Grosse Pointe Blank (1997)

01 Monday Apr 2019

Tags

Action, Alan Arkin, Comedy, Crime, Drama, Favourite movie, George Armitage, High school reunion, Hitman, John Cusack, Minnie Driver, Review

D: George Armitage / 107m

Cast: John Cusack, Minnie Driver, Alan Arkin, Dan Aykroyd, Joan Cusack, Hank Azaria, K. Todd Freeman, Jeremy Piven, Mitchell Ryan, Michael Cudlitz, Benny Urquidez

Martin Q. Blank (Cusack) is a hitman with a problem: he’s feeling miserable, and he’s unhappy with his work. He’s at odds with his boss, Grocer (Aykroyd), over plans to unionise the hitman “business”, and is made more unhappy when a contract goes wrong. Persuaded by the combined efforts of his therapist, Dr Oatman (Arkin), and his secretary Marcella (Cusack), Martin agrees to attend his high school’s tenth anniversary reunion – and while he’s there he can carry out another contract. Back in his home town of Grosse Pointe, Blank catches up with his old friend, Paul (Piven), and his old girlfriend, Debi Newberry (Driver). Though he walked out on her on the night of the prom, and hasn’t been back since, Martin and Debi soon reconnect, and attend the reunion together. But Martin is being stalked by another hitman, Felix LaPoubelle (Urquidez), and when Martin is forced to kill him in one of the school corridors, the aftermath is witnessed by Debi, who runs off. And matters are made even worse when Martin discovers that the target he’s there to kill is none other than Debi’s father, Bart (Ryan)…

If you had to sum up the appeal of Grosse Pointe Blank, then its dialogue would be a great place to start. This short monologue by Martin to his shrink Dr Oatman about the reunion is a perfect example of just how finely tuned much of this movie is, and also how it doesn’t take itself very seriously (a good idea in a comedy about a hitman developing a conscience): “They all have husbands and wives and children and houses and dogs, and, you know, they’ve all made themselves a part of something and they can talk about what they do. What am I gonna say? “I killed the president of Paraguay with a fork. How’ve you been?” It’s carefully crafted moments like this one – fluid, satirical, and very funny – that ensure the movie has a lightness of touch and doesn’t look and sound like it’s trying too hard. Instead it maintains an even, modest tone throughout, and focuses more on the characters than the action. In Martin Blank, the screenwriters (including Cusack himself) have created a sympathetic hitman whose “moral flexibility” belies a natural charm and wit that make the character more rounded and less stereotypical than usual, so much so that when he does have to kill someone – the corridor fight with LaPoubelle is a highlight – the intensity he displays is borne out of necessity rather than a fundamental flaw in his personality. The only real flaw is that he’s believed himself incapable of living a normal life for all these years.

Cusack is terrific in the role, deftly handling the various elements thrown into the mix – drama, comedy, romance, action – and displaying a versatility across genres that had been hinted at before this, but never fully exploited. The cast as a whole are on good form, from Cusack’s sister Joan as Blank’s faithful yet caustic secretary, to Piven’s lovelorn best friend, and Arkin as the therapist who remains unconvinced when Blank reassures him he’s not a target. Even Driver and Aykroyd, acquired tastes unless in the right surroundings, are likeable, and Armitage makes sure that everyone gets enough exposure to warrant them all making an impact. He also directs with a visual flair that’s unexpected, and in conjunction with DoP Jamie Anderson, keeps the movie from settling into a standard action comedy format. It’s a movie that’s full of surprises, touching in places but never too far from another quip or pithy observation, and though it ultimately treads an overly familiar romantic path, there are enough detours along the way to make it feel fresher than most. The action is well handled and expertly choreographed (a little ragged, but in a good way), and there’s a terrific soundtrack from Joe Strummer. All in all, it’s a movie that wants its audience to have a good time, and which achieves that ambition with skill and aplomb, and without having to employ the time honoured process known as shakabuku.

Rating: 8/10 – with various shades of light and dark that allow for differing perspectives on what it means to be a hitman, and a wicked sense of humour that Cusack et al exploit at every given opportunity, Grosse Pointe Blank is an absolute delight from start to finish; still as entertaining now as it was back on first release, it’s a movie that may have dated in terms of the costumes and the hairstyles, but beneath all the horseplay there are universal themes in play to help anchor the frothy, carefree nature of the main storyline, and ensure that the movie resonates with audiences in more ways than one.

Blood Money (2017)

03 Sunday Dec 2017

Posted by dullwood68 in Movies

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Drama, Ellar Coltrane, Jacob Artist, John Cusack, Lucky McKee, Review, Stolen money, Thriller, Willa Fitzgerald

D: Lucky McKee / 85m

Cast: John Cusack, Ellar Coltrane, Willa Fitzgerald, Jacob Artist

A movie that should really have the tag line, “If you go down to the woods today…” Blood Money shows us that, if nothing else, three friends should never go camping together for the weekend, especially if the girl, Lynn (Fitzgerald), once had a relationship with one of the guys, Victor (Coltrane), and is now seeing the other guy, Jeff (Artist). With all that baggage hanging over them, what’s the likeliest thing that could happen (aside from their falling out, that is)? The answer – of course – is that they run into an embezzler on the run, Miller (Cusack), and the four bags he’s jumped out of a plane with but become separated from. The bags contain a cool eight million dollars, and Miller is determined to be reunited with them. But he hasn’t counted on Lynn’s equal determination to keep them for herself…

And that’s the movie in a nutshell. Embezzler jumps out of a plane with eight million dollars in cash stuffed into four bags, loses them to Lynn and Jeff (Victor correctly guesses it’s stolen money and he doesn’t want anything to do with it; hooray for someone behaving sensibly in one of these movies), and spends the remainder of the movie trying to get it all back from them. A simple plot, no frills, and potentially, a timely reminder that it’s often the simplest of plots that make for the best movies. Just not this time though. Instead, Blood Money insists on putting its characters through the mill in a succession of scenes that make you wonder if writers Jared Butler and Lars Norberg had worked out any of it in advance. The trio of unhappy campers bicker and argue while Miller wanders along the side of a river seemingly in no hurry to retrieve his ill-gotten gains and then skip the country (there’s an element of the D.B. Cooper story here but that has more drama to it than this does). At one point, Victor, having left his “friends”, comes upon Miller lying asleep on a makeshift table. It’s as potent a message as to the movie’s reliance on logic as you could ever need.

The movie does do something right, though, and while it may not pan out as effectively as hoped, it is a better idea than might be expected. The standard approach for this kind of wilderness thriller is to have the thief as the bad guy (he won’t let anything stand in his way, etc. etc.), and the lone female the eventual heroine who overcomes fear, panic, injury and several attempts on her life before eventually triumphing over the bad guy. Here, though, Butler and Norberg have chosen to make Lynn the bad guy, and Miller the character the viewer ends up rooting for. Once Lynn gets her hands on the money, it’s instant addiction time, and no one, not even Miller is going to stop her from keeping it. Again, it’s a great idea, and Fitzgerald has a field day with the role, but the drawback – yes, inevitably, there is one – is that over the course of the movie, Lynn’s determination becomes more than a little tedious, and by the time the script calls on her to explain herself, and she’s become a psycho with a mission, what she comes up with makes about as much sense as anything else in the movie (it’s something to do with becoming a woman, or something like that; in truth, it doesn’t really matter).

Against this the characters of Victor and Jeff have no chance but to sound and feel like also rans, with Victor bemoaning the way in which Lynn broke up with him, and Jeff forever feeling paranoid that Lynn will give Victor a second chance. And as Lynn is so awful to both of them, you can’t help but wonder why either one of them wants to be with her. But the dynamic feels forced anyway. With no credible reason for the trio to be together in the first place – where else but in the movies do these kinds of trips ever take place? – except to grab the loot when it shows up and set the thriller elements in motion, the script’s attempts at keeping us interested in which one out of Victor and Jeff, Lynn will end up with soon becomes irrelevant, and partly because it’s pretty obvious she doesn’t want either of them. So Blood Money becomes a chase movie, and in doing so, becomes even more generic.

At the helm of all this redactive nonsense, director Lucky McKee, who can normally be counted on to elevate the material he works with – check out May (2002) or The Woman (2011) if you need any persuading – approaches the material with no clear idea of how to make more of the script than is there, or to make the narrative more thrilling. This means the movie plods along lacking any appreciable energy, and Fitzgerald aside, wastes the talents of Cusack and Coltrane accordingly (Artist’s role as Jeff is so poorly written that the actor is undermined before he can even start). It’s a shame to see Cusack’s run of terrible movies continue, but here he’s in on the act, giving a less-than convincing turn as a thief with a conscience and an easy-going manner that changes whenever he has a weapon in his hand. Miller is a character you never get to know beyond the obvious, and when he tries explaining to Victor why he stole the money, the scene fades out before he can finish. If that’s an example of how well the character has been created then there’s little hope that any of it will ever matter.

In the end, and thankfully it’s a short enough experience that it rolls around quite acceptably, Blood Money has no clear agenda beyond its basic plot. There are no hidden subtexts, no attempts at allegory, and no sense that there was ever any intention to include them. But with that being the case, then the movie had every opportunity to up the ante on its simple narrative and make it all as tense and as thrilling as possible. That hasn’t happened though, and the movie is a plodding exercise in undercooked thrills, rampant narcissism (Lynn), and underwhelming relationship advice, and it all ends as precisely as you’d expect. So beware: if you go down to the woods today…

Rating: 4/10 – shoddy and inconsistent in its efforts to provide a convincing mise en scene, Blood Money is another forgettable outdoors thriller that seems to have been written on spec and directed accordingly; only worth watching if you want to see deconstructed gender politics given a light dusting of credibility, or the movie’s Georgia locations rendered beautifully by DoP Alex Vendler.

Monthly Roundup – December 2016

31 Saturday Dec 2016

Posted by dullwood68 in Movies

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Tags

50's sci-fi movie, A Perfect Man, Action, Alice Through the Looking Glass, Ana Girardot, Barry Sonnenfeld, Cameron Mitchell, Cat, Cell, Chandler Riggs, Christopher Walken, Comedy, David Tomlinson, Devil's Crag, Diana Dors, Drama, Edward Kemmer, Eliminators (2016), Flight to Mars, Frances O'Connor, Giant from the Unknown, Hard Target 2, Horror, Hostile takeover, Is Your Honeymoon Really Necessary, James Bobin, James Nunn, Jennifer Garner, John Cusack, Johnny Depp, Kevin Spacey, Lesley Selander, Literary adaptation, Marguerite Chapman, Mars, Maurice Elvey, Mercy (2014), Mia Wasikowska, Murder, Myanmar, Nine Lives, Peter Cornwell, Pierre Niney, Reviews, Rhona Mitra, Richard E. Cunha, Robert Knepper, Roel Reiné, Sally Fraser, Samuel L. Jackson, Scott Adkins, Sequel, Shirley Knight, Stephen King, The Mad Hatter, The Red Queen, Thriller, Tod Williams, Vargas, Wade Barrett, Wonderland, WWE Films, Yann Gozlan

Cell (2016) / D: Tod Williams / 98m

Cast: John Cusack, Samuel L. Jackson, Isabelle Fuhrman, Clark Sarullo, Ethan Andrew Casto, Owen Teague, Stacy Keach, Joshua Mikel

Rating: 4/10 – a mysterious cell phone signal turns people into crazed, zombie-like creatures, but one man (Cusack) is determined to find his son while society disintegrates around him; a Stephen King adaptation (and co-scripted by him), Cell is another reminder that his work rarely translates well to the screen, and this is no exception, being dramatically incoherent, a waste of its talented cast, and lumbered with an ending that makes absolutely no sense at all.

A Perfect Man (2015) / D: Yann Gozlan / 104m

Original title: Un homme idéal

Cast: Pierre Niney, Ana Girardot, André Marcon, Valéria Cavalli, Thibault Vinçon, Marc Barbé, Sacha Mijovic

Rating: 7/10 – aspiring author Mathieu Vasseur (Niney) isn’t getting anywhere until he finds an unpublished novel and claims it as his own, a move that leads to fame, fortune, blackmail, and ultimately, murder; a clever, twisty thriller that benefits from a splendidly nervous, anxious performance from Niney, A Perfect Man may have many familiar elements, but it’s a movie with a great deal of style, and it holds the attention in such a way that there are times when you won’t realise you’re holding your breath.

Is Your Honeymoon Really Necessary (1953) / D: Maurice Elvey / 80m

Cast: David Tomlinson, Diana Dors, Bonar Colleano, Sidney James, Diana Decker, Audrey Freeman, MacDonald Parke

Rating: 5/10 – returning to the UK with his new bride (Decker), US soldier Laurie Vining (Colleano) is horrified to learn that he may still be married to his first wife, glamour girl Candy (Dors), a situation that leads to his desperately trying to avoid his new bride – or anyone else – from finding out; a bedroom farce based on a successful stage play, Is Your Honeymoon Really Necessary has dated somewhat, but for fans of the cast and this type of Fifties UK comedy, there’s much to enjoy, from the frantic mugging of Colleano and Tomlinson, Elvey’s efficient direction, and a surprisingly nuanced performance from Dors.

Eliminators (2016) / D: James Nunn / 94m

Cast: Scott Adkins, Wade Barrett, Daniel Caltagirone, James Cosmo, Ty Glaser, Olivia Mace, Lily Ann Stubbs

Rating: 3/10 – when a home invasion means his Witness Protection identity is compromised, ex-Federal Agent Martin Parker (Adkins) finds himself the target of a hitman (Barrett) and forced to go on the run; a WWE Films production shot on location in and around London, Eliminators is a bog-standard actioner that stretches credulity, invites disbelief, and warrants avoidance as it does its best to cram in as many dull action scenes as it can in ninety minutes, and serves as yet another reminder that being a WWE superstar doesn’t mean you can act.

Giant from the Unknown (1958) / D: Richard E. Cunha / 77m

aka The Diablo Giant; Giant from Devil’s Crag; Giant from Diablo Point

Cast: Edward Kemmer, Sally Fraser, Bob Steele, Morris Ankrum, Buddy Baer, Jolene Brand, Gary Crutcher, Billy Dix

Rating: 4/10 – animal mutilations and murder plague a small town – and that’s before a giant Spanish conquistador is released from suspended animation by a lightning bolt, and threatens both the town’s inhabitants and the research team trying to ascertain if the legend about him is true; not the best example of a Fifties “creature feature”, Giant from the Unknown takes so long to get going that it’s nearly over before it’s begun, features a raft of irritating performances, and is so flatly directed by Cunha that once the Giant is awakened, you can’t help but pray that he’s the first victim.

Alice Through the Looking Glass (2016) / D: James Bobin / 113m

Cast: Mia Wasikowska, Johnny Depp, Anne Hathaway, Helena Bonham Carter, Sacha Baron Cohen, Rhys Ifans, Matt Lucas, Lindsay Duncan, Leo Bill, Ed Speelers, Geraldine James, Andrew Scott, Alan Rickman, Stephen Fry, Michael Sheen, Barbara Windsor, Timothy Spall, Matt Vogel, Paul Whitehouse

Rating: 5/10 – Alice (Wasikowska) returns to Wonderland to save the Mad Hatter (Depp) from suicidal depression(!) and the attentions of Time (Cohen) and the Red Queen (Carter) who are working in tandem and holding the Hatter’s family hostage for no convincing reason you can think of; another sequel no one asked for (and nowhere near as successful as its predecessor), Alice Through the Looking Glass is ravishing to look at, boasts some fine visual effects, and a great performance by Cohen, but everything else is a mess: bloated, derivative, witless, and with yet another wasteful performance from Depp (who clearly can’t be bothered).

Hard Target 2 (2016) / D: Roel Reiné / 104m

Cast: Scott Adkins, Robert Knepper, Rhona Mitra, Temuera Morrison, Ann Truong, Adam Saunders, Jamie Timony, Peter Hardy

Rating: 4/10 – ex-MMA fighter Wes Baylor (Adkins) finds himself in Myanmar with one simple objective: reach the Thai border while he’s pursued by a motley group of “hunters” who are out to kill him; a movie that definitely comes under the heading of “another sequel no one asked for”, Hard Target 2 is betrayed by its low budget origins, a script that lurches from one unmemorable action scene to another, and Knepper’s one-note portrayal of the villain.

Nine Lives (2016) / D: Barry Sonnenfeld / 87m

Cast: Kevin Spacey, Jennifer Garner, Christopher Walken, Robbie Amell, Malina Weissman, Cheryl Hines, Mark Consuelos, Talitha Bateman

Rating: 3/10 – businessman Tom Brand (Spacey) has no time for his wife (Garner) and daughter (Weissman), so what better way for him to learn the value of family (and some humility in the process) than by stranding his mind in the body of a cat?; the kind of inane, superficial comedy that Hollywood churns out with mindless regularity, Nine Lives gives Garfield 2 (2006) a run for its money in the stupid stakes, and hammers another nail into the coffin of Barry Sonnenfeld’s once-glorious career.

Flight to Mars (1951) / D: Lesley Selander / 72m

Cast: Marguerite Chapman, Cameron Mitchell, Arthur Franz, Virginia Huston, John Litel, Morris Ankrum, Richard Gaines, Lucille Barkley, Robert Barrat

Rating: 5/10 – the first manned flight to Mars gets there safely only to learn that the planet is inhabited, and by a human-like race that may or may not have an ulterior motive for helping them return to Earth; early-Fifties sci-fi hokum that throws in a tepid romance and some very, very short skirts for the female cast, Flight to Mars retains an odd charm – perhaps because of its naïve approach – that helps alleviate some of the more daffy moments the script insists on doling out.

Mercy (2014) / D: Peter Cornwell / 79m

Cast: Frances O’Connor, Shirley Knight, Chandler Riggs, Joel Courtney, Mark Duplass, Dylan McDermott, Amanda Walsh, Hana Hayes, Pepper Binkley

Rating: 4/10 – after a spell in a nursing home, Grandma Mercy (Knight) comes home to be looked after by her family – daughter Rebecca (O’Connor) and grandsons George (Riggs) and Buddy (Courtney) – but soon exhibits strange behaviour, behaviour that includes warning George that a supernatural force is coming to get him; adapted from the short story Gramma by Stephen King (yes, him again), Mercy aims for creepy and menacing, yet succeeds instead in being confused and uninspired, and with laboured direction and performances, a situation that devotees of King adaptations will appreciate, having been there many times before.

Maps to the Stars (2014)

05 Sunday Oct 2014

Posted by dullwood68 in Movies

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Actress, Black comedy, Chauffeur, Child actor, David Cronenberg, Drama, Dysfunctional family, Evan Bird, Hollywood, John Cusack, Julianne Moore, Mia Wasikowska, Olivia Williams, P.A., Review, Robert Pattinson, Self-help guru

D: David Cronenberg / 111m

Cast: Julianne Moore, Mia Wasikowska, John Cusack, Evan Bird, Olivia Williams, Robert Pattinson, Sarah Gadon, Kiara Glasco, Dawn Greenhalgh

Arriving in Los Angeles, Agatha (Wasikowska) is met by limo driver/aspiring actor Jerome (Pattinson). On the way to where she’s staying she asks him to drive to a spot up in the hills near to the Hollywood sign, though when they get there there isn’t a house where Agatha expects it to be. Meanwhile, child actor Benjie Weiss (Bird) is in the middle of negotiations to star in the sequel to the movie that has made him a star. However, a recent bout of substance abuse has the studio insisting on his sobriety. At the same time, well-known actress Havana Segrand (Moore) is doing all she can to land the part her mother played in a remake of a 60’s classic. Through a lucky piece of networking, Agatha ends up working for Havana as her P.A.

Agatha has burns from a fire that happened when she was younger and it’s revealed that she’s spent the last seven years in a psychiatric hospital as she caused the fire. Her reason for coming to L.A. is to make amends to her family, parents Stafford (Cusack) and Christina (Williams), and her brother, who it turns out is Benjie. When they learn she’s back in town they have different reactions but she sees them each in turn with differing results. As troubled as Agatha is, she’s unaware of the ghosts Benjie sees, ghosts that are pushing him toward a violent outburst. And Havana is tormented by visions of her mother (Gadon) before she died, visions that feed into her insecurity about playing her mother’s role. A relationship blossoms with Jerome but is eventually undermined by Havana, while one of Benjie’s hallucinations causes a tragedy he can’t run away from… except with Agatha. With violence blighting both their lives, they decide on a solution to their problems that will give them both peace from the demons that haunt them.

The first movie that David Cronenberg has made – if only partially – in the US, Maps to the Stars is a biting satire that explores the various tensions within one of the most dysfunctional families in recent movie history. The Weisses are so screwed up as a family it’s a wonder any of them can function normally on a day to day basis. Dad Stafford is a self-help guru cum massage therapist whose sense of his own relevance is underlined by the famous people he’s met, like the Dalai Lama. He’s distant from his wife and son, and is worried that any adverse publicity will expose the secret he and Christina have shared for years. For her part, Christina acts as a kind of manager for her son’s career, advising him and attending meetings with the studio. She gets little recognition for her efforts from him, and she too is afraid their secret will be revealed. Both characters are unhappy and edgy in their own skins, and there is a distance between them that has become enforced through necessity, but their dependence on each other is the only way they can express their love for each other.

Benjie is thirteen and the kind of spoilt-minded child actor who thinks it’s okay to disrespect people and be abusive and mean-minded. There’s a certain amount of insecurity about him, but it’s smothered by his “fuck you” attitude, and his need to be in control of his own life, independent of his parents. By contrast, Agatha is the child who wants to make amends, who wants to see her family reunited, but doesn’t realise – or expect – that her optimism is misguided. Her troubled history (controlled by several different medications) is in danger of defining her as an individual, and her job with Havana, and her romance with Jerome, help boost her confidence in dealing with Benjie and her parents. When they both go wrong, she discards her meds, and it’s only when she does that she’s truly able to deal with things, even if the way in which she does is far from appropriate. Self-confidence aside, it’s her schizophrenia that keeps her strong.

All four actors – Cusack, Williams, Bird and Wasikowska – prove excellent choices for their roles, and each one holds the viewer’s attention with ease in each of their scenes; when some of them are together, it’s like an embarrassment of riches, and it’s good to see Cusack back on form after the likes of Drive Hard and The Prince (both 2014). But this is Moore’s movie all the way, her portrayal of an actress on the verge of becoming irrelevant both tragic and horrifying in its naked neediness and self-serving hypocrisy. Moore’s no stranger to tortured female characters (whether self-inflicted or not), and here she adds yet another to the list, making Havana pitiable, self-destructive and venal in equal measure. It’s a bravura performance, with Moore displaying Havana’s emotional vulnerability and lack of empathy, particularly in the horrifying scene where she celebrates getting her mother’s role through tragic circumstances. She’s hypnotic to watch, and by far the best part of seeing the movie.

Good as the performances are though (and they are very good), there isn’t any easy way to connect with the characters. Agatha has most of the viewer’s sympathy, but that slowly changes as the movie progresses. Benjie is virtually irredeemable, while Stafford and Christina are too wrapped up in themselves to care about anyone else. This is also a movie made with a degree of distance between the characters and the audience, and this appears to be down to Cronenberg’s approach to both them and Bruce Wagner’s screenplay. His direction is as inventive as ever, and he deposits the Weisses and Havana in various large, open spaces to highlight their isolation (particularly their own homes). As a movie that shines a light on how dysfunction and self-destruction can both encourage and propel certain people toward terrible actions, it’s a triumph. But as a movie that identifies root causes and solid motivations for those actions it’s not so successful, leaving the viewer to scratch their head at how the characters can be so self-destructive, and with no attempts to seek help (even from Stafford).

However, there is a degree of dark humour here that some audiences will recognise, as well as moments of soap opera absurdity that threaten to undermine the overall cleverness of the script. These are also predictable moments, and while some are necessary for certain storylines to move forward, it’s a shame that they’ve been included, as they actually cause the movie’s flow to stutter when they occur. Still, there’s more here that’s good than bad, and it’s compelling on several levels.

Rating: 8/10 – another winner from Cronenberg, Maps to the Stars has a few, minor faults, and will certainly divide audiences, but fans will lap it up, while newcomers to Cronenberg’s oeuvre may be non-plussed by the observational approach; with a raft of intriguing, well-constructed performances, the movie offers far more than is obvious at first glance.

The Prince (2014)

25 Monday Aug 2014

Posted by dullwood68 in Movies

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Tags

Brian A. Miller, Bruce Willis, Car bomb, Crime thriller, Drugs, Hitman, Jason Patric, John Cusack, Mechanic, New Orleans, Review, The Pharmacy

D: Brian A. Miller / 93m

Cast: Jason Patric, Bruce Willis, Jessica Lowndes, John Cusack, Gia Mantegna, Jeong Ji-Hoon, Johnathon Schaech, Don Harvey, Tyler J. Olson, Curtis “50 Cent” Jackson

Paul (Patric), a mechanic working in a small town in Mississippi, has an only daughter, Beth (Mantegna), away at college. She’s due home for a weekend visit but she fails to show up. Worried that something has happened to her, Paul travels to the college and checks her room, where he finds a picture of Beth and another girl outside a bar. He goes to the bar and in time the girl turns up. Her name is Angela (Lowndes), and while she can’t tell Paul where Beth is, she does know that she was seeing a dealer called Eddie (Olson). She helps him track Eddie down to New Orleans, and in the process, comes to learn that Paul isn’t just a mechanic, but that he has fighting skills she’s never seen before.

When he finds Eddie, Paul discovers that Beth has left him to go live with a more dangerous drug dealer known as the Pharmacy (Jackson). Paul pledges to rescue her and tries to persuade Angela to go back home, but she refuses. Meanwhile, Paul’s arrival in New Orleans is reported to ruthless crime boss Omar (Willis). Twenty years before, Paul was responsible for the deaths of Omar’s wife and daughter. Now, Omar sees his chance for revenge. Paul seeks help from old friend, Sam (Cusack) while he goes to rescue Beth. He discovers that the Pharmacy has been told by Omar to keep Paul there, but he takes Beth and escapes during the subsequent gunfight. Back at Sam’s, and as they’re preparing to leave, Omar’s second-in-command, Mark (Ji-Hoon), ambushes them and manages to get away with Beth. Paul follows him to Omar’s, and a final confrontation between the two.

At ninety-three minutes, one thing that The Prince does have in its favour is a fairly short running time. Otherwise, this is yet another heavily padded, strictly by-the-books crime thriller with an invincible hero, a bad-ass villain, and a damsel in distress. With such a predictable nature, the movie struggles from the outset to provide its audience with anything new or different, even down to the scene where Omar has an employee killed for being out of line, just so we know how bad-ass he is (the fact the employee is standing next to a pool and looks incredibly nervous is also a bit of a giveaway as to what’s going to happen).

As the titular Prince, Paul is a methodical, no-nonsense, quietly threatening ex-hitman who hasn’t lost his touch, but who is also hard to like and thanks to Patric’s portrayal and the script’s lack of humour, comes off as colourless and remote. When he rescues Beth from the Pharmacy there’s so little emotion he might as well have been retrieving a can of peas he’d left behind at the grocery store. Paul is a character who seems estranged from everyone except Beth, and even then he seems to be trying a little too hard, as if he can’t quite work out if he’s doing things in the right way or not. It makes his interaction with Angela unnecessarily stilted and repetitious, and their scenes together suffer accordingly.

Paul’s determination to get Beth back is laudable, but with such a lack of emotion on his part, his efforts don’t have the resonance that even something as contrived as Taken (2008) and its two sequels have (yes, Taken 3 will be with us in 2015). What emoting there is in the movie is left to Angela – who keeps saying how shocked she is by each turn of event or revelation – and Omar, whose need for revenge is almost pathological (though as usual, he holds off on killing Beth long enough for Paul to turn the tables on him). Lowndes is okay, but Angela is a character that never rings true, allowing herself to go with a man she doesn’t know to New Orleans for $500, and who stays around when the bullets start flying and the bodies start piling up. Willis plays Omar as controlled at first but soon ramps up the ham, and by the movie’s end he’s dispensed entirely with characterisation and gone completely for caricature.

With minor support from Mantegna (sidelined for most of the movie), and Cusack (winning this year’s Nicolas Cage Award for Worst Hairstyle), The Prince ticks all the boxes when it comes to low-budget movie-making, with its dull, uninspired script courtesy of Andre Fabrizio and Jeremy Passmore; poorly edited and choreographed action sequences (the showdown between Paul and Mark is the worst example); trite, repetitive dialogue; clumsy framing and photography; lacklustre direction; and the kind of approach that almost screams “Doing it purely for the money!” Several moments are of the wince-inducing variety (e.g. Jackson’s attempts at acting), and despite all the gunplay and dead bodies, not one police officer makes an appearance at any point in the proceedings, which only serves to highlight the improbability of everything that happens.

Rating: 3/10 – a nail in the coffin of several careers (though probably not the last one), The Prince is a ham-fisted attempt at an urban western but without any of that genre’s appeal or distinctive flavour; entirely derivative and short on imagination, this is one crime thriller that can safely be avoided.

Drive Hard (2014)

11 Wednesday Jun 2014

Posted by dullwood68 in Movies

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Tags

Action, Australia, Bank robbery, Brian Trenchard-Smith, Car chases, Corrupt cops, Gold Coast, John Cusack, Review, Thomas Jane

D: Brian Trenchard-Smith / 92m

Cast: John Cusack, Thomas Jane, Zoe Ventoura, Christopher Morris, Yesse Spence, Damien Garvey

Former race car driver Peter Roberts (Jane) runs a driving school but continues to dream of race car glory. His wife, Tessa (Spence) and daughter Rebecca are not entirely supportive of him, and he’s very much stuck in a rut. When a driving lesson with visiting American, Keller (Cusack) begins uncomfortably – Keller seems to know an awful lot about Peter, his family, and his past – Peter decides to end the lesson. Keller persuades him to make a stop at a bank; when Keller comes out it’s clear he’s just committed a robbery, and Peter is now his getaway driver. They evade the police and swap Peter’s clunky driving school car for a souped-up GT before heading further up the coast to where Keller can leave the country.

Of course, Keller hasn’t just committed any old bank robbery, he’s stolen $9 million in bearer bonds from a bank that acts as a front for the crime syndicate that left him high and dry after a job he did for them (Keller is a thief and spent five years in jail). With the bank’s “security” staff after them, as well as the local police (who are on the bank’s payroll), and the Federal police, Peter and Keller have to try and keep a low profile on their journey, something that proves easier said than done. And as their relationship develops, Keller shows Peter that his life isn’t as rosy as he thinks it is. It all leads to a showdown at a marina that sees Peter and Keller working together to get both of them out of danger.

Drive Hard is best summed up in four words: it’s just plain awful. This is movie-making of such depressing witlessness that it makes you wonder how on earth anyone could have thought they were doing a good enough job in the first place. Watching actors of the calibre of Cusack and Jane trying to make any of it interesting or entertaining is like watching two ageing boxers trying to land punches but missing every time. Jane is simply embarrassing; it’s like he’s decided that making his character seem credible just isn’t relevant or necessary. It’s possibly the worst performance he’s ever given on screen. And Cusack is only marginally better, again ditching a credible characterisation in favour of mangled line readings. If there was ever a performance that shouted, “paying the mortgage here!” then this is the one.

At the reins, and failing to bring anything remotely interesting or new to proceedings is veteran director (and co-screenwriter) Trenchard-Smith, a cult figure quite well-regarded but on this outing, clearly going through the motions. For a movie with a title like Drive Hard, it’s equally clear that the title came first, and the story and plot came along a very distant second and third. Even the chase sequences – strictly speaking, one chase sequence split into two sections – are dull and uninspired, and you know things are bad when the budget isn’t big enough to come up with at least one decent collision or car wreck. Otherwise there are plenty of shots of Peter and Keller driving through the (admittedly) beautiful Gold Coast countryside on their not very fast trip to the marina, and an encounter with a group of bikers that should provide some much-needed tension but which is resolved with a minimum of fuss and/or bother (basically these bikers are about as scary as a bunch of leather-clad Teletubbies).

There are other encounters along the way – a gas station attendant tries to steal the bonds but ends up like Marvin in Pulp Fiction (1994), an elderly woman at the site of a wedding reception goes gun crazy when she realises who Peter and Keller are – but these (very minor) highlights are still badly paced and edited. The subplot involving the corrupt cops and the Feds is allowed to trundle on in such a contrived manner it makes its resolution all the more welcome, even if it is entirely implausible, and the main bad guy, Rossi (Morris) is so colourless he might as well be see-through. Peter’s relationship with Tessa feels like it was adapted from an agony aunt column, and the solution to their problems proves to be unashamedly sexist.

The worst aspect of this absolute mess of a movie is without doubt the dialogue, with enough clunkers per minute to warrant some kind of award. Cusack seems saddled with most of them, and his attempts to justify his actions are both lame and ludicrous at the same time. Jane blusters his way through his lines with all the enthusiasm of someone who can’t wait to get them over and done with, and Rossi’s attempts to sound threatening are about as impressive as someone trying to intimidate a snail. And as if things couldn’t get any worse, the end credits fail to list the young actress who plays Rebecca, but does list Cusack’s personal chef twice.

Rating: 3/10 – abysmal, and a low point for pretty much everyone concerned, Drive Hard disappoints on almost every level; leaden, tension-free and careless, this is filmmaking for the sake of it and as entertaining as watching your toenails grow.

Grand Piano (2013)

20 Thursday Feb 2014

Posted by dullwood68 in Movies

≈ 2 Comments

Tags

Alex Winter, Classical concert, Elijah Wood, Eugenio Mira, John Cusack, Missing fortune, Pianist, Review, Sniper, Thriller

D: Eugenio Mira / 90m

Cast: Elijah Wood, John Cusack, Kerry Bishé, Tamsin Egerton, Allen Leech, Don McManus, Alex Winter

A Hitchcockian thriller with a preposterous MacGuffin at its centre, Grand Piano is set at a classical concert that sees the return to the stage after five years of pianist Tom Selznick (Wood). Selznick hasn’t played in all that time because he choked at his last recital, failing to complete a piece by his mentor Patrick Godureaux called La Cinquette. Now, having been persuaded to return by his actress wife Emma (Bishé), Tom has to face both his fears about playing, and once he’s begun playing, a sniper hidden somewhere in the building. The sniper, Clem (Cusack), wants Tom to play every note of the concert perfectly or he will kill Emma; in particular he wants Tom to play the same piece he couldn’t complete five years before.

The reason for Clem wanting Tom to play that particular piece is revealed at around the halfway mark, and has the potential to make some viewers give up there and then. Up until that point, the script has made a good job of keeping both Tom and the audience in the dark about Clem’s intentions and the reasons why he’s doing it all. It’s also done a good job of slowly increasing the tension as Tom tries to find a way of stopping Clem while keeping both himself and Emma alive, and still completing the concert. Depending on your response to Clem’s motive – and this reviewer found it to be too complicated for its own good – the inherent implausibility in the whole endeavour will either cause you to say au revoir to Tom’s predicament, or keep going out of curiosity as to how everything will be resolved.

My advice, though, is to stick with it. Grand Piano is one of those thrillers where the very unlikelihood of what’s transpiring is irrelevant (Speed anyone?). Thanks to some inspired direction by Mira and a wonderfully nervy performance by Wood, Grand Piano succeeds where perhaps it shouldn’t. From the moment where Tom finds notes from Clem written on his score sheets, the movie shifts up a gear, tightening the screws (or should that be piano strings?) with each new twist and turn. Mira proves himself a supremely confident director, orchestrating the action with style and not a little panache. He knows when to keep the camera moving, even if some of his pans are a little dizzying, but he’s more effective when he keeps the camera static; he makes a virtue of it when Tom begins to play La Cinquette, keeping the camera at a respectful distance and allowing Wood to show off his moves for a good two minutes. It’s a bold move, holding up the action for a solo piano piece, but it works; you’re waiting for the moment where Tom froze last time, hoping the difficulty of the piece won’t trip him up again.

Mira also fares well with his cast, eliciting strong performances from all concerned. As mentioned already Wood puts in a great performance, his initial stage fright giving way to panic and then to desperate resistance before finding a way out of his predicament. When he finally confronts Clem, the script is clever enough not to make him into an instant action hero, and his solution to their fight is entirely credible. As the villain of the piece, Cusack’s performance is mostly a vocal one, as for most of the movie he’s just a disembodied voice in the earpiece he makes Tom wear. Despite this restriction Cusack is more effective under these circumstances than he is when he finally confronts Tom; somehow his physical presence in the movie – while entirely necessary – still feels like a bit of a letdown. It’s not Cusack’s fault, and yet given how good he is as just a threatening voice, maybe it is.

Of the supporting characters, most are underwritten in comparison with Tom and Clem, but they’re there to serve the story’s momentum rather than stand out. Ashley (Egerton) and Wayne (Leech), as friends of Emma are annoying and dim in equal measure, while Emma herself is required to do little more than look constantly worried about her husband. More interesting, and given better motivation and dialogue are Tom’s friend and conductor Norman (McManus) and Tom’s assistant (Winter). Norman is larger than life and shows more faith in Tom than Tom does himself. It’s a small part but McManus plays him with just the right amount of brio and concern. As Tom’s assistant, Winter has a larger role than at first expected, but shows what a talented actor he is, keeping his character’s motives and actions pleasantly off-kilter.

The script, by Damien Chazelle, has its flaws, not least that McGuffin, but it’s structure is sound and it keeps the viewer wanting to know what’s next. There’s some florid dialogue in there on occasion but the cast handle it well, and there’s a satisfying conclusion. But ultimately this is Mora’s picture, and if it wasn’t his guiding hand on the baton, then this could have turned out a lot, lot worse.

Rating: 8/10 – a bravura piece of filmmaking that has a hypnotic effect on its audience; thrilling and exciting in equal measure, Wood’s convincing performance adds greatly to why the movie works so well.