Lee Percy – but somewhere along the way, any sense of urgency about the subject and its ramifications seems to have been lost. Perhaps it’s due to the time that’s passed since Snowden blew the whistle; in today’s need-to-know-now society is his story relevant anymore?

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There are good performances all round, but mostly amongst the supporting turns, with Ifans a standout as Snowden’s mentor and über-spook Corbin O’Brien. Its also good to see Nicolas Cage, albeit in a minor role, deliver the kind of performance that we know he’s capable of. Spare a thought though for the trio of Leo, Quinto and Wilkinson, stranded in a hotel room in Hong Kong and not really given much to do except listen and look amazed/appalled/astounded as appropriate (it makes the scene where Greenwald barks orders at his editor (Richardson) all the more striking – and out of place). Woodley is hamstrung by a role that requires her to be unsupportive and selfish for the most part, and which is left hanging by a script that doesn’t explain why she’s now living with Snowden in Moscow. And as Snowden, Gordon-Levitt gives a diffident, constrained portrayal of a man who made a momentous personal and professional decision, and the actor carries the gravitas of that with aplomb. If only he didn’t sound like Keanu Reeves…

Rating: 6/10 – Stone adds another American life to his list of movie subjects, but in doing so seems more like a director for hire than the tirelessly challenging agent provocateur he usually is; what hampers Snowden is a sense that its story is no longer important, and that the movie is aware of this, which stops it from being the impassioned, thought-provoking movie it should be.

 

*The 1917 Espionage Act is a particularly apt (and predictable) piece of legislation for Snowden to be charged under. Such is the loose nature of the Act, if Snowden were to return to the US and be put on trial, he wouldn’t be able to use any information relating to the offence as evidence that he wasn’t guilty; because of the nature of the information he released, it would still be regarded as classified and therefore not admissible, and the jury wouldn’t be privy to it. And that’s without the cost of the defense itself: anywhere between $1 million and $3 million.

Bastille Day (2016)

05 Monday Sep 2016

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Bastille Day

D: James Watkins / 92m

Cast: Idris Elba, Richard Madden, Charlotte Le Bon, Kelly Reilly, José Garcia, Thierry Godard, Anatol Yusef

Meh (see also Mechanic: Resurrection).

Rating: 3/10 – uninspired, heavy-handed, preposterous, and as dead on arrival as the four victims of its fictional bombing, Bastille Day limps along from one turgid, barely credible scene to another with all the panache and style of a boxer who’s on the ropes and seeing double of everything; not even Elba’s stoic presence can save this Euro-mess of a movie, an action thriller that insults its audience at every turn, plays fast and loose with its own narrative, and which flags up every single plot development with all the subtlety of a punch in the face.

Jason Bourne (2016)

20 Saturday Aug 2016

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Jason Bourne

D: Paul Greengrass / 123m

Cast: Matt Damon, Tommy Lee Jones, Alicia Vikander, Vincent Cassel, Julia Stiles, Riz Ahmed, Ato Essandoh, Scott Shepherd, Bill Camp, Vinzenz Kiefer, Stephen Kunken, Gregg Henry

The original Bourne movie trilogy was smart, inventive, thrilling, and a massive boost for the ailing spy genre. It made an action hero of Matt Damon, featured action sequences that were fresh and exciting, and had an emotionally complex through-line that bolstered the already intense plotting. At the end of The Bourne Ultimatum, David Webb had gained the answers to questions that had plagued him ever since he’d been saved from a watery grave by the crew of a fishing boat.

Except… he hasn’t, not really. The closing lines from The Bourne Ultimatum – “I remember. I remember everything.” – are repeated here at the movie’s beginning, and are followed by a montage of scenes from the original trilogy (as far as this movie is concerned, The Bourne Legacy (2012) never happened). But in amongst these memories are flashes of scenes we haven’t seen before. And when Jason Bourne snaps out of his reverie, we find him in the back of a truck and heading for an illegal fight ground in Greece. Clearly the years since he took down Treadstone and Blackbriar haven’t been good to him: despite his fighting prowess he still looks lost. And the bad dreams, or reveries, he’s experiencing aren’t helping. For someone who “remembers everything”, he’s having some of the most spectacularly disturbing and disorienting dreams ever. And he can’t make sense of them, especially the ones that involve his father, Richard Webb (Henry).

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Help comes in the familiar but unexpected form of ex-CIA analyst Nicky Parsons (Stiles). Having hacked into the CIA mainframe, she’s done so with the aim of helping Bourne learn more about his past, and has discovered that his father had a greater role in the Treadstone programme than Bourne has been led to believe. But in hacking the CIA, Nicky has become a target and her contacting Bourne in Athens leads to his getting “back in the game”. With CIA operatives on their trail, as well as an Asset (Cassel), Bourne gains access to the information Nicky hacked, and once he becomes aware of his father’s involvement, he finds his enrolment in the Treadstone program wasn’t as clear cut as he thought. But as before, his reappearance has senior members of the CIA, including Director Robert Dewey (Jones), unwilling to let Bourne expose their Black Ops programs. Using a combination of the Asset and the head of the Cyber Crimes Division, Heather Lee (Vikander), to track down Bourne and eliminate him once and for all, Dewey plots to keep the CIA’s secrets as hidden as ever.

Fans of the Bourne Trilogy are generally dismissive of The Bourne Legacy, the Jeremy Renner starring addition to the series that failed to add anything new to the mix, and which felt like an uninspired retread of everything that had gone before. Matt Damon famously turned down the chance to cameo in Legacy, and made it clear that he wouldn’t return to the franchise unless Paul Greengrass was back on board as well. Well, Damon got his wish, and Greengrass is back as the movie’s director. But perhaps Damon should have made another stipulation: that Greengrass didn’t write the script.

Jason Bourne has many of the same attributes that The Bourne Supremacy and The Bourne Ultimatum share. There’s the generous use of “shaky cam”, Christopher Rouse’s exemplary editing, excellent location work, and a series of intense and very well-staged action sequences (one of the series major strengths). But there’s one aspect that’s missing this time round, and aside from Greengrass’s muscular directorial style, it’s perhaps the series’ most important component: the contribution of Tony Gilroy. As screenwriter of the first two movies, and co-screenwriter of the third (though his input was drastically reduced), as well as Legacy‘s writer/director, Gilroy helped guide the series from its inauspicious beginnings to a position of critical and commercial success worldwide. His scripts had intelligence, depth and subtlety, and his villains were drawn with a vividness and care that made them worthy adversaries.

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But without Gilroy (no doubt a casualty of The Bourne Legacy‘s poor reception), Jason Bourne proves just as disappointing as its unacknowledged predecessor. Nearly ten years on from the events of Ultimatum, Bourne is still an emotional mess, haunted by memory fragments that cause him pain and regret. He looks awful, and Damon plays him like a man besieged. For a man who found all the answers he needed, Bourne looks even more tormented than when he was in the dark. The movie never really attempts to explain why this is the case, preferring instead to give audiences a tortured Bourne without expanding on his back story. As a result, his decision to jump back in, prompted by some spurious nonsense involving his father, seems perfunctory instead of necessary.

With Bourne himself treated in such a cavalier fashion – he’s really just a one-man wrecking crew here – the other characters fare just as badly. Dewey is a stock villain, one step removed from twirling an invisible moustache and muttering “mwah-ha-ha!” whenever the script has him do something nefarious. Jones has no chance with the role, and there are times when his awareness of this comes through loud and clear; just watch his scenes with Vikander, and ask yourself if he looks committed. Cassel’s Asset is fuelled by revenge for the torture he suffered through Bourne’s exposure of the Blackbriar program, but as the character spends an inordinate amount of time running around chasing Bourne without actually catching him, his anger (and his back story) gets shoved to the side. And then there’s Heather Lee, the Cyber Crimes head who acts as this movie’s Pamela Landy. There’s supposed to be some mystery as to which side she’s on (she helps Bourne in various ways while pushing a separate CIA agenda), but thanks to Greengrass’s less than subtle direction, Vikander never looks anything other than extremely distrustful.

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And then there’s the small but important matter of how Bourne gets about. From Greece he travels to Berlin, then to London. He does so on his own, without any help from anyone, and manages to elude detection at every turn (a facet of the series that was usually, and very cleverly explained away – but not here). And yet when he travels from London to Las Vegas he does so by commercial aircraft, and though he receives assistance from Lee in getting through US Customs, it still begs the question how UK Customs didn’t flag him up in the first place. (Also, it seems that outside of Athens and Las Vegas there’s not the CCTV infrastructure to allow the CIA to track Bourne efficiently anywhere else.) And stop and think about this: in Las Vegas, at an expo for a communications platform that Dewey wants to appropriate – don’t ask – Bourne picks up various conveniently placed bugging devices that he uses to get to Dewey, all of which begs the question, what plan did he have originally (as he couldn’t have known they were there beforehand)?

Gaping plot holes like these only add to the realisation that Jason Bourne is a less than rewarding, less than necessary sequel to four previous movies (three of which had already told the story effectively and with impressive style), that throws in a handful of rousing action sequences, makes Bourne indestructible, has a subplot involving a communications platform – actually, still don’t ask – and features some of the blandest characters in the whole series. Greengrass is a mercurial director, with a great visual style, but he’s not as good a screenwriter as he might think, and along with Rouse, he makes things too simplistic for the movie’s own good. The end result? A movie that only takes off when it’s throwing punches or chasing SWAT vehicles.

Rating: 5/10 – a missed opportunity to enhance and expand on the series, Jason Bourne trades on nostalgia instead of bringing something new to the franchise; Bourne looks tired throughout, as does Jones, and by the movie’s end the viewer will feel exactly the same way.

Criminal (2016)

12 Tuesday Jul 2016

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Criminal

D: Ariel Vromen / 108m

Cast: Kevin Costner, Gary Oldman, Tommy Lee Jones, Gal Gadot, Ryan Reynolds, Alice Eve, Michael Pitt, Jordi Mollà, Antje Traue, Amaury Nolasco, Scott Adkins, Lara Decaro

Emotionless career criminal and sociopath Jericho Stewart (Costner) has a motto: “You hurt me… I hurt you worse.” It’s tempting to rephrase said motto so that it reflects Criminal‘s effect on its audience: “You trust the movie… and it gets worse.” For the movie is an unappealing mix of action movie, paranoid thriller and sentimental drama, and it tries to be all these things at once, with varied results.

It begins with London-based CIA agent Bill Pope (Reynolds) being followed by a bunch of bad guys led by Elsa Mueller (Traue). He has a holdall full of money, but he manages to hide it. When he’s tricked into making an “escape” to a cement works, he finds himself under fire and eventually captured by terrorist nutjob Xavier Heimdahl (Mollà). Heimdahl (he’s Spanish but his Scandinavian surname elicits no comment from anyone) wants a flash drive that’s also in the holdall; on it is a wormhole program that will give him complete access and control over the US’s weapons and defence system. But Bill keeps schtum and is beaten to death.

But this is the movies and being dead doesn’t always mean being dead. In Criminal, the twist is that Bill’s memories can be accessed and transferred into the mind of another person; in theory, that is. Pioneer scientist Dr Mahal Franks (Jones) has been trying to get permission for human trial for five years, but with the CIA’s London overseer, Quaker Wells (Oldman), desperate to find the program’s creator, a hacker called Jan Stroop aka The Dutchman (Pitt) before he can sell it to the highest bidder (which was Bill before he was killed), he sees no option but to allow Franks to test his theory that transference of memories is possible in humans. But there’s a catch (isn’t there always?).

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Franks’ best candidate to receive Bill’s memories is the aforementioned emotionless career criminal and sociopath Jericho Stewart. Currently in prison, he’s dragged from his cell in the US and shoved on a plane to the UK where Franks operates on him. When he comes to, Wells conveniently fills him in on what’s at stake and his part in it all, but Jericho pretends he doesn’t have any of Bill’s memories. Thinking he’s of no further use, Wells instructs two of his men to take Jericho out into the British countryside somewhere and kill him. But Jericho has other ideas, ideas that centre around a holdall full of money…

Criminal is a movie that offers three storylines for the price of one, and while each one would have made a respectable enough impact as a single movie, Douglas Cook and David Weisberg’s script gets so carried away with itself that the storylines tend to trip each other up and get entangled. Storyline one is a standard world-in-peril scenario that gives Gary Oldman the chance to run around and shout a lot about how much peril the world is in, while storyline two concerns Jericho Stewart’s coming to terms with having Bill’s feelings and emotions, two things he’s had no previous use for. And then there’s storyline three, the (very) unlikely relationship that develops between Jericho and Bill’s wife, Jill (Gadot).

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It’s this last storyline that’s the most problematic, and not just because on their first meeting, Jericho uses duct tape to tie Jill to her bed before making off with her jewellery. No, it’s the alacrity with which she lets him stay the night when he returns the next time, albeit wounded and showing clear signs that her husband is in his head somewhere. And while Jan Stroop demonstrates his control over the US’s weapons and defence system by firing a nuclear warhead from a submarine in the atlantic, Jericho and Jill (now there’s a name for a spin-off TV series) share chicken and waffles with her daughter, Emma (Decaro). This is the point in the movie where storylines two and three ride roughshod over storyline one – it literally grinds to a halt – and any pretense of Criminal being an action thriller is forgotten.

The movie rights itself, though – thankfully – and Jericho is soon back to letting out his inner rage, and on one singular occasion, in a way that’s uncomfortably, misogynistically non-PC (and he gloats about it too). Unfortunately it’s a moment that not even Costner can rescue, which is a shame as he’s just about the only consistently good thing in the whole movie. From his first appearance as a fuzzy-wigged prisoner in chains, all animal instincts and snarling antagonism – when he’s shot with a tranquiliser dart he merely grunts and says, “You’re gonna need another one” – Costner gives a terrific performance that holds the movie together; when he’s on screen you can’t take your eyes off him, and when he isn’t, you can’t wait until he’s back. As Jericho begins to deal with the onslaught of Bill’s memories and feelings, Costner articulates the pain he feels with conviction and sincerity – and this despite having to deal with some truly lame dialogue.

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Elsewhere, Oldman and Jones pop up at various points to push along the basic plot to its unsurprising conclusion, Reynolds contributes what amounts to an extended cameo that anyone could have played, Eve is completely wasted in a role that amounts to approximately five minutes of screen time and a handful of lines, Mollà never gets a grip on his character’s motivations, Pitt has the same problem, Adkins has a supporting role that doesn’t require him to go up against anyone (not even Costner), and Gadot struggles with a role that most actresses would have had trouble with.

Doing his best to make all this fit together in a halfway credible sense is Vromen, whose last movie was the gripping character study The Iceman (2013). He does his best, and the action sequences, despite offering little in the way of original thrills and spills, have a kinetic energy to them that ensures they stand out from the often plodding nature of the rest of the movie… but it’s the generic nature of the thriller elements that defeats him. Danny Rafic’s editing tries to make the movie feel more vigorous than it actually is, and there’s an appropriately dramatic score by Keith Power and Brian Tyler that provides a degree of ad hoc excitement but like so much of the movie, never fully encapsulates the sense of imminent peril Oldman continually shouts about.

Rating: 5/10 – another high-concept idea gets a lukewarm treatment, leaving Criminal feeling undercooked and dragging its heels when it should be embracing its race against time plotting; fans of Costner won’t be disappointed but otherwise this is an action/thriller/sci-fi/drama hybrid that lets its cast, and the audience, down way too often for its own good.

Central Intelligence (2016)

24 Friday Jun 2016

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Central Intelligence

D: Rawson Marshall Thurber / 114m

Cast: Dwayne Johnson, Kevin Hart, Amy Ryan, Danielle Nicolet, Jason Bateman, Aaron Paul, Ryan Hansen, Tim Griffin, Timothy John Smith, Thomas Kretschmann

An action comedy that doesn’t take itself, or its raison d’etre, seriously, Central Intelligence is the kind of buddy movie that lives or dies depending on the chemistry between its two leads. It’s a relief then that the pairing of Dwayne Johnson and Kevin Hart – this decade’s answer to Arnold Schwarzenegger and Danny DeVito perhaps – works so well, and the pair are able to riff off on one another with an ease that belies the fact that this is their first movie together.

It all begins twenty years ago at a high school rally that sees put-upon fat kid Robbie Weirdicht grabbed from the school showers and sent sprawling across the floor of the gymnasium where everyone is gathered. While everyone else laughs, only Calvin Joyner, the most popular kid in school, helps Robbie to cover up. Robbie runs away and is never seen again. Fast forward twenty years and the class of 1996 is preparing to attend their high school reunion. Calvin (Hart) is now an accountant whose initial promise seems to have petered out: he’s just been passed up for promotion. He’s married to his childhood sweetheart, Maggie (Nicolet), but they don’t have any kids and she’s more successful than he is. Then, out of the blue, Calvin recieves a friend request on Facebook from someone called Bob Stone (Johnson). Stone persuades Calvin to meet him for a drink, and when they do, Calvin is amazed that Bob is actually Robbie, and that Robbie has changed so completely from the fat kid he remembers from school.

CI - scene2

The pair end up back at Calvin’s home, where Bob asks him to look at his payroll account as there’s a problem with it. But the account is actually a list of bids for an unknown item at an auction due to finish the next night. Bob stays over, but the morning brings a surprise visit by the CIA in the form of Agent Harris (Ryan) and her fellow agents, Mitchell (Griffin) and Cooper (Smith). They’re after Bob who, it transpires, is a CIA agent who is apparently wanted for the theft of spy sateliite codes and the murder of his partner. Bob has left, however, and only catches up with Calvin later at his office. A firefight with the CIA ensues and the pair narrowly escape. Bob explains he’s trying to find the location where the codes will be bought, and needs Calvin’s accounting skills to help him do so. Calvin balks at the idea however, and takes off at the first opportunity.

Pressure from the CIA is brought to bear on Calvin and he’s forced to give up Bob’s whereabouts. But with Bob in custody and being interrogated “the hard way”, Calvin has a change of heart and helps him escape. They use another high school alumni, Trevor (Bateman), to help them find the location of the buy, and head off to Boston to crash the meeting, and discover just who the buyer is and if he’s a shadowy figure called the Black Badger, also the man responsible for the death of Bob’s partner, Phil (Paul)…

CI - scene1

From the above synopsis you can guess that Central Intelligence doesn’t have exactly the greatest of scripts, but that wouldn’t be entirely true. Yes, it has several painful moments where the basic plot rebounds against the constraints of credibility, and the storyline surrounding Calvin and Maggie’s relationship takes the movie off into odd areas that slow the movie down and feel like padding, but overall it’s a movie that provides solid laughs, both visual (Bob’s dislocated finger) and verbal (“And you’re still shorter than my cat” – Trevor to Calvin). For once, Hart doesn’t overdo his usual schtick and delivers his best performance for a while, making Calvin’s eventual, committed, partnership with Bob more believable than expected. Meanwhile, Johnson reminds viewers just how good he can be in a comedy role, playing Bob as an over-exuberant man-child whose enthusiasm for pretty much everything is expressed through a variety of gushing excitement and childlike wonder.

Indeed, it’s the inspired pairing of Johnson and Hart that makes Central Intelligence work as well as it does. Unlike, say, Hart’s pairing with Ice Cube in the Ride Along movies, here he displays a genuine chemistry with the former WWE Superstar that makes watching the movie far more enjoyable than it appears at first glance. And while, as mentioned above, Hart employs his trademark cowardly, fast-talking movie persona on several occasions but perhaps in deference to Johnson’s cleverer, less in-your-face approach, refrains from going as over the top as he’s done in the likes of Get Hard (2015). This makes for one of his better performances, and in his scenes with Johnson you can see and feel him upping his game, something he hasn’t done since co-starring with Stallone and De Niro in Grudge Match (2013).

CI - scene3

Without Johnson and Hart’s sterling performances, however, Central Intelligence would be even more derivative and lightweight than it looks, thanks to its piecemeal plotting, obvious villain, and low-key action sequences (they’re well choreographed but aren’t that memorable when all’s said and done). There’s an awkward subplot involving bullying that is resolved in typically inappropriate fashion, and the secondary characters are practically cardboard cutouts, leaving the likes of Ryan and Bateman little else to do but recite their lines and hope for the best once the movie’s cut together. Thurber, whose last movie was the wickedly smart and under-appreciated We’re the Millers (2013) makes light work of a screenplay that could have been filed under “fluffy nonsense” and no one would have complained, and shows an aptitude for the buddy movie – and showing these characters in a good light in particular – that hopefully will keep him retained if a sequel is ever greenlit (which is likely).

Rating: 6/10 – there’s plenty of silly fun to be had in Central Intelligence, but while it’s amusing enough, it doesn’t excuse the waywardness or clumsiness of the script; Hart and Johnson make a great double act (though Johnson proves to be the better comic actor), and there’s enough merit to the action scenes to keep genre fans happy, all of which adds up to a surprisingly entertaining viewing experience – if you don’t expect too much.

Monthly Roundup – December 2015

31 Thursday Dec 2015

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The Hike (2011) / D: Rupert Bryan / 83m

Cast: Barbara Nedeljakova, Zara Phythian, Ben Loyd-Holmes, Lisa-Marie Long, Jemma Bolt, Stephanie Siadatan, Daniel Caren, Dominic Le Moignan, Shauna Macdonald, Tamer Hassan

The Hike

Rating: 2/10 – five female friends decide to take a trip into the woods only to find themselves at the mercy of three psychos; an unforgivably awful UK torture porn movie, The Hike doesn’t have the strength of its own convictions and features some truly abysmal “acting”.

Extraction (2015) / D: Steven C. Miller / 83m

Cast: Kellan Lutz, Bruce Willis, Gina Carano, D.B. Sweeney, Joshua Mikel, Steve Coulter, Dan Bilzerian, Lydia Hull

Extraction

Rating: 3/10 – when former CIA operative Leonard Turner (Willis) is abducted by terrorists, it’s down to his son (Lutz) to rescue him; Willis’s career continues in its downward spiral, but now he’s starting to take his co-stars with him, in an action movie that occasionally glances at credibility but then looks away in shame.

Charlie Chan in the Secret Service (1944) / D: Phil Rosen / 65m

aka Charlie Chan and the Secret Service

Cast: Sidney Toler, Mantan Moreland, Arthur Loft, Gwen Kenyon, Sarah Edwards, George J. Lewis, Marianne Quon, Benson Fong, Muni Seroff, Barry Bernard, Gene Roth, Eddy Chandler, Lelah Tyler

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Rating: 6/10 – Charlie Chan investigates when an inventor is found dead and the plans of the top secret weapon he was working on go missing; the first Charlie Chan movie to be made by Monogram, this is still an efficient murder mystery with a few tricks up its sleeve.

Outside the Law (2002) / D: Jorge Montesi / 90m

Cast: Cynthia Rothrock, Seamus Devers, Jessica Stier, Jeff Wincott, Stephen Macht, Dan Lauria, Brad Greenquist, Don Harvey, Petra Wright, James Lew

Outside the Law

Rating: 3/10 – betrayed secret agent Julie Cosgrove (Rothrock) takes time out from being on the run to bust up a drug smuggling ring operating out of a sleepy Florida town; late vintage Rothrock sees the action star still uncomfortable when called upon to smile, but there’s little she can do to improve this plodding (and naturally implausible) thriller.

Ashby (2015)

27 Sunday Sep 2015

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Ashby

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”…

Ashby - scene

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

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American Ultra

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…

American Ultra - scene

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.

Mini-Review: The Man from U.N.C.L.E. (2015)

19 Wednesday Aug 2015

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Man from U.N.C.L.E., The

D: Guy Ritchie / 116m

Cast: Henry Cavill, Armie Hammer, Alicia Vikander, Elizabeth Debicki, Luca Calvani, Sylvester Groth, Hugh Grant, Jared Harris, Christian Berkel, Misha Kuznetsov

Following his rescue of a scientist’s daughter, Gaby Teller (Vikander) from East Berlin, CIA agent Napoleon Solo (Cavill) is told by his boss (Harris) that he has a new partner: the KGB agent who tried to stop him, Ilya Kuryakin (Hammer). Gaby’s father, Udo (Berkel), is building an atom bomb that’s intended for a hidden Nazi group. Her Uncle Rudi (Groth) is suspected of knowing where he is. Solo and Kuryakin must take Gaby to Rome where evidence points to the involvement of the Alexanders (Calvani, Debicki). While Solo poses as an antiquities dealer, Kuryakin poses as Gaby’s fiancé. Solo and Kuryakin attend a party given by Victoria Alexander where they discover evidence that the atom bomb (and Udo) must be nearby. That night they both break in to the Alexanders’ factory where they find further evidence of Udo’s work.

Solo meets with Victoria but she drugs his drink. When he wakes he finds himself strapped to a chair and about to be tortured by Uncle Rudi who turns out to be an evil Nazi scientist. With Kuryakin’s aid he escapes, while Gaby is taken to an island where her father is putting the finishing touches to the bomb. It’s at this point that Solo and Kuryakin are introduced to Commander Waverly (Grant), a member of British intelligence. He fills them in on some information that’s been held back from them, and reveals a plan to infiltrate the island, seize the atom bomb, and rescue Gaby and her father. But the Alexanders have an ace up their sleeve…

Man from U.N.C.L.E., The - scene

The Man from U.N.C.L.E. (on the big screen at least) has been a long time coming. But up until the recent involvement of Ritchie and his producing partner Lionel Wigram, every attempt to make a movie version of the classic 60’s TV show has stalled, often before it’s even cleared the gate. Coming off two very successful Sherlock Holmes movies, Ritchie has clearly been given as much leeway as he needs in order to bring this movie to audiences, and while he uses many of the stylistic shooting techniques he used on the Holmes movies, what he’s failed to do is come up with a story that is either exciting or engrossing. It’s a shame as the potential is there for another successful franchise, but aside from a splendidly retro feel for the era, the movie lacks the kind of impact that would lift it out of the bin marked “ordinary”.

Things aren’t helped by the casting of Cavill and Hammer, two averagely effective actors who lack the subtlety required to make Solo and Kuryakin anything more than grudging partners. Sure it’s an origin story so the animosity is understandable, but they’re also highly skilled professionals, the best at what they do; so why make Solo a preening plank, or Kuryakin a headstrong liability? It’s a curious decision, to make your two leading men so unrelatable, but Ritchie’s gone with it completely, and the movie suffers appropriately. Thankfully, the same can’t be said of Vikander and Debicki, who save the movie from being too much of a debacle, and the involvement of Grant, who seems to be having the most fun he’s had in years. If there is to be a sequel – and at the moment the movie’s performance at the box office seems to indicate there won’t be – then a serious rethink is in order.

Rating: 5/10 – not as bad as it could have been, but also not as good as it should have been, The Man from U.N.C.L.E. lacks energy and limps uneasily from scene to scene in search of a consistently entertaining tone that it doesn’t find; a pleasant enough diversion if you’re in the mood, but definitely not a movie to expect too much from.

Spy (2015)

02 Tuesday Jun 2015

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Spy

D: Paul Feig / 120m

Cast: Melissa McCarthy, Jason Statham, Rose Byrne, Miranda Hart, Allison Janney, Bobby Cannavale, Peter Serafinowicz, Morena Baccarin, Richard Brake, Nargis Fakhri, 50 Cent, Jude Law

CIA operatives Bradley Fine (Law) and Susan Cooper (McCarthy) are the best team in the organisation: Fine out in the field, Susan back at HQ guiding and protecting him on his missions. After Fine misses out on the chance to find the whereabouts of a nuclear weapon that’s up for sale – by accidentally shooting the seller – the CIA soon learns that the seller’s daughter, Rayna Boyanov (Byrne), has taken over the sale and through corrupt businessman Sergio De Luca (Cannavale) is offering it to terrorist Solsa Dudaev (Brake).

Fine infiltrates Rayna’s home but discovers it’s a trap; Susan has to watch as Rayna kills him. When it becomes clear that Rayna knows the identities of all of the CIA’s top agents, including gung-ho hothead Rick Ford (Statham), Susan volunteers to travel to Paris where De Luca has an office, and to report back any activity. Followed there by Ford, who thinks she’ll compromise the mission, Susan discovers that De Luca is now in Rome. Once there, she switches her dowdy undercover identity for a more upmarket one, and trails De Luca to a casino. She witnesses a man spike a drink at the bar; when the drink is delivered to none other than Rayna, Susan sees her chance to get close to Fine’s killer and find out the location of the nuclear weapon.

Gaining Rayna’s confidence, the pair fly to Budapest. During the flight one of the pilot tries to kill Rayna but Susan overpowers him and lands the plane instead. In the process she reveals her skills as an agent, and Rayna becomes convinced she works for the CIA. Susan manages to convince her that her father employed Susan to look after her. Rayna believes her story, but when they arrive in Budapest, matters are complicated by the arrival of Susan’s best friend and co-worker, Nancy (Hart) who has been sent to check on her. Pretending Nancy works for her, Susan foils another bid to kill Rayna, but in doing so finds herself at Rayna’s mercy, and with the sale of the nuclear weapon a matter of hours away.

Spy - scene

It’s been four short years since Melissa McCarthy shot to fame by defecating into a sink in the movie Bridesmaids (2011). In that time she’s continued with her role in the TV show Mike & Molly, had a minor role in This Is 40 (2012), given supporting turns in The Hangover Part III (2013) and St. Vincent (2014), co-starred with Sandra Bullock in The Heat (2013), and headlined two movies of her own, Identity Thief (2013) and Tammy (2014). If the last two movies didn’t exactly set critical pulses racing, both took over $100,000,000 worldwide, proving that audiences enjoyed watching slight variations on the character she first played in director Paul Feig’s earlier movie.

But it was a character that had a limited shelf life, and with Spy, McCarthy and Feig have wisely broadened their horizons, and in so doing, have given the actress her best role yet. As the ten years desk bound CIA agent who dreams of some excitement in her life, McCarthy delivers a performance that is at once more controlled and less wayward. In creating Susan Cooper, McCarthy shows that she has much more to offer than pratfalls and foul-mouthed schtick (even though there’s room for both here, just not as much as usual), and is more than capable of playing a fully rounded character. It’s good to see her owning the material as well and riffing on it to such good effect, making Susan possibly her most endearing, and appealing role to date, and entirely worthy of the movie itself.

For the best thing about Spy is that it’s consistently funny, whether it’s subverting genre conventions by thrusting the backroom girls into the spotlight, making Fine a preening douche, Ford a ridiculous blowhard, or giving Susan some of the worst makeovers in history for her undercover identities, the movie has great fun in spoofing the spy/action movie while maintaining a more serious subplot about Susan’s gaining enough self-confidence to fulfil her potential as an agent. That Feig’s script has the confidence to attempt both, and then succeed with seeming ease, adds to the movie’s lustre, and makes it all the more enjoyable.

As already noted, McCarthy delivers her best role to date, and she’s matched by the surprise – and inspired – casting of Statham as the kind of agent who can’t pass up an opportunity for a bit of self-aggrandisement. On this evidence, Statham should do more comedy, as here he’s hilarious, shouting and swearing like a man on the brink of a psychotic break, and making the kinds of boasts that are so absurd he doesn’t know how idiotic he sounds. But where Ford’s boasting is a highlight, he’s still outdone by the insults traded between Susan and Rayna, some of which are the funniest putdowns heard in recent years (and particularly when it comes to Rayna’s hairdo). Byrne and McCarthy have a great time deadpanning their lines at each other, and so does the audience as each insult escalates their dislike of each other’s character.

In support, Serafinowicz is irrepressible as Susan’s Italian contact, Aldo, for whom large bosoms are the key to happiness; Law is debonair, charming and an unfeeling arse; Janney is the CIA chief who sees promise in Susan’s wish to work in the field; Cannavale doesn’t really feature until the last twenty minutes; 50 Cent plays himself; and in a role that doesn’t see her stretch too far from her British TV persona, Hart racks up enough laughs as Nancy to have done her US career no harm at all. In short, it’s a great cast, and they all deliver as required.

The European locations are filmed by Robert D. Yeoman with that travelogue sheen that enhances even the most attractive of regions or cities, and as a result the movie is attractive to look at throughout. The music by Theodore Shapiro is occasionally overbearing, but this is due to its prominence in the sound mix rather than any compositional issues, and McCarthy’s wardrobe, courtesy of Christine Bieselin Clark, fluctuates from plain and functional to horrendous to glamorous (though her final look in the movie makes her appear too much like Dawn French for comfort). And the action scenes are splendidly realised, including a terrific fight between McCarthy and  Fakhri that wouldn’t look out of place in a… well, in a Jason Statham movie.

Rating: 8/10 – consistently entertaining, Spy is a treat for fans of McCarthy and spy spoofs in general; with a script that knows when to be serious and when to be gloriously silly, it’s a movie that is infectious in its desire to please its audience, something it does with no small amount of style and wit.

3 Days to Kill (2014)

15 Thursday May 2014

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3 Days to Kill

D: McG / 123m

Cast: Kevin Costner, Amber Heard, Hailee Steinfeld, Connie Nielsen, Tómas Lemarquis, Richard Sammel, Marc Andréoni, Bruno Ricci, Jonas Bloquet, Eriq Ebouaney

Veteran CIA agent Ethan Renner (Costner) is part of a mission to capture international terrorist The Wolf (Sammel).  Acting on intelligence that his associate The Albino (Lemarquis) is selling a dirty bomb at a hotel in Belgrade, Ethan and his team attempt to capture him but the mission goes wrong when The Albino recognises one of Ethan’s team.  The Albino makes his escape in the ensuing shootout; Ethan chases him but finds himself short of breath, and he collapses.  Despite being wounded, The Albino gets away.  Ethan blacks out.  Later, in a local hospital, a doctor tells him he has cancer, and at best, has 3-5 months to live.

Having been pensioned off from the CIA, Ethan moves to Paris where his estranged wife, Tina (Nielsen), and daughter Zooey (Steinfeld) live.  He tries to reestablish his relationship with Zooey but his first attempts are clumsy and backfire on him.  When Tina has to go to London for a few days, Ethan persuades her that he can look after Zooey, and he moves into their apartment.  That same day, Ethan is approached by Vivi Delay (Heard), a senior CIA agent who wants him to continue looking for The Wolf, and offers him an experimental drug that will stave off the effects of his cancer enough to extend his life by a few more months.  Ethan accepts the job.  He begins targeting known associates of The Wolf and The Albino, until he learns that The Albino will be in Paris in a few days’ time.

His relationship with Zooey improves slowly, and is cemented when he saves her from being raped in a nightclub.  As their time together becomes more and more important to Zooey, Ethan has to juggle the demands made on him as a father, and as an agent.  Tina returns home and is pleased to see Ethan and Zooey getting on so well, and she and Ethan have a reconciliation.  His mission to capture The Wolf comes to a head when Zooey’s boyfriend Hugh (Bloquet) invites them to a party at his parents’ home, and in one of those amazing moments of serendipity that exist only in the movies, it turns out that Hugh’s father is The Wolf’s Paris business partner, and he’s there as well.

3 Days to Kill - scene

Another low-concept idea from the mind of Luc Besson, 3 Days to Kill bears all the hallmarks of a hastily put together movie production and lurches from one badly thought out scene to another, trading on Costner’s innate gravitas as an actor (and then doing it’s best to undermine that gravitas with some ill-considered comedy beats), and complete with awful dialogue and weak characterisations.  Not one of the relationships foisted on us by Besson and co-writer Adi Hasak is at all plausible, and Ethan himself is a bizarre combination of action hero, concerned absentee father, and comedic torturer.  The movie is full of awkward moments that add nothing to the plot but do succeed in padding out the running time.  There is a whole third-string storyline involving Ethan’s apartment and the family of squatters that have taken it over; unable to evict them, Ethan allows his anger at their being there to develop into a strange paternal devotion: when one of patriarch Jules’s (Ebouaney) daughters has a child in the apartment, Ethan is on hand to become a de facto godfather (and hold the baby).

Even more bizarre is the character of Vivi Delay, portrayed by Heard as a mixture of modern-day vamp and emotionally vacant dominatrix.  The actress’ interpretation of the role is (hopefully) based on what direction there is in the script, but if it’s not then it’s a freakish performance and one that makes Heard look like an amateur trying to break free from regional theatre.  Even the way she delivers her lines – arch, and laced with undisguised sarcasm – makes them sound like a first draft reading, and it’s a relief that she’s not on screen any more than she is.  Steinfeld is equally guilty of putting in a sub-par performance, giving us a moody teenager that no one would believe in, and failing to make Zooey’s relationship with Ethan anything other perfunctory and/or glib (depending on a scene’s requirements).  Nielsen has the thankless role of mother removed for the sake of the plot, while Costner (who has said he liked the character of Ethan, but didn’t like the movie) does his best with one of the most uneven roles of his career.  (You know an actor’s in trouble when his character name is a combination of Ethan Hunt and Jeremy Renner from Mission Impossible: Ghost Protocol.)  Looking uncomfortable throughout, and burdened with the daunting prospect of injecting some credibility into the proceedings, Costner does just enough to keep the audience from tuning out completely, and shows that it’s not only Liam Neeson who can still kick ass at an advanced age (Costner is 59).

Under the less than capable direction of McG, 3 Days to Kill is a mess of a movie that only moves up a notch with its action scenes, including a cleverly constructed kidnapping involving a bus, a bicycle, and a small claymore mine.  The Paris locations are also worth mentioning, as is the somewhat bucolic score by Guillaume Roussel, and the often tightly-framed compositions of veteran cinematographer Thierry Arbogast.  As a thrill ride, the movie is fitfully effective, but as an absorbing, entertaining piece it’s as lightweight as a feather, with too many narrative absurdities than it could ever overcome, including the experimental drug that only Vivi knows anything about (oh yeah?).

Rating: 4/10 – a second-hand script (replete with Besson’s recurring penchant for casual racism) masquerading as a polished action movie, 3 Days to Kill never lives up to its initial promise; with weak direction and the kind of cast that deserves more, the movie struggles to establish the same tone throughout, and boasts the kind of unlucky central performance from its star that, in the Nineties, would have doomed his career quicker than The Postman did.