Galveston (2018)

29 Monday Oct 2018

Tags

Beau Bridges, Ben Foster, Crime, Drama, Elle Fanning, Literary adaptation, Lung condition, Mélanie Laurent, Mob enforcer, Review, Texas, Thriller

D: Mélanie Laurent / 93m

Cast: Ben Foster, Elle Fanning, Beau Bridges, C.K. McFarland, Robert Aramayo, Adepero Oduye, María Valverde, Lili Reinhart

An enforcer for a local crime boss (Bridges), Roy Cady (Foster) finds out he has a lung condition but he refuses to have treatment for it. On the same day he’s given a job to scare a local lawyer into staying silent on a case that his boss is involved with; he’s also advised not to take a gun. Roy ignores this instruction, which proves fortuitous as it’s a set up that’s meant to see him killed and framed for the lawyer’s murder. Fleeing with Rocky (Fanning), a young girl he finds at the scene, Roy deliberates on what to do next, but before he can decide, Rocky persuades him to take her home so she can pick up some things. Circumstances mean that Rocky returns with her three year old sister, Tiffany, and the trio end up staying at a motel. There, Roy tries to work out the importance of some paperwork he found at the lawyer’s house, while a bond develops between him, Rocky, and her sister. He’s also approached by another resident at the motel, Tray (Aramayo), about taking part in a robbery at a local pharmacy, but it’s when the truth emerges about Rocky’s home visit that their lives are put in even further jeopardy…

For the first twenty minutes of Galveston, it’s business as usual as Foster’s brooding, moody mob enforcer acts in a brooding, moody manner in a movie that looks as if it’s going to be brooding and moody all the way through. But once Roy has been forced to rely on his violent proclivities, and he flees the lawyer’s home with Rocky in tow, the movie takes a left turn away from the kind of modern noir it looks and feels like, and becomes a different beast altogether. That noir feeling hangs around in the background waiting to be employed again, but not before the storyline morphs into a relationship drama that sees Roy become a de facto father figure to Rocky and Tiffany, and while he also explores – albeit hesitantly – his impending mortality. As Roy learns to be responsible for someone other than himself, the movie settles down into a melancholy groove that sees Rocky reveal a tragic past, and fate catch up with both of them. That this all takes up most of the movie’s running time, and the various plot strands are all tied up with almost indecent haste in the final twenty minutes, makes for a thriller that avoids being a thriller as much as it possibly can.

Part of this is undoubtedly due to the movie’s structure, and a script that was originally written by Nic Pizzolatto (who also wrote the novel from which this is adapted), but which received “contributions” from Laurent that led to Pizzolatto leaving the project (he’s credited under the pseudonym Jim Hammett). Whatever Laurent’s “contributions” were, the end result is a movie that underwhelms during its extended middle section, and which often strives for relevance in terms of its characters and the situation they find themselves in. Though Foster is as convincing as ever, this is still a role he could play in his sleep, that of the taciturn loner gradually brought out of his shell. But this time around his performance is in service to a story that doesn’t develop his character fully enough to make audiences care enough about his belated attempts at redemption. Likewise, Fanning is stranded in a role that gives Rocky little to do except make terrible decisions without ever learning from them. Laurent’s direction is uneven too, with individual scenes carrying much more weight than others (or the movie as a whole), and while the whole thing benefits from Arnaud Potier’s striking cinematography, the movie remains a frustrating exercise that never quite catches fire in the way it promises.

Rating: 6/10 – Foster and Fanning are a great pairing, but with both of them shackled by a script that doesn’t examine their characters’ relationship too closely, or exploit its potential, Galveston fails to impress in the manner that Laurent may have been hoping for; one to approach with caution then, but with sufficient bursts of the movie it could have been to make it an occasionally interesting experience.

Operation Finale (2018)

15 Monday Oct 2018

Posted by dullwood68 in Movies

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Tags

1960, Abduction, Adolf Eichmann, Ben Kingsley, Buenos Aires, Chris Weitz, Drama, Israel, Mélanie Laurent, Oscar Isaac, Review, True story

D: Chris Weitz / 123m

Cast: Oscar Isaac, Ben Kingsley, Mélanie Laurent, Lior Raz, Nick Kroll, Haley Lu Richardson, Joe Alwyn, Michael Aronov, Greta Scacchi, Pêpê Rapazote, Peter Strauss, Simon Russell Beale

In Buenos Aires in 1960, a young woman called Sylvia Hermann (Richardson) begins dating a young man, Klaus (Alwyn), who tells her he lives with his uncle, who has been looking after him since his father died in World War II. The kindly uncle actually is his father, Adolf Eichmann (Kingsley), long wanted for war crimes, and now the focus of an Israeli attempt to kidnap him and bring him to trial. Mossad assembles a team that includes Peter Malkin (Isaac), a brash, opportunistic agent who was involved in a previous attempt to capture Eichmann that ended tragically; Rafi Eitan (Kroll), an intelligence specialist; and Hanna Elian (Laurent), a doctor and former agent. The team travels to Buenos Aires where they organise a safe house, and plot Eichmann’s abduction. Once captured, though, they find themselves with a problem: the only way they can get Eichmann out of the country is on an El Al plane that’s scheduled to leave in ten days’ time. But first, El Al wants a signed affidavit from Eichmann that he is willing to travel to Israel to stand trial…

The capture and subsequent “extradition” of Adolf Eichmann from Argentina to Israel in May 1960 has all the hallmarks of an exciting adventure story, with the Mossad team working in secrecy, and under the very real threat of being captured by the Argentinian police and finding themselves put on trial for espionage. And that’s without the substantial number of Nazis and Nazi sympathisers living in Buenos Aires at the time, who would most likely have had them killed on the spot. Eichmann’s capture was a huge coup for the Israelis, and though Operation Finale conflates much of the background detail – e.g. Sylvia Hermann began dating Klaus Eichmann in 1956 – it remains true to the spirit and the general sequence of events that saw one of the principle architects of the Final Solution finally brought to justice. However, Matthew Orton’s screenplay only provides an occasional sense of the danger Malkin and his colleagues were facing, and director Chris Weitz doesn’t seem able to make the movie as tense and exciting as it should be. Instead, we’re treated to a number of scenes where the team debate whether or not to kill Eichmann there and then (even though that’s not the mission), and several repetitive scenes where they endeavour to get him to sign El Al’s affidavit, but to no avail.

It’s a shame, as though this is a distinct improvement on The Man Who Captured Eichmann (1996), it never really gels as the historical thriller that was so clearly intended. The performances are uniformly good, with Kingsley subdued yet calculating as Eichmann, and Aronov matching him for intensity as chief interrogator Zvi Aharoni, but they’re in service to material that is often dry and unimaginative. Dramatic flourishes such as flashbacks to the death of Malkin’s sister (which put Eichmann unconvincingly at the scene), and a party where the entire gathering shouts “Sieg Heil!” and gives the Nazi salute over and over, stand out because they are more emotive, but elsewhere the movie treads an even keel and rarely strays from feeling perfunctory and ever so slightly mannered. Even the last minute race against time to get to the airport with the police on the team’s tail is less than exciting, just another cog in the story’s wheel that the makers feel obliged to turn for the audience’s sake. It’s another moment of restrained pretence in a movie that lacks the kind of emotional impact such a dramatic story truly deserves.

Rating: 5/10 – despite the good use of Argentinian locations, and David Brisbin’s detailed production design, Operation Finale feels more like the cinematic equivalent of a first draft than a finished product; with a handful of soap opera elements that further dilute the drama, the movie is too broad and too uneven in its approach to be anywhere near successful, but on its own terms it will suffice until the next interpretation comes along.

Enemy (2013)

11 Friday Jul 2014

Posted by dullwood68 in Movies

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Tags

Actor, Denis Villeneuve, Double, Drama, History teacher, Jake Gyllenhaal, Mélanie Laurent, Mystery, Psychological thriller, Sarah Gadon, Toronto

D: Denis Villeneuve / 90m

Cast: Jake Gyllenhaal, Mélanie Laurent, Sarah Gadon, Isabella Rossellini, Joshua Peace, Tim Post

Adam Bell (Gyllenhaal) is an associate professor of history, a little removed from his colleagues and students, but in a relationship with Mary (Laurent), though this has its ups and downs. On the advice of a fellow teacher (Peace), Adam rents a movie called Where There’s a Will There’s a Way. That night he watches the movie, but it’s only later that same night that he’s awoken by the realisation that one of the bellhops in the movie – played by Daniel Saint Claire (Gyllenhaal) – looks exactly like him. Fascinated by his discovery, Adam decides to track down the actor; an online search reveals the talent agency that represents him. Adam visits the building where the agency is based and is mistaken for Saint Claire. He receives an envelope that contains a letter addressed to Anthony Claire (the actor’s real name) at his home. Adam goes there but is too nervous to call at the man’s apartment. Instead he telephones Claire but his wife Helen (Gadon) answers.

Adam calls again when Anthony is home but the actor tells him not to call again. Later, he changes his mind and agrees to meet Adam at a hotel. Meanwhile, Helen, suspecting Anthony is cheating on her, goes to where Adam teaches and briefly speaks to him (though she doesn’t tell him who she is). Adam and Anthony meet and find they are entirely identical, even down to a scar they both have on their chest. Scared by this, Adam flees. Now it’s Anthony’s turn to be fascinated by Adam: he finds out where Adam lives and sees him with Mary. Anthony becomes infatuated with Mary and manipulates Adam into letting him take Mary away overnight. Adam goes to Anthony’s apartment and stays there until Helen arrives home, and as the evening progresses, the two couples’ lives become inextricably entwined…

Right from the start, with its opening scene set in an underground sex club, Enemy lets its audience know that it’s not going to be the type of psychological drama/thriller where things are explained too easily. That scene, with its ritualised stage show, serves as an introduction to the wider mystery that envelops Adam, and yet it remains frustratingly unexplored (though it is referred to later on in the movie). For the casual viewer, frustration is the one constant the movie cleaves to, as scene after scene fails or refuses to give an explicit reason for what’s happening; very little can be accepted or relied upon at face value. Enemy is a movie where inference and supposition will only get the viewer so far, and where the plot’s strange twists and turns only serve to make things more convoluted and disorienting.

And while some might find this counter-productive in terms of getting the most out of the movie, ultimately it enhances the experience, with director Villeneuve’s decision to make some scenes completely enigmatic while lacing others with complex misdirection, adding to the sense of unease that the movie builds up. It’s an accomplished piece of deconstruction, removing key elements that most other movies would rush to include in order to make things easier for the audience. Here Villeneuve avoids any attempt at clarity, and by doing so, creates a deceptively elegant, thought-provoking movie that rewards more and more with each repeat viewing.

He’s aided by an impressively layered script by Javier Gullón (adapted from the novel, The Double, by José Saramago), that makes a virtue of ambiguity and provokes as many questions as can be reasonably squeezed into ninety minutes. It’s a delicate balancing act, providing just enough information to keep the viewer intrigued and baffled at the same time, while choosing to reveal very little through either characterisation or dialogue (unless you’re paying very close attention). Between them, Gullón and Villeneuve have designed a movie that defies conventions and exceeds expectations with a great deal of audacity and artistic brio.

Of course, none of this would be possible without the participation of Gyllenhaal, who excels as Adam and Anthony, his performances so finely attuned to the material that he doesn’t put a foot wrong throughout, whether he’s required to play nervous and scared (Adam) or confident and predatory (Anthony). It’s his finest role to date, and proof (if any were needed) that he is one of the best actors around today. He’s ably supported by Laurent in a role that appears to be underwritten but which fits perfectly with the storyline, and Gadon (also seen in Belle), whose portrayal of Anthony’s loyal but emotionally scarred wife matches Gyllenhaal’s performance for intensity and poignancy.

The look of the movie (bearing in mind it’s set in Toronto) is suitably chilly, and the colour scheme – a mix of dark browns and greys – complements the often oppressive nature of the storyline, and the movie’s sense of impending doom. There’s also a fantastic, unnerving score by Danny Bensi and Saunder Jauriaans that is both portentous and imposing at the same time, adding a dark undercurrent to proceedings that is strikingly effective. Technically daring, Enemy succeeds by grounding its ambiguous, sometimes fantastical, storyline and plot in a world where the mystery surrounding Adam and Anthony can be perceived as both rational and weird… and it still works.

Rating: 9/10 – a modern classic, precisely assembled and without an ounce of cinematic fat to it, Enemy is a psychological thriller that mesmerises with ease and ends with a visual punch to the gut that you definitely won’t see coming; the first of (hopefully) many more remarkable collaborations between Villeneuve and Gyllenhaal, and deserving of a much wider audience.