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Monthly Roundup – June 2018

01 Sunday Jul 2018

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Borg McEnroe (2017) / D: Janus Metz / 107m

Cast: Sverrir Gudnason, Shia LaBeouf, Stellan Skarsgård, Tuva Novotny, Leo Borg, Marcus Mossberg, Jackson Gann, Scott Arthur

Rating: 7/10 – the rivalry between tennis players Björn Borg (Gudnason) and John McEnroe (LaBeouf) is explored during the run up to the 1980 Wimbledon Tennis Championships, and the tournament itself; with a script that delves into both players’ formative years (and if you think Borg is a terrific choice for the young Swede then it’s no surprise: Bjōrn is his dad), Borg McEnroe is an absorbing yet diffident look at what drove both men to be as good as they were, and features fine work from Gudnason and LaBeouf, though at times it’s all a little too dry and respectful.

The Ferryman (2018) / D: Elliott Maguire / 76m

Cast: Nicola Holt, Garth Maunders, Shobi Rae Mclean, Pamela Ashton, Philip Scott-Shurety

Rating: 4/10 – following a suicide attempt, a young woman, Mara (Holt), finds herself experiencing strange phenomena and being pursued by a mysterious hooded figure; an ultra-low budget British horror, The Ferryman is let down by terrible performances, cringeworthy dialogue, and a patently obvious storyline, and yet it’s saved from complete disaster by a strong visual style that’s supported by a disconcerting soundtrack, an approach that first-timer Maguire exploits as often as possible.

Red Sparrow (2018) / D: Francis Lawrence / 140m

Cast: Jennifer Lawrence, Joel Edgerton, Matthias Schoenaerts, Charlotte Rampling, Mary-Louise Parker, Ciarán Hinds, Joely Richardson, Bill Camp, Jeremy Irons, Thekla Reuten, Douglas Hodge

Rating: 6/10 – Ex-ballerina Dominika Egorova (Lawrence) is recruited to a secret Russian organisation that trains her to use her body as a weapon, and which then uses her to expose a double agent working in the heart of the Soviet system; a movie made up of so many twists and turns it becomes tiring to keep track of them all, Red Sparrow is an unlikely project to be released in the current gender/political climate, seeking as it does to objectify and fetishise its star as often as possible, but it tells a decent enough story while not exactly providing viewers with anything new or memorable.

Spinning Man (2018) / D: Simon Kaijser / 100m

Cast: Guy Pearce, Pierce Brosnan, Minnie Driver, Alexandra Shipp, Odeya Rush, Jamie Kennedy, Clark Gregg

Rating: 4/10 – when a teenage student (Rush) goes missing, suspicion falls on the professor (Pearce) who may or may not have been having a relationship with her; with arguably the most annoying character of 2018 propping up the narrative (Pearce’s commitment to the role doesn’t help), Spinning Man is a dreary mystery thriller that has its chief suspect behave as guiltily as possible and as often as he can, while putting him in as many unlikely situations as the script can come up with, all of which makes for a dismally executed movie that can’t even rustle up a decent denouement.

Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom (2018) / D: J.A. Bayona / 128m

Cast: Chris Pratt, Bryce Dallas Howard, Rafe Spall, Justice Smith, Daniella Pineda, James Cromwell, Toby Jones, Ted Levine, Jeff Goldblum, BD Wong, Geraldine Chaplin, Isabella Sermon

Rating: 7/10 – with the volcano on Isla Nublar about to erupt, a rescue mission is launched to save as many of the dinosaurs as possible, but it’s a rescue mission with an ulterior motive; clearly the movie designed to move the series forward – just how many times can Jurassic Park be reworked before everyone gets fed up with it all? – Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom concentrates on the horror elements that have always been a part of the franchise’s raison d’être, and does so in a way that broadens the scope of the series, and allows Bayona to provide an inventive twist on the old dark house scenario.

Dirty Gertie from Harlem U.S.A. (1946) / D: Spencer Williams / 61m

Cast: Francine Everett, Don Wilson, Katherine Moore, Alfred Hawkins, David Boykin, L.E. Lewis, Inez Newell, Piano Frank, John King

Rating: 7/10 – making an appearance at a club on a Caribbean island resort, dancer Gertie La Rue’s free-spirited behaviour causes all sorts of problems, for her and for the men she meets; an all-black production that takes W. Somerset Maugham’s tale Miss Thompson and puts its own passionate spin on it, Dirty Gertie from Harlem U.S.A. overcomes its limited production values thanks to its faux-theatrical mise-en-scene, Williams’ confidence as a director, a vivid performance from Everett that emphasises Gertie’s irresponsible nature, and by virtue of the relaxed attitude it takes to the themes of race and sexuality.

Wagon Wheels (1934) / D: Charles Barton / 59m

Cast: Randolph Scott, Gail Patrick, Billy Lee, Monte Blue, Raymond Hatton, Jan Duggan, Leila Bennett, Olin Howland

Rating: 5/10 – a wagon train heading for Oregon encounters trials and hardships along the way, including Indian attacks that are being organised by someone who’s a part of the group; a middling Western that finds too much room for songs round the campfire, Wagon Wheels takes a while to get going, but once it does, it has pace and a certain amount of B-movie charm thanks to Scott’s square-jawed performance, and Barton’s experienced direction, benefits that help offset the clunky storyline and one-note characters.

Batman: Gotham by Gaslight (2018) / D: Sam Liu / 77m

Cast: Bruce Greenwood, Jennifer Carpenter, Scott Patterson, Kari Wuhrer, Anthony Head, Yuri Lowenthal, William Salyers, Grey Griffin

Rating: 6/10 – in an alternate, Victorian-era Gotham City, the Batman (Greenwood) has only recently begun his efforts at stopping crime, efforts that see him cross paths with the notorious Jack the Ripper; though kudos is due to Warner Bros. for trying something different, Batman: Gotham by Gaslight doesn’t always feel as if it’s been thoroughly thought out, with too much time given over to the mystery of Jack’s real identity, and a sub-plot involving Selena Kyle (Carpenter) that seems designed to pad out a storyline that doesn’t have enough substance for a full-length feature.

Batman vs. Two-Face (2017) / D: Rick Morales / 72m

Cast: Adam West, Burt Ward, William Shatner, Julie Newmar, Steven Weber, Jim Ward, Lee Meriwether

Rating: 6/10 – when a laboratory accident turns Gotham City District Attorney Harvey Dent (Shatner) into arch-villain Two-Face, Batman (West) and Robin (Ward) soon end his criminal activities, only to find themselves battling all their old adversaries – but who is manipulating them?; what probably seemed like a good idea at the time – have West and Ward (and Newmar) reprise their television roles – Batman vs. Two-Face is let down by a tired script that does its best to revisit past TV glories but without replicating the sheer ebullience the 60’s series enjoyed, making this very much a missed opportunity.

Stratton (2017) / D: Simon West / 94m

Cast: Dominic Cooper, Austin Stowell, Gemma Chan, Connie Nielsen, Thomas Kretschmann, Tom Felton, Derek Jacobi, Igal Naor

Rating: 4/10 – a Special Boat Service commando, John Stratton (Cooper), teams up with an American military operative (Stowell) to track down an international terrorist cell that is targeting a major Western target – but which one?; the kind of action movie that wants to be packed with impressive action sequences, and thrilling moments, Stratton is let down by a tepid script, restrictive production values, poor performances, and despite West’s best efforts, action scenes that only inspire yawns, not appreciation.

SnakeHead Swamp (2014) / D: Don E. FauntLeRoy / 86m

Cast: Ayla Kell, Dave Davis, Terri Garber, Antonio Fargas

Rating: 3/10 – a truck full of genetically mutated snakehead fish crashes, releasing its cargo into the Louisiana swamp land, where they soon start making their way to the top of the food chain; another lousy SyFy movie that mixes mutant creatures, endangered teens, a muddled voodoo subplot, and sub-par special effects to less than astounding results, SnakeHead Swamp might best be described as a “no-brainer”, in that it doesn’t try very hard, FauntLeRoy’s direction is rarely noticeable, and the cast – even Fargas – don’t come anywhere near making their characters credible or realistic, all of which is down to a script that should have been rejected at the title stage.

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The Foreigner (2017)

18 Thursday Jan 2018

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D: Martin Campbell / 113m

Cast: Jackie Chan, Pierce Brosnan, Orla Brady, Dermot Crowley, Rory Fleck Byrne, Charlie Murphy, Niall McNamee, Rufus Jones, Ray Fearon, Lia Williams, Michael McElhatton

At the beginning of The Foreigner we see Jackie Chan playing a role that we’ve not seen him play before: that of a concerned father. Already it’s a refreshing change, and though you might think he’s being a little over-protective of his teenage daughter, even he can’t foresee that when he drops her off a boutique clothes shop that she’s going to be the victim of a terrorist bom blast just moments later. But if Chan’s character, a Chinese Nuang chef called Ngoc Minh Quan, is stone-faced before, then he’s positively chiselled granite afterwards, as the London Metropolitan police investigation stalls quickly in its efforts to discover which dissident faction of the IRA carried out the bombing (they call themselves the “Authentic IRA”, as if the real IRA were somehow a bunch of phoneys). Quan learns enough from the police to enable him to go after Northern Ireland Deputy First Minister Liam Hennessy (Brosnan), an ex-member of the original IRA brought into the Establishment but who still has ties to his once and fellow comrades. Is Hennessy the link that Quan needs to find the bombers? Will Quan be able to stay one step ahead of the police as he wages his own one-man war against Hennessy and his associates? And will anyone be able to answer the question, just how does one lone sixty-one year old Asian man that everyone’s on the lookout for, travel backwards and forwards between London and Ireland without racking up some serious air miles (oh yes, and being spotted)?

Adapted from Stephen Leather’s novel of the same name, The Foreigner is an action thriller that requires the usual suspension of disbelief at almost every turn, but which still manages, for the most part, to be entertaining. Chan is excellent value as the grieving yet violently focused Quan, a role he slips into with very little effort. It’s sometimes easy to write off stars such as Chan as not being “real” actors, but as Arnold Schwarzenegger showed in Maggie (2015), there will always be roles they can play that will surprise us. Chan’s melancholy, devastated presence is one that adds a layer of sympathy to the character that isn’t always considered a necessity in this kind of movie, but it’s a more than welcome change, and again, Chan is more than up to the task. So too is Brosnan, clearly relishing the chance to play an Irishman for a change and ramping up the character’s ambiguity; is he a good guy, or a bad guy, or just caught in the middle? Further down the cast list there are fine supporting turns from the likes of Crowley and Murphy (though her role is a little too similar to Polly Walker’s in Patriot Games (1992), and from the ever reliable McElhatton.

But while the performances are above average for a thick-ear thriller such as this, and director Martin Campbell does his best to keep things moving quickly enough so that the viewer won’t notice some of the more patent absurdities on display (again, just who is Quan’s remarkable travel agent?), the script by David Marconi either relies on too much exposition, or jumps from scene to scene disjointedly, making it difficult to keep track of what’s happening exactly, and why. That said, Campbell does know how to put together an effective action sequence, and though Chan isn’t as fast as he used to be, he still doesn’t have to rely on carefully chosen camera angles or rapid-fire editing to make himself look good. All in all, the movie is good in places, long-winded in others, but still well assembled enough to provide a couple of hours of harmless enjoyment – and sometimes that’s all you need.

Rating: 7/10 – Chan and Brosnan make for great adversaries, and Campbell is on solid form in the director’s chair, making The Foreigner an above average thriller with better ambitions than most; a bit of a throwback to thrillers from the Seventies (but with extra added millennial-style violence), this gives Chan his best role in years, and is an entertaining if occasionally cheesy action movie that doesn’t worry in the slightest about the things it gets irretrievably wrong.

The Only Living Boy in New York (2017)

11 Saturday Nov 2017

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D: Marc Webb / 89m

Cast: Callum Turner, Jeff Bridges, Kate Beckinsale, Pierce Brosnan, Cynthia Nixon, Kiersey Clemons, Bill Camp, Wallace Shawn, Tate Donovan, Anh Duong, Debi Mazar, Ben Hollandsworth, John Bolger

Pity poor Thomas (Turner). He’s the quintessential college graduate who can’t work out what he wants to do with his life. His father, Ethan (Brosnan), is a brusque senior editor at a publishing firm, and his mother, Judith (Nixon) appears to be a nervous soul who surrounds herself with people from the arts in order to offset her nervous disposition. Thomas has been discouraged by his father from becoming an author, and he doesn’t seem to have a fall-back career to help him move forward. Instead he spends time with his best friend Mimi (Clemons). He’s in love with Mimi, but his love isn’t reciprocated. One day, Thomas meets W.F. (Bridges), who’s just moved into his building. They strike up a friendship, and soon Thomas is sharing his woes and actively seeking advice from his new-found friend. Soon after, while Thomas and Mimi are out together one evening, they see Ethan in the company of another woman. From this, Thomas decides to find out who the woman is, and to stop any affair she and her father may be having.

The woman is Johanna (Beckinsale), a freelance book editor who has been working on and off with Ethan over the past year. Thomas tells W.F. about his father’s affair, but instead of being equally outraged or supportive of Thomas’s efforts to sabotage the affair, W.F. questions his motives, asking him if he, Thomas, wants to sleep with Johanna instead, and making it plain that this is the reason why Thomas wants to put an end to the affair… Of course, this is all true, and in the way that only the movies can offer, Johanna proves receptive to Thomas’s advances and they begin their own relationship. It’s at this point in the movie when it’s likely that many viewers will throw their hands up in the air and cry, Wish Fulfilment! It’s also the moment when the movie, struggling already to make us care about Thomas or any of the other characters, throws in the towel and decides to play out its insubstantial narrative with all the emotional finesse of an after hours drinking contest.

It’s always hard to work out just who qualifies as the potential audience for a movie like The Only Living Boy in New York, with its self-torturing central characters, middle class aspirations, mock intellectualising (W.F. quotes Ezra Pound at one point), and lazy approach to character building. Oh, and let’s not forget the usual number of occasions where people talk in riddles and never… explain… themselves… fully. It’s hard to understand just why so many of these movies get made, especially when the aim is to try to make these tortured souls and their mock-important lives relevant to the average viewer. Even if this is exactly the social milieu that you inhabit, and even if many of the characters on display reminded you of people you actually know, would you still be interested in watching them whine about how hard done by they are, or how sad or lonely or misunderstood they are? (It’s probably very unlikely.) So if even the people this truly relates to aren’t likely to engage with this particular story, why should anyone else?

Granted, some viewers might be attracted to the movie by the talent involved. Actors of the stature of Jeff Bridges and Pierce Brosnan will always garner interest in any movies they appear in, but on this occasion, they’re at the mercy of a script that challenges the audience to be emotionally involved at nearly every turn. No matter how good the performances – and Brosnan is very good (which is really nice to see after some of the movies he’s made in recent years) – if the script isn’t up to it, or isn’t as compelling as it should be, then no amount of acting experience can compensate for a story that carries little or no emotional weight. And Allan Loeb’s screenplay has exactly that problem: it’s dry and superficial, and any sympathies for Thomas et al. can only be arrived at by a huge amount of effort on the viewer’s part, and an effort that isn’t rewarded at any point during the movie. Even when the movie tries to be clever with the introduction of a back story that, once mentioned, gives away a large chunk of the plot, it stumbles on looking for a payoff that won’t feel forced or intrusive (hint: it doesn’t succeed).

Following on from the much more engaging experience that was Gifted (2017), director Marc Webb does his best to make the various plot developments more interesting than they are, but too often finds himself trying to coax some much needed animation into the material, and struggling to provide any sense that all this is happening in the real world and to “real” people. He’s not helped by Turner’s less than stellar performance, his interpretation of Thomas unnecessarily making viewers wonder just why Johanna would sleep with him, or why Mimi – in a plot “twist” that can be seen coming from space, let alone a mile away – eventually decides she really does love him. It’s a role that unfortunately exposes Turner’s limited range as an actor, and especially in his scenes with Bridges, and it sometimes he does more harm to the movie than even the script. Bridges is good value as always, Beckinsale is trapped by a character arc that is actually one long downward spiral, Nixon does anxious (and should be on medication) because that’s the only thing we know about Judith, and Clemons shows flashes of inspiration as she attempts to make Mimi more than just the best friend whose knowing comments get ignored by the main character.

In the end it all builds to a confrontation that lacks energy, emotion, and purpose (except to help wind things up quickly). An awkward, and unnecessary, coda undermines everything that’s gone before, and is so dramatically redundant that it’s like a slap in the face to the viewer. It reinforces the notion that whatever message the movie is trying to make, whether it be about relationships and how hard they can be, or finding one’s way in the world (by sleeping with your father’s mistress; always a good starting point), or even selecting a career based on what you know you can’t do, the movie itself hasn’t fully made up its mind what that message is, or even if it’s sure about it. In that way it’s a lot like Thomas himself: confused, hoping for inspiration to strike, and held back by so many missed opportunities to do the right thing.

Rating: 4/10 – a glossy snapshot of a semi-privileged lifestyle that proves as empty as the shallowness of the characters and their wretchedly expressed desires, The Only Living Boy in New York is pretentious on one side, and wilfully obtuse on the other; a tale that lacks passion despite its use of affairs and sexual exploitation, it’s another exercise in trying to make middle class angst interesting when we’ve seen it waaaaay too many times before.

Monthly Roundup – March 2017

01 Saturday Apr 2017

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Fist Fight (2017) / D: Richie Keen / 91m

Cast: Ice Cube, Charlie Day, Tracy Morgan, Jillian Bell, Dean Norris, Christina Hendricks, Kumail Nanjiani, Dennis Haysbert, JoAnna Garcia Swisher, Alexa Nisenson

Rating: 3/10 – meh; lame on levels you wouldn’t have thought possible (Bell’s character wants to have sex with a pupil – and doesn’t think it’s wrong), Fist Fight is a virtually laugh-free exercise that wastes the time of everyone concerned, and its unsuspecting audience.

I.T. (2016) / D: John Moore / 95m

Cast: Pierce Brosnan, James Frecheville, Anna Friel, Stefanie Scott, Michael Nyqvist

Rating: 3/10 – meh; lame on levels you wouldn’t have thought possible (Brosnan’s character is a tech mogul who doesn’t know the first thing about the tech he’s promoting), I.T. is a virtually tension-free exercise that wastes the time of everyone concerned, and its unsuspecting audience.

Collide (2016) / D: Eran Creevy / 99m

Cast: Nicholas Hoult, Felicity Jones, Anthony Hopkins, Ben Kingsley, Marwan Kenzari, Aleksandar Jovanovic, Christian Rubeck, Erdal Yildiz, Clemens Schick, Johnny Palmiero

Rating: 6/10 – Hoult’s backpacker finds himself mixed up with rival gangsters Hopkins and Kingsley, and using his driving skills to stay one step ahead of both of them; the focus is squarely on the action, which is a good thing, as Collide‘s plot is as all over the place as the various cars Hoult throws about on German autobahns, but when it’s bad it’s Hopkins intoning “I’m the destroyer of worlds” bad.

Jimmy the Gent (1934) / D: Michael Curtiz / 67m

Cast: James Cagney, Bette Davis, Allen Jenkins, Alan Dinehart, Alice White, Arthur Hohl, Mayo Methot

Rating: 7/10 – in an effort to woo back his former secretary (Davis), Cagney’s brash racketeer attempts to put a classier spin on his finding “lost” heirs business, and finds himself mellowing when a case challenges his compromised ethics; worth watching just for the pairing of Cagney and Davis, Jimmy the Gent is a typically fast-paced, razor sharp romantic comedy that may seem predictable nowadays but is nevertheless a minor gem that is effortlessly entertaining.

Kong: Skull Island (2017) / D: Jordan Vogt-Roberts / 118m

Cast: Tom Hiddleston, Samuel L. Jackson, Brie Larson, John Goodman, John C. Reilly, Thomas Mann, Corey Hawkins, Toby Kebbell, Tian Jing, John Ortiz, Jason Mitchell, Shea Whigham, Richard Jenkins, Terry Notary

Rating: 5/10 – an expedition to a mysterious island in the Pacific yields dangers galore for its participants – Jackson’s crazed Army Colonel, Hiddleston’s ex-SAS captain, Larson’s anti-war photographer, Goodman’s duplicitous government official et al – not the least of which is an angry hundred-foot gorilla called Kong; while Kong: Skull Island may be visually arresting, and its action sequences pleasingly vivid, the lack of a decent plot and characters with any kind of inner life makes the movie yet another franchise-building letdown.

The Rezort (2015) / D: Steve Barker / 93m

Cast: Dougray Scott, Jessica De Gouw, Martin McCann, Elen Rhys, Claire Goose, Jassa Ahluwalia, Lawrence Walker

Rating: 4/10 – after a viral outbreak that turned its victims into flesh-hungry zombies is contained, an island resort opens that offers survivors the chance to hunt down and exterminate zombies with little or no risk of harm – but the resort is targeted from the inside and a group of holiday makers find themselves becoming the hunted; a strong idea that runs out of steam by the halfway mark, The Rezort leaves its cast stranded with a standard “run from this place to the next and look desperate” approach that drains the movie of any tension and makes it all look as generic as the next zombie movie.

Inspector Hornleigh on Holiday (1939) / D: Walter Forde / 90m

Cast: Gordon Harker, Alistair Sim, Linden Travers, Wally Patch, Edward Chapman, Philip Leaver, Kynaston Reeves

Rating: 7/10 – a seaside holiday for Inspector Hornleigh (Harker) and his trusty sidekick, Sergeant Bingham (Sim), leads inevitably to a murder case involving an inheritance and a criminal outfit who target their victims with the unwitting aid of döppelgangers; the second of three movies featuring Harker’s irascible policeman and Sim’s less-than-sharp second-in-command, Inspector Hornleigh on Holiday is a simple, easy-going, undemanding bit of fun that manages to combine drama and comedy to good effect, and which still holds up nearly eighty years later.

Inspector Hornleigh Gets on It (1941) / D: Walter Forde / 87m

aka Mail Train

Cast: Gordon Harker, Alistair Sim, Phyllis Calvert, Edward Chapman, Charles Oliver, Raymond Huntley, Percy Walsh, David Horne

Rating: 7/10 – despite being sidelined from regular detective work through a stint investigating thefts at an army barracks, Hornleigh and Bingham find themselves on the trail of Fifth Columnists; the last in the short-lived series, Inspector Hornleigh Goes to It is as sprightly and entertaining as the previous two instalments, and allows Huntley to make this priceless observation: “One of them’s tall, bald, looks intelligent but isn’t. The other’s short, sour-faced, doesn’t look intelligent but is.”

Omega Rising: Remembering Joe D’Amato (2017) / D: Eugenio Ercolani, Guiliano Emanuele / 69m

With: Joe D’Amato (archive footage), Luigi Montefiori, Michele Soavi, Claudio Fragasso, Rossella Drudi, Antonio Tentori, Carlo Maria Cordio, Mark Thompson-Ashworth

Rating: 3/10 – Aristide Massaccesi (aka Joe D’Amato)’s career in movies is assessed by some of the people who worked with him closely when he first started out; at sixty-nine minutes, Omega Rising: Remembering Joe D’Amato is a documentary that feels like it lasts twice as long, thanks to Ercolani and Emanuele’s decision to let their interviewees ramble on at length (and usually about themselves instead of D’Amato), and a random assortment of clips that don’t always illustrate what’s being talked about.

Mini-Review: Urge (2016)

27 Monday Jun 2016

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Urge

D: Aaron Kaufman / 90m

Cast: Justin Chatwin, Danny Masterson, Ashley Greene, Pierce Brosnan, Nick Thune, Alexis Knapp, Chris Geere, Bar Paly, Eric Davis, Jeff Fahey, Kevin Corrigan

In Urge, there is only One Rule: you can only take said designer drug once. It’s new, much more addictive than any other drug available, and can only be found at a nightclub on Eastman Island, off the coast of New York. When arrogant businessman Neil (Masterson) takes his p.a. Theresa (Greene), and friends Joey (Knapp), Danny (Thune), Vick (Geere), and Denise (Paly) to his home there for the weekend, they find another (uninvited) friend, Jason (Chatwin) already there. The group head for the island’s only nightclub, where they find the guests rapidly shedding their inhibitions and having the time of their lives. Jason is invited to meet the club’s owner (Brosnan), who supplies him with Urge, a new drug that promises to surpass anything Jason and his friends have tried before… and so it proves, except for Jason who is unaffected by it.

Despite the One Rule, Neil and friends go back the next night to score some more Urge. Later, Jason awakes back at Neil’s house where a party is in full swing, and Urge is being taken repeatedly by everyone there. But instead of providing everyone with a good time, darker aspects of their personalities and hidden desires are being drawn out by the drug. Sex and violence abound, and try as he might, Jason can’t get any one of his friends to listen to him when he tells them something is wrong. With the violent behaviour increasing, he attempts to get them to leave but only Joey is able to go with him. But once they do they discover that things are worse all over the island, and Jason learns that the mysterious club owner has a much darker plan for Urge than anyone could have imagined.

Urge - scene1

Showing the effects of a drug high on screen is often an excuse for directors to go overboard in the editing suite by stitching together static shots with jump cuts featuring bursts of colour and/or flashing images (and not always in a way that makes any sense). Urge takes this option but doesn’t overdo it, choosing instead to have its cast behave in angry, declamatory ways that are meant to be dramatic but are often absurd and laughable; you could be forgiven for thinking that getting high means acting in an over the top manner and shouting a lot (which is pretty much Masterson’s entire performance). This all leads to various comeuppances and violent confrontations that, alas, add little to the main narrative, and are largely contrived.

What doesn’t help is the movie’s determination to be a tortured religious allegory, with Brosnan’s character (all tired verbiage and inappropriate laughing) put forward as a vengeful God, and Urge being used as one of the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse. None of it makes any real dramatic sense, and when Jerry Stahl’s script isn’t trying to make Urge seem like an edgy thriller, it stops the movie short and lets Brosnan’s mysterious club owner pontificate on the failings of the human race (dialogue that not even Brosnan can make credible). There’s an attempt at making the spread of the drug an example of the drawbacks relating to free will, but it’s awkward and ill-conceived in its execution.

Rating: 3/10 – with an unwieldy narrative that rarely makes sense and has a nodding acquaintance with plausibility, Urge wants to be a tense, disturbing thriller, but ends up  falling short on both fronts; Chatwin and co. struggle with their underwritten characters, and director Kaufman (making his feature debut) shows an aptitude-lite approach to the material that hampers it even further.

No Escape (2015)

08 Sunday Nov 2015

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No Escape

D: John Erick Dowdle / 103m

Cast: Owen Wilson, Lake Bell, Pierce Brosnan, Sterling Jerins, Claire Geare, Thanawut Kasro, Chatchawan Kamonsakpitak, Sahajak Boonthanakit

Set in an unnamed country in South-East Asia, No Escape is one of those survivalist fantasies that puts a lot of effort into stacking the odds against the hero (and his family as well, in this case), but then makes it incredibly easy for him to overcome those odds. Once the viewer realises this, other flaws in the plot become clearer and the initial tension that screenwriters John Erick Dowdle and his brother Drew go to some lengths to arrange, soon decreases the longer the movie plays out. By the end, there have been too many contrivances and coincidences for the tension to be maintained effectively.

Part of the problem here is that it doesn’t take long for the viewer to realise that, the set up notwithstanding – nationalists stage a coup in anger against US investment in the water industry (don’t worry, it almost makes sense) – the script has no intention of being too hard on its hard luck family. Yes, it makes things difficult for them, and yes they’re pursued throughout by one hard-line rebel who’s intent on killing all of them, but as more and more ambushes and deadly encounters are survived, any idea that they’re not going to make it to Vietnam and safety is soon abandoned. Even when they find themselves captured by the rebels, there’s always a delay in executing them that allows the family to be rescued or save themselves.

With any real peril sidelined by the movie’s need to keep its nuclear family free from harm, No Escape becomes even more predictable in its approach. Brosnan’s lively hedonist is revealed to have a darker past than he originally lets on, and once the coup is in full swing, any chance the family has of reaching the American Embassy is always going to be doomed to failure, while random strangers will pop up to help them as and when necessary.

THE COUP

But though it’s entirely predictable, and Wilson’s Jack and Bell’s Annie lack any appreciable depth – Annie doesn’t want to be in South-East Asia, while Jack is making the best of a bad business setback… and that’s it – the movie gets by on its early scenes where the seriousness of the coup begins to sink in, and the targetting of Americans for execution becomes altogether clear (even if the reasoning is a little too pat). The pace is brisk and efficient, and Dowdle uses hand-held photography to good effect (though as a result, some of the framing is off, though this may be deliberate – it’s hard to tell).

On the performance side, Wilson is okay as the determined Jack, but his portrayal reveals a facet of his acting that seems to have gone unnoticed all these years: he doesn’t have a great repertoire of expressions. What this means is that unless he really scrunches up his features, alarm or fear look much the same as surprise or wonder, and panic looks like he’s trying to fathom a difficult math problem. Bell is required to look fearful and upset for most of the movie, and even before the coup takes place, so there’s no hope of a character arc there, and some viewers may be alarmed at the ease with which she exhorts her terrified daughters to stay hidden while she goes off and does something that usually heightens the risk they’re in.

With Wilson and Bell having no choice but to play their roles as earnestly as possible, it’s left to Brosnan’s chirpy Brit to inject a bit of spice into proceedings, but his character, Hammond, is so perilously close to cliché that although he’s a welcome sight when he appears, it’s equally good to see the back of him (to be fair, this is less Brosnan’s fault and more Dowdle’s). As Jack and Annie’s two young girls, Jerins and Geare are both adorable, while the majority of the rebels are just ruthless, nasty thugs hell bent on killing all and sundry. Only Boonthanakit’s taxi driver, who models himself on Kenny Rogers, stands out from the rest of the locals, but sadly it’s in a way that hints at casual racism.

No Escape - scene2

Towards the end, the family’s escape route becomes clear, and they take their chances, but it’s here that the movie makes its biggest faux pas, as it tries to present the city they’ve arrived in as being half in the unnamed country that serves as the movie’s backdrop, and half in Vietnam. It’s a totally ridiculous moment, and completely ruins any verisimilitude that Dowdle has managed to create thus far, leaving the viewer to scratch his or her head and wonder WtF?

And one last issue: what kind of father tells his frightened daughter – when she’s being forced to point a gun at him – to shoot him and that it’s okay to do so? What kind of selfless, parental martyrdom is being expounded here? True, it’s intended to make an already tense situation all the more horrific (or potentially so), but it’s likely most viewers will be wondering, again, WtF?

For all its tense confrontations and attempts to make the rebels as thuggish and murderous as possible, No Escape is hampered too much by Dowdle’s uncomfortable mix of revolution and manhunt, and his mandate that no real harm shall come to the family. What this leaves the viewer with is a movie that looks like it’s going to be tough and uncompromising, but in reality only treats its secondary and minor characters as if they were expendable. Now if one of the children had died…

Rating: 5/10 – mostly efficient, but neutered by a squeamishness about hurting the family, No Escape at least stops short of making Wilson an action hero, but does ask him to play a character who seems to be wilfully putting his family in harms way; better in its opening half hour, and before Jack starts throwing his children off of a rooftop, the movie tries its best to be a hard-hitting thriller, but never hits the mark.

Mini-Review: Survivor (2015)

27 Saturday Jun 2015

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Survivor

D: James McTeigue / 96m

Cast: Milla Jovovich, Pierce Brosnan, Dylan McDermott, Angela Bassett, James D’Arcy, Robert Forster, Frances de la Tour, Roger Rees, Benno Fürmann, Genevieve O’Reilly, Corey Johnson

Kate Abbott (Jovovich) has transferred to the American Embassy in London. She oversees visa applications to the US by foreign nationals travelling through the UK. When she suspects that gas expert Dr Balan (Rees) isn’t all that he seems, it leads to her being hunted by assassin the Watchmaker (Brosnan). With only her colleague, Sam Parker (McDermott), believing she’s had nothing to do with the deaths of other colleagues in a bomb blast, or that of her immediate boss, Bill Talbot (Forster), Kate is forced to go on the run in an attempt to get to the bottom of the conspiracy she’s found herself entangled in.

Narrowly escaping several attempts on her life by the Watchmaker, Kate realises she has to get back into the embassy in order to find the proof she needs to expose the conspiracy. Helped by Sam and another colleague, Sally (de la Tour), Kate discovers enough information to send her off to New York on New Year’s Eve. Followed by the Watchmaker, Kate has only a few hours to foil a terrorist attack planned for midnight in Times Square, and which is backed by the pharmaceutical company that Balan works for.

Survivor - scene

Take a director whose previous output includes V for Vendetta (2005) and the underrated Ninja Assassin (2009), add two principal stars who are no strangers to the action genre, a supporting cast of more than capable (and proven) actors, and good location work in both London and New York – and what do you get? A terrible piece of nonsense that doesn’t even bother to try and hide how preposterous it all is. This is largely thanks to Philip Shelby’s overly-simplistic, corner-cutting script, a melange of action movie clichés and inane dialogue lumped in amongst an unconvincing plot and the kind of one-dimensional characterisations that leave the viewer shaking their head in disbelief.

There’s no point at which Survivor is even remotely credible, and while there’s a small degree of amusement to be had at each nutty development in the script, McTeigue fails to maintain any degree of confidence behind the camera. As a result, the movie plods from one uninspired set piece to the next without pausing for breath or an injection of self-belief. Jovovich runs around a lot looking frazzled and confused (as well she might), while Brosnan sleepwalks through his role with the look of an actor wondering where his career went to. By the end, with its inevitable showdown between Kate and the Watchmaker, the movie has given up trying to be exciting or different, and renders itself completely unremarkable.

Rating: 3/10 – why movies like these continue to be made is anybody’s guess, but Survivor is an object lesson in how not to make a modern day thriller with Cold War overtones; lacking credibility is one thing, but lacking suspense as well makes for a poorly judged and ill-considered movie that viewers can only help will end sooner than it does.

The November Man (2014)

15 Saturday Nov 2014

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November Man, The

D: Roger Donaldson / 108m

Cast: Pierce Brosnan, Luke Bracey, Olga Kurylenko, Bill Smitrovich, Lazar Ristovski, Eliza Taylor, Caterina Scorsone, Will Patton, Mediha Musliovic, Amila Terzimehic, Patrick Kennedy

Montenegro, 2008. CIA agent Peter Devereaux (Brosnan) and his protegé David Mason (Bracey) are on an assignment to stop the assassination of a visiting dignitary. Devereaux takes the man’s place and while they identify and kill the would-be assassin, it comes at a price: Mason’s lack of experience causes the death of a young boy.

Lausanne, 2013. Devereaux is now retired and owns a small lakeside cafe. One day he’s approached by his old handler, Hanley (Smitrovich), with a job. Devereaux’s ex-lover, Natalia (Musliovic) is in trouble. She is in Moscow working undercover as an aide to Russian President-elect Arkady Federov (Ristovski). Natalia has uncovered intelligence that she says will destroy Federov’s chances of becoming president, but won’t reveal any details unless she’s extracted. Devereaux agrees to get her out. On the day of the extraction, Natalia obtains the evidence she needs against Federov but her actions are discovered. With her position compromised, and with Federov’s men chasing her, she evades capture long enough for Devereaux to find her. However, Hanley’s superior, Weinstein (Patton) gives an order that leads the extraction team – led by Mason – to kill her.

Devereaux kills the rest of Mason’s team but leaves him alive. While Mason is tasked with tracking down his mentor – Weinstein believes Devereaux and Hanley are in collusion, but doesn’t know why – Devereaux seeks to find out just what was going on in Moscow and why Natalia was killed. Using the evidence she gathered and was able to give him before she died, Devereaux tries to find a young woman named Mira Filipova; she is the only witness to war crimes Federov committed in Chechnya, and he will stop at nothing to silence her. With the only clue to her whereabouts being her association with a Belgrade women’s aid centre, Devereaux – and an assassin (Terzimehic) sent by Federov – attempts to find out more from centre worker Alice Fournier (Kurylenko). They go on the run together, chased by both Federov’s assassin and Mason, but managing to stay one step ahead of both. Along the way Devereaux tests Mason’s resolve, learns the truth about Federov’s involvement in a bombing that started the Chechnya war, and finds his twelve year old daughter, Lucy, put in harm’s way.

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An old-fashioned spy thriller where the Russians are – ostensibly – the bad guys, and the CIA is equally corrupt, this adaptation of the novel There Are No Spies by Bill Granger (and the seventh in a series of novels featuring Devereaux) has a simple, retro feel to it, but the now over-familiar Belgrade locations and haphazard plotting, as well as some disastrous attempts at characterisation, leave the movie looking and feeling disjointed and ill-conceived. From its opening sequence, The November Man makes a valiant attempt to bring the viewer on board but then keeps them at a distance thanks to its unfailing ability to jettison credibility at every turn.

Despite the retro feel – at one point Devereaux picks a lock the old-fashioned way – The November Man makes the occasional attempt to appear and feel relevant, but making Devereaux seem like an ageing Jason Bourne merely highlights the scarcity of original thought on display. The script, by Michael Finch and Karl Gajdusek, is littered with ill-considered and poorly written scenes that fail to advance the plot, and which give the impression that, rather than adapting Granger’s novel, they were making things up as they went along. There’s one very disturbing, completely out of left field scene where Devereaux cuts the femoral artery of Mason’s neighbour, Sarah (Taylor), leaving her to die unless Mason saves her (and doesn’t pursue his mentor). It’s an incredibly stupid scene, badly written and directed, and serves only to show how determined the movie is to get it wrong.

The basic plot is sound if unoriginal – someone in the CIA colluded with Federov to instigate the war in Chechnya, but who? – but somewhere along the way the need to add in as many convoluted twists and turns as possible has distorted the movie’s focus and made it more ludicrous than convincing. There’s also some wildly absurd action beats that defy logic, such as when Mason drives at full speed into a wall in order to kill the agent he’s riding with (don’t ask!); seconds later, Mason’s running away from the crash as if nothing’s happened.

Against all this, not even Brosnan can rescue things, even when running along alleyways and hotel corridors like he did in his Bond days. He’s also tasked with constantly looking aggrieved (and judging by how badly the movie’s turned out, he probably knew something was up during filming), but it’s the continual change back and forth between cold-blooded killer and sensitive family man that fails to have any impact. Thanks to the script, Brosnan is effectively playing two different Devereauxs, but they don’t fit together (not even once), leaving the actor struggling to combine the two into one recognisable character. It’s no surprise then that the rest of the cast fare equally badly, though Bracey deserves special mention for the woodenness of his expressions and the awkwardness of his line readings. Kurylenko has a little more to do than be the female lead who gets to “stand-next-to-the-star-and-look-pretty”, and Smitrovich does aggressive even when the script doesn’t call for it.

In the end, The November Man is a soggy mess of a movie that does just enough to hold the attention but without putting in too much effort. Donaldson directs as if he’s only seen every other page of the script, and the location photography by Romain Lacourbas is perfunctory, leaving the backdrop of the movie looking less than interesting. And John Gilbert’s editing lacks the necessary punch and energy to make the action scenes anything more than humdrum and predictably constructed.

Rating: 4/10 – weak in almost every department, The November Man is a dire attempt at replicating the kind of spy thrillers that popped up every other month throughout the Eighties; it doesn’t work here, and hasn’t done in any of the three hundred similar movies that Steven Seagal has made in the last ten years either.

Mini-Review: The Love Punch (2013)

22 Friday Aug 2014

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Love Punch, The

D: Joel Hopkins / 94m

Cast: Pierce Brosnan, Emma Thompson, Timothy Spall, Celia Imrie, Louise Bourgoin, Laurent Lafitte, Tuppence Middleton, Jack Wilkinson, Olivier Chantreau, Marisa Berenson

When divorced couple Richard (Brosnan) and Kate (Thompson) discover that their pensions are worthless thanks to a company takeover orchestrated by French businessman Vincent (Lafitte), they put aside their differences and set out to steal a diamond worth $10.8 million that he has just purchased.  Their plan sees them travel to the Cap d’Antibes where Vincent is due to marry supermodel Manon (Bourgoin), and for whom he has had the diamond made into a necklace for their wedding day.

Aided by their friends, Jerry (Spall) and Penelope (Imrie), the still-sparring couple plan to attend the wedding disguised as Texans (there to cement a deal with Vincent), steal the diamond and replace it with a fake, and then head back to the UK to sell the diamond and disperse the money from the sale to everyone who’s lost their pension.  But not everything goes to plan…

Love Punch, The - scene

Look through most actors’ filmographies and you’ll see one or two movies that look like they were made a) for the money, b) because of the location, or c) both.  Well, for Messrs. Brosnan, Thompson, Spall, and Imrie, this is that movie, a dreadfully unfunny romantic comedy/caper hybrid that boasts beautiful locations but little else.  It’s a measure of writer/director Hopkins’ script that belief has to be suspended time and time again, from Kate’s unconvincing faint that gets them into Vincent’s building, to the idea of four Fifty-somethings even planning a diamond robbery.  And when they decide the only way to physically attend the wedding is by climbing a nearby cliff face, then you know rampant absurdity is the order of the day.

The performances are hampered accordingly, though Thompson does her best with what she has.  Brosnan tries too hard, Spall is given a military background that no one knows about, and Imrie revisits the sex-hungry character she’s played so many times before (but without bringing anything new to the idea).  The rest of the cast do what they can but it’s an uphill struggle.

The Love Punch was obviously intended as a bit of a light-hearted romp featuring two of Britain’s most popular actors, but instead it’s a stodgy, lumpen mess that never gets off the ground.  Definitely not one for the promo reel.

Rating: 3/10 – awkward and terrible, The Love Punch should be approached with caution; hampered by a dire script and with too many moments where the audience will be wondering if they’re really seeing what they’re seeing, this is one for fans of the principal cast only.

A Long Way Down (2014)

14 Monday Jul 2014

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Long Way Down, A

D: Pascal Chaumeil / 96m

Cast: Pierce Brosnan, Toni Collette, Imogen Poots, Aaron Paul, Sam Neill, Rosamund Pike, Tuppence Middleton, Joe Cole, Leo Bill, Josef Altin

On New Year’s Eve, four very different people find themselves on the roof of a London tower block, and all with the same idea: to commit suicide.  There’s disgraced TV celebrity Martin (Brosnan), shy, apologetic Maureen (Collette), politician’s daughter Jess (Poots), and pizza delivery guy JJ (Paul).  With all of them unable to go through with their plans (and each actively stopping the rest from jumping), the quartet decide to make a pact: that none of them will try to kill themselves until Valentine’s Day.  Later that night, Jess accidentally O.D.’s in a club; with the aid of Jess’s boyfriend, Chas (Cole), the others get her to hospital.  News of their attempted suicides reaches the press and they all become minor celebrities. Martin suggests they use the attention to make some money, and they take part in interviews, and talk shows.  When one talk show appearance goes wrong, the four decide to go away together on holiday.

The trip proves to be yet another disaster, with JJ unknowingly befriending a journalist (Middleton) and further tensions arise when he also reveals something about himself that only Jess knows (and has kept to herself).  The group return to London and go their separate ways (though each in their own way keeps tabs on the others, except for JJ).  As Valentine’s Day draws near, JJ vanishes.  On the day itself, the others find him back on the roof of the tower block, and ready to kill himself.

Long Way Down, A - scene

Adapted from the novel by Nick Hornby, A Long Way Down takes a serious subject and uses it as the springboard for a sporadically dramatic, essentially lightweight comedy that never quite fires on all cylinders, and has enough awkward moments for two movies, let alone one.  The problems lie in the characters themselves.  Martin’s back story includes time in prison for sleeping inadvertently with a fifteen year old girl, and this is treated largely as an excuse for amusement, with Brosnan mugging for all he’s worth when the subject is brought up.  Maureen has a severely disabled son, Matty (Altin) that she no longer feels she can support adequately, but it’s obvious that she has a really good support network around her so the dramatic elements of her situation never really ring true.  Jess is almost a caricature of every wild child and rebellious daughter of an establishment figure you’re ever likely to encounter, and her sadness over the disappearance of her sister is briefly explored and then forgotten.  As for JJ, his character is the most maddening of them all, with his failed musical background and resulting depression proving hard to sympathise with, or appreciate.

While the movie works hard to flesh out these characters, and make their individual problems worthy of our concern, it’s unable to do so by virtue of their predicament being too artificial for its own good.  At no time in the movie do you really feel that any one of these disparate people really, truly wants to kill themselves, and so any drama in the two rooftop sequences that bookend the movie is immediately eliminated.  And as mentioned above, their individual dilemmas, particularly Martin’s, don’t hold the attention as well, or as much, as they should.  This all leaves the movie lurching from one lacklustre scene to another, its attempts at humour proving occasionally successful, its dramatic approach having no bite, and its supporting characters – from Jess’s dad (Neill) to Pike’s deliberately insensitive talk show host – endorsing the view that the main four characters aren’t that interesting.

As a result, it’s fitting that the performances are as equally uninspired as the movie itself.  Brosnan plays Martin as a bit of a buffoon, good-natured but with an often spectacular misunderstanding of the people around him, his unfortunate “indiscretion” treated like a minor inconvenience blown out of all proportion.  Brosnan’s an accomplished actor but here he seems unable to get to grips with such a poorly crafted character.  Collette has the least showy role, and fares better than the rest, her understated performance as Maureen the nearest the movie gets to providing someone for the audience to relate to; her scenes with Altin are genuinely affecting, but belong in a different movie.  Poots plays Jess as a whirling dervish, snappy and borderline obnoxious, her quieter scenes more convincing than the ones where she’s supposed to be the challenging anti-establishment rebel.  Paul, meanwhile – the predictably token American in the cast – does his best with a role that becomes more and more important as the movie goes on, but he can’t overcome the clumsy way in which JJ is written.

There’s a better movie to be made here, and while it’s clear the material is a challenge, A Long Way Down doesn’t even attempt to play up the more darkly humorous aspects of the group’s situation or elevate the drama inherent in such a premise.  The movie seems determined not to make things too uncomfortable for the audience, to play things down to make them more palatable (and presumably, more box office friendly).  It’s an obvious decision on the part of the producers (unfortunately) but it doesn’t help the movie at all.

Rating: 5/10 – not as dramatic or as funny as it looks, A Long Way Down struggles to be as emotionally involving as it should be; with no one to connect with, the movie loses focus early on and never really recovers, leaving its characters to stumble on until the movie’s predictably feel good ending.