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Journey’s End (2017)

15 Friday Feb 2019

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D: Saul Dibb / 107m

Cast: Sam Claflin, Asa Butterfield, Paul Bettany, Toby Jones, Stephen Graham, Tom Sturridge, Robert Glenister, Miles Jupp, Rupert Wickham

March 1918, Northern France. With rumours growing of a German push to break the deadlock that currently exists, the British have decided that each company should spend six days of every month on the Front Line. On the eighteenth it’s the turn of Company C, led by Captain Stanhope (Claflin). Once at the trenches, Stanhope and his second in command, Lieutenant Osborne (Betttany), discover that they are low on weapons, and even lower on supplies. The arrival of Second Lieutenant Ralegh (Butterfield), who was at school with Stanhope (albeit three years below him), doesn’t aid matters as Stanhope has taken to heavy drinking as a way of dealing with the stress of being in command, and he doesn’t want Ralegh writing home about him (Stanhope is in a relationship with Ralegh’s sister, Margaret). This causes a rift between them that is further abrogated when a raid is required and Ralegh returns alive, though others don’t. With the German offensive revealed to be taking place on the twenty-first, and Company C being tasked with holding the line, Stanhope and his men prepare themselves for the worst…

The fifth screen adaptation of R.C. Sherriff’s play of the same name, Journey’s End relies heavily on its creator’s theatrical inspirations and presents much of the action as if this was a filmed stage production. This isn’t a bad thing on the whole, as it keeps the material confined in physical terms, making any escape from the officer’s quarters (where most of the movie takes place) or the front line trenches, entirely welcome, even though it’s likely to be fleeting. Focusing instead on the psychological damage suffered by Captain Stanhope and its effects on the officers around him, their quarters are another battleground for the group to navigate. Osborne, known as “Uncle” to the other men, is forbearing and supportive, but not so forgiving when Stanhope acts in bad faith, as when he plans to read, and censor if necessary, Ralegh’s letters home. Trotter (Graham) is the brunt of Stanhope’s unkind jokes but seems inured to them, while Hibbert (Sturridge) has his own struggles, and tries to avoid fighting by claiming an illness. Ralegh has a bad case of hero worship, and has a hard time getting to grips with a much different Stanhope than the one he knew in school.  As the fateful day approaches, Stanhope’s anger and self-loathing at the man he’s become is displayed in markedly different ways, and with markedly different results.

By retaining the close quarters and intense emotional outbursts that Stanhope has no choice but to express, Simon Reade’s anxiety-inducing screenplay and Saul Dibb’s assured direction maintain a tight grip on the narrative, and make this adaptation genuinely affecting. Any melodramatics are kept to a minimum, and the claustrophobic setting adds its own power to the mix, but its the performances that elevate the familiarity of the material and make it impactful. Claflin takes Stanhope’s self-hatred and sense of duty and makes them two sides of a divided character whose commitment is never in doubt even as he spirals ever further towards self-destruction. Butterfield as Ralegh is the perfect embodiment of innocence informed by inexperience and boyish exuberance, while Bettany is quiet and contemplative, yet just as aware that a soldier can only count on so much luck to survive the absurdities thrown up by war (and so it proves). Even down to the supporting roles, the movie is perfectly cast (Jones is particularly memorable as the dyspeptic cook, Mason), so that when the raid, and then the offensive, actually put them at risk, the movie has succeeded in making the viewer care about them. The story may not be new any more, but this is one version that succeeds by acknowledging this and relying on Sherriff’s original themes to get its message across – and it does so with passion and conviction.

Rating: 8/10 – with a necessarily gloomy visual style to support the gravity of the characters’ situation, Journey’s End isn’t interested in the politics of the era, or the stupidity of the military top brass (though these are accepted), but in the hopes and fears, and the camaraderie, of the men who fought so bravely; fatalistic and yet strangely optimistic as well, this is affecting and sincere, and a powerful reminder – if it were needed – that in war the idea of “winners” is patently, and utterly absurd.

Captain America: Civil War (2016)

04 Wednesday May 2016

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Captain America Civil War

D: Anthony Russo, Joe Russo / 147m

Cast: Chris Evans, Robert Downey Jr, Scarlett Johansson, Sebastian Stan, Anthony Mackie, Don Cheadle, Jeremy Renner, Chadwick Boseman, Paul Bettany, Elizabeth Olsen, Paul Rudd, Emily VanCamp, Tom Holland, Daniel Brühl, Frank Grillo, William Hurt, Martin Freeman, Marisa Tomei, John Kani, John Slattery, Hope Davis, Alfre Woodard

And so begins Phase 3 of the Marvel Cinematic Universe. Though the Marvel formula is pretty well established now, and is beginning to show through a little too often for comfort – Avengers: Age of Ultron (2015) disappoints more and more with repeated viewings, Ant-Man (2015) was fun but too married to the formula for its own good – the company that should finally give us the Spider-Man movie a lot of people have been waiting for, has cannily begun the process of dismantling and rebuilding the work it carried out in Phases 1 and 2. Having introduced us to the more well-known Marvel superheroes – Iron Man, Thor, the Hulk, Captain America etc. – over the next few years we’re going to meet several newer additions to the roster, so that by the time we get to Avengers: Infinity War Part II (2019), the Avengers will hopefully be comprised of a different set of superheroes.

With that in mind, there’s a lot that needs to happen before then, and while Captain America: Civil War looks as if it’s the first step in getting there, and while it’s still the best Marvel movie this side of Guardians of the Galaxy (2014), Marvel are still playing it safe in terms of the characters – contrary to what you may have heard, all the main players survive in this movie – but they are trying to make things grittier and more true to life in relation to the characters’ relationships and feelings. Hence we have a falling out between Tony Stark (Downey Jr) and Steve Rogers (Evans) over whether or not the Avengers should be “policed” following the destructive events in Sokovia. Tony believes that their actions in the past have caused too much death and suffering (even though they’ve saved the world twice), while Steve feels that it shouldn’t be left up to anyone else but the Avengers as to where they go and who they stand up to; what if they’re not asked to go somewhere they should be?

CACW - scene2

It all leads to the various core Avengers – except for an absent Thor and Bruce Banner – taking sides over the issue, and for each side to bring in back up when it’s clear that a showdown is inevitable. Meanwhile, as if things aren’t bad enough, Steve’s old friend and Winter Soldier, Bucky Barnes (Stan) is still on the run and apparently responsible for the bombing of a United Nations building that has taken the life of T’Chaka (Kani), the king of African nation Wakanda. His son, T’Challa (Boseman), swears to have his revenge on Barnes, and with Steve unwilling to give up on his friend, the battle lines are even more fiercely drawn. (T’Challa is one of the new characters, aka Black Panther, and will have his own movie in 2018.)

What it all boils down to is whether or not the Avengers should be autonomous or inducted into the world’s police force and used accordingly. There are good reasons on both sides for inclusion or exclusion but the interesting thing about the arguments put forward is that Tony’s are emotionally driven by his feelings of guilt over the numerous deaths that occurred in Sokovia, while Steve’s are still rooted in his past. Having fought against Hitler and Hydra both in World War II, Steve knows one thing for sure: if there’s evil to be faced and defeated, then you just do it. It’s a simple idea, but for Steve a very powerful one. And though the movie does its best to keep the narrative focused on this divisive idea, there’s a spanner in the works.

CACW - scene1

The “spanner” is this movie’s principal villain, Colonel Helmut Zemo (Brühl), who is operating in the background and using Barnes’ past to cause maximum distrust between Tony and Steve. He’s doing so for personal reasons, and credible ones at that, and they have a bearing on the division that threatens the future of the Avengers. Zemo may not be trying to destroy the world like Loki or Ultron, but it’s good to see a villain causing so much harm all by himself and without an army of aliens or robots to help him. Brühl puts in a good performance, and its one whose quiet determination isn’t overwhelmed by all the sturm und drang going on around him. But Zemo is also the device by which the Avengers reach their own accord, an uneasy truce if you like, but one that introduces a further interesting dynamic for future movies.

As for the other characters, and with so many to include, the script by Christopher Markus and Stephen McFeely rightly concentrates on the falling out between Tony and Steve, while doing its best to address and develop issues surrounding everyone else. There’s the tentative romance brewing between Vision (Bettany) and Scarlet Witch (Olsen) that has them on opposite sides (as well as Vision’s understanding of the Infinity Stone in his forehead), the return of General Thaddeus Ross (Hurt) as the man charged with bringing the Avengers into line, the various drawbacks encountered by Falcon (Mackie) and War Machine (Cheadle) as the sidekicks of Captain America and Iron Man respectively, Black Widow’s (Johansson) kick-ass yet conciliatory occupation of the middle ground when necessary, the return of Hawkeye (Renner) to make up the numbers on Cap’s side, and the return also of Scott Lang aka Ant-Man (Rudd) who provides much of the comedy that makes the airport confrontation so much fun.

As mentioned before, we’re introduced to one of Phase 3’s newer characters, Black Panther. Originally meant to have a much smaller role in Captain America: Civil War, Boseman’s portrayal is extremely good, and bodes well for his solo outing. The character’s place in the MCU is assured thanks to the way in which the script integrates his own personal mission of revenge into Tony’s attempts to achieve regulation of the Avengers. Neither a part of the Avengers or against them, Black Panther is a neutral figure in terms of the differences affecting them, and acts as a buffer for the audience by following his own path.

CACW - scene3

And then there’s the little matter of finally seeing Peter Parker aka Spider-Man in a Marvel movie – at last. With all due respect to Sam Raimi and Tobey Maguire, and Marc Webb and Andrew Garfield, in the space of roughly half an hour, the Russo brothers and the writers have given us the best Spidey yet seen on the big screen. Holland is terrific as the garrulous super-teen, nervous and perplexed in his meeting with Tony Stark, unabashedly starstruck in his set-to with Captain America et al. It’s an absolute joy to see him portrayed in this fashion, and for fans who stay to (almost) the very end, the caveat “Soider-Man will return” (a la James Bond) will be a welcome sight.

With this movie, Marvel has begun the next Phase of its assault on our hearts and minds and disposable incomes in such an enjoyable way that even though it’s not a movie that takes any real risks with either its characters or the storyline, it’s still a marked improvement on recent outings. The humour is there, the action/fight scenes are as inventive and thrilling as ever, and (some of) the characters are allowed to develop further, thereby consolidating our affection for them. It’s a huge juggling act, but here the writers and the Russo brothers have made such a good job of things that there are only minor gripes to be had, and those aren’t really worth mentioning. Where Guardians of the Galaxy raised the bar considerably for the MCU, Captain America: Civil War has just vaulted over it with accomplished ease.

Rating: 9/10 – while many may regard this as just Avengers 2.5, there’s more to Captain America: Civil War than meets the eye, and Marvel can be rightly proud of what they’ve achieved; as a stand-alone movie it works incredibly well, and as a part of the wider MCU it’s even more effective, being more tightly scripted and more efficiently directed than any other superhero movies out there at the moment – and yes, that does mean Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice (2016).

Mini-Review: Mortdecai (2015)

11 Monday May 2015

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Mortdecai

D: David Koepp / 107m

Cast: Johnny Depp, Gwyneth Paltrow, Ewan McGregor, Paul Bettany, Olivia Munn, Jonny Pasvolsky, Michael Culkin, Ulrich Thomsen, Jeff Goldblum, Michael Byrne, Paul Whitehouse

When an art restorer is killed and the painting she was working on stolen, Inspector Alistair Martland (McGregor) is put in charge of the investigation. He brings on board crooked art dealer Charlie Mortdecai (Depp) to help recover the painting which is a Goya. Mortdecai has potentially ruinous debts, and though agreeing to help, he plans to sell the painting when he finds it. While he begins the search, his wife Johanna (Paltrow) decides to look for it herself. She visits a duke (Byrne) who tells her it was stolen by a friend of his during the war, and that on the back of the painting are codes that will lead to a hidden stash of Nazi gold.

With criminal Emil Strago (Pasvolsky) also after the painting to help fund his terrorist activities, and the involvement of Russian mobster Romanov (Thomsen), Mortdecai, aided by his faithful manservant Jock Strapp (Bettany), eventually discovers the location of the painting and attempts to steal it back from the man who has it, American dealer Milton Krampf (Goldblum). Strago, in cahoots with Cramp’s daughter Georgina (Munn), manages to get the painting himself, but when he tries to find the codes, he inadvertently destroys it. But Johanna reveals that the painting was a fake, and that she knows the location of the real one.

Mortdecai - scene

Recent movies starring Johnny Depp have proved to be mostly disappointing, and Mortdecai continues that streak, lacking cohesion, credible characters, and worst of all, sufficient laughs to offset the movie’s other faults, such as Depp’s own performance. For anyone with even a passing knowledge of British comedy from the Fifties and Sixties, Mortdecai will be the movie where Depp does his best Terry-Thomas impersonation, even down to the gap in his upper teeth. It’s hard to say if Depp is being affectionate or paying tribute, but either way his overly mannered performance is so distracting it ultimately becomes off-putting (not to mention annoying).

Thanks to Eric Aronson’s trying-too-hard screenplay (adapted from the novel by Kyril Bonfiglioli), the movie struggles on almost every level except for cinematography and costume design, and makes a hash of its absurdist situations, refusing to acknowledge that less is more and that caper movies should be fun and not a trial to sit through. Koepp is a better writer than he is a director, and he plays around with the pace of the movie throughout, making some stretches play out inordinately while letting his cast direct themselves. The twists and turns of the plot are too predictable for anyone to care about, and the action scenes too pedestrian. With running gags the order of the day, the humour soon becomes tiresome as well. There’s a decent movie to be made from Bonfiglioli’s Mortdecai novels, but sadly, this isn’t it.

Rating: 3/10 – not as clever or funny as its makers will have intended, Mortdecai is yet another movie where no one realised early on just how many mistakes were being made; lacking subtlety, wit or charm, the movie is like a smörgåsbord of bad ideas all pulled together in the wrong place at the wrong time and in the wrong way.

Transcendence (2014)

21 Monday Apr 2014

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Transcendence

D: Wally Pfister / 119m

Cast: Johnny Depp, Rebecca Hall, Paul Bettany, Morgan Freeman, Cillian Murphy, Kate Mara, Cole Hauser, Clifton Collins Jr, Cory Hardrict, Falk Hentschel, Josh Stewart, Lukas Haas, Xander Berkeley

Those of you with a good memory will recall Johnny Depp’s last sci-fi outing, the distinctly flat and underwhelming The Astronaut’s Wife (1999).  Amongst the movies in Depp’s filmography it’s a rare misstep… until now.

Here, Depp plays Dr Will Caster, a scientist investigating the possibilities surrounding artificial intelligence (AI).  He is supported by, and works with, his wife, Evelyn (Hall), and from the wider scientific community, Max Waters (Bettany) and Joseph Tagger (Freeman).  When he is shot leaving a symposium by a member (Haas) of a radical anti-AI movement, RIFT, Will receives what appears to be a non-fatal wound.  Later, he learns the bullet was coated with polonium and he has only a matter of weeks to live.

Appropriating the work of a fellow scientist, Dr Thomas Casey (Berkeley), Evelyn sets up a secret laboratory where she intends to digitise Will’s mind and connect it with a computer system, thus allowing his “consciousness” to live on after his physical death.  She’s aided by Max who has reservations about the plan; when it succeeds, and one of Will’s first requests is to be connected to the internet, Max becomes afraid of the potential danger in Will having access to every computer on the planet.  He tries to pull the plug but Evelyn stops him and forces him to leave.  Max is then kidnapped by RIFT, and their leader, Bree (Mara), decides to keep him captive until they can stop Will’s consciousness from spreading.  They arrive at the laboratory too late to stop Will connecting to the internet, and too late to stop Evelyn from escaping.

Meanwhile, Tagger is helping FBI agent Buchanan (Murphy) track down the members of RIFT.  When Will manipulates the FBI’s computer system in order to help them, Tagger also becomes worried about the possible consequences of Will’s access.  As Evelyn, under Will’s instruction, starts to oversee the building of a brand new facility in the desert town of Brightwood, RIFT inexplicably hold back from trying to sabotage it, and the FBI sit on their hands as well.  Two years later, Will has moved on to using nano-technology in his work and when a worker is badly injured, takes the opportunity to use his medical capabilities to “improve” the worker’s physical condition, even going so far as to install software in the man’s head that links him to Will.  As more and more people undergo this “corrective surgery”, RIFT and the FBI both become afraid that Will is creating an army, and decide to take steps to put an end to his new existence.  The only way they can do it?  By using a virus created by Max that should stop Will by shutting down the internet…completely.

Transcendence - scene

Hopefully that (actually quite) brief synopsis should alert the potential viewer that Transcendence has a lot going on, and not all of it either clever or logical.  At the movie’s beginning, Will is a bit like an absent-minded professor, and has no interest in trying to change the world through the appliance of new technologies; that’s Evelyn’s aim.  As his metamorphosis develops and his “power” increases, he begins to do just that, using nano-technology to heal the sick and heal the planet.  All good, right?  Well yes, and therein lies one of the movie’s major problems: it’s ostensibly a thriller, and outside of the involvement of RIFT, so far the thriller elements have been sorely lacking (it’s also meant to be a romantic drama, and a cautionary tale, and a bio-horror movie as well).  Will’s adaptation of people becomes the trigger for a last quarter increase in action and spectacle that, while predictable, is unnecessary and forced (hell, it’s so forced, the FBI and RIFT practically team up to put a stop to Will’s unwanted apotheosis).

There’s also the timescale, that “two years later” mentioned before where everyone outside of Will and Evelyn sit around waiting for things to reach a point where they have to intervene, whereas before, prevention was the order of the day, both legally and illegally.  It’s also absurd to think that Max would be held captive for all this time without anyone trying to find him, but this turns out to be the case.  And with the size of the facility being built at Brightwood it’s unreasonable to think that the government or homeland security or the NSA (or someone) wouldn’t come around for a look-see at some point, but they don’t.  And it’s equally implausible that Will, even with all the access to information that he has, can create and master so many new technological advances from scratch, but he does.

As science fiction, Transcendence is woollier than most and depends on its human element to move the story forward but even there the story stumbles.  Will and Evelyn are supposed to be devoted to each other, and before Will’s death that’s evident.  But when he “transcends” he becomes more attentive and tries hard to make up for his lack of a physical presence; however, Evelyn is unhappy with this and shows her unhappiness in such a way that even Will should notice but he doesn’t.  Even when she begins to have doubts about what he’s doing he still doesn’t notice – so much for having advanced intelligence!  This, of course, leads into the main theme of the movie: can an artificially created intelligence be self aware?  (The answer, very obviously, is no.)  The movie dangles this supposed conundrum at the audience every now and again as if it bestows some depth on proceedings, but it’s a hollow, nonsensical question which, unsurprisingly, is resolved in an awkward, unsatisfactory manner.

The cast mostly go through the motions.  Depp is off his game by a long stretch, and as AI-Will is too subdued to make much of an impression, either as the saviour of the world, or its potential destroyer.  Hall’s character is irritating and the actress never quite overcomes this limitation; she also seems unsure of how Evelyn should behave from one scene to the next.  Bettany, as the movie’s voice of reason is sidelined too much by his incarceration by RIFT, and early on, plays the concerned friend with so much humility you half expect him to start wringing his hands at the prospective awfulness of what’s going to happen.  Freeman does his by-now standard wise old man routine, while Murphy has to cope with being a bystander to pretty much everything.  And Mara gives such a blunt performance she never changes her facial expression once throughout the entire movie.

Jack Paglen’s script mixes cod-science with emotional drama to only slight effect, and as filmed, has too many stretches where the movie stops dead in its tracks – which is odd, as the movie is decently paced and only occasionally strays towards boring.  The scenes between AI-Will and Evelyn quickly become repetitive, as do those featuring Tagger and Buchanan.  In the director’s chair, veteran cinematographer Pfister (making his directorial debut), has obviously kept a close eye on DoP Jess Hall, and the movie is often beautifully lensed, particularly its desert location.  He’s less confident when it comes to the cast, hence the lacklustre performances, and the script hasn’t helped him either.  There’s also an annoying score courtesy of Mychael Danna, packed with predictable cues and motifs.

Rating: 5/10 – somehow, Transcendence holds the attention throughout, even if it’s just to see how much sillier it can get; with another sci-fi misstep under his belt, let’s see if it’s another fifteen years before Depp makes another venture into the genre.