Tag Archives: Keanu Reeves

To the Bone (2017)

23 Friday Nov 2018

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D: Marti Noxon / 107m

Cast: Lily Collins, Carrie Preston, Lili Taylor, Keanu Reeves, Alex Sharp, Liana Liberato, Retta, Leslie Bibb, Maya Eshet, Alanna Ubach

Ellen (Collins) is a twenty year old college dropout suffering with anorexia. Returning to her father and stepmother’s home after a failed stint at an in-patient programme, she finds herself put forward for yet another treatment regime, this time run by unconventional therapist Dr Beckham (Reeves). At the urging of her stepmother, Susan (Preston), and younger sister, Kelly (Liberato), Ellen agrees to take part, and goes to stay at a home run by Beckham where sufferers from eating disorders can receive treatment and learn to remind themselves that “life is worth living”. There Ellen meets a variety of fellow anorexics (and bulimics), including Lucas (Sharp), a young, British-born ballet dancer whose career has been cut short by a knee injury and his subsequent anorexia. The pair develop a friendship that sees Lucas act as Ellen’s personal advocate, encouraging her to eat more and to see the world in a more positive light. But Ellen’s demons – largely in the form of something she did that prompted another girl to take her own life – aren’t so easily overcome, and her initial progress is soon derailed by events that she has no defence against…

Early on in To the Bone, Ellen and her sister are sitting talking quietly, an unidentified city spread out before them. Kelly is voicing her concern about Ellen’s condition when Ellen replies, “I’ve got it under control. Nothing bad’s gonna happen.” To which Kelly answers, “How many people do you think are down there? Like 2 million? I bet a bunch of them who are about to die just said the exact same thing.” It’s a poignant moment, and one that highlights the problem on both sides of the eating disorder divide: the sufferers think they’re in control of what they’re doing, while their loved ones wish it were true. And there’s no middle ground. It’s moments like these, where hope and despair collide and cancel each other out, that makes Noxon’s debut as a feature writer/director all the more affecting. A movie that for the most part offers little in the way of concrete answers, To the Bone is instead a powerful and unflinching examination of both the physical effects of anorexia, and the psychological damage that accompanies it. Based around Noxon’s own experiences, the movie steers clear of being yet another “disease of the week” TV-style outing, and instead focuses on what can be done to make someone with an eating disorder value their life again.

Despite some odd moments of fractured humour, mainly expressed through Lucas’s flamboyant behaviour, this isn’t a movie designed to entertain or make the viewer feel good. Which is a good thing, as this would have trivialised the serious nature of the subject matter, and undermined the good work of all concerned. Collins gives an exemplary performance, expressing Ellen’s anger and sense of hopelessness at her situation, and doing so with a clarity and a precision that allows Ellen’s rough-hued antagonism to have a credible emotional and psychological footing. There’s good support from Taylor as Ellen’s mother, unable to deal with her daughter’s suffering because of her own problems, Preston as Ellen’s stepmother, a woman out of her depth but willing to make  mistakes if it helps matters (though usually it doesn’t), and Liberato as the younger sister who misses the version of Ellen that she’s meant to be. If there’s one thorn in the narrative ointment, it’s related to Reeves’ character, a therapist whose benign manner and intuitive insights are jettisoned during a misjudged scene in which Beckham tells Ellen that the answer to her problems is to “grow a pair”. It’s a moment that sits uncomfortably within the rest of the material, but fortunately it’s a rare mis-step in a movie that is otherwise moving and empathetic.

Rating: 8/10 – confidently handled by Noxon, and compellingly structured, To the Bone benefits from an excellent central performance from Collins, and the decision to be non-judgmental of its characters; a journey worth taking then, sincere and unapologetic in its examination of a difficult and important subject, and worthy without preaching or being condescending.

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Monthly Roundup – September 2018

30 Sunday Sep 2018

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Christopher Robin (2018) / D: Marc Forster / 104m

Cast: Ewan McGregor, Hayley Atwell, Bronte Carmichael, Mark Gatiss, Oliver Ford Davies, Jim Cummings, Brad Garrett, Peter Capaldi, Sophie Okonedo, Toby Jones

Rating: 7/10 – having left behind his childhood friends at the Hundred Acre Wood, an adult Christopher Robin (McGregor), now married and weighed down by the demands of his work, is reunited with them just at the moment that they all most need each other; a live action/CGI variation on A.A. Milne’s Winnie the Pooh stories, Christopher Robin is an enjoyable if lightweight confection from Disney that features good performances from McGregor and Cummings (as both Pooh and Tigger), but which also takes a very straightforward approach to its story, and allows Gatiss to overdo it as the smug villain of the piece.

Melvin Goes to Dinner (2003) / D: Bob Odenkirk / 83m

Cast: Michael Blieden, Stephanie Courtney, Matt Price, Annabelle Gurwitch, Maura Tierney, David Cross, Melora Walters, Jack Black

Rating: 7/10 – two friends agree to meet for dinner but two other people end up joining them, leading to an evening of surprising connections and revelations that causes each to rethink their own opinions and feelings about each other; adapted from the stage play Phyro-Giants! (and written by Blieden), Odenkirk’s debut as a director is an amusing examination of what we tell ourselves to be true while being closely examined by others who may (or may not) know better, making Melvin Goes to Dinner a waspish if somewhat diffident look at social mores that feels a little forced in places, but is well acted by its cast.

BlacKkKlansman (2018) / D: Spike Lee / 135m

Cast: John David Washington, Adam Driver, Laura Harrier, Topher Grace, Jasper Pããkkönen, Ryan Eggold, Paul Walter Houser, Ashlie Atkinson, Michael Buscemi, Robert John Burke, Frederick Weller, Corey Hawkins, Harry Belafonte, Alec Baldwin

Rating: 9/10 – the true story of how, in the early Seventies, the Colorado Springs Police Department’s first black officer, Ron Stallworth (Washington), infiltrated the local chapter of the Ku Klux Klan with the aid of a fellow, Jewish officer, Flip Zimmerman (Driver); a return to form for Spike Lee, BlacKkKlansman is entertaining and frightening in equal measure for the way it deals with contentious issues surrounding politics and racism that are as entrenched today as they were back in the Seventies, and for the deft way in which Lee allows the humour to filter through without negating the seriousness of the issues he’s examining.

Unearthed & Untold: The Path to Pet Sematary (2017) / D: John Campopiano, Justin White / 97m

With: Mary Lambert, Dale Midkiff, Denise Crosby, Brad Greenquist, Peter Stein, Elliot Goldenthal, Miko Hughes, Susan Blommaert, Heather Langenkamp

Rating: 6/10 – a look at the making of Pet Sematary (1989), with interviews and recollections from the cast and crew, and an assessment of the movie’s impact and legacy in the years that have followed; coming across very much like a labour of love for its directors, Unearthed & Untold: The Path to Pet Sematary features a wealth of details about the making of the movie, some of which is fascinating, and some of which is less so, making this a mixed bag in terms of content, but if you’re a fan of Pet Sematary, this will be a must-see, and should offer up behind-the-scenes information that hasn’t been seen or heard before.

Lake Placid: Legacy (2018) / D: Darrell Roodt / 93m

Cast: Katherine Barrell, Tim Rozon, Sai Bennett, Luke Newton, Craig Stein, Joe Pantoliano, Alisha Bailey

Rating: 3/10 – a group of eco-warriors discover a remote island that’s not on any maps, and find a genetically altered apex predator that soon begins whittling down their numbers; the sixth entry in the franchise, Lake Placid: Legacy ignores the previous four movies and acts – without explanation – as a direct sequel to the original, though that doesn’t make it any less abysmal, and it’s easily the worst in the series, something it achieves thanks to a dreadful script, Roodt’s absentee direction, the less than stellar efforts of the cast, and just by being greenlit in the first place.

Killing Gunther (2017) / D: Taran Killam / 93m

Cast: Taran Killam, Bobby Moynihan, Hannah Simone, Cobie Smulders, Arnold Schwarzenegger, Allison Tolman, Paul Brittain, Aaron Yoo, Ryan Gaul, Amir Talai, Peter Kelamis

Rating: 4/10 – an assassin, Blake (Killam), hires a team of other assassins to help him track down and eliminate Gunther (Schwarzenegger), the world’s most feared, and successful, hitman; ostensibly a comedy, Killing Gunther is yet another ill-advised movie where the script – and the cast – try way too hard to make absurdist behaviour funny all by itself, and where the tone is as wayward as the narrative, something that makes the movie an uneven watch and less than successful in its attempts to entertain – and the less said about Schwarzenegger’s performance the better.

Overboard (2018) / D: Rob Greenberg / 112m

Cast: Eugenio Derbez, Anna Faris, Eva Longoria, John Hannah, Swoosie Kurtz, Mel Rodriguez, Josh Segarra, Hannah Nordberg, Alyvia Alyn Lind, Payton Lapinski, Fernando Luján, Cecilia Suárez, Mariana Treviño

Rating: 6/10 – when a rich, arrogant, multi-millionaire playboy (Derbez) falls overboard from his yacht and loses his memory, a struggling single mother (Faris) that he’s treated badly sees an opportunity to exploit his misfortune for her own personal gain; a gender-swap remake of the 1987 original, Overboard is pleasant enough, with well judged performances from Derbez and Faris, but it plays out in expected fashion, with only occasional moments that stand out, and never really tries to do anything that might make viewers think of it as anything more than an acceptable remake doing its best to keep audiences just interested enough to stay until the end.

El club de los buenos infieles (2017) / D: Lluís Segura / 84m

Cast: Raúl Fernández de Pablo, Fele Martínez, Juanma Cifuentes, Hovik Keuchkerian, Albert Ribalta, Jordi Vilches, Adrián Lastra

Rating: 7/10 – four friends, all married but experiencing a loss of desire for their wives, decide to start a club for men with similar problems, and in the hope that by “seeing” other women, it will rekindle their desire; based on a true story, El club de los buenos infieles starts off strongly as the men explain their feelings, but soon the ridiculous nature of their solution leads to all sorts of uncomfortable moments and situations that stretch the credibility of the material, leaving the principal cast’s performances to keep things engaging, along with Segura’s confident direction (which helps overcome much of the script’s deficiencies), and a couple of very funny set-pieces that are worth a look all by themselves.

Destination Wedding (2018) / D: Victor Lewin / 87m

Cast: Winona Ryder, Keanu Reeves

Rating: 5/10 – two misanthropes (Ryder, Reeves) invited to the same wedding (he’s the groom’s brother, she’s the groom’s ex), find they have much more in common than expected, including an attraction to each other; the kind of movie that has its characters spout pseudo-intellectual nonsense at every opportunity in an effort to make them sound wise and/or studiously profound, Destination Wedding could have been much funnier than it thinks it is, and wastes the talents of both Ryder and Reeves (yes, even Reeves) as it leaves no turn unstoned in its efforts to be a romantic comedy that isn’t in the least bit romantic, or comic.

The Resurrection of Gavin Stone (2016) / D: Dallas Jenkins / 92m

Cast: Brett Dalton, Anjelah Johnson-Reyes, Neil Flynn, D.B. Sweeney, Shawn Michaels, Patrick Gagnon, Tim Frank, Tara Rios

Rating: 6/10 – a former teen TV star whose adult acting career isn’t going as well as he’d hoped, finds himself doing community service at his hometown church, and discovering that having a lack of religious faith is the least of his problems; a bright and breezy romantic comedy, The Resurrection of Gavin Stone wears its Christian beliefs on its sleeve, while doing absolutely nothing that you wouldn’t expect it to, thanks to likable performances from Dalton and Johnson-Reyes, a solid if predictable script, and workmanlike direction that never lets the material stray from its formulaic constraints, though if truth be told, on this occasion that’s not necessarily a bad thing.

The Predator (2018) / D: Shane Black / 107m

Cast: Boyd Holbrook, Trevante Rhodes, Jacob Tremblay, Sterling K. Brown, Olivia Munn, Keegan-Michael Key, Thomas Jane, Alfie Allen, Augusto Aguilera, Jake Busey, Yvonne Strahovski

Rating: 5/10 – a rag-tag band of PTSD sufferers and an army sniper (Holbrook) find themselves taking on a couple of Predators while a secret arm of the US government atempts to exploit their presence on Earth; a movie that could and should have been so much better (soooo much better), The Predator is unnecessarily convoluted and stupid at the same time, and despite Black’s best efforts, remains the kind of sequel that everyone has high hopes for, only to see them drain away with every dumb moment that the script can squeeze in, and every tortuous twist of logic that can be forced onto the narrative, all of which leaves everyone hoping and praying that this is the end of the line.

The Astounding She-Monster (1957) / D: Ronald V. Ashcroft / 62m

aka Mysterious Invader

Cast: Robert Clarke, Kenne Duncan, Marilyn Harvey, Jeanne Tatum, Shirley Kilpatrick, Ewing Miles Brown

Rating: 3/10 – kidnappers take their hostage up into the mountains, unaware that a space ship has crash landed nearby, and the sole occupant (Kilpatrick) is more than capable of defending itself; not a cult classic, and not a movie to look back fondly on for any low-budget virtues it may have (it doesn’t), The Astounding She-Monster is a creature feature without a creature, a crime drama with an annoying voice over, a sci-fi horror with minimal elements of both, and a movie with far too many scenes where the cast run through the same stretch of woods trying to get away from an alien whose only speed is ultra-ultra-slow.

Siberia (2018)

05 Sunday Aug 2018

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D: Matthew Ross / 105m

Cast: Keanu Reeves, Ana Ularu, Pasha D. Lychnikoff, James Gracie, Veronica Ferres, Molly Ringwald, Dmitry Chepovetsky, Rafael Petardi, Eugene Lipinsky

Brought to St Petersburg by the promise of a high-figure deal, diamond merchant Lucas Hill (Reeves) arrives to find his Russian business partner, Pyotr, has vanished, and with the single blue diamond he was meant to give Lucas to help initiate the deal. The buyer, a shady businessman named Boris Volkov (Lychnikoff), allows Lucas two days in which to bring him the sample and the other twenty blue diamonds that make up the deal. Learning that his partner is waiting for him in the Siberian town of Mirny, Lucas flies there, only to learn that his partner has moved on again. With bad weather keeping him there, Lucas, who is married, begins an affair with café owner, Katya (Ularu); he also gets to know her fiercely protective brother, Ivan (Chepovetsky). Returning to St Petersburg, Lucas manages to find the sample diamond and discovers through bringing Katya to him, why his partner was in Mirny: he left another sample diamond there, but this one is a fake. As Lucas begins to piece together the details of the deal Pyotr was arranging, he comes to realise that his life is in danger – and so is Katya’s…

It has to be acknowledged that Keanu Reeves, away from the John Wick series (and any possible mention of a third Bill & Ted movie), appears to be much in demand and works steadily as a result. However, his choice of movies leaves a lot to be desired, and for every good movie he makes, there’s a five-to-one ratio of movies he makes that aren’t. Siberia definitely falls into the latter category. It starts off well enough, but that’s just the first ten minutes, with Lucas arriving in St Petersburg (to a cheery welcome from Ferres’ desk clerk), and learning that he’s already well on the way to being shafted by all and sundry. Thankfully, Lucas can speak Russian, a fact that doesn’t stop everyone around him talking in their native language as if he can’t understand them. This is one of many narrative decisions made by Scott B. Smith’s irritating screenplay that hinders the flow of the material, but none more so when the movie morphs from nascent crime thriller to fully fledged romantic drama within a handful of scenes. This development is too absurd to be credible: Katya is literally the only woman we see in Mirny, and she tells Lucas they might as well have sex because everyone else will think they’ve done it anyway.

So the middle third of the movie is taken up with scenes of Lucas and Katya having sex at every opportunity – bear in mind he’s only there for two days – and then having more sex when she’s in St Petersburg. The couple’s emotions are created to order, there’s little chemistry between them, and their pillow talk is of the “do you know why I like blue diamonds?” variety. As if this aspect of the movie isn’t bad enough, the shady business deal involving passing off fake diamonds as real never really holds any weight or plausibility, though Lychnikoff’s smiling dirtbag (while still its own kind of stereotype) is mesmerising in a callous, offhand manner that works better than it should. None of this is even remotely believable, and it all leads to a violent showdown that only goes to prove that the makers had painted themselves into a corner in terms of a credible outcome. Ross, making only his second feature after the much more accessible Frank & Lola (2016), fumbles things badly throughout, and the movie’s wayward tone undermines any serious attempts at drama – or thriller elements – that the script might be aiming for. There’s an obvious joke about being sent to Siberia, but on this occasion it’s too ironic for comfort.

Rating: 4/10 – another dire entry in the Reeves resumé, Siberia adds up to a collection of scenes and characters that feel like they were assembled by someone with only a rough idea of how to put a script together; definitely one to avoid unless you’re a committed Reeves fan, and even then you should think twice.

John Wick: Chapter 2 (2017)

15 Wednesday Feb 2017

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D: Chad Stahelski / 122m

Cast: Keanu Reeves, Riccardo Scamarcio, Ian McShane, Common, Ruby Rose, Claudia Gerini, Laurence Fishburne, Lance Reddick, Franco Nero, Peter Serafinowicz, Peter Stormare, John Leguizamo, Bridget Moynahan

In the surprise movie of 2014, Keanu Reeves made a bit of a comeback playing a retired assassin called John Wick. Brutally coerced into giving up a peaceful life as a widower after his wife, Helen (Moynahan), died from cancer, Wick had his car stolen and his dog – a puppy! – killed (not to mention being beaten up himself). He came out of retirement, dished out some serious retribution – killing a total of seventy-seven people (mostly unfortunate henchmen) in the process – and headed off into the sunrise.

Well, that’s what we thought he was doing. But as this amped-up, mercilessly nihilistic sequel shows, here’s what John actually did next. First there’s the small matter of retrieving his car from the uncle (Stormare) of the Russian gangster who stole his car in the first place. One warehouse full of wrecked cars and dead or suffering henchmen later, John has got his vehicle back and has managed to get it home where it can be rebuilt in all its former glory by John’s friend and chop shop specialist, Aurelio (Leguizamo). Job done, he says hello to his new dog, and he even re-buries the weapons he disinterred in the first movie. But just as he’s finished that, and is ready to resume his retirement, fate comes calling in the form of sequel nemesis, Santino D’Antonio (Scamarcia).

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Santino wants John to honour a marker he has, the debt that John owes him for Santino’s help in John’s retirement. John refuses, but Santino is like a spoilt child who’s been told he can’t have his own way. As soon as he leaves he uses a rocket launcher to blow John’s house to smithereens (but don’t worry, this time John and the dog survive). Next stop for a seriously annoyed John is the Continental hotel, where assassins can meet, have a few drinks, rest up, and absolutely, positively not kill each other. Chided by hotel owner and mentor, Winston (McShane), for not accepting the marker, John meets with Santino and discovers that his target is Santino’s sister, Gianna (Gerini).

So, a less than happy John travels to Rome, meets up with Winston’s Italian counterpart, Julius (Nero), gets all kitted out – bulletproof suits are all the rage in Rome – and after wandering through a series of tunnels setting up an elaborate kill sequence for later, he finds Gianna. Her death ensues, and just as expected, John has to escape back through the tunnels while offing an astonishingly large amount of disposable henchmen (don’t they have a union?). On his tail is Santino’s right hand assassin, Ares (Rose), there to dispose of him as a “loose end”, and Cassian (Common), Gianna’s personal bodyguard, who has taken his employer’s death, well, personally. John avoids death several dozen times over, gets back to the Italian Continental, and manages to leave for New York with Julius’s help. But not before the scheming and deceitful Santino has taken out a contract on John’s life, a contract worth $7m to anyone who can do what no one else has even come close to doing: killing the Boogeyman himself.

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There’s more to the story, but in actuality it doesn’t amount to much, peppered as it is with an extended sequence of multiple mayhems at a train station – John and Cassian casually shooting at each other over the heads of blissfully unaware travellers is both comical and disturbing in equal measure – a reunion for ex-Matrix co-stars Reeves and Laurence (“Don’t call me Larry”) Fishburne, and yet another extended shootout in a museum, which features a genuinely disorientating sequence in an exhibition wing full of mirrored hallways and rooms. It’s all impossibly loud and garish and there’s not even the hint of a policeman hoving into view at any moment (though we do get to see a returning Jimmy the patrolman ask John if he’s “working”).

But plausibility and noting the absence of any laws that don’t pertain to the life of an assassin aren’t exactly the movie’s main interest. John Wick: Chapter 2 has one mission statement and one mission statement only: to provide its audience with as many over the top, seriously insane fight sequences as it can squeeze into its two hour running time. There are moments when the movie is absolutely bat-shit crazy in its determination to make viewers exclaim “Holy f*ck!” at the positively insane levels of violence on display, whether it’s John taking out a motorcyclist with a car door, or dispatching another assassin with a pencil; it’s all designed to up the ante for modern day action thrillers, and put other like-minded movie makers on notice: this is what you have to surpass.

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Whether anyone else can or will match the violent excesses that John Wick can come up with is debatable – and that’s without the inevitable Chapter 3 to consider as well. Under the guidance of returning screenwriter Derek Kolstad and director Chad Stahelski, John Wick: Chapter 2 is a riot: bigger, bolder, more exhausting than its predecessor, and yet leavened by healthy doses of humour when it’s needed. It’s not to all tastes, and some viewers will be put off by the obvious “gun love” on display, not to mention the number of close up head shots that are sprayed (literally) throughout the movie. But this is a movie that’s unashamedly for fans of high body counts, sneering villains who’ll definitely get their come-uppance, brutal fight sequences, and beautifully art-directed and surreal backdrops for said sequences.

The world that John Wick and his contemporaries inhabit is not the same world that we inhabit (though it has its similarities, obviously). In it, a man can be shot in the stomach and still see off multiple attackers. But thanks to a script that’s much cleverer in its design and intent than most people are likely to give it credit for, this is a sequel that delivers on the promise of its predecessor, and adds a whole new level of shock and awe, while also expanding on the world it takes place in. It’s almost the perfect sequel, giving the returning audience more of what it liked first time round and much more besides. If there are criticisms to be made then they’ll relate to the suddenness of the airport sequences and how they’re edited together (clumsily in places), and the continuing idea that John Wick is a ghost, the boogeyman that no one sees coming, when everyone he meets says, “Ah, Mr Wick”.

It all ends on a promise, one that will have fans clamouring for the makers to hurry up, and naysayers burying their heads in their hands in despair. But again, this is a movie made for fans of the original, a demographic that has apparently grown since 2014. At time of writing, John Wick: Chapter 2 has already made half of what the first movie made overall, and in just four days of release. And whatever you might say about Reeves’ acting ability, or the absurdity of the shootouts and one man overcoming all odds, this is a movie that delivers a ridiculous amount of adrenalin-fuelled turmoil and does so with an enormous amount of chutzpah. There really isn’t anything else out there to touch it.

Rating: 9/10 – that rare beast, a superior sequel, John Wick: Chapter 2 opens up the throttle in the first frenzied fifteen minutes, and barely lets up for the next hour and forty-five minutes; simply put, it does what it says on the tin, and then pumps an extra shot in for good measure.

The Whole Truth (2016)

22 Saturday Oct 2016

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D: Courtney Hunt / 93m

Cast: Keanu Reeves, Renée Zellweger, Gugu Mbatha-Raw, Gabriel Basso, Jim Belushi, Jim Klock, Ritchie Montgomery, Christopher Berry, Nicole Barré, Sean Bridgers, Mattie Liptak

In a small Louisiana town, young Mike Lassiter (Basso) is arrested for the murder of his father, Boone (Belushi). Having confessed to the crime, Mike says nothing more, even to his lawyer, Richard Ramsey (Reeves). Obviously this makes it hard for Ramsey to mount a defence, but as a friend of the family, and someone that Boone helped become a lawyer, he has inside knowledge about Boone that the jury won’t be aware of. With his client staying quiet, Ramsey’s only choice is to malign Boone’s reputation as a good father to Mike and loving husband to Loretta (Zellweger).

As the trial begins, Ramsey is joined by a junior lawyer, Janelle Brady (Mbatha-Raw). Together they begin to piece together a defence based on Boone’s abusive behaviour towards Mike and Loretta, while the prosecution – led by Leblanc (Klock) – reinforces the details surrounding the murder and Mike’s subsequent confession. The case seems hopeless until Ramsey calls Loretta to the witness stand, where she confirms just how abusive her husband could be. But as the trial continues, Janelle becomes suspicious about what might have really happened; she comes to believe that Mike is taking the fall for his mother. There’s no evidence to support this, however, and when Mike takes the stand and delivers a bombshell that no one could have prepared for, his testimony takes the trial in a direction that no one could have prepared for either.

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With an introductory voice over by Reeves that sets the tone for the whole movie (he sounds bored and uninterested), The Whole Truth is one of those courtroom dramas where secrets are revealed every so often in an effort to keep the audience guessing as to what’s happened, or is happening, and which should add up to a last-minute revelation that will have said audience saying to themselves, “Wow! I never saw that coming!” Except, in reality, The Whole Truth opts for secrets that have no impact on the movie’s ending, and which are pretty much forgotten about once they’ve been revealed.

You don’t have to have seen hundreds of courtroom dramas to know that ninety-nine per cent of the time, if the defendant has confessed to the crime (but isn’t saying why they did it), then the chances of them actually being guilty are greatly reduced. And while it would be unfair to reveal if this is the case here, let’s just say that there is a formula here that’s being adhered to, and said formula shouldn’t spring too many surprises on anyone familiar with the genre. And thanks to screenwriter Nicholas Kazan (known here as Raphael Jackson, and perhaps wisely), the movie plods along from one unexciting revelation to another in a dour effort to appear exciting. It’s all so sloppily written that, from Ramsey’s “knowing” voice over to both his and Leblanc’s inability to cross-examine witnesses, The Whole Truth acts more as an educational movie about how not to make a courtroom drama than the effective thriller it wants to be.

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Kazan’s script is one of the main offenders, but it’s not alone in handicapping the movie at every turn. Since coming to people’s attention with her well-received debut, Frozen River (2008), director Courtney Hunt has only worked on five TV episodes before taking on the challenge of molding this movie into something that isn’t the cinematic definition of “generic”. That she never gets to grips with the material, and films everything in a bland, TV-movie-of-the-week style, is evident throughout, and the look of the movie – all washed-out and looking as if bright colours were a no-no – further undermines any attempts the movie might make to stand out from the crowd. It’s as if cinematographer Jules O’Loughlin was instructed not to make the movie look attractive.

And then, somewhat inevitably, there’s the cast. Keanu Reeves has the kind of career that fluctuates between godawful and cautiously optimistic with almost absurd regularity. John Wick (2014) was a reminder that when he’s asked to play taciturn and given minimal dialogue, he’s playing to his strengths as an actor. But then he also appears in movies such as Man of Tai Chi (2013 – and which he directed), and Knock Knock (2015), and you’re reminded that he’s only good with certain material. Here he struggles as usual with both his character and his character’s dialogue, with his occasional voice overs further underscoring how often he looks and sounds removed from the movies he makes. He makes for an unconvincing trial lawyer as well, and The Whole Truth teeters on the edge of disaster every time Ramsey gets up to question a witness.

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Making her return to acting after a six-year hiatus, Renée Zellweger is, as many people have already pointed out, hard to recognise as Loretta. Even when she speaks you could still be forgiven for thinking she’s someone else, and this proves to be something of a distraction whenever she’s on screen. Why she picked this movie to make her comeback is a mystery that’s more intriguing than the central mystery around who killed Boone, and though she has second billing, Loretta is more of a supporting role than a lead. She’s not asked to do too much, and when Loretta takes the stand, Zellweger treats us to a glimpse of what she’s capable of, but otherwise it’s a performance that dozens of other actresses could have given. Mbatha-Raw is underused as well, her character the inexperienced, somewhat naïve ingenue who gets her one chance to shine in court before being relegated back to the sidelines.

With the performances unable to lift the movie out of its self-imposed narrative doldrums, and Hunt apparently unable to make much out of the material, The Whole Truth proves to be hugely disappointing, and resoundingly flat. There’s no impetus, no energy in the courtroom scenes, and by the end it’s difficult to care who did what, why or how. Courtroom dramas succeed or fail on the quality of the secrets that are revealed during a trial, and the odds against the defence lawyer winning, but here there’s so much apathy on display that any impact is curtailed before any such secrets are fully revealed. This may be a courtroom drama per se, but someone really should have pointed out that the drama was, in legal terms, misrepresented.

Rating: 4/10 – originally set to star Daniel Craig as Ramsey, The Whole Truth is a movie that wouldn’t have turned out any better even if he hadn’t dropped out just days before production was due to begin; clumsy and dull, the movie is like drudge work for the eyes and ears, and never once feels like it’s going to step up a gear and become even slightly interesting.

10 Stars Who Weren’t Born in the Country You Think They Were

13 Monday Jun 2016

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When we see certain stars in their movies we’re prone to making subconcious conclusions about them: what they’re like off-camera (how nice or how nasty), what they might like to do in their spare time, and sometimes, if they’re single, that we’d be the perfect partner for them (creepy yes, but in a non-stalker kind of way, you know?). Some stars have been around long enough for most people to know that they’re not originally from the country we associate them with. For example, Mel Gibson is generally regarded as Australian but was actually born in the good old US of A. And Audrey Hepburn – American? British? – was born in Belgium. In the spirit of full disclosure, here are ten stars who weren’t born in the country you think they were. See how many of them you knew already.

1 – Emma Watson – the star of the Harry Potter movies, and more recently, Regression (2015), looks and sounds like the quintessential English rose, but guess again. Although both her parents are English, Miss Watson was actually born in Paris, France.

Emma Watson

2 – Eva Green – the mercurial, fearless star of movies such as Casino Royale (2006) and 300: Rise of an Empire (2014) has a classical beauty that could have originated in any of a dozen countries around the globe, but like Emma Watson, Green was born in Paris, France.

3 – Keanu Reeves – with his Hawaiian Christian name and chiselled good looks, you could be forgiven for believing Reeves to be as American as they come, but in fact the star of The Matrix (1999) and The Day the Earth Stood Still (2008) was born in Beirut, Lebanon.

4 – Bruce Willis – the tough-as-nails star of Die Hard (1988) and The Sixth Sense (1999) – like so many others in this list – is generally regarded as American through and through but again, appearances can be (and are) deceiving, as Willis was born in Idar-Oberstein in the former West Germany.

Bruce Willis

5 – Rose Byrne – an actress whose career began back in 1994 as the unfortunately named Rastus Summers in Dallas Doll, Byrne has made a name for herself in recent years in a number of R-rated comedies, and while she seems as American as the next actress, she was actually born in Balmain, Australia.

6 – Oscar Isaac – with his dark, brooding looks, Isaac has a cosmopolitan aura about him that, like Eva Green, could mean he was born just about anywhere, but while he’s played a Russian in Pu239 (2006), and a Mexican in For Greater Glory: The True Story of Cristiada (2012) – amongst others – Isaac actually heralds from Guatemala.

7 – Michael Fassbender – despite having grown up in Northern Ireland and having made a name for himself in a handful of well-received British movies, including Hunger (2008) and Fish Tank (2009), the younger incarnation of Magneto in the X-Men movies actually hails from Heidelberg in the former West Germany.

Michael Fassbender

8 – Joaquin Phoenix – while most of his siblings were born in the US, including his brother River, the star of Walk the Line (2005) and Her (2013) was born in a country where his parents were serving as Children of God missionaries at the time. The country? None other than Puerto Rico.

9 – Amy Adams – as quintessentially American in appearance as Emma Watson is quintessentially British in appearance, the actress who was billed as Gorgeous Woman in Tenacious D in the Pick of Destiny (2006), and who is now Clark Kent/Superman’s go-to gal, was actually born in Vicenza, Italy.

10 – Kim Cattrall – the star of Sex and the City and, going further back, Big Trouble in Little China (1986), looks American, sounds American, and appears steeped in all things American, but again, appearances are deceiving as the truth is she was born in Liverpool, England.

Kim Cattrall

Exposed (2016)

02 Saturday Apr 2016

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Exposed

aka Daughter of God; Wisdom

D: Declan Dale / 102m

Cast: Ana de Armas, Keanu Reeves, Christopher McDonald, Mira Sorvino, Big Daddy Kane, Venus Ariel, Gabriel Vargas, Melissa Linton, Michael Rispoli

Hands up anyone who’s heard of Declan Dale. Maybe you’ve seen his last movie. Well, actually, you couldn’t have because Declan Dale doesn’t exist, he’s the pseudonym of writer/director Gee Malik Linton, Exposed‘s director when it was called Daughter of God, and when it didn’t try to be two movies at the same time. Thanks to the intervention of distributor Lionsgate – who thought they were getting a gritty police drama starring Keanu Reeves – Linton’s stark, character-driven bi-lingual drama focusing on child abuse and violence towards women was emasculated, and the movie became a sluggish crime thriller instead (just watch the trailer below to see how determined Lionsgate were to make Exposed seem like an exciting, must-see thriller).

The result is astonishingly bad. In its current form, Exposed has the potential of being one of the year’s worst movies, a terrible disaster brought about, not by one of the production companies involved, but by a distributor who thought it knew better. In downplaying Isabel’s story in favour of Galban’s glum search for his partner’s killer, the less than competent folks at Lionsgate have made a potentially absorbing, surrealist drama into a muddled snoozefest that clumps along like an amputee getting used to a badly fitting prosthesis. Again, the result is astonishingly bad – really, seriously, completely, astonishingly, bad.

It’s hard to believe, but the movie’s editor, Melody London, has a great track record. She’s worked with Jim Jarmusch on movies such as Down by Law (1986) and Mystery Train (1989), and contributed greatly to the success of documentaries such as Going Upriver: The Long War of John Kerry (2004) and Apache 8 (2011). With that in mind, it’s hard to understand just how wretchedly Exposed has been stitched together, and just how deluded the “good” folks at Lionsgate were when they came to giving London their feedback on how to “improve” the movie’s chances at the box office. Because ultimately that was Lionsgate’s fear: that Linton’s original version, Daughter of God, would fail to make a dent at the box office. They were actively saying to Linton, this movie will sink without trace unless we intervene.

Exposed - scene1

Well, hubris is a wonderful thing – except when it’s unfounded. Exposed has been released in eight countries at time of writing, and while exact figures aren’t available, the movie appears to have made only $205,703 worldwide (it made just $122 in the UK, while US returns haven’t even been revealed). If anyone at Lionsgate is still trying to say they did the right thing, then any production companies planning to let them distribute their latest feature, should turn around and run as far away as possible in the opposite direction.

So just how bad is Exposed? It’s astonishingly bad (but we’ve established that). Why is it so bad? Here are just three examples (there could have been more but this review has to end at some point): Detective Galban (Reeves) is allowed to investigate the death of his partner, Cullen, even though he’s still grieving over the loss of his wife; when it becomes clear that his partner was corrupt, Galban is warned off the investigation by his boss, Lieutenant Galway (McDonald), in order to avoid Cullen’s wife, Janine (Sorvino), losing out on his pension rights; and when Janine is informed that her husband’s death isn’t going to be investigated, she’s incensed – until the next scene where she attempts to seduce Galban while also admitting that Cullen was as crooked as everyone said.

What investigation there is – Janine insists her husband’s murderer is caught – depends on photos found on a camera at the murder scene. In them, there are several Latinos, including Manuel de La Cruz (Vargas) and his sister-in-law, Isabel (de Armas). Manuel seems to be focus of Cullen’s surveillance, and when the other people in the pictures start turning up dead, the main suspect in their deaths, and Cullen’s, is local crime boss Jonathan “Black” Jones (Kane). He denies any involvement but Galban is convinced he’s guilty. All Galban really knows for sure is that the girl in the photos is probably the key to everything. But Galban is such a terrible detective that he can’t even track her down, even though it should be easy.

Exposed - scene3

Meanwhile, Isabel has problems of her own. On the night that Cullen was killed (and on the same subway platform) she has a vision: an albino man who walks on air above the tracks. With her husband away in Iraq, and living with her devout in-laws, Isabel’s faith is challenged when she begins seeing another strange being. She comes to believe that God has a plan for her, and that these beings she’s seeing are angels. But when her husband is killed and she later discovers that she’s pregnant, her in-laws disown her, despite her saying it’s a miracle (her husband was in Iraq for over a year). Ostracised, she turns her attention to a little girl, Elisa (Ariel), who appears to be suffering abuse at the hands of her father. This leads to a tragedy that reveals the reason for her pregnancy, and explains much of what happened the night that Cullen died.

In essence, there are two very different stories here, and they clash with each other at every turn. Galban’s investigation goes nowhere, partly because he’s apparently useless at his job (at one point he whinges that “nobody’s talking”), and partly because the revised storyline doesn’t know what to do with him. Reeves is a producer on the movie; one would have thought he would have more input into how the character is presented, but it’s soon obvious he either didn’t have as much clout as you’d expect, or he realised early on that, once Lionsgate got their hands on the movie, it was all over bar the crying. Either way, Reeves gives one of the most lethargic, barely involved performances of his career. For everyone who thought he’d turned his career slump around with John Wick (2014), think again. This and Knock Knock (2015) are clear indicators that John Wick was an unexpected blip on the radar.

Exposed - scene2

de Armas has the better, more developed role, and she’s very effective in an emotionally confused, gamine kind of way, but as Isabel’s story takes her to some very dark places indeed, the actress’s performance is undervalued by the arbitrary twists and turns of Lionsgate’s re-edit. There are moments when the power of Linton’s original cut is able to shine through, notably in the sequences with the angels, and later as we realise just how fragile Isabel’s grip on reality really is. But there are long stretches where her story sits there like a stalled car, and as with Galban’s story, this version of her story doesn’t always know how to move forward without looking and feeling clumsy (and which it never comes close to overcoming).

At least there is some closure to Isabel’s story, even if it is rushed and overly melodramatic. Other characters come and go without the viewer even realising, and there’s a confrontation between Manuel and “Black” Jones that comes out of nowhere and then returns there as soon as it’s done. But by the time this encounter pops up the average viewer will be checking their watch and wondering just how longer this farrago has got to go. There are just so many wretchedly glum and dispiriting scenes that have come before, suspended moments that lack resonance or emotion, for anyone to really care how it all turns out. And when it finally does, the only reaction left to the viewer who’s got that far is relief.

Rating: 3/10 – a spectacular misfire of a movie, Exposed is so bad that William Goldman’s classic quote, “In Hollywood, nobody knows anything”, should have the qualifier, “especially Lionsgate” added to it; let’s hope that Linton’s original cut eventually sees the light of day, and this dull, leaden, dreary mess can be consigned to the cinematic landfill where it belongs.

Mini-Review: Knock Knock (2015)

10 Saturday Oct 2015

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Knock Knock

D: Eli Roth / 100m

Cast: Keanu Reeves, Lorenza Izzo, Ana de Armas, Aaron Burns, Ignacia Allamand, Colleen Camp

Architect and committed family man Evan Webber (Reeves) is forced to stay home for the weekend due to work commitments, while his artist wife, Karen (Allamand), and their two children go to the beach. On the first night he’s hard at work when he hears a knock at the front door. Not expecting anyone, he’s surprised to find two young women – Bel (de Armas) and Genesis (Izzo) – trying to find the location of a party they’re going to, and who are soaked through thanks to the rain. He lets them in to wait for another taxi, and gives them robes to wear while their clothes are put in the drier. He’s hospitable and friendly, but as the two women begin to flirt with him, Evan becomes uncomfortable. When the taxi finally arrives and he tries to give the girls back their clothes, he finds them in the bathroom, naked, and wanting very much to have sex with him.

Evan succumbs to their advances and they end up having a threesome. The next morning, he wakes to find Genesis and Bel have no intention of leaving. When they vandalise one of his wife’s sculptures, he threatens to call the police, but they call his bluff by saying they’d have an interesting story to tell the police, what with their being underage. Evan is shocked, and backs down, and the young women continue to disregard his pleas not to interfere or damage anything. Eventually he gets so mad he starts to call the police to report a break-in, and the women agree to leave. He drops them off where they’re supposed to live, and back home, cleans up all the mess they’ve created. Later that night, Evan is working again when he hears a noise. He goes to investigate and is knocked unconscious by Genesis. When he comes to he finds himself tied to the bed, and that both Genesis and Bel are determined to make him suffer for his actions of the night before.

Knock Knock - scene

“Knock knock.

Who’s there?

A pretty awful movie by Eli Roth.

Sorry, we’re out.”

A remake of Death Game (1977), which starred one of this movie’s producers, Sondra Locke, and cast member Colleen Camp, Knock Knock has all the tension and edge-of-your-seat suspense of an episode of The Simpsons. It’s stupid, ridiculous, annoying, derivative, farcical, erratic, ludicrous, woeful, preposterous, idiotic, and just plain dumb. It’s a psychological thriller that forgets all about the “logical” and plumps for the “psycho” side of things with a passion that will leave most viewers shaking their heads in disbelief. This is a home invasion movie where you can’t feel sympathy for Reeves’ character, or the barmy antics of Genesis and Bel, or even the unlucky Louis (Burns), Karen’s assistant, who proves that an asthmatic can still play piggy-in-the-middle long after they should have collapsed fighting for their breath.

The script, co-written by Roth, Nicolás López and Guillermo Amoedo, is a lumpen mess that judders from one unconvincing scene to another, and resolutely avoids giving Evan the chance to gain the upper hand, keeping him the shouting, sweating victim throughout, while making Bel and Genesis the equivalent of avenging angels (though why they do what they do is obscured by their commitment to behaving like five year olds on a sugar high). Reeves is also lumbered with some of the most awful dialogue written in recent years, and it shows up his deficiencies as an actor (it doesn’t help that for most of the movie’s second half, and one rant aside, his general reaction to what’s happening to him is to repeat the F-word). And Roth, whose caché as a director is becoming increasingly devalued, directs each scene as if it’s completely independent of the ones before and after it, and shows no interest in making it exciting or dramatic for the viewer.

Rating: 3/10 – a wince-inducing thriller that remains a huge waste of time, and confirms Evan’s question part way through of “What’s the point?” with every subsequent scene; more knock-off than remake, Knock Knock plays around with a decent clutch of ideas but ultimately hasn’t got a clue what to do with any of them.

John Wick (2014)

15 Thursday Jan 2015

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John Wick

D: Chad Stahelski, David Leitch / 101m

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

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

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

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

John Wick - scene

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

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

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

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

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

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

Speed (1994)

23 Wednesday Jul 2014

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MSDSPEE FE005

D: Jan de Bont / 116m

Cast: Keanu Reeves, Sandra Bullock, Dennis Hopper, Jeff Daniels, Joe Morton, Alan Ruck, Glenn Plummer, Richard Lineback, Beth Grant, Hawthorne James, Carlos Carrasco

When some of the workers in one of L.A.’s high-rise office buildings get into an elevator, they don’t realise they’ve just become hostages in a deadly game of cat-and-mouse between ex-cop turned bomb-loving nut job Howard Payne (Hopper) and the police.  With the elevator wired up with explosives, it’s down to maverick cop Jack Traven (Reeves) and his partner, Harry Temple (Daniels), to rescue the hostages, and capture Payne.  However, while the hostages are rescued, Payne manages to escape.

Some time later, Traven is getting his morning coffee and doughnuts when a nearby bus explodes, destroying it, and the driver, completely.  A pay phone rings; it’s Payne, with a challenge for Traven.  There’s a bus rigged with explosives that will be armed if the bus travels at over fifty miles an hour.  The catch?  If it slows below fifty miles an hour, then the bomb will go off, killing everyone on board.  Jack’s mission is simple: to find the bus, get on it and stay with it until Payne’s ransom demands are met.  Once on the bus, Traven’s presence leads to the driver (James) being shot and wounded.  Luckily, passenger Annie Porter (Bullock) takes over from him, and Traven explains why he’s on the bus.  He also manages to alert Temple and their boss Lieutenant McMahon (Morton).  With various obstacles and problems to overcome – a very sharp right turn at an intersection, a gap in the freeway – Traven and Porter keep the bus moving above fifty, while Harry tries to track down Payne.

Eventually, Traven realises that Payne has been watching the bus via a hidden camera all along.  McMahon, with the aid of a local news crew, hijack the signal and overlay a recording of Traven and the passengers sitting quietly on the bus.  With this in place, Traven attempts to defuse the bomb but without success, but he does get the passengers off (and himself) before the bus – now roaming an airport – collides with a plane and explodes.  At first unaware of what’s happened, when Payne finds out he goes to where the ransom is to be left and abducts Annie, heading down into the subway.  Traven goes after him, and while Payne is taken care of, he and Annie have a bigger problem: the train’s brakes aren’t working, and Annie is handcuffed around a pole…

Speed - scene

The surprising thing about Speed is that after twenty years it’s still as exciting as it was on first release, it’s high-concept storyline and mixture of vehicular mayhem with a vivid sense of humour, still hitting the mark, and still an object lesson in how to mount and execute an action movie.  It’s also a small miracle that it was made at all.  Graham Yost’s original script – originally intended for Jeff Bridges and Ellen DeGeneres as Traven and Annie – ended when the bus blew up; the addition of the subway scenes helped get the movie the go-ahead.  John McTiernan was the producers’ first choice for director but he turned them down.  The dialogue was given an almost complete re-write by Joss Whedon.  The scenes shot on the then unopened I-105 highway were filmed around the remaining construction work, leading to numerous continuity errors that appear in the movie.  The producers weren’t convinced about Reeves (especially when they saw his haircut), and wanted a big name actress to appear alongside him; de Bont insisted on casting Bullock.  And the production ran out of money before filming was completed; at very early previews the subway scenes were shown as animated story boards, but thanks to positive audience feedback for these scenes, extra money was found to finish the movie.

And yet, despite all that adversity, Speed is a triumph, a well-oiled adrenaline rush of a movie that rarely lets up, its central section so tightly orchestrated and edited (by John Wright) that there’s barely an ounce of cinematic fat to be found.  The movie is often breathtaking, its propulsive qualities keeping the viewer on the edge of their seat, maintaining an immersive power that makes watching it as exhilarating as if you were on the bus yourself.  Its tripartite structure, utilising various modes of transport – elevator, bus, subway train – is cleverly done, increasing the stakes as the movie progresses (as well as the speed these modes of transport can travel at), and providing each section with a satisfying pay-off (the bus/plane explosion is still one of cinema’s finest incendiary moments).  The famous bus jump – filmed for real even though it doesn’t look like it – is the movie’s big heart-stopper and even now, can get audiences willing the bus to clear the gap.

With all that action going on it would be easy to forget that the movie has a big heart, and can pack an emotional wallop when required – Helen (Grant) trying to get off the bus and ending up under the wheels, the bus hitting the pram (what a shocker that must have been when the movie was first shown) – and there’s also the movie’s often wry sense of humour and quotable one liners: “Jesus. Bob, what button did you push?”; “I already seen the airport”; and “Yeah, but I’m taller”.  It’s an inherently silly movie when all’s said and done, as preposterous an idea as you could possibly imagine, but it works, thanks largely to the cast treating it seriously and playing it straight (verbal quips aside).  Reeves though is horribly wooden, a big thick plank of wood in a tight t-shirt, but he’s still a good fit for the character.  Bullock takes a fairly nondescript role and turns it into a star-making turn, while Hopper, as expected, piles on the ham as Payne, chewing the scenery with barely restrained relish.  Annie’s fellow passengers, from Ruck’s slow-witted tourist to Carrasco’s abrasive construction worker, come in and out of prominence as the script demands, but each actor has his or her moment to shine.  And both Daniels and Morton are as dependable as ever as Traven’s colleagues in the L.A.P.D.

Viewers paying close attention will spot errors in continuity that should rankle, but end up being a part of the movie’s charm, and there are goofs galore including dialogue spoken when a character’s mouth is clearly shut, and Harry’s limp switching from left leg to right leg to left leg, and so on (and then being abandoned altogether when he and his team raid Payne’s home).  But none of this really has any detrimental impact on the movie, and under de Bont’s more than capable direction, Speed sets a high standard that few action movies made since then have come close to bettering.

Rating: 8/10 – for all its inconsistencies and dumb-ass leading character, Speed is a thrill ride – mostly set on a bus – that compels the audience’s attention and rewards it with escalating tension and drama; quite simply, one of the best action movies of the Nineties, and a movie that shrugs off its Die–Hard-on-a-bus premise to provide an experience that is still as exciting as it was twenty years ago.