Tag Archives: Joel Edgerton

Gringo (2018)

10 Saturday Mar 2018

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D: Nash Edgerton / 110m

Cast: David Oyelowo, Charlize Theron, Joel Edgerton, Amanda Seyfried, Sharlto Copley, Harry Treadaway, Thandie Newton, Yul Vazquez, Carlos Corona, Diego Cataño, Rodrigo Corea, Hernán Mendoza, Alan Ruck, Kenneth Choi

Ah, the underdog. The plucky, conscientious, yet continually overlooked underdog. One of Life’s also-rans, he or she rarely gets ahead because everyone around them is too busy feathering their own nests to do anything other than take them for granted – except when it comes time to make them the fall guy in some nefarious scheme or other. How many times have we seen this scenario in a movie? (Don’t answer, that’s an entirely rhetorical question.) And how many times have we seen the underdog, after many trials and tribulations, find a way to come out on top? (Again, don’t answer.) But it doesn’t seem to matter how often this kind of scenario plays out in a movie, someone will always come along and attempt to provide another variation on such a time-worn theme. Which leads us to Gringo, the second feature from Nash Edgerton, and another example of the underdog story. Here, the underdog is Harold Soyinka (Oyelowo), a Nigerian-born executive at a US pharmaceutical company, Cannabax Technologies Inc, who finds himself in trouble with a Mexican drugs cartel.

It’s all the fault of his duplicitous bosses, Richard Rusk (Edgerton), and Elaine Markinson (Theron). The marijuana-based drug they’ve been developing for the mass market is ready to go, but in their haste to rake in as much profit as they can, Richard and Elaine have decided to sever ties with the drugs cartel they have been colluding with up until now. Harold doesn’t know any of this at first, but he soon gets wise, and he learns that Richard and Elaine are planning to sell the company, meaning he’ll lose his job. So on a trip to Cannabax’s Mexican factory, Harold decides to fake his own kidnapping. He hopes to force Richard and Elaine into paying the “ransom demand” and pocketing the money for himself. Inevitably, things don’t go the way Harold has planned them, and soon he’s being chased by the cartel, getting involved with the girlfriend (Seyfried) of a drug mule (Treadaway) (they’re all staying in the same hotel where he’s hiding out), and finding an unlikely saviour in an ex-mercenary (Copley) who isn’t all that he seems.

Gringo is the kind of black comedy thriller that always seems to attract a great cast, but which then spends a lot of time and effort in giving them hardly anything to do, or to work with. It’s a busy movie, but messy and dramatically uneven, and unsure of what tone to adopt in any given scene. As it plays out, the movie seems committed to providing as many stock characters in as many stock situations as it can, and to adding a thick layer of humour to proceedings in the hope that if the drama doesn’t work, then the audience will be distracted by the sight of Harold’s high-pitched yelping when given an injection (admittedly funny thanks to Oyelowo), or the cartel boss’s obsession with The Beatles (less so). When things turn violent, the movie becomes another beast altogether, and it tries for tragedy as well, something it can’t pull off because by then it’s way too late. The performances suffer as a result, with Oyelowo and Copley coming off best, but Theron is saddled with a thankless “corporate bitch” role that even she can’t enliven. There’s a half decent movie in there somewhere, but thanks to the vagaries of the script (by Anthony Tambakis and Matthew Stone) and Edgerton’s inability to maintain a consistent tone throughout, it’s never going to see the light of day.

Rating: 5/10 – intermittently funny, but otherwise too predictable and/or derivative of other, similar movies, Gringo wants to be entertaining but lacks the wherewithal to know how; a movie that coasts along at times in its search for the next incident to move it forward, it’s amiable enough, but not very ambitious in its ideas, something that leaves it feeling rough and ready and under-developed.

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Bright (2017)

23 Saturday Dec 2017

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D: David Ayer / 118m

Cast: Will Smith, Joel Edgerton, Noomi Rapace, Lucy Fry, Edgar Ramírez, Veronica Ngo, Alex Meraz, Happy Anderson, Ike Barinholtz, Dawn Olivieri, Matt Gerald, Margaret Cho, Joseph Piccuirro, Brad William Henke, Jay Hernandez, Enrique Murciano

And so, like the cinematic equivalent of a pair of socks (but for the same foot), we have Bright, the latest Netflix original to grace the small screen and remind us that not all the bad movies get a cinema release. Penned by Max Landis and directed by David Ayer, this lumpen mix of fantasy and crime arrives D.O.A. before it’s even started, and not once during its near-on two hour run time, shows any sign that it can be resurrected (unlike one of its characters). If you have to see this movie, then be warned: it’s as if Alien Nation (1988) never happened.

Mismatched buddy cop movies have been around for some time now, but rarely have they been as ill-advised and as poorly constructed as this movie. Bright takes a great central conceit – what if magic was real and fantasy creatures co-existed with us in some alternate reality? – and then keeps on reminding the viewer that beyond this central conceit, the script has no idea what to do with it other than to make an action thriller out of it, and one that rarely makes any coherent sense. There’s a Dark Lord who was vanquished two thousand years ago, and now a bad elf, Leilah (Rapace), wants to use one of three magic wands to bring the Dark Lord back so he can kill billions of people and enslave the rest. (As wth most fantasy movies where there’s a Big Bad who just wants to destroy everything, there’s no actual reason given as to why they want to do all this, or why they have followers who can’t see this isn’t actually a good thing.) Our heroes are a couple of L.A. cops, the mismatched buddies of this paragraph’s first sentence. One is Daryl Ward (Smith), a long-serving officer about to resume active duty after being shot, and the other is his partner, Nick Jakoby (Edgerton), the first and only Orc to become a police officer.

It won’t surprise anyone that Nick being an Orc gives rise to notions of racism, both casual and institutional, and the movie does spend some time examining this particular theme, but it does so in such a clumsy, ham-fisted way that it’s almost embarrassing. The Orc population primarily lives in ghetto-ised areas, while the Elves have their own exclusive part of town, are rich and influential, and apparently exist to go boutique shopping (there are fairies too but they’re not important). Both keep out of each other’s way, both have sketchily drawn histories, and there’s no attempt to explain how they and humans came to be co-existing with each other, or how long it’s been going on. Landis and Ayer aren’t interested in creating a credible world that makes any sense, and that’s evident by the way in which the movie throws the viewer in at the deep end and then wanders off without throwing them a lifeline. Instead, Ward and Nick are soon running from everyone in their efforts to keep Leilah’s magic wand – stolen by good elf Tikka (Fry) – from ending up in the wrong hands. Corrupt cops want it, a local gang wants it, Leilah and two of her followers (Ngo, Meraz) want it, and an FBI agent, Kandomere (Ramirez), wants it as well. What’s a couple of increasingly isolated police officers to do?

The answer is to wait until the movie delivers on a piece of information a minor character imparts near the beginning. The title refers to someone who can wield a magic wand – usually an elf – but who can also be human, even though the odds are (unsurprisingly) astronomical. With this fairly important tidbit introduced into the narrative, and in such a way as to draw direct attention to it, the ending of the movie is set up, and any tension intended to keep viewers on the edge of their seats wondering how Leilah can be defeated, is abandoned. Landis and Ayer know what’s going to happen, the viewer knows what’s going to happen, and if you took a straw poll of a hundred random strangers, they’d all know too. This means wading through a number of encounters that offer a succession of action beats – one inside a convenience store is at least well choreographed – interspersed with scenes that are meant to reveal more about the characters. Sadly, much of this is tedious to watch and dramatically redundant. This is fantasy by numbers, and Landis’s script doesn’t bring anything new to the table, just stock characters and a predictable scenario.

It’s concerning that Landis thinks of this movie as his “Star Wars“, and that Ayer has said (in response to a negative review) that “it’s a big fun movie”. Landis needs to rethink his opinion, and Ayer needs to reflect on what aspects could be regarded as “fun”. Following on so soon after the debacle that was Suicide Squad (2016), Ayer should be persuaded to avoid big budget fantasy spectacles and maybe concentrate on smaller, more personal movies or return to making gritty, immediate cop thrillers such as End of Watch (2012). Equally, Landis should forget about high concept screenplays and maybe write some more of the quirky, low budget stuff that actually has an impact, such as Mr. Right (2015). The trap that both men have fallen into is in believing that audiences will just accept what they’re being shown, and will be more than happy with the numerous action scenes that bulk out the movie. But when everything seems either laboured or ignored or both, audiences will take that on board, and they will be disappointed.

The performances are adequate, with Edgerton coming away with a degree of kudos for his portrayal of Nick, but for Smith this is another misfire in what seems to be a consistent series of misfires stretching all the way back to Men in Black 3 (2012). Whether you believe his judgment has been affected in some way, and that his choice of projects over the last five years has made him appear “off his game”, what remains is a portrayal here that doesn’t resonate in the way that a Will Smith performance used to. There isn’t the energy or the knowing humour that we’ve come to expect in the past; instead it’s another occasion where his presence is almost a guarantee of disappointment. Rapace has even less chance of making an impact, reduced as she is to playing generic villain of the month, while the rest of the cast make up the numbers in a variety of unassuming and unaffecting ways. It all looks gloomy and portentous, but not in a good way, and there are moments where any good intentions or creative ideas appear to have been jettisoned in favour of sticking to Landis’s screenplay. There’s a great movie to be made from the idea of fantasy creatures inhabiting the same world as humans, and living side by side with us, but unfortunately, Bright isn’t it.

Rating: 3/10 – with a sequel already greenlit and Smith set to return, the notion that Netflix have seen all they need to see in relation to Bright is quite a worrying development, especially as there’s nothing here to warrant continuing Ward or Nick’s story; loud, dumb, and superficially entertaining, it’s a movie that lacks heart and soul and a sense of wonder at the world it’s seeking to show, and which quickly descends into a melee of rote situations and trite outcomes.

It Comes at Night (2017)

16 Wednesday Aug 2017

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D: Trey Edward Shults / 91m

Cast: Joel Edgerton, Christopher Abbott, Carmen Ejogo, Kelvin Harrison Jr, Riley Keough, Griffin Robert Faulkner

In recent years, low budget horror thrillers have had something of a resurgence, what with It Follows (2014), The Witch (2015), Split (2016), and Get Out (2017) all making an impact with audiences and critics alike. While there are still too many similar movies out there that lack the attention to detail or the originality of these particular examples, it’s heartening to see that some movie makers aren’t just content to rehash familiar stories and plots, and are willing to bringing something different to the table. In addition to the makers of the movies listed above, we now have to add the name of Trey Edward Shults. Making only his second feature, Shults has made a movie that is by turns eerie, unnerving and undeniably tense. It’s a post-apocalyptic thriller that slowly tightens the screws on its characters from the start, and makes no promises of a happy ending for any of them.

We discover things are bad right at the beginning, with Paul (Edgerton), his wife Sarah (Ejogo), and their teenage son, Travis (Harrison Jr), transporting an old man in a wheelbarrow to a clearing in the woods. The old man – who is Sarah’s father – is visibly ill. Paul shoots him, and he and Travis put the body in a shallow grave; they then burn it. The message is clear: anyone found to be contaminated by the disease that has ravaged the rest of the world, will be despatched in a similar fashion. They return to their home deep in the woods, where they barricade themselves inside. This is their life now, and Paul is determined to keep them from harm. That determination is put to the test the next night when they capture an intruder trying to break in. The man’s name is Will (Abbott), and he manages to convince Paul that he was only looking for food and water for himself and his wife, Kim (Keough), and young son Andrew (Faulkner). Satisfied that Will doesn’t have the disease, Paul agrees to travel with him to collect his wife and son.

With Will’s family in the house as well, Paul impresses on the newcomers the rules that have kept him and his family safe, in particular ensuring the only entrance door is kept secure at night. The two families begin to learn to trust each other, but there are odd moments where Travis wonders if the stories Will and Kim tell are entirely true. On an excursion into the woods, Travis’s dog, Stanley, runs off and doesn’t come back. That night, Travis wakes from a nightmare, and in turn, discovers that the entrance door is ajar. Having wakened his father and Will, they discover a badly wounded Stanley just inside the door. Tensions mount when Sarah suggests that a sleepwalking Andrew might have opened the door, while Will and Kim accuse Travis. Tensions mount even further when Travis learns that Andrew may be infected, and Paul decides to finds out for himself…

For much of It Comes at Night, the audience is only given enough to appreciate the immediate situation, and what it means for the two families concerned. There’s no extended scene where someone describes the outbreak of the disease and how it happened, or how quickly it spread, or how easily society fell apart in the wake of the spread. Instead, it’s enough to know that the world has become an entirely dangerous place, and that trust may have become the most precious commodity on the planet. It’s easy to see that Paul is doing his best to protect his family, and it’s clear that he’s given their situation a lot of thought, but it’s also obvious that he’s had to make other, more personal sacrifices along the way, and though much of the story’s focus is on Travis and how he perceives events happening around him, Edgerton’s quiet, brooding performance is the movie’s touchstone. He’s a man who’s dispensed with the idea of social niceties, and if killing means survival, then that’s what he’ll do. Edgerton brings all this to the character, and though he’s sometimes on the periphery of a scene, his presence is as accurate a monitor of the movie’s overall mood as you’d need.

And that mood is pretty intense for most of the movie as the audience waits for the inevitable disintegration of the uneasy combination of two families with differing agendas co-existing in the same claustrophobic property. A veritable maze of a place, the house is a distorting labyrinth that allows for various spy holes and hiding places, and which allows Travis to be the conduit through which the viewer gains a broader understanding of the dynamics of both families, as well as his own growing understanding of the fault lines developing between them. Travis has recurring nightmares relating to the disease, and it’s his fear that gives the audience a way into a scenario that could otherwise have been just a mood piece. There’s a grim inevitability to the way in which this new, insular “society” breaks down, and Shults makes good use of the dread that comes along with it. Will Paul be able to protect his family or will events determine otherwise? And are Travis’s nightmares a foretaste of what’s to come?

For most of the movie’s well-judged running time, Shults handles the character dynamics with confidence and a consistent use of sparse, realistic dialogue. He also ensures that the mottled colour scheme of the property and the surrounding woods adds a melancholy layer to proceedings that is both dispiriting and oppressive. This isn’t a movie that provides much in the way of humour, and though smiles are appropriate on a couple of occasions, what Shults does is to use these moments as a way of leavening the pervading sense of anxiety that he’s building, and to help soften some of the blows to come. Inevitably though, there are a couple of issues that hinder the movie from becoming a complete success. There’s an awkward moment involving Travis and Kim that could best be described as a “seduction scene”, but which isn’t developed any further, and the issue of who opened the entrance door is left unsolved, which feels like a clumsy misstep from a writer/director who for the most part, is in firm control of everything else. It’s a frustrating lapse, as well, because it leaves the viewer waiting to find out who did open it, and for some, it’s likely to occupy their thoughts for the last twenty-five minutes. Those issues aside, though, It Comes at Night is a movie that continues that recent run of effective horror thrillers with more than a dash of style.

Rating: 8/10 – a slowburn thriller with horror overtones, It Comes at Night is also a sombre, doleful survivalist drama that is well-paced, confidently handled by its writer/director, and features a terrific performance from Edgerton; with a palpable sense of impending doom to weigh the characters down, it’s a movie with nihilist leanings and very little intention of sending the viewer away in a happy mood, but in terms of what it wants to achieve, it has to be considered a definite success.

Loving (2016)

03 Friday Feb 2017

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D: Jeff Nichols / 123m

Cast: Joel Edgerton, Ruth Negga, Marton Csokas, Nick Kroll, Terri Abney, Alano Miller, Sharon Blackwood, Bill Camp, David Jensen, Jon Bass, Michael Shannon

Caroline County, Virginia, 1958. Bricklayer Richard Loving has fallen in love with Mildred Jeter (Negga), and now she’s pregnant. Knowing that Virginia’s anti-miscegenation laws prohibit inter-racial marriage, they travel to Washington D.C. and get married there. They return to Caroline County and begin their married life in the home of Mildred’s parents. But news of their marriage has reached the wrong people; in a dawn raid carried out by the local sheriff (Csokas), Richard and Mildred are arrested and put in jail. Richard is allowed out on bail soon after, but Mildred is kept there until the following Monday. At their trial, and on the recommendation of their lawyer (Camp), they plead guilty and are both sentenced to one year in prison, which will be suspended if they leave Virginia and don’t return for twenty-five years. With no other choice available to them, they move to Washington and stay with one of Mildred’s friends.

Richard’s mother (Blackwood) is a midwife, and Mildred is determined that their first baby should be delivered by her. They sneak back to Caroline County and Mildred gives birth to a son, Sidney. But again, the sheriff arrives to arrest them. In court, the judge is on the point of sentencing them when their lawyer intervenes and assumes the blame for their having returned. They return to Washington, and in time, have two more children: another son, Donald, and a daughter, Peggy. But Mildred is unhappy that her children can’t grow up surrounded by trees and fields and a more simple country life. On the advice of her friend she writes to Robert F. Kennedy (at the time the Attorney General), explaining their situation. A little while later, Mildred receives a call from Bernard S. Cohen (Kroll), a lawyer working for the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), who has been passed their case and wants to meet with them. But their first meeting doesn’t go too well, mainly because he suggests they return to Caroline County and get re-arrested so Cohen can begin mounting a challenge through the courts.

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Circumstances however, dictate a return to Caroline County, and the Lovings rent an old farm house nearby where they’re unlikely to be noticed. Cohen is encouraged to keep working on their case, and with the aid of constitutional lawyer Phil Hirschkop (Bass), they keep appealing the verdicts given at Virginia state level, until they have an appearance before the Supreme Court, an appearance that will have a far-reaching effect on not just the Lovings, but the whole country.

Following quickly on the heels of his previous movie, Midnight Special (also 2016), writer/director Jeff Nichols has made a much quieter, less spectacular movie, but also one that speaks directly from the heart. Anyone expecting the usual courtroom pyrotechnics that such a story might provoke other movie makers to attempt will be either sorely disappointed or pleasantly surprised. There are only three courtroom scenes in the entire movie, and they’re all very brief. And aside from the dawn raid that sees the couple’s first arrest by Sheriff Brooks, there’s little in the way of full-blown drama or tension. What we have instead, is a movie that quite rightly focuses on the Lovings, and the various ways that their love for each other allows them to weather the legal and social ramifications of their fight to have their marriage recognised – and not just in the state of Virginia.

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Nichols has gone to great lengths to make this movie about the Lovings, and not the crusade that Cohen and Hirschkop went on to get the anti-miscegenation law changed, a law that had been born out of the South’s desire to maintain racial purity (Virginia’s argument was that it was unfair to bring mixed race children into the world; the state regarded them as bastards). This contentious stance, and the challenge to it would make for a great movie, but Nichols is more astute than that, and he’s recognised that it’s the Lovings themselves that are the important element here. In scene after scene we witness a couple whose commitment and reliance on each other is evident from a glance here, a touch there, and how strong they are because they’re a couple. It’s their love that shines through, time and again, and it’s all done so subtly and so delicately that the breadth and depth of it is sometimes surprising – and that makes it all the more extraordinary.

Nichols is helped by two very good choices for the roles of Richard and Matilda. Edgerton gives possibly his best performance as the buttoned-down, emotionally and intellectually restrained bricklayer whose involvement all along is tempered by a fatalistic attitude. Edgerton is hunched over and taciturn, weighed down (and yet unbowed) by the wider relevance of his situation. It’s a situation that he doesn’t trust fully, but because Matilda supports it, he supports it through supporting her. Edgerton displays all this by relaxing his features when needed, softening his mostly pinched facial muscles as signs of both acceptance and admration for Mildred’s patience and persistence; you know he’d rather settle for a quiet life in Washington, but he also recognises that it’s not the life he should be leading. For some viewers, it may seem that Edgerton is just brooding a lot and being monosyllabic, but there’s a depth and a profundity to his performance that is very impresssive indeed.

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He’s matched by Negga, who gives one of the year’s most sublime performances. Best known perhaps for her TV work on shows such as Marvel’s Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. and more recently, Preacher, Negga is a revelation here, not portraying Mildred but inhabiting her, and in the process, revealing aspects and nuances that play out through her expressions and her body language. Like her husband, Mildred has a pride and a sense of her own worth that won’t be taken from her, and it’s she who drives the story forward. Negga shows us the determination not to be told where she can or cannot live and bring up her children, and she does so with a quiet fierceness that is entirely credible. Just watching her as she tries to take in what “going to the Supreme Court” actually means, with the character’s naïvete and lack of education shining through, is a perfect example of Negga’s confidence in the role, as she combines vulnerability and tenacity to quite stunning effect. And if further proof were needed as just how good she is, watch Negga when Mildred gets the call from Cohen as to the Supreme Court’s verdict; it’s simply breathtaking, both for its emotional complexity and its simplicity, a conflation that few actresses are able to achieve no matter how much they try.

Nichols is also astute enough to make sure that Loving isn’t about miscegenation, or the racial, social and political turmoil of the time (though they’re acknowledged), but what marriage means for a couple who love each other so deeply. It’s no coincidence that the movie is most effective when a scene involves just Richard and Mildred, and the audience can see how important they are to each other. Nichols is to be congratulated for making a movie that is truly about a couple and not what happened to them; here, all that is of secondary importance. With tremendous, striking cinematography from regular DoP Adam Stone, and a quietly emotive yet affecting score by David Wingo, Nichols adopts a measured, deliberate approach to the Lovings’ story that makes the whole experience that much more thought-provoking and absorbing.

Rating: 9/10 – a simple, yet powerful movie about love and hope, and a couple whose faith and belief in each other was unshakeable, Loving is one of the better screen biographies of recent years, featuring two superb central performances, and a fidelity to the real Richard and Mildred Loving that is refreshing to witness; with few obvious fireworks to grab the attention, what the movie does instead to such good effect, is to introduce us to a couple who never sought the attention they received (except insofar as it helped their legal challenge), and who, while they were alive, were a shining example of love really, truly conquering all.

Midnight Special (2016)

12 Tuesday Apr 2016

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Midnight Special

D: Jeff Nichols / 112m

Cast: Michael Shannon, Joel Edgerton, Jaeden Lieberher, Kirsten Dunst, Adam Driver, Bill Camp, Scott Haze, Sam Shepard, Paul Sparks, David Jensen

It’s only taken writer/director Jeff Nichols four movies to become a movie maker whose projects carry an enormous weight of expectation. First there was Shotgun Stories (2007), then there was Take Shelter (2011). He followed that up with Mud (2012), and now he brings us Midnight Special, a tale about an eight year old boy who may be an alien, or an emissary from God, or something else completely. It’s a measure of Nichols’ success that he’s taken what could have been an awkward, unconvincing story – in lesser hands – and made it into an articulate, gripping tale that’s also exciting and thought-provoking.

The movie begins with the police searching for a missing child called Alton Meyer (Lieberher). He’s been abducted from a religious compound known as the Ranch. It’s head, Alton’s adoptive father, Calvin Meyer (Shepard), wants him back, and within the next four days. But Alton – who has to wear blue goggles during daylight hours – has been abducted by his real father, Roy Tomlin (Shannon), and he, along with his friend, Lucas (Edgerton), are trying to keep Alton safe and also get him to a certain place in four days’ time. There, something momentous will happen, but neither Roy nor Calvin Meyer knows what it is; and at this point, Alton doesn’t know either.

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The FBI, and the NSA – in the form of agent Paul Sevier (Driver) – are also trying to find Alton, as they have become aware that he has been including coded intelligence in the sermons he’s written for Meyer. But Alton has other gifts, and one in particular, connected to his sight. When Ray decides to stop off at an old Ranch member’s home, that particular gift almost causes the house to shake apart. From there, the trio drive to the home of Alton’s mother, Sarah (Dunst), but not before an incident at a gas station reveals that Alton’s heat signature is similar to that of a nuclear bomb. Now a foursome, they travel on to the location that Alton must reach, however, they’re unaware that two members of the Ranch, Doak (Camp) and Levi (Haze), are tracking them with the intention of kidnapping Alton and returning him to the Ranch.

Before they are able to, Alton, who has been getting sicker and sicker, and has to avoid direct sunlight, tells Roy that he can no longer continue to keep hidden from the sun. Roy exposes Alton to a sunrise, and it has an extraordinary effect: he can now walk about unaffected in daylight, and knows exactly what he needs to do and why he needs to be in a certain place at a certain date and time. As he tells Roy: he doesn’t belong here.

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Whether or not Alton makes it to his rendezvous is, ultimately, neither here nor there. What’s important is the journey he makes getting there, and the way in which he and his parents, and Lucas, make it there. One of the strengths of Nichols’ impressive and layered screenplay is the way in which Roy’s parental determination to not let anything stop him from getting Alton to his rendezvous, sometimes presents itself as unfeeling and harsh. When he and Lucas encounter a state trooper, Roy is unequivocal: he tells Lucas to shoot him. Roy doesn’t care about anyone else, only Alton, and his zeal and willingness to put moral certitude aside makes him one of recent cinema’s more interesting and intriguing characters. Shannon is perfect for the role, morally absent when he needs to be, but a committed, loving father as well, and fully able to show these two sides of Roy’s character without any sense that he’s a Jekyll and Hyde personality and able to call on either side when necessary.

What’s also important is that Roy believes in Alton, albeit in a different way from Calvin (he and his followers believe that Alton’s rendezvous is also the time when they will all be judged by God). He believes in his son, wholeheartedly, and even if what he knows is incredibly far-fetched. If it wasn’t for the light that can stream from Alton’s eyes when he’s exposed to sunlight, the viewer would be hard pressed to believe in the same way as Roy does. Nichols doesn’t keep the viewer in the dark for long (no pun intended), and any doubts are dispelled when Elden (Jensen), the ex-Ranch member has to have “another look”. From then on, Alton’s gifts/abilities/powers are assimilated into the narrative in a way that both explores them and allows them to drive events forward. As the otherworldly Alton, Lieberher does a fantastic job of balancing his closeted childhood with his increasing awareness of the skills he really possesses (he reads a lot of comic books and at one point asks about Kryptonite as if it were real).

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Nichols orchestrates all this with a tremendous amount of flair, even as he keeps a tight rein on the more overt sci-fi elements of his screenplay. The subplot involving the Ranch members sometimes comes across as more of an afterthought, or late addition to the script, while the inclusion of Sarah doesn’t give Dunst much more to do than look concerned and hesitant. And there’s one very important question that Nichols leaves right until the very final shot to explain (in many respects it’s the most important question). But with such a high level of confidence on display, Nichols can be forgiven a couple of narrative faux pas, and his handling of the action sequences is bracing and not at all derivative (a major feat in itself). The whole thing is beautifully shot by Nichols’ regular DoP Adam Stone, and there’s an insidious, disorientating score courtesy of another Nichols’ regular, David Wingo.

Rating: 8/10 – Nichols continues his run of impressive features with a movie that asks what it is to be human, and comes up with some unexpected answers in the process; Midnight Special is an intelligent, original, and supremely well executed sci-fi drama, as well as a fantastic example of what can be done with a well constructed script, a more than willing cast, inspired direction, and all on a modest budget.

The Gift (2015)

10 Sunday Apr 2016

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The Gift

D: Joel Edgerton / 103m

Cast: Jason Bateman, Rebecca Hall, Joel Edgerton, Allison Tolman, Tim Griffin, Busy Philipps, Adam Lazarre-White, Beau Knapp, Wendell Pierce, Mirrah Foulkes, Nash Edgerton, David Denman, Katie Aselton

You move to California from Chicago to start afresh. You try and put behind you the pain of a miscarriage. If you’re the husband you work hard and press for that promotion at work that you really deserve. If you’re the wife you stay at home and redesign the new home you’re living in, because interior design is what you do. And if you’re someone who used to know the husband years ago in high school then you suddenly show up out of the blue and start making things awkward.

Such is the basic set-up of Joel Edgerton’s first foray into feature directing – he also wrote the script – a dark, psychological thriller that asks that old chestnut once more: what do you do when your sins come back to haunt you? The sins in question belong to Simon Callum (Bateman). He’s smart, he’s determined, he’s likeable – in short, he’s too good to be true. And so it proves, with past behaviours having been retained twenty-five years on, and his moral centre somewhat askew. When Simon is approached by a man who claims to know him (but who he doesn’t recognise), his offhand, dismissive attitude is covered by a thin veneer of acceptance. But when a bottle of wine appears on Simon and his wife Robyn’s doorstep, with a note from the same man – whose name is Gordon Mosley (Edgerton) – Simon is made uncomfortable. And this being a thriller, the audience knows that Simon is going to feel a lot more uncomfortable before the movie’s conclusion.

The Gift - scene3

But Edgerton the writer pulls a bit of a switch, and instead of having Gordon (known as Gordo) continue to make Simon’s life uncomfortable, the old high school classmate starts dropping in unexpectedly when Simon isn’t around. Robyn (Hall) is polite, and always invites him in, and even though she’s a little bit unnerved by his presence, she’s also sympathetic towards him, suspecting that his life hasn’t turned out as well as Simon’s has. She lets him set up their new TV, and increasingly seems pleased to see him when he visits. Simon is less than happy with this, and wants nothing more to do with Gordo, even though he can’t specify why.

An invitation to dinner at Gordo’s house doesn’t go well, however, and Simon uses the opportunity to end their renewed relationship. But when an incident at their house sends Simon back to Gordo’s home, he learns something alarming: it isn’t Gordo’s home at all, but belongs to someone he works for. The police become involved, briefly, but without any evidence of a crime committed against the Callums, they’re powerless to intervene. Later, Gordo sends an apology, but Simon is angry, while Robyn is more accepting. This is the beginning of a rift that will grow between them, but right then, Simon’s bid for promotion is going well, and he feels able to control everything that’s happening around them.

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Of course, this proves foolish, as Gordo continues to manipulate their lives from afar. Robyn falls pregnant, and later learns some disturbing information about Simon and Gordo’s time in high school. She delves deeper, and what she finds out throws everything into sharp relief, and places her marriage in jeopardy. And all the while, Gordo hovers in the background, a shadow figure that may or may not be seeking justice for wrongs done to him in the past, or a malevolent force of the present, with undisclosed reasons for targetting Simon.

The Gift is a movie that tells its fairly straightforward tale with a small amount of visual flair, and a deeper understanding of untrammelled arrogance. Simon is a creep, something that’s made clear almost from the start, and his character is off-putting and insincere. It makes feeling sorry for him virtually impossible, and as the audience learns more and more about him, and his true colours shine through (however blackly), any potential sympathy is washed away in a tide of unhealthy revelations. Bateman makes the most of Simon’s more despicable justifications for his behaviour, and revels in playing the movie’s real bad guy, but it’s a role that doesn’t allow for much development or depth. And by the end, when the full extent of what’s been going on is revealed, the viewer’s main reaction is likely to be that of ennui rather than satisfaction.

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As the harried, semi-stalked Robyn, Hall is her usual intelligent but emotionally removed self, peeling back the layers of Robyn’s past with more dexterity than Bateman is allowed to do, but ultimately falling short of showing us why Robyn is with Simon in the first place (or why she stays with him until events give her no choice). Hall is also let down by the script’s decision to introduce a drug problem for Robyn, and then have it resolved within fifteen minutes. Other subplots are either forgotten or abandoned, with the disappearance of the Callum’s dog, Mr Bojangles – potentially an occurrence that could ensure a great deal of suspense – again resolved far too quickly and far too easily. Likewise the matter of Gordo’s using his boss’s house; viewers may not be surprised by this development, but they might well be surprised at the way in which it’s not used to further the plot and is just abandoned along with so much else that acts as filler for the movie’s first half.

As the drama mutates uneasily into melodrama – Simon assaults Gordo and warns him off, Simon’s promotion suffers a serious setback – the tension increases, but Edgerton the director doesn’t have the experience to really make an audience sit on the edge of their seat or hold their breath in anxious anticipation. Some scenes fall flatter than a pancake, while others maintain a sense of unease that is undone by the use of too little light. There are a handful of dream sequences that seem out of place, but Edgerton integrates them with the narrative more effectively than some other (more experienced) directors would have done, but there’s still the lingering feeling that even though he’s done his homework, the writer/director/star could have done with a little bit of assistance in pulling it all together.

Rating: 6/10 – better than most psychological thrillers (but only just), The Gift should more accurately be called The Gifts, or even Several Gifts Left on a Doorstep; Edgerton does his best to explore notions of guilt and retribution but fails to fully engage with his audience, leading to a movie that promises a lot but only delivers a fraction of what’s needed to make it completely successful.

Jane Got a Gun (2015)

19 Saturday Mar 2016

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Jane Got a Gun

D: Gavin O’Connor / 98m

Cast: Natalie Portman, Joel Edgerton, Ewan McGregor, Noah Emmerich, Rodrigo Santoro, Boyd Holbrook

Since its announcement back in 2012, Jane Got a Gun has had a difficult production history. Lynne Ramsay was the movie’s original director, but with a week to go before actual filming began, disagreements with the producers caused her to leave the project. Natalie Portman remained attached to the project, while her male co-stars changed almost as quickly as they were announced. Michael Fassbender was cast as Jane’s ex-lover, Dan Frost, but had to drop out thanks to scheduling conflicts with X-Men: Days of Future Past (2014). Joel Edgerton, originally cast as the movie’s villain, John Bishop, was recast as Frost. And to take over the vacated role of Bishop, Jude Law was brought on board. However, Law had only signed on because Ramsay was directing; when she left the production, so did Law. Next up as Bishop was Bradley Cooper, but scheduling conflicts would again rob the movie of one of its stars, as the actor was needed on American Hustle (2013) (thank God Ewan McGregor wasn’t too busy).

The script also underwent a rewrite. Brian Duffield’s original screenplay, which had appeared on the 2011 Blacklist, was given an overhaul by Anthony Tambakis and Edgerton, and just in case the changes in acting personnel weren’t enough, first choice DoP Darius Khondji left the project along with Ramsay and was replaced by Mandy Walker. With Gavin O’Connor on board as the movie’s new director, the New Mexico shoot went off relatively smoothly, and a mid-2014 release was pencilled in. But this was pushed back to early 2015, and then delayed again until September. A further delay saw the world premiere arranged for 16 November in Paris, but the terrorist attacks that occurred three days before caused the premiere to be postponed. And to add insult to injury, when the movie was finally released in the US by the Weinstein Company it proved to be the worst wide release in the company’s history.

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But what of the movie itself? Is its tortured production and release history reflected in the quality of the movie, or has it managed to overcome all the setbacks that waylaid it over the course of three years? The answer – unsurprisingly – is yes and no. Even if you’re not aware of the movie’s history, watching it will soon give the impression that something’s not quite right, that there’s something missing, something that went astray during filming. And it won’t take the interested viewer long to realise that part of that “something” is cohesion.

Jane Got a Gun takes a non-linear approach to its narrative, offering flashbacks at every opportunity in order to fill in its back story and explain its characters’ motives. While it’s not the first movie to adopt this strategy, it is one that makes a particularly awkward fist of it. And it does so in such a piecemeal fashion that it’s hard to work out if it was a deliberate decision by Tambakis and Edgerton, or was present in Duffield’s original script. Either way, the narrative lacks momentum and comes across as unavoidably fractured. The basic story – frontier wife seeks ex-lover’s help when the gang her husband double-crossed comes looking for them – is strong enough to withstand too much tampering, but here the back story of Jane and Dan just gets in the way. A more straighforward storyline would have benefitted the movie greatly, and maybe there’s another cut of the movie out there somewhere where that approach has been adopted, but otherwise, Jane Got a Gun too often lacks focus in the time it takes for Bishop and his gang to reach Jane’s home.

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The movie also struggles with the quality of its dialogue. Some viewers might be convinced that Brian Duffield is a pseudonym for George Lucas, such is the arch, clichéd nature of some of the lines (or that Tambakis and Edgerton shouldn’t be allowed to collaborate on a script ever again) and there are too many moments where the by now trapped viewer will be wincing at some of the utterances that were allowed to stay in place. Whether or not anyone noticed seems irrelevant now given the whole raft of other problems the movie had to deal with, but sometimes the dialogue is so clunky and uninspired that anyone watching will wonder if it had to be that bad.

Thankfully, though, the movie isn’t that bad all the way through. As the beleaguered and heavily put upon Jane of the title, Portman maintains a stoicism and a sense of her rightful place (by her husband) that when Frost’s past relationship with her becomes clearer, along with the undercurrents that bind them together, these aspects give the movie an emotional depth that is pleasantly surprising (and welcome). Portman also knows when to rely on her passivity to speak volumes for the character, as in the early scenes where Jane’s pride is put aside due to the necessity of speaking to Frost. For his part, Edgerton matches Portman for moody introspection, paring Frost down emotionally and physically, letting his injured feelings seep out through the looks and glances he gives Jane. Together, Jane and Frost make for an affecting couple, both tied down by the bad decisions that each has made, and Portman and Edgerton both show the limiting effects those decisions have had, and the overwhelming sense of regret that comes with them.

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As the villainous trail boss and outlaw Bishop, McGregor has a hard time making him less unctuous and more intimidating than the character appears at first, and he’s not helped by the kind of moustache that cries out to be twirled (while he makes mwah-hah-hah sounds). Emmerich’s role is fleshed out by the flashbacks, and there are efficient turns in minor roles from Santoro and Holbrook, otherwise it’s all Portman and Edgerton, one decision the script gets right all along. There’s a fiery showdown that is let down slightly by the same shot being included twice, and a twist in the tale that facilitates a happy ending the movie didn’t really need, but all in all the tone and the pacing allow the movie to breathe when it needs to, and gives the viewer the chance to appreciate the movie’s better qualities, buried as they are beneath some of the less effective narrative decisions.

In addition it’s beautifully shot by Walker, and the editing by Alan Cody, who did some excellent work on the mini-series The Pacific (2010), matches the laconic, melancholy mood so perfectly at times that, again, you wish the script had been tighter. O’Connor doesn’t give the audience anything too spectacular or impressive to look at – what Ramsay would have made of the material remains a tantalising prospect – but he does keep a firm rein on proceedings and doesn’t make the mistake of including too many obvious directorial flourishes (though there are a few too many moments where the action is seen through a window or is distorted by glass). Backed up by a low-key yet expressive score from Lisa Gerrard and Marcello De Francisci, Jane Got a Gun may not be a movie that has overcome its troubled production history entirely, but it does get more things right than wrong.

Rating: 6/10 – good Westerns are hard to find these days, and while Jane Got a Gun suffers from a lack of cohesion in its story elements, it still contains enough good material to be worth watching; with good performances from Portman and Edgerton to help things along, this is one movie that deserves to be known for something more than the difficulties it faced in getting made.

Exodus: Gods and Kings (2014)

01 Thursday Jan 2015

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Exodus Gods and Kings

D: Ridley Scott / 150m

Cast: Christian Bale, Joel Edgerton, John Turturro, Aaron Paul, Ben Mendelsohn, María Valverde, Sigourney Weaver, Ben Kingsley, Hiam Abbass, Isaac Andrews, Ewen Bremner, Indira Varma, Golshifteh Farahani, Ghassan Massoud, Tara Fitzgerald

Ancient Egypt, 1300 BC. In the holy city of Memphis, Pharaoh Seti (Turturro) has learnt that the Hittite army is nearby. He sends his two sons, Ramses (Edgerton) and Moses (Bale) to rout them, which they do, but not before Moses saves Ramses’ life on the battlefield, thus fulfilling a prophecy that says one of them will be saved by the other who will become a leader. When they return, Seti orders Ramses to travel to Pithom in order to assess the slaves working there. Moses goes instead and meets the Viceroy, Hegep (Mendelsohn).

Hegep is crooked and treats the slaves poorly. During his visit, Moses meets a man called Nun (Kingsley) who tells him that he is a Hebrew and that the circumstances of his birth are not as he believes. Moses refutes this and returns to Memphis, but the story is overheard and reported to Hegep. Soon after, Seti dies and Ramses becomes Pharaoh. When Hegep comes to Memphis he tells Ramses of Moses’ history; this leads to Moses being sent into exile. He travels to Midian where he settles down as a shepherd and marries Zipporah; they have a son, Gershom. Meanwhile, Ramses marries Nefertari and they too have a son.

Nine years pass. During a storm, Moses pursues some stray lambs onto a nearby mountain. A rock slide renders him unconscious; when he comes to he finds himself confronted by a young boy, Malak (Andrews) who is God’s messenger. He gives Moses a task to do, one that brings him back to Memphis and a meeting with Ramses where he warns the Pharaoh to set the Hebrews free or there will be consequences. Moses prepares the Hebrews for conflict, while Ramses targets them in the hope that Moses will give himself up. But Malak appears to him again and warns him that Moses’ lack of progress means “something is coming”.

“Something” proves to be a series of plagues that wreak havoc on Memphis and the Egyptian people, culminating in a cull of all the Egyptian firstborns, including Ramses’ infant son. Ramses, in despair, tells Moses to take his people and leave. But once they’ve done so he takes four thousand men and pursues them all the way to the Red Sea, with the intention of slaughtering them all.

Exodus Gods and Kings - scene

It could be argued that the need for a re-telling of the Moses story isn’t exactly high on anyone’s agenda at the moment, but nevertheless here it is, and directed by one of the few directors able to orchestrate a movie on such an epic scale. However, while Exodus: Gods and Kings is as visually impressive as you might expect given that Darius Wolski is behind the camera and Ridley Scott is overseeing things, the movie as a whole is a leaden, passion-free exercise in big-budget movie making.

Considering both the material and the cast taking part, the movie struggles to engage the audience from the off, proving largely uninteresting and a frustratingly bland experience. As happens every so often with the projects Scott chooses – 1492: Conquest of Paradise (1992) and Hannibal (2001) are just two examples – Exodus: Gods and Kings is a) too long, and b) too tedious.

With the story of Moses, the ten plagues, and the crossing of the Red Sea being one of the most dramatic Biblical tales, the fact that this incarnation loses its way so quickly (and never recovers) is a little embarrassing. The criticism that Scott focuses too much on the design and look of a movie is upheld here by a range of performances that give new meaning to the word “undercooked”. Bale’s portrayal of Moses lacks the intensity of feeling that the part demands, and his discovery of his roots is reduced to a brief scene that gives way to an even briefer fight scene; it’s as if he’s more irritated than devastated. Edgerton plays Ramses as an indecisive, self-doubting pharaoh who looks like he needs a comforter (or his mommy). As the dramatic foil to Moses, Ramses’ character carries all the weight of a feather duster, and Bale and Edgerton’s scenes together quickly become repetitive in nature: Moses shows his annoyance/anger/disappointment in Ramses, Ramses does his best not to look as if he’s going to cry.

Thus any clash between the two is always going to be heavily weighted in Moses’ favour, but Bale never takes full advantage of the way the script orchestrates these encounters (he’s also able to get to Ramses without being detected, and to leave without being pursued). He and Egerton aren’t bad per se, but they don’t spark off each other. If it weren’t for the fact that both actors are clearly physically present in their scenes together, you could be forgiven for believing that they filmed them separately and were “united” in post-production.

As for the rest of the cast, their roles are generally too small for them to make much of an impression, with the notable exception of Mendelsohn, who takes Hegep and invests him with a surprising mixture of flippancy and menace. It’s the best performance in the whole movie, and when he’s on screen, the discrepancy between his approach and Bale’s (in particular) is all too apparent. In even minor roles, Weaver, Paul, Turturro, Kingsley and Farahani are there to make up the numbers, while Valverde is stranded by the script’s need to tick off the boxes in Moses’ life without providing any depth to it. It’s unfortunate, as well, that Valverde’s appearance is during the film’s middle section, where Moses strives to be a shepherd before his first meeting with Malak (there is a burning bush but with Malak acting as God’s mouthpiece, it just looks superfluous). This stretch of the movie has all the pace of a snail race, and thanks to the indolent editing – courtesy of Billy Rich – seems to go on for much longer than it actually does.

With so many scenes either dragging on or lacking in energy, Exodus: Gods and Kings regularly falls back on its special effects, but even here the spectacular appears commonplace, our familiarity with what CGI can achieve blunting the effect of seeing Memphis from the air, or giant crocodiles attacking ships on the Nile. It also leaves the crossing of the Red Sea, and its fast-approaching ten-storey wave, feeling less impressive and/or intimidating than it should be. Again, Scott and his cast and crew fail to heighten the drama and leave the viewer struggling to work out where everyone is in relation to a constantly changing topography (not to mention a wave that appears to be advancing from at least three directions at once).

Exodus Gods and Kings - scene2

Scott’s ardor seems to have waned recently, with his last two movies – The Counselor (2013) and Prometheus (2012) – showing clear signs of a director unable to spot, or deal with, or overcome, the faults in each movie’s screenplay, and sadly, the same is true here. The script – by Adam Cooper and Bill Collage, with assists from Jeffrey Caine and Steven Zaillian – aims for intimacy amid the spectacle but ends up skirting it instead, and any notions of leadership, duty, fraternal betrayal, faith or destiny, rather than being placed front and centre, are given a passing nod whenever the movie appears to need them.

Rating: 5/10 – visually stunning but dramatically redundant, Exodus: Gods and Kings is a disappointing, mediocre piece that fails to inject any fervour into the story of Moses and his efforts to free the Hebrews from the pharaohs’ tyranny; stilted and dull, this becomes as much an epic of endurance (for the audience) as it does for its characters.