Tag Archives: Manhunt

Patriots Day (2016)

22 Sunday Jan 2017

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D: Peter Berg / 133m

Cast: Mark Wahlberg, Kevin Bacon, John Goodman, J.K. Simmons, Michelle Monaghan, Alex Wolff, Themo Melikidze, James Colby, Michael Beach, Rachel Brosnahan, Christopher O’Shea, Jake Picking, Jimmy O. Yang, Vincent Curatola, Melissa Benoist, Khandi Alexander, Adam Trese, Dustin Tucker

At 2:48pm on 15 April 2013, the 117th annual Boston Marathon was taking place, and was proceeding as smoothly as in previous years. It was already nearly three hours since the winner had crossed the finish line, and the remainder of the runners – some 5,700 – were still to complete the course. A minute later, at 2:49pm, a bomb exploded in the crowd of onlookers near the finish line; approximately thirteen seconds after, a second bomb exploded one block further away. Between them, the blasts claimed the lives of three people, and injured hundreds of others, including sixteen people who lost limbs. It was a terrorist attack that no one saw coming, and such was the confusion at the time of the blasts that runners still crossed the finish line for another eight minutes.

This is the core event of Patriots Day, a recreation of the bombings that occurred that fateful day, and the subsequent manhunt that took place over the next four days. It begins with Boston Police Department Sergeant Tommy Saunders (Wahlberg) and moves on to introduce a variety of individuals whose lives will be affected by the bombing and subsequent events. These include Tommy’s wife, Carol (Monaghan), Boston Police Commissioner Ed Davis (Goodman), young couple Jessica Kensky (Brosnahan) and Patrick Downes (O’Shea), Chinese student Dun Meng (Yang), MIT police officer Sean Collier (Picking), district of Watertown police Sergeant Jeffrey Pugliese (Simmons), Boston Police Superintendent Billy Evans (Colby), naturalised U.S. citizen Dzhokhar Tsarnaev (Wolff), his brother Tamerlan (Melikidze), and Tamerlan’s American-born wife, Katherine (Benoist).

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By the time the race starts we know that Tamerlan and Dzhokhar will be the people who place the bombs. And as the race begins, and we see them moving amongst the crowds, what has been a fairly straightforward, and somewhat leisurely approach to the events of 15 April 2013 begins to become something altogether more focused, and darker. When the bombs do go off – and we know they will – the explosions, and the devastation they cause, are still shocking. And it’s as this point that Patriots Day, which could have so easily been a tale of jingoistic heroism sprinkled with Hollywood-ised action beats, becomes something even richer and more surprising: a movie based on true events that incorporates an incredible level of detail, and better still, includes actual footage from the time. It’s this aspect of the movie, the mixture of real and realised that impresses the most, as it makes the verisimilitude that much more potent.

In adapting the book, Boston Strong by Casey Sherman and Dave Wedge, director Peter Berg has made his most accomplished and impactful movie to date. Reuniting with Mark Wahlberg for the third time after Lone Survivor (2013) and Deepwater Horizon (2016) – also true stories – Berg has finally crafted a movie that resonates on more than one level, and which doesn’t rely on the jingoistic heroism mentioned above. It does celebrate the way in which the residents of Boston came together in the wake of a terrorist attack, but Sergeant Pugliese’s incredibly brave confrontation with Tamerlan Tsarnaev aside, there aren’t any moments of gung ho courage, just an acknowledgment of how determined everyone – law enforcement and public alike – were in making sure the bombers were captured. It’s not often that a movie gives you a true sense of a community coming together in such a way, but this is definitely one of them, and it does so powerfully and succinctly.

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The various storylines are cleverly interwoven as well, with each character given a relevant amount of screen time, and their lives, even Wahlberg’s composite policeman, explored with a tremendous surety of touch. Admittedly, some of the investigators – Bacon’s overly experienced FBI agent Richard DesLauriers, Goodman’s shocked and angry Police Commissioner – fare less well in this respect due to the nature of their involvement, but otherwise, people such as Downes and Kensky, who had reached the finish line when the first bomb went off, are afforded due recognition because of what happened to them not only then but subsequently. The same is true of Steve Woolfenden (Tucker), who was injured and separated from his young son, Leo. Away from the injured, the fates of people such as Dun Meng and MIT police officer Sean Collier are played out with sincerity and a lack of sensationalism, or the kind of made-for-TV banality that offsets any strived-for veracity.

Once the manhunt is under way and an initial identification of the suspects has been made (one of the movie’s cleverest moments), the movie steps up a gear, and becomes intensely exciting. The scenes involving Dun and the Tsarnaevs are mini-masterclasses in how to keep an audience on the edge of their seat, and all this is achieved by precision editing (courtesy of Gabriel Fleming and Colby Parker Jr) and an emotional undercurrent that permeates the movie as a whole. Berg makes you care about the people in this movie, these people who experienced so much and came out the other side so much stronger (albeit not all of them). The same can be said of the shootout on Watertown’s Laurel Street, a literally explosive confrontation between the police and the Tsarnaevs that stands head and shoulders above most movie shootouts, and which again, thanks to Fleming and Parker Jr, leaves the viewer gasping at how insane it all was, and how frightening it must have been to be a part of it all.

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Berg’s commitment to telling this story as honestly and passionately as possible, while not sensationalising it in any way, is the reason why it works so well, and why it deserves every possible accolade. He’s helped tremendously by a cast so committed to meeting his vision of the story that there’s not one performance that’s out of place or not operating in service of the material. Wahlberg, who always seems to feel more comfortable playing blue collar workers, puts in his best work since The Fighter (2010), while the likes of Goodman, Bacon, Monaghan and Simmons all deliver solid, credible supporting performances that enhance the narrative whenever they’re on screen. As the Tsarnaevs, Wolff and Melikidze are an impressive teaming, establishing both the bonds and the boundaries between the two brothers with almost nonchalant ease; it’s an adversarial relationship in many ways (as with so many brothers), but you never once question their commitment to their cause and each other. But if there has to be one actor or actress who stands out for any reason, then that is unquestionably Melissa Benoist, TV’s current Supergirl. Watch the scene where Katherine is interrogated by a nameless “spook”: it’s an exemplary display of a character’s doubt, fear, loathing, and blinkered self-assurance, and is as surprising for its conclusion as it is for the iciness of the scene as a whole.

The movie ends as most movies attempting to tell a true story often do: with an update on some of the people whose lives were affected on that terrible day in April 2013. And then it goes one step further, and you hear the voice of the real Patrick Downes, and then you see both him and Jessica Kensky as they talk about that day and what it’s meant to them since. You see officials such as Ed Davis and Richard DesLauriers, and as they talk about the notion of Boston Strong, the unifying concept that sprang up in the wake of the bombings, the idea that Boston and its people would not be intimidated by acts of terrorism – listening to them you understand just why Berg and his team were so determined not to make this an exercise in hyperbole or the cinematic equivalent of yellow journalism. Because if they had, then the movie’s final image – its message if you like – would have meant nothing. It would have lacked context, and it would have lacked the emotional jolt that the movie leaves you with. And what was that image? Ah, now that would be telling…

Rating: 9/10 – a superb retelling of the Boston Marathon bombings and the manhunt that followed over the next one hundred and five hours, Patriots Day is a movie devoid of frills, unnecessary plot devices, or political finger-pointing; a tribute to all those who survived the bombings, and the extraordinary levels of cooperation between a city and its law enforcement – a de facto curfew was in place following the shootout in Watertown – the movie focuses on telling its story matter-of-factly and audaciously, and by concentrating on the people who were caught up in it all, an approach that many other movies “based on real events” should try adopting as well.

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Misconduct (2016)

06 Saturday Feb 2016

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Misconduct

D: Shintaro Shimasawa / 106m

Cast: Josh Duhamel, Alice Eve, Anthony Hopkins, Al Pacino, Malin Akerman, Byung-hun Lee, Julia Stiles, Glen Powell, Marcus Lyle Brown

Released as a Lionsgate Premiere (rough translation: not good enough to be shown in cinemas), Misconduct is an early contender for Worst Movie of 2016. It’s ostensibly a thriller but veers off in so many different directions in an effort to be interesting that in the end it’s just a jumbled mess. There’s not even the germ of a good idea here, the script by Simon Boyes and Adam Mason resorting to cliché after cliché and line after line of awful dialogue in its efforts to appear somehow less than the sum of its parts (or the parts of its sum even).

It’s a movie where everybody is up to no good. Sadly, the audience knows this right from the start, so any “revelations” or twists and turns have the effect of inducing a headache rather than any surprises. The storyline tries to be convoluted in an attempt to mystify anyone unfortunate enough to watch Misconduct, and the basic plot – Hopkins’ pharmaceutical CO is accused of deliberately falsifying bad test results – struggles even to be relevant within the movie’s own structure. Once a badly attached blackmail plot is added to the mix, it gives the movie carte blanche to be as stupid as it wants, a move it takes full advantage of.

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As well as the blackmail plot – instigated by Hopkins’ unbalanced girlfriend (played by Akerman) and involving Duhamel’s ambitious attorney – Misconduct features a dire attempt at adding depth to two of the characters’ lives, Duhamel and his moody, depressed wife Eve, by having them recovering from the loss of a child during pregnancy. Why this subplot is even present is a mystery the movie never answers, along with the presence of Lee as a corporate-sponsored assassin who for some inexplicable reason is dying from some unstated disease (again you have to ask yourself why any of this has been included).

There’s more, but as the movie continues piling absurdity on top of absurdity, the unlucky viewer will find themselves wondering if this is intended more as a parody than a thriller, and will be laughing accordingly, but if it is then no one informed the cast, who struggle through scene after scene with resolutely straight faces and a grim determination to get through it all and reach the end with a degree of integrity still intact. Duhamel is a capable actor, but here he’s as wooden as a fence post and spends most of his screen time looking petulant, or as if there’s a bad smell under his nose (there is, and it’s coming from the script). Matching him for petulance, and using staring off into space a lot as a character trait, Eve gives probably the worst performance of her career so far, as she tries to distance herself from everyone and everything connected with the movie.

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Akerman is a poor femme fatale, her attempt to seduce Duhamel having all the allure of a drunken one-night stand with someone you hope doesn’t give you their number the next morning. As mentioned above, Lee is the assassin who’s close to death, and he sleepwalks through his role making supposedly “deep” comments and trying to appear above it all by refusing to acknowledge that this is one acting gig his agent should be apologising for profusely. And then there’s Stiles, an actress who really should be given better roles than the one she has here, a Kidnap and Response expert who gets to shout at Hopkins a lot and look suitably badass (and that’s basically it).

You get the picture: Misconduct has its fair share of bad performances to match its bad script and wayward direction – Shimasawa, making his first feature, gives an approximation of what a director should be doing – but then there’s Hopkins and Pacino, two Oscar winners now content (like De Niro) to throw away their talent and make terrible movie after terrible movie. Hopkins has the larger amount of screen time, but phones in his performance, and falls back on the kind of aloof, manipulative, all-knowing characterisation he’s played way too often in recent years. When you’ve got Hopkins in a movie and he’s playing a powerful businessman you just know in advance that he’s not going to be putting much effort in, and that’s exactly the case here. Amazingly though, Pacino is worse, his law firm boss coming across as a pale imitation of his role in The Devil’s Advocate (1997). He’s also upstaged by his own hair, which in one scene, looks like the worst comb-back in history. Why either of them took on their roles is the one abiding mystery the movie cannot solve.

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From starting out as a legal thriller – you get the idea the movie might just be about bringing Hopkins’ fraudulent CO to justice, and the hunt for the evidence to prove his negligence – it soon descends into a welter of murder and violence and betrayal on all sides, as the script decides it needs to be more punchy than in its earlier scenes. It leads to one of the movie’s more absurd scenes where Duhamel, having gouged his stomach escaping from the police, buys some glue in a convenience store and uses it to close his wound. And of course, he then runs around as if it had never happened. Lazy, lazy, lazy.

There is an attempt at providing a central murder mystery to keep the audience intrigued, but regular viewers of this kind of movie will spot the culprit from a mile off. But this is in keeping with the movie’s inability to come up with anything new or unpredictable, and again, regular viewers of this kind of star-happy dross will have resigned themselves to the movie’s inevitable outcome(s) long before they reach the end. The makers probably didn’t intend the title Misconduct to be so relevant to its own content and execution, but in one respect they can be applauded: they made sure the movie certainly lived up to it.

Rating: 3/10 – with only its standard, by-the-numbers production effort propping it up in the ratings stakes, Misconduct is a woeful, massively disappointing movie that falls down each and every time it tries to be interesting; with awful dialogue and some truly atrocious performances, it’s a movie that defies explanation as to its existence, and ranks as one of the worst “corporate/legal thrillers” in recent memory.

Big Game (2014)

13 Wednesday May 2015

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Big Game

D: Jalmari Helander / 90m

Cast: Samuel L. Jackson, Onni Tommila, Ray Stevenson, Victor Garber, Jim Broadbent, Mehmet Kurtulus, Ted Levine, Felicity Huffman, Jorma Tommila

On the eve of his thirteenth birthday, and following the tradition of his Finnish community, Oskari (Onni Tommila) must go alone into the mountains and hunt down and kill a wild animal such as a deer. If he succeeds, as his father (Jorma Tommila) did, he will be regarded as a man. But when Oskari chooses a bow as his weapon of choice, he proves less than capable with it, and he heads off uncertain as to how well he will do. Meanwhile, the President of the United States, William Moore (Jackson), is aboard Air Force One heading for a conference in Helsinki. Travelling with him is his senior security officer, Morris (Stevenson), who once took a bullet intended for the President. When the plane is targeted by mercenaries led by Hazar (Kurtulus), Morris gets Moore into an escape pod and jettisons it. As he parachutes to safety, missiles strike the plane and it explodes. Below, Oskari is tracking through the forest when Air Force One careens through the trees above him and crashes. Oscar discovers the escape pod and releases Moore.

At the Pentagon, the Vice President (Garber), along with General Underwood (Levine) and the director of the CIA (Huffman), are made aware of the situation. Using satellite feeds they begin to track the President’s whereabouts, and are aided by terrorism expert Herbert (Broadbent). He correctly identifies Hazar as the culprit responsible for the attack on Air Force One, though the mercenary’s true reason for doing so, to hunt the President for sport, remains a mystery to them. In time, they also learn that Morris  is working with Hazar and his job is to deliver the President so that Hazar can hunt him.

While Hazar and his men begin to track the President, Oskari tells Moore about the rite of passage he’s on. They make camp for the night and the next morning press on with Oskari’s hunt. It’s not long, however, before Hazar finds them both and takes the President hostage, though only temporarily, as Oskari rescues him (though not in the most conventional of manners). In the process they discover that Air Force One has come to rest in a lake, and that their best hope for survival lies within it. But once they’re aboard they find themselves trapped, and with a bomb that is quickly counting down…

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The most expensive movie yet produced in Finland, Big Game is a throwback to those action thrillers from the Eighties and Nineties where one lone hero took on a whole slew of bad guys and offed them in various inventive ways. Here the twist is that the lone hero is a thirteen year old boy, and the location – while reminiscent of Cliffhanger (1993) – is the stunning Bavarian Alps (that’s right, it’s not Finland). Though he naturally has top billing, Jackson is actually a supporting player in a movie that keeps its focus firmly on the path to manhood being taken by Oskari.

This allows the movie to rise – briefly – above the usual run-of-the-mill heroics expected of this sort of thing, but at the same time, to minimise the amount of risk or danger both Oskari and Moore find themselves in. At one point they find themselves in a fridge hurtling down the side of a mountain and then plunging into a river. But Hazar and his men make only a token effort to chase them, and they both emerge from the fridge with minor abrasions. It’s meant to be a man hunt (and the title is a pretty big clue as well), but it’s more like a polite ramble with the occasional burst of distracting gunfire. And it ends with a gloriously explosive finale that feels rushed, even if it is immensely satisfying. There’s a specific target audience here – aside from Hollywood producers – and it’s early teenage boys. It’s a boys’ own adventure, but devoid of real threats or real pain.

But despite the long-winded beginning, and the lack of any appreciable tension, Big Game is still straightforward, enjoyable stuff that ticks a variety of boxes while sidestepping some others. Jackson’s slightly pompous President is soon taken down a peg and learns a lot from his young rescuer; Stevenson’s loyal agent has a secret agenda and an Achilles heel of a health condition; Hazar is a predictably urbane psychopath; the location photography is often breathtaking; the Pentagon seems to be staffed by only ten people; and Levine and Huffman’s characters seem so inept it’s a wonder they’re in the positions they’ve reached. Add to all that a performance from Broadbent that feels like it should be in another movie entirely, and you have a movie that falls back on some tried and (not to be) trusted plot devices and stereotypical characterisations.

However, Helander – adapting an original story by himself and producer Petri Jokiranta – does invest the movie with a sharp line in humour (Oskari doesn’t recognise Moore at all; Hazar tells a helicopter pilot his best chance is to run as the mercenary doesn’t have a gun yet), and even allows Jackson to get in a carefully edited “motherf-“. It’s good to see the star of so many low-grade thrillers in recent years play against type (Moore gets beaten up twice), and even better to see that he’s enjoying himself. But it’s Onni Tommila who steals the show, his narrow gaze and determined features giving perfect expression to a boy who won’t give up, despite the odds against him (and the fact that he’s terrible with a bow and arrow). With Helander adding some family issues to the mix as well, and making Oskari resourceful but not impossibly so, the movie retains a core focus that serves it immeasurably.

Rating: 7/10 – while not as violent as audiences might expect (or want it to be), Big Game is still an enjoyable, though lightweight, piece of high concept entertainment; Jackson and Onni Tommila make a great team, and if, as it seems, the way is left open for some kind of sequel, then that’s not such a bad thing either.

The Timber (2015)

13 Friday Feb 2015

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Timber, The

D: Anthony O’Brien / 82m

Cast: Josh Peck, James Ransone, David Bailie, Elisa Lasowski, Maria Doyle Kennedy, Julian Glover, Mark Caven, Shaun O’Hagan, William Gaunt, Attila Arpa

1898, the Yukon Territory. Brothers Wyatt (Ransone) and Samuel (Peck), along with their mother Maggie (Kennedy) and Samuel’s wife, Lisa (Lasowski) and their newborn son, are struggling to keep their property from being foreclosed by local businessman and bank owner George Howell (Glover). When Howell tells Wyatt that their debt will be paid if he tracks down and captures the brothers’ father, Jebediah (Gaunt), he has no choice but to accept. Samuel goes with him, much to the dismay of Lisa who is fearful they won’t return.

As they set out, Howell insists they’re accompanied by Colonel Rupert Thomas (Caven), a seasoned army man who knows the area they’re travelling into, the Timber. As they make their way up into the mountains to the mining camp where their father was last known to be, the town sheriff, Snow (Bailie) visits Maggie and Lisa to make sure they’re alright. While he’s there, two of Howell’s men arrive to begin assessing the property, but before it’s legal to do so; Snow runs them off.

Heading deeper into the Timber, an accident with their horses and wagon leaves the three men having to travel on on foot. The next morning they’re attacked by a couple of mountain men and Thomas is killed. Wyatt and Samuel press on, struggling against the harsh elements and a further assault that sees Samuel captured and taken to a cave where his left hand is badly injured. Wyatt rescues him and they continue on up the mountain until they reach the mining camp. But madness has overtaken the men working there, and the foreman, Jim Broadswell (O’Hagan) has them locked up. When some of the workers use dynamite to blow up the camp, the brothers manage to escape, taking Broadswell with them.

Their father, however, intercepts them, killing Broadswell and wounding Wyatt. Unable to do anything, Samuel passes out and he and his brother are taken to a small Indian encampment where Samuel wakes to find that Jebediah has amputated his injured hand. With their father clearly out of his mind and intending to murder Wyatt, Samuel has to find the strength to save his brother, while back at their home, Howell and three of his men arrive to take the property by force if they have to.

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Shot in the stunningly beautiful Carpathian Mountains, The Timber is a Western that features an odd editing style, and the kind of elliptical narrative that could well alienate audiences expecting a more straightforward plot or storyline. It’s a bold move on the makers’ part and while it does add to the overall, nightmarish quality of the brothers’ journey, there are also times when it proves frustrating. Scenes appear disjointed, and the movie is peppered with flashbacks and Samuel’s musings on the events that take place and his own mental state. It’s not a conventional approach by any means, but in the hands of screenwriters O’Brien, Steve Allrich and Colin Ossiander, it does make for an absorbing, though unpredictable viewing experience.

That said, there are enough genre conventions to help the wary viewer along. Howell is the devious land baron, Samuel’s wife Lisa is the plucky frontierswoman with a mind of her own, and the brothers are the traditional good men trying to stay that way. These staples help the movie immensely when its non-linear approach kicks in, its deliberately steady pace allowing for more detail than expected, and for the themes of betrayal, greed, revenge and madness to work their way through the narrative more effectively. It’s a considered, more thoughtful Western, and it retains a moral compass that anchors the characters.

Samuel and Wyatt appear to be opposites, with the younger brother, Samuel, seeming to be less experienced and less mature, but as the movie progresses he proves to be his brother’s equal, and by the movie’s end he’s passed through what might be termed an adult rite of passage. Wyatt is more confident, firm in his beliefs and unafraid of doing the difficult thing, but he proves just as unprepared for what happens on the journey as Samuel. In a way, it’s his over-confidence that determines how much trouble they’ll both face, and whether or not they’ll survive the ordeal.

On the distaff side, Lisa and Maggie are the type of dependable women who seem used to being left by their men, and who harbour a mainly unspoken resentment of it. Maggie is fearful for her sons’ return because she’s already lost her husband to the Timber; she doesn’t want to lose them in the same way. Lisa is fearful because of her newborn child and being left alone, and sees the brothers’ quest as being irresponsible. When they leave she makes her feelings clear by avoiding a kiss from Samuel, then adopts his role by guarding the property while they’re gone. She’s a practical woman because she has to be.

Peck and Ransone make a good pairing, their physicality and dramatic intensity proving an apt fit for the material, while Lasowski offers grit and determination to spare. Kennedy uses Maggie’s loss to present a woman living in both the past and the present, and Bailie gets the chance to reveal a greater depth to the sheriff’s character than is at first apparent. As the underhanded Howell, Glover exudes a cold nonchalance that befits his character’s greed, and for those of you who may be wondering, yes it is the same William Gaunt who appeared in the cult Sixties’ TV series The  Champions who plays Jebediah (though you’d be hard pressed to recognise him).

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With the Carpathians standing in for Canada’s Yukon territory, and what must have been a difficult shoot due to the conditions – there are plenty of moments where Samuel and Wyatt are wading through knee-deep snow – The Timber is a movie full of arresting visuals and stunning scenery. O’Brien directs with a reliance on close-ups to add a measure of unnerving claustrophobia to the wide open spaces, and keeps the madness – or mountain sickness – from being too over the top. At a trim eighty-two minutes, the movie doesn’t outstay its welcome, and while as mentioned before, it provides enough genre staples to keep most Western fans happy, it’s still likely to divide audiences at the end of the trail.

Rating: 7/10 – a solid, no frills Western with a psychological core, The Timber is a well-intentioned, idiosyncratic movie that impresses as often as it hesitates; there’s much to appreciate here, but it may depend on your frame of mind when watching it as to just how much appreciation it’ll receive.