Cast: Luke Evans, Kelly Reilly, Norma Dixit, Skye Lucia Degruttola, Olivia Chenery, Jason Maza, Stacy Hall
Cathy Noland (Reilly) owns a florist shop in a small town, and seems happy being on her own. What she doesn’t know is that Lewis (Evans) has been watching her for months, learning everything he can about her, and tracking her daily routines. When she leaves a yoga class at the end of the day, Lewis grabs her in the parking lot and quickly ties her up and gags her before putting her in the boot of his car. He takes her to his home where he puts her in a soundproofed, hidden room. It soon becomes clear that Lewis has some questions for Cathy, and they may have something to do with a medical malpractice trial that he’s following on television. Cathy tries to escape, but isn’t successful, and as time passes, Lewis presses her to tell the truth about herself (starting with her name) and how it all relates to his wife, Alana (Chenery), and how she recently died. When Lewis finally learns the truth, it isn’t what he’s expecting, and he’s caught off guard when Cathy makes her next attempt at escaping…
The kind of mystery thrller that comes and goes without anyone really noticing it, 10×10 starts off well, but then stumbles repeatedly on its way to a violent showdown between Evans’ angry kidnapper and Reilly’s resourceful captive. Again, as with a lot of mystery thrillers, there’s the germ of a good idea here, but Noel Clarke’s screenplay (he also produces, and cameos as a waiter in a diner) is unable to connect the narrative dots in such a way that the movie forms into a cohesive whole. The script also tries to subvert audience expectations by throwing in a couple of “unexpected” twists along the way, and though these attempts are laudable in and of themselves, they don’t carry any weight or have any dramatic impact. Instead of being surprised, or even shocked, the average viewer’s reaction is likely to be a shrug of indifference. Part of the problem is the movie’s unfortunate habit of presenting scenes that act independently from the ones that precede and follow them, or which fail to increase the tension. One such scene involves Lewis driving to a favourite spot he and Alana went to. A squad car pulls up, and for a moment it looks as if Lewis is going to be in trouble. Only for a moment, though…
With scenes such as these being resolved too quickly, all that remains is for the cat and mouse game between Lewis and Cathy to hold the attention and provide all the thrills (the violent assaults that pepper the narrative soon become derivative and perfunctory in the way they’re staged and play out). Alas, once Cathy is kidnapped, any tension soon dissipates as the script’s awkward machinations are further undermined by first-time director Ewing’s unoriginal handling. Between the house’s open plan living area and the hidden room is a corridor; the number of times Lewis and Cathy run down it in either direction is about the only scary thing the viewer can rely on. In the end, and despite Evans’ and Reilly’s best efforts, the movie loses its way completely and becomes yet another generic thriller that is so generic it even includes a scene where the villain of the piece is supposedly dead – only to be miraculously resurrected the very next minute. When a movie resorts to such crude tactics in order to raise some excitement, then you know it’s been in trouble for some time already.
Rating: 3/10 – a woeful movie that is almost wholly free of subtext or metaphor, 10×10‘s main achievement is that it was made in the first place and induced both Evans and Reilly to take part; almost an object lesson in how not to create a tense, exciting thriller, this is one to avoid in favour of almost anything else.
Cast: Antonio de la Torre, Luis Callejo, Ruth Díaz, Raúl Jiménez, Manolo Solo, Font García, Pilar Gómez
After taking part in a robbery (as the getaway driver) that goes wrong and leaves one person dead and another in a coma, Curro (Callejo) is sentenced to eight years in jail. His girlfriend, Ana (Díaz), stands by him and they have a son together. In the weeks before Curro is due to be released, a stranger, José (de la Torre), begins to frequent the bar where Ana works – and which is owned by her brother, Juanjo (Jiménez). José is quiet, but soon becomes friends with Juanjo, and an attraction develops between him and Ana. Days before Curro is released, the pair sleep together, and José shows an unexpected interest in the details of the robbery, and Curro’s compatriots. When Curro is released, his angry nature drives a wedge between him and Ana, and José is able to persuade her and her son to come away with him to his family home in the countryside. When José returns alone, and tells Curro he wants to see him, he can have no idea of the journey that he and José are about to embark upon…
The winner in the Best Film category at the 31st Goya Awards – previous winners include All About My Mother (1999) and Blancanieves (2012) – The Fury of a Patient Man is a slow-burn thriller that doesn’t take too long in revealing its central character’s intentions (the clue is in the title after all), but which does leave the viewer guessing as to just how far José will go in his desire for revenge. Up until Arévalo reveals the answer in the movie’s most memorable scene, things unfold at a steady yet involving pace, with great care taken to establish the characters and the interplay between them. This allows Ana to be more than just a pawn in Jose’s game, and Curro to be more than just an angry thug, decisions that help the narrative immensely, and which also leaves the viewer with characters other than José to consider when wondering what will happen to them. Curro may not be entirely sympathetic but it’s soon obvious he’s in way over his head, while Ana could be accused of using José just as much as he’s using her, but it’s this kind of ambiguity that ensures the movie isn’t rote or predictable.
Once José and Curro meet, and they begin a road trip that will change both of them (albeit in very different ways), Arévalo and co-screenwriter David Pulido quicken both the pace and the tone of the movie, and throw in a couple of violent set-pieces that are unflinchingly brutal but still in keeping with the needs of the material. There’s also an uncomfortable moment when a minor character, only minutes after being introduced, is revealed to be pregnant. The camera switches to José whose passive features betray nothing of what he’s thinking. It’s another, potent example of the ambiguity that runs like a thread through the narrative, and the way in which Arévalo is able to tighten the screws at will. de la Torre is terrific as José, effortlessly diffident at the start and slowly but surely revealing the rage he’s nursed for eight years. As José cuts a bloody swathe through Curro’s compatriots, de la Torre’s portrayal becomes even more insular, with the character’s violent outbursts proving expectedly cathartic, and yet leaving him emotionally detached. Callejo and Díaz provide good support, and there’s exemplary camerawork from DoP Arnau Valls Colomer, especially in the opening scene, which is shot entirely from the back seat of Curro’s getaway car – crash and all.
Rating: 8/10 – a movie that builds tension through the motivations of its characters, and is often unflinchingly violent because of those motivations, The Fury of a Patient Man is both subtle and judicious in its character building, and blunt and uncompromising once it steps up a gear; an English language remake is in the pipeline, but it already has its work cut out for it if it’s going to be as good as this version.
Cast: John Hawkes, Vail Bloom, Joanna Cassidy, Jeff Fahey, Robert Forster, Brett Jacobsen, Dichen Lachman, Dash Mihok, Sydney Tamiia Poitier, Crystal Reed, Rider Strong, Natalie Zea
A modern day noir that sports a grim measure of inevitability, the central character in Too Late is not John Hawkes’ determined private investigator, Samson, but Dorothy (Reed), the stripper he befriends then loses touch with for three years. When she asks to meet him, she’s already in trouble, and by the time he arrives for their rendezvous, she’s already dead. So what’s a newly embittered P.I. to do? Why, go after the people responsible of course. Dorothy’s murder gives Samson a purpose he’s been missing, and he’s as dogged and persistent as gumshoes in the movies usually are, but writer-director Dennis Hauck isn’t interested solely in presenting Samson’s woes, he’s equally (if not more) interested in revealing Dorothy’s hopes and dreams. Too often in noir thrillers, the murder victim serves as a modus operandi for the hero’s actions. Here, Dorothy is more than that: she’s someone the viewer gets to know, and in some detail, and that’s because once she’s dead, she’s not really dead.
How is this possible, you might ask? Well, Hauck has a trick up his sleeve. Once the first scene is over and we’ve met Dorothy and gotten to know a lot about her and she’s wound up dead, Hauck brings her back in the third scene, one where we get to see her meet Samson for the first time. The movie consists of five scenes in total, but they’re assembled in a non-linear fashion. This isn’t as confusing as it might sound – though some viewers may feel aggrieved when they realise that scene five is actually a precursor to scene four – and what it does is to allow Dorothy’s character to be present throughout the whole movie, and to leave an indelible impression. That way, Samson’s determination to track down and punish the people responsible for her death becomes understandable in a way that doesn’t often occur in noir thrillers. And Hauck is clever enough through his screenplay to make Samson’s “mission” a personal one that really comes across as personal, instead of something perfunctory in order to get the movie started. There is an air of personal redemption going on with Samson, and his persistence hints at deeper feelings for Dorothy than he might admit.
Each scene has been shot in one single, continuous twenty-two minute take, so there’s a lot of Steadicam work, plus a lot of swinging the camera from one character to another, which can be really distracting (there’s also an impressive zoom in the first scene that is technically superb for the distance it covers). On occasion the need to maintain the integrity of the take makes for some uncomfortable transitions, but overall Hauck and DoP Bill Fernandez have done an impressive job of immersing the viewer in what’s happening, and populating the frame with details that support the emotion of each scene as it unfolds. The performances are very good indeed, with Hawkes, Lachman and Reed all at the top of their game, while the likes of Bloom – re-enacting Julianne Moore’s famous nude scene from Short Cuts (1993) – Zea and Jacobsen all make an impact in minor roles. This being a modern noir thriller, there’s plenty of violence, but it’s always in service to the demands of the narrative, rather than the other way round. As a tale of flawed human beings trying their best to get by in the world with what little they have that’s theirs, Too Late is an intriguing, thought-provoking revenge drama that has no intention of telling its heartfelt story in any other way than with honesty, sincerity and an unfailing commitment to its characters.
Rating: 8/10 – the commitment to continuous twenty-two minute scenes does lead to some pacing issues, and some moments do feel like filler (e.g. the point where Samson picks up a guitar and performs an admittedly lovely song), but Too Late is far too good everywhere else; a meditative, earnest thriller that impresses every time it surprises, this also serves as an example of how character can – and always should – drive the narrative of a movie forward, and how it should be allowed to maintain that ambition right to the very end.
Cast: Antonio Banderas, Karl Urban, Paz Vega, Clint Dyer, Johnathon Schaech, Cristina Serafini, Lillian Blankenship, Atanas Srebrev, Mark Rhino Smith, Raycho Vasilev, Stacey Clickner, Robert Forster
Acts of Vengeance (or, the latest episode in the on-going series, Whatever Happened to Antonio Banderas) is, on the face of it, not a great movie. It’s another low-budget action thriller with Bulgaria standing in for America (and poorly at that; you know that a movie’s in trouble when the sign outside a book store says exactly that: Bookstore). It has a trio of internationally known stars who clearly had a fortnight’s break in their schedule, and nothing better to do, plus a cameo (from Forster) that lasts all of two minutes. The movie is a curious mix of the standard and the bizarre – which at least helps it stand out somewhat from the crowd – and it has a clutch of fight scenes that are well choreographed and shot. It keeps Banderas mute for much of the running time, has a plot that’s so worn out it’s practically invisible, telegraphs its villain with all the subtlety of a stampeding rhino, and features one laughably absurd scene after another. In short, it’s two steps away from being a complete disaster. But the movie has an ace up its sleeve, an ace in the form of its director, Isaac Florentine.
If you’re not familiar with Florentine’s career, and if you’re a fan of DTV movies, then where the hell have you been since 1992? Although he’s never made a mainstream movie, Florentine is more than adept at turning some of the least promising material into something that works in ways that it really shouldn’t do. And the man knows how to put together a fight scene. This is just as true here, with Banderas doing the majority of his own stunt work, and Florentine ensuring that Yaron Scharf’s cinematography provides the best coverage possible. So we have Banderas’ avenging lawyer, Frank Valera – he’s looking for the killer or killers of his wife and daughter (Serafini, Blankenship) – learning a range of fighting techniques, and getting into a number of scraps where his newfound skills are shown off to very good effect. These fight scenes, and Banderas’ involvement in them, are what raise the movie out of the various narrative doldrums that leave the story waiting around to be kickstarted again after stalling. These scenes are also the movie’s modus operandi; if they’re not any good, then what’s the point of watching it in the first place?
There are the aforementioned bizarre elements to help it along, though, such as the story being structured in such a way that quotes from Marcus Aurelius’ Meditations can be used as chapter headings (“To expect bad men not to do wrong is madness”), and the recurring presence of Russian mobsters for Frank to beat up on – and without any reprisals. Factor in Vega’s handy nurse in a medical crisis, Urban’s illegal cage fighting cop (don’t ask), Frank’s hearing becoming pin sharp within days of his deciding to remain mute until he’s avenged his family (which has him acting like a sighted DareDevil), and the villain conveniently leaving his house key in a planter right outside his front door, and you have a movie that’s only on nodding terms with reality. But even with all that, Florentine has a clean, unfussy visual style that suits the material down to the ground, and he instills the movie with a rhythm that moves things along with a surprising amount of energy. While it’s true that the limitations of Matt Venne’s screenplay are evident in almost every scene, Acts of Vengeance has enough to recommend it as a one-off, just-for-the-fun-of-it viewing.
Rating: 4/10 – yes, it’s bad, and yes, it’s another nail in the career of its star, but thanks to Florentine’s involvement, Acts of Vengeance can be regarded as something of a guilty pleasure; with a handful of well choreographed fight scenes that belie the dire nature of the rest of the material, this is a movie that at least doesn’t outstay its welcome, and wraps things up neatly and concisely.
Cast: Maika Monroe, Mark Webber, Will Patton, Maggie Grace, Justin Chatwin, Bonnie Bedelia, Aaron Poole, Brad Carter, Logan Miller, Kassia Conway, Sarah Noble Peck
A small town murder mystery with an arthouse feel, The Scent of Rain & Lightning opens with bad news for Jody Linder (Monroe): Billy Croyle (Carter), the man who was jailed for killing her parents, Laurie and Hugh (Grace, Chatwin), twelve years before has had his sentence commuted and is being released from prison. Understandably, Jody and the rest of her family – grandfather ‘Senior’ (Patton), grandmother Annabelle (Bedelia), uncles Chace (Webber) and Meryl (Poole) – aren’t too happy about this, but when Jody confronts Croyle and he accuses ‘Senior’ of getting the verdict he wanted, as well as denying he killed her parents, Jody begins to ask questions around town, questions that make her believe that not everything about her parents’ deaths is as cut and dried as she’s been led to believe. As the town – and her family – start to give up their secrets, Jody is forced to accept that the answers she’s looking for may lie closer to home. But then a senseless act of violence occurs, one that puts Jody in danger, and which threatens her family as well…
A slow burn thriller that looks and feels like an arthouse movie, The Scent of Rain & Lightning (adapted from the novel of the same name by Nancy Pickard) doesn’t offer anything new for viewers with a liking for small town murder mysteries, but it does provide a non-linear narrative that interweaves Jody’s somewhat random approach to investigating her parents’ deaths, with flashbacks to the events that led up to the murders, and finally, what actually happened. These flashbacks are necessary, as Jody proves to be the Rick Deckard of small town murder mysteries, and never learns anything of real value. Thankfully, while she’s looking for answers, the script by Casey Twenter and Jeff Robison (also two of the movie’s producers) keeps the viewer up to speed with what happened, why, how, and who was responsible. It makes for an uneven narrative, with neither strand complementing each other, or finding common moments where they might connect effectively, and as a result, it’s a movie that often feels like it’s been stitched together Frankenstein Monster-style, with no clear idea of which part goes with which. This also leaves some scenes feeling a little lost, or there just to pad out the running time.
Performance-wise, the movie is a bit of a mixed bag also. None of the characters are particularly well developed, and Jody’s expected character arc fizzles out around two thirds in. Monroe, a very talented young actress who’s still looking for that perfect follow up to her breakout role in It Follows (2014), hasn’t much to do beyond ask awkward questions and have those questions go unanswered. As the movie progresses, her role diminishes further and further, and the need to solve the mystery takes precedence. This brings Grace’s character to the fore, but Laurie and her secret prove to be very stereotypical, which leaves any emotional connection the viewer might be looking to make as unlikely as Kevin Spacey winning a Best Supporting Actor award at this year’s Oscars. Elsewhere, the likes of Patton, Bedelia and Poole flit in and out of the narrative, while Webber struggles to make his character ambivalent enough to be considered a viable suspect. Robbins, making his second feature (and appearing as the town sheriff), opts for a muted visual style that is at least atmospheric, but which doesn’t elevate the material, and there are too many occasions where the image is refracted through water as if it has an important psychological resonance.
Rating: 5/10 – with two narrative strands that work independently of each other, and a sense that no amount of screenplay jiggery-pokery could have brought them together, The Scent of Rain & Lightning lacks the impact needed to make its mystery elements work, and its small town milieu appropriately claustrophobic; disappointing then – though not unwatchable – it’s another indie thriller that tries hard to be different while forgetting that it’s using very basic materials to begin with.
Cast: Nigel O’Neill, Susan Lynch, Józef Pawlowski, Stuart Graham, David Pearse, Anna Próchniak, Stella McCusker, Ian McElhinney
Donal (O”Neill) and his mother, Florence (McCusker), live on a farm on the outskirts of a small town in Northern Ireland. The pair keep themselves to themselves, and seem to be contented with their lot. But when Donal does go out one evening, he returns to find a stranger leaving the farmhouse and his mother dead inside. Some time later, Donal is surprised by two hooded intruders who attempt to kill him as well. He turns the tables on them, and coerces one of them, a young Polish man named Bartosz (Pawlowski), to help him track down the man who killed his mother. The trail leads to a prostitution ring run by a woman called Charlie (Lynch). Soon, Donal and Bartosz are both hunters and hunted as Charlie targets them, and a game of cat and mouse ensues, one that reveals an unexpected connection between Florence, Donal, and Charlie, and events that took place around thirty years before, events that have a major bearing on Florence’s murder and Donal’s current predicament.
A tough and gritty Western transposed to the wilds of Northern Ireland, Bad Day for the Cut is a modest amalgam of revenge motifs that makes the most of its equally modest production values and its sparsely populated locations, and which benefits further from good performances and Baugh’s measured direction. Along with co-screenwriter Brendan Mullins, Baugh (making his feature debut) has constructed a movie that harkens back to so many other, similar movies from the past, but which still maintains an identity all its own. Donal is a familiar figure, the man rendered alone through the death of his family and consumed with anger. It makes him determined and uncompromising, but Baugh is careful to avoid making him a murderous automaton. When Bartosz reveals that his sister, Kaja (Próchniak), is one of the girls in Charlie’s stable, Donal allows himself to be sidetracked in his mission to make Charlie pay for his mother’s murder. Despite his need for revenge, Donal retains an innate honesty and sense of morality that he fights hard not to compromise. As the beleaguered Donal, O’Neill is a quiet force of nature, taciturn for the most part but capable of moments of irredeemable violence; you wouldn’t want to be trapped in a camper van with Donal and a hot saucepan.
Like all good thrillers, Donal’s quest for revenge doesn’t go as planned (partly because he doesn’t really have a plan), and partly because there are things he doesn’t know, things that he only becomes aware of as the movie progresses. These things stop the movie from being too simplistic, and they also allow the character of Frankie (played with unrestrained vitriol by Lynch) to become more than just a matriarchal monster figure. Baugh plays up the rural isolation that Donal leaves behind in his search for vengeance, but thanks to some well chosen locations, keeps him acting in isolation (even while being helped by Bartosz, who has his own agenda), and adrift from any semblance of a normal life. There’s a real sense that even if he does succeed in getting his revenge, it won’t mean that his grief will be assuaged. Against this, the movie does have a wry sense of humour, and is often funny in a “you-shouldn’t-laugh” kind of way that offsets those moments where the violence is busy being harsh and inflexible. Tough and unyielding then at times, Baugh has managed to put together an agreeable thriller that overcomes several narrative stumbles (which ultimately don’t hurt it as much as they should), and in doing so, he emerges as a director to watch out for in the future.
Rating: 7/10 – with wonderful cinematography by DoP Ryan Kernaghan, and a straightforward approach to the material that works wonders, Bad Day for the Cut is an enjoyable Irish Western that pays due respect to its genre inspirations; anchored by a terrific performance from O’Neill, it’s also a movie whose narrative doesn’t feel forced (except once), and which never tries to be smarter than it already is.
The short movie is an oft-neglected aspect of movie viewing these days, with fewer outlets available to the makers of short movies, and certainly little chance of their efforts being seen in our local multiplexes (the exceptions to these are the animated shorts made to accompany the likes of Pixar’s movies, the occasional cash-in from Disney such as Frozen Fever (2015), and Blue Sky’s Scrat movies). Otherwise it’s an internet platform such as Vimeo, YouTube (a particularly good place to find short movies, including the ones in this post), or brief exposure at a film festival. Even on DVD or Blu-ray, there’s a dearth of short movies on offer. In an attempt to bring some of the gems that are out there to a wider audience, here’s another in an ongoing series of posts. Who knows? You might find one that becomes a firm favourite – if you do, please let me know.
Don’t Look Away (2017) / D: Christopher Cox / 8m
Cast: Sabrina Twyla, Danny Roy, Jim Marshall, Charlie McCarthy
Rating: 6/10 – Siblings Savannah (Twyla) and Jim (Roy) are squabbling as usual while they wait for their parents to arrive home. When Savannah looks out of her bedroom window she sees a strange man standing in the garden looking at her. The man is wearing a tattered black suit, and has a bag over his head that is wrapped in chains. When her father (Marshall) calls to say he’ll be late home, Savannah mentions the man. He immediately tells her not to look away, and to get her brother to lock all the doors. But not knowing all the rules puts Savannah in danger… A brisk, relatively effective horror short, Don’t Look Away starts well, but soon tapers off once Savannah inevitably looks away, and writer/director Cox finds himself attempting to explain the animus behind the strange man in the garden (referred to as The Creature in the credits). There’s the germ of a good idea here, and though it’s not anywhere near as scary as it should be, if Cox ever manages to expand on his basic premise, he has the potential to get another horror franchise icon off the ground.
Andy (2017) / D: Michael J. Murphy / 16m
Cast: Brendan Meyer, McKaley Miller, Madison Iseman, Tannaz Shastiri, Beejan Land, Seth Clarke, Tom Draper, Landon Merrell
Rating: 7/10 – After being harrassed and bullied throughout his high school years, Andy (Meyer) discovers that social media is the ideal way to get even. Not so much a cautionary tale – Andy uses his tormentors’ own forms of harrassment against them – but a revenge tale pure and simple, this is a well mounted and well constructed short that doesn’t play out as simply as expected. The basic set up has been seen a thousand times before, but Murphy’s third short plays a trump card in its depiction of high school queen Lia (Iseman). She and Andy used to be childhood friends but they’ve grown apart and now she’s popular and he’s not. There’s a point in the movie where she has a choice to make – and she doesn’t make the right choice. However, Murphy and co-screenwriter Emily Mattoon make it clear that it’s not a choice she wants to make. This makes Andy’s subsequent revenge just as terrible as the harrassment he’s suffered. Subtly done, this raises the material, and makes the ending far more ironic than expected.
Prego (2015) / D: Usher Morgan / 13m
Cast: Katie Vincent, Taso Mikroulis
Rating: 8/10 – A woman (Vincent) meets a man (Mikroulis) in a cafe and tells him that she’s pregnant with his child. His response isn’t what she wants to hear. A well written and very funny comedy short, Prego works as well as it does by taking an established (and somewhat stereotypical) situation and making the woman’s exasperation as amusing as the man’s witless comments and questions. The dialogue is sharp and to the point, and the performances are terrific, with Vincent convincing as the straight (wo)man to Mikroulis’ credulous man-child. Morgan shoots much of their exchange in close-up, placing strong emphasis on Vincent’s impressively blue eyes and Mikroulis’ ability to stare blankly but still to good purpose. The ending may be just a tad predictable, but otherwise this is winning stuff, unfussy, well put together, and backed by an apt and appealing soundtrack.
Hedonist (2012) / D: Miquel Vilar / 9m
Original title: Hedonista
Cast: Anna Casas, Frank Capdet, Jordi Pérez
Rating: 7/10 – A couple (Casas, Pérez) visit a man (Capdet) in his apartment in order for the wife to experience the kind of pleasure that she hasn’t had since she was a child, pleasure that the man cultivates in an unusual and, for the husband, disgusting way. A beguiling and intriguing exploration of an obscure form of sexual gratification, Hedonist is as much about the pursuit of that gratification as it is the power shifts in the relationship between the married couple. The husband is unhappy about being there and accuses his wife of not wanting to sleep with him. She dismisses his concerns as if they were trifles. The man offers advice and warnings, but the wife isn’t interested. Both men have only limited influence; the woman has taken charge. Vilar keeps the audience guessing until the end as to what exactly are the “specimens” the woman has come to “collect”, and in doing so he gives the impression this will develop into a horror short. And when the nature of the “specimens” is revealed, there are likely to be some viewers who will be in complete agreement that it has.
Cast: Colin Farrell, Nicole Kidman, Barry Keoghan, Raffey Cassidy, Sunny Suljic, Alicia Silverstone, Bill Camp
In Yorgos Lanthimos’s follow up to the multi-award winning The Lobster (2015), he teams up again with Colin Farrell to tell a story adapted from Iphigenia at Aulis by the Greek playwright Euripides. Lanthimos is an idiosyncratic writer/director, and his approach to movie making can often seem experimental and/or challenging. That’s certainly the case here, as he shines a light on the aftermath of a man dying during surgery, a man that Farrell’s character, cardiothoracic specialist Steven Moore, operated on. Steven is part of a traditional nuclear family – wife Anna (Kidman), teenage daughter Kim (Cassidy), younger son Bob (Suljic) – is well respected by his peers, and appears to have everything he could need. The only odd thing about his life is his relationship with a teenage boy called Martin (Keoghan). They meet in coffee shops, and though Martin at first seems as if he could be some kind of outpatient that Steven is treating, his openly expressed neediness is at odds with Steven’s more reserved demeanour.
Martin begins to visit the hospital instead of waiting for their meetings outside. He appears without warning, and his beahviour becomes increasingly erratic. In an effort to placate him, Steven invites Martin to his home for dinner. Over time, Martin ingratiates himself into Steven’s family, and wins the affection of Kim. A reciprocal arrangement sees Steven going to dinner at Martin’s home, where he meets Martin’s mother (Silverstone). The evening doesn’t go well, and it prompts Steven to start ignoring Martin’s calls and attempts to meet up. Then one day Bob wakes to find he’s paralysed from the waist down. Soon he’s refusing to eat as well, but despite the best medical treatment that Steven can arrange, there is no physical reason found to explain what’s happening. And then, during choir practice, Kim too loses the use of her legs, and she and her brother find themselves in hospital, in the same room, and facing the same outcome: death.
In adapting Iphigenia at Aulis, Lanthimos has taken the central theme – what would you do if you had to kill a loved one to avert a greater number of deaths – and made it into a psychological thriller that proves difficult to engage with from the very start. Beginning with a close up of a beating human heart that’s been operated on, this is as close as the movie gets to displaying anything like the same kind of “heart” to its characters. As a result, Steven, Anna, Martin et al become chess pieces to be moved around a board of Lanthimos’ design, and with no greater ambition than to reach the endgame. What doesn’t help is the emotional constraint the movie adopts, particularly with Steven, where his dialogue is largely clipped and/or neutral in its relation to other dialogue in any given scene. This makes Steven something of an emotional cipher, physically present in the moment, but otherwise withdrawn or remote from the people around him (he’s more present with his children but then only when they’re doing what he expects of them). And even when he does display any real emotion, such as during a row with Anna, his responses are childish and inappropriate; he’s a man approximating what it is to feel anything.
Steven is also a dissembler, hiding the facts about his relationship with Martin from everyone else until matters dictate he reveal the truth. This should lead to a point from which the audience can begin to have some sympathy for his predicament – in order to save the lives of everyone in his family he must choose to kill one of them deliberately, to make a sacrificial offering as atonement for his sins – but thanks to Lanthimos’ determination to continue on and make Steven’s predicament a tragic one, the movie becomes instead a visual treat if not one that is likely to stir any feelings beyond impatience or apathy. The how and the why of his children falling ill is explained fully and with no room for misunderstanding, but despite this the actual source of their illness remains illogically set up and maintained. As an act of revenge it has its merits (as Euripides knew), but it’s introduced in a way that robs it of any merit as a narrative device; the audience is expected to go along with it because the script doesn’t offer any alternative. It also leaves the inter-relationships between the likes of Martin and Kim, and Steven and Anna – and most notably, Anna and Matthew (Camp), one of Steven’s colleagues – feeling contrived and under-developed.
There are times when it seems as if Lanthimos is more interested in mood and tone than he is in characterisation or narrative meaning, but what this does mean is that the movie has such a strong, consistent visual aesthetic that it compensates for some of the more wayward decisions made in regard to the plot. Each shot is lovingly framed and lit by DoP Thimios Bakatakis, and there are moments of quiet beauty, such as the very high, overhead shot of Anna and Bob that sees them about to leave the hospital after Bob has been allowed to go home, only for him to collapse. The camera stays fixed in place, maintaining its distance, as Anna desperately tries to rouse him. There are other moments where the cinematography excels, but these moments aren’t always in service to the narrative, unless Lanthimos’ intention really is to keep the viewer at a distance, and make it more difficult (than it is already) to engage with the characters.
In the end, and despite Lanthimos’ best efforts, this is a movie that relies on its main character behaving inappropriately and oddly in spite of the gravity of his situation, and Keoghan giving the kind of performance that is technically impressive – and that’s about all. As the movie spirals down towards a scene that is likely to have viewers laughing when they should be horrified, the nature of the material reveals itself to be a carefully constructed farce rather than the psychological mystery thriller that it appears to be (though whether or not this is Lanthimos’ intention is still debatable). Watched as such, the movie makes more sense and is more enjoyable, but if taken at face value it’s more likely to alienate viewers than entice them in with the offer of a probing, insightful melodrama. More simply put, and despite a handful of good performances, it’s a movie that looks very good indeed on the surface, but which lacks the necessary substance when you look more closely.
Rating: 6/10 – an arthouse thriller that takes a step back from its central plot before it’s even begun, The Killing of a Sacred Deer strives for eloquence and meaning, but falls short because of its detachment from the material; Farrell et al are left stranded sometimes by Lanthimos’ approach to the movie’s subject matter, and there are too many occasions where the viewer’s response will be one of bemusement or disbelief at what they’re seeing.
Cast: Francesca Eastwood, Clifton Collins Jr, Leah McKendrick, Peter Vack, David Sullivan, David Huynh, Marlon Young, Jess Nurse, Mary Price Moore
A movie that invites the viewer to play an extended version of Spot the Influence, M.F.A. (that’s Master of Fine Arts in case you didn’t know) is a splatter cake of references and themes from other features, most of which are really obvious, and which have an unfortunate tendency to interrupt the narrative, and pull the viewer out of the strange effect that the movie creates in between these interruptions. So every now and then, the viewer is forced to exclaim, “Hey! That’s from [insert relevant movie title here]” before being able to reconnect with art student Noelle (Eastwood) and her attempts at university-based vigilantism. That’s the first, really obvious influence: Michael Winner’s seminal Death Wish (1974). But don’t worry, there are plenty of others to pick out. (There’s a game derived from Withnail & I (1987) where the viewer is required to have a drink every time one of the characters has a drink; you might want to train for it. You could play a similar sort of game with M.F.A. and have a drink every time a movie influence, or reference, appears on screen.)
At first, this is all kind of fun, but the movie soon runs the risk of adding all these references to the detriment of the script as a whole, with Eastwood’s revenge focused antagonist seemingly at the mercy of every pause and insert that writer, producer and co-star Leah McKendrick can come up with. It all begins well enough with under-achieving Noelle in danger of failing her class and not graduating due to a lack of emotion in her paintings. As if this wasn’t bad enough, she gets an invite to a party by a guy she likes, Luke (Vack), and while she’s there he takes her to his room and rapes her. Understandably shocked, she’s further shocked by the attitude of her best friend, Skye (McKendrick), who tells her to forget about it, and a school councellor, Mrs Sanders (Moore), who questions Noelle as if she were making it all up. When Luke invites her over to his place as if nothing has happened, he ends up dead and Noelle begins to walk a very dark path of revenge and cold-blooded murder.
By this stage, the movie has begun its salute to Death Wish, and has done so via a shout out to The Hunting Ground (2015). We learn that Balboa University, the fictional campus where Noelle studies, has never acknowledged the rape of a student within its grounds in its entire history, and the script winds this into the narrative in an effort to make a point about contemporary gender politics, but while it’s a noble aim, it feels just as forced as the idea that a counsellor would dismiss a claim of rape entirely (especially these days), and just as forced as the idea that because they’re male and likely to be sports stars, rapists will always get away with it (even if there’s widely available video evidence to prove they did it). The script adopts then a very black and white attitude that seems intent on providing Noelle with a reason for going all Paul Kersey, but which also doesn’t forget to include moments of sexploitation when she does so (her first targeted victim has to be seduced before he dies). Despite this kind of direct approach, the combination of McKendrick’s screenplay and Leite’s direction doesn’t ensure this means an effective approach, and the two elements tend to work against each other.
Of course, Noelle isn’t satisfied with avenging her own assault, though it’s only when she becomes aware of another rape – that went unpunished – that she decides to do something more. As she works her way through a list of rapists, Noelle finds that her art work gains that missing emotion, or passion, that was holding her back. This idea, that murder can be an inspiration for artistic expression, has been seen several times before, including the likes of House of Wax (1953) and Color Me Blood Red (1965), but here it seems like an afterthought, so long does it take for Noelle to begin using her new feelings in order to improve her work (which of course is immediately recognised as being significantly better by her tutor and the rest of her class). And of course, once she begins killing her fellow students, Noelle has a detective on her trail called Kennedy (Collins Jr), who’s always one step behind her until the end (though like Rick Deckard in Blade Runner (1982) he doesn’t actually do any detecting, but is gifted her identity when an intended victim survives her attack on him). The tropes and long range subtleties of low budget horror thrillers are all present and correct, from the ease with which Noelle carries out her crimes, to the fetishisation of Eastwood herself, as she’s called upon to wear revealing outfit after revealing outfit before finally appearing nude.
With M.F.A. throwing together so many disparate elements, and sometimes in the same scene, it’s inevitable that the movie itself doesn’t always work as well as intended. Some of the dialogue is clunky and several moments of exposition sound like they’re being read from cue cards, but in a strange way the movie is quite hypnotic to watch. This is partly due to the various influences on display (which one will the viewer spot next?), and partly due to Eastwood’s committed performance, which anchors the movie and helps gloss over some of the longueurs that occur when the script tries to be didactic. Utilising a sympathetic approach to the character of Noelle that she manages to retain even when she’s wearing her vigilante hat, she gives an emotionally redolent, purposeful performance that could well prove to be her break-out role. In support, Collins Jr has very little to do except grow a beard very quickly, while McKendrick is erratic as the poorly written best friend whose involvement in Noelle’s life leads to an easily anticipated tragedy.
But again, even with all this going on, the movie is worth a watch, it’s strangled dynamic proving unexpectedly gripping in places, and with a dark thriller atmosphere that, for the most part, is well handled by Leite and which adds power to the material. There are brief moments of levity, a few nods to the kind of life Noelle could have had if she didn’t become a vigilante, and a couple of painful instances where Noelle’s self-awareness has the potential for self-destruction. The ending at least is dramatically satisfying, even though the build-up to it is wayward and not entirely confident in what it’s trying to say. A good try, then, and one that shows promise for all concerned.
Rating: 7/10 – thematically bizarre, and unabashedly dogmatic in places, M.F.A. is nevertheless a dour but entertaining, low budget rehash of the vigilante movies of the late Seventies; with a persuasive central performance by Eastwood, it’s a movie that wears its influences on its sleeves, and which isn’t afraid to mix things up – even if that mixing isn’t too successful – in order to tell its uncompromising tale.
Cast: Dylan O’Brien, Michael Keaton, Sanaa Lathan, Shiva Negar, Taylor Kitsch, David Suchet, Scott Adkins, Joseph Long, Mohammad Bakri, Navid Negahban, Khalid Laith, Vladimir Friedman, Charlotte Vega
It doesn’t take long – or much – to work out that American Assassin wants to be the first in a new spy/action series. After all, it’s an origin story, and the main character, Mitch Rapp (O’Brien), is in his early twenties at this point, so the potential is there for several more movies to be adapted from the novels by Vince Flynn, and made into the kind of slick, glossily produced, but largely pedestrian movie that’s been put together here. Depending on your patience or your level of appreciation for Rapp and his personal mission to rid the world of terrorists – particuarly Muslim ones – this will either have you urging him on, or wondering what makes him so special. However, what is certain, is that Mitch’s origin story leaves a lot to be desired.
What sets Mitch off on his pesonal mission happens on a beach in Ibiza. Having just proposed to his girlfriend, Katrina (Vega), Mitch is getting them drinks to celebrate when, from out of nowhere and with no warning at all, the beach is overrun by terrorists who start shooting randomly at everyone, including Mitch himself, who gets wounded, and (of course) Katrina, who is killed right in front of him. Fast forward eighteen months, and Mitch is now on the trail of the terrorist responsible for the beach attack. He’s managed to persuade said terrorist that they share the same aims and gotten himself a personal invitation to meet up in person. But just as he’s face to face with his arch-nemesis, a team of US Special Forces ops take out the terrorist and his men, and leave taking Mitch with them. He’s taken to a CIA safe house where he spends thirty days being debriefed, and impressing CIA Deputy Director Irene Kennedy (Lathan). She wants him for a black ops team called Orion, because “he tests off the chart” for what they need.
Without wishing to use this site’s favourite I-word, what follows could be predicted by just about anyone, even someone who’s never seen this kind of movie before (or any kind of revenge flick). Mitch is revealed to have authority issues, and he clashes with his trainer/handler Stan Hurley (Keaton), while also getting on the nerves of the rest of his team, and in particular, those of Victor (Adkins), his main rival for the position of Alpha Male. But Irene keeps on vouching for him, even when Mitch makes it clear he’s not a team player, and even when Stan correctly deduces that he’s driven by revenge and not by any patriotic duty (which is apparently preferable, as revenge is regarded as something that gets in the way of being a fully competent operative). Sent on the trail of some missing weapons grade plutonium that may or may not be about to fall into the hands of a trio of Iranian hardliners, Mitch disobeys orders on a mission in Istanbul, but is fortunate enough to retrieve vital information in the process.
This sets the pattern for the rest of the movie, as Stan tries to focus Mitch’s energies in the right direction, while Mitch continues acting impulsively and without the slightest idea of what he’s going to do next until he makes it up on the spot. He’s kind of an anti-hero, using the resources of the CIA to wage his own war on terror, while being told that his approach and attitude isn’t the best. This leads to a fair bit of confusion on the script’s part, as Irene and Stan (mostly Stan) keep telling him that his motives are wrong. But without them, Mitch wouldn’t have the skill set that he has, and he wouldn’t “test off the chart”. Apparently, he’s a natural, the kind of operative that the CIA prays comes along every so often, but at the same time they want to reign him in and make him fit their approach and attitude. And they wonder why it doesn’t work…
In the end, the movie can’t help but try and have its cake and eat it, as Mitch swings into action single-handedly at every turn, ignoring Stan’s orders and advice, and getting by on sheer exuberance and luck. O’Brien gives an intense performance as Mitch, but aside from a growing respect for Stan that fits the standard template for this kind of movie, there’s no character arc as such because he goes from delighted fiancé to revenge-fuelled assassin in the space of those eighteen months we never get to see. What we’re left with is a dour, singularly remote character that the viewer can’t connect with, and whose only emotional trait is anger. Other than that, Mitch is pretty much a stiff with a variety of weapons. As his mentor, Keaton continues a run of performances that prove he’s an actor who can make more out of a character than is on the page, and whose work ethic is almost second to none. Whenever he’s on screen, the movie picks up, and his energy helps carry the movie forward when at times it’s in danger of stalling.
Elsewhere, Lathan’s CIA Deputy Director remains a bland interpretation of an even blander role, while Negar grabs some of the limelight as an Iranian agent who’s part of the team when they get to Rome. The main villain is a renegade Orion operative called Ghost (Kitsch) who has his own revenge issues, but like a lot of self-absorbed bad guys he’s prone to too much monologuing and being lenient when it’s absolutely not in his best interest. The script’s nuclear bomb McGuffin feels old hat, and it all leads to an unfortunate bout of ruinous CGI involving the US Navy’s Sixth Fleet that requires such a major suspension of disbelief that only unintentional laughter can be regarded as the correct response to it. Trying to keep all this feeling fresh and exciting, but being undermined by the tired scenarios on display, Cuesta – whose pedigree includes stints on TV’s Six Feet Under, Dexter and Homeland – does what he can, and there are flashes of what he could have achieved, but they’re not enough to lift the material out of its self-imposed doldrums. By the end of the movie, you’ll either be optimistically looking forward to another outing for Mitch and his authority issues, or you might be agreeing with Tina Turner and saying, “We don’t need another hero”.
Rating: 5/10 – a broad spectrum action thriller that’s at least professionally made, American Assassin is the result of the work of four screenwriters (including Edward Zwick when he was attached to direct as well) who, between them, couldn’t make the material memorable enough; formulaic and predictable at every turn, it’s not a bad movie per se, just one that doesn’t have the necessary impact to help it rise above the bar set by the likes of James Bond or Jason Bourne.
Cast: Alice Lowe, Jo Hartley, Kayvan Novak, Kate Dickie, Dan Renton Skinner, Tom Davis, Mike Wozniak, Tom Meeten, Gemma Whelan
In Alice Lowe’s feature debut as writer/director, the premise is simple: a pregnant woman is convinced her unborn foetus is compelling her to kill the people she holds responsible for the death of her partner. Angry and upset at being alone, Ruth (Lowe) targets each individual – inappropriate pet shop owner Mr Zabek (Skinner), repulsive Seventies DJ Dan (Davis), lonely corporate lawyer Ella (Dickie), anonymous victim Zac (Meeten), apologetic rock climbing guide Tom (Novak), fitness fanatic Len (Whelan) – at the behest of her unborn child, and in the process finds being a mother-to-be more daunting (obviously) than she’d ever expected.
Made over a two week period while Lowe was actually pregnant, Prevenge is a movie that covers a lot of ground in its relatively short running time, and which isn’t just a standard revenge thriller tricked out with gory set pieces. It’s also a pitch black comedy, an uncompromising examination of an emotionally disturbed pregnant woman, and a mordaunt exercise in extreme pre-natal depression. Lowe has created a complex, flawed-yet-undeniably decent anti-heroine whose particular psychosis is both alarming and understandable at the same time. She has conversations with her unborn child that push the envelope of maternal paranoia. While most expectant mothers will worry that there might be something wrong with their baby, it’s safe to assume that they won’t be worried about the foetus talking to them and advocating a string of murders.
Throughout, Ruth is worried that her baby might not be normal. She misses a scan just in case it reveals something abnormal, an issue that Ruth’s midwife (Hartley) dismisses with the practised ease of someone who’s heard it all before. But of course, Ruth knows better. Cajoled and persuaded by the baby growing inside her to become a serial killer, Ruth knows that her baby is abnormal; she just doesn’t want anyone to know how much. When the midwife makes mention of letting Social Services know that Ruth is struggling with the pregnancy, Ruth is adamant that she doesn’t want them involved, that she doesn’t want her baby taken away from her. Despite her mixed feelings, Ruth’s maternal instinct to protect her offspring is as deep-rooted and profound as any other mother’s.
Lowe makes Ruth’s ambivalence a credible reaction to the idea that she’s being urged to revenge by a foetus, a “belief” that is clearly the result of a mental break that Ruth has experienced in the wake of her partner’s death. Lowe is also clever enough to avoid trying to introduce any notion of ambiguity to this fractured relationship – Ruth is mentally ill, and though is a movie with very definite horror overtones, any potential supernatural reason for the foetus’ speaking to her is never allowed any credence. Ruth is maddened by grief, then, and it’s this reason that provides her with both a defined character arc, and the necessary sympathy to help audiences identify with her.
In terms of Ruth’s victims, Lowe is also clever enough to make it a game of two halves. Mr Zabek, DJ Dan, and Ella are all horrible people in their own right. Mr Zabek is the slimy high priest of sexual innuendo, while DJ Dan is so crass and boorish that he can throw up into his Seventies afro wig and then think nothing of kissing Ruth full on the lips. Ella is unfeeling, dismissive of others, and generally insensitive. Each of them are so awful that when Ruth kills them the temptation is to cheer, and urge her on to the next victim. But when she arrives at Zac’s home – and makes Ruth the cuckoo in the nest, a neat twist on her own situation – Lowe finds that Zac’s flatmate, Josh (Wozniak), is a genuinely nice man, something she wasn’t expecting. His subsequent demise doesn’t sit well with Ruth, despite her baby’s withering disregard for both him and Ruth’s feelings.
From there on, Ruth’s commitment to avenging her partner’s death begins to falter. Her first contact with Tom (prior to despatching Zac) didn’t go the way she’d planned, and her next attempt fails also, so she moves on to Len, who puts up a fight (complete with boxing gloves). Her midwife, realising something is wrong, admonishes Ruth and tells her it’s got to stop. Returning to Tom again, Ruth finds his partner is expecting a child also, and her maternal instinct kicks in for this other mother-to-be: how fair would it be for Tom’s partner to be in the same situation as Ruth? The foetus is unconcerned, but before Ruth can go through with anything, her waters break and her whole world changes. Some viewers may think that this “second half” isn’t as effective as the gore and humour-soaked “first half”, but Lowe isn’t interested in simply repeating the early formula, and instead adds layers to both Ruth’s predicament and the movie’s overall sense of bitter regret.
But this is a comedy as well as a sustained and impressive look at pre-natal paranoia and psychosis. Lowe is an accomplished writer of naturalistic dialogue, but she’s also a winner when it comes to pithy one-liners (of anchovies: “They look like the eyelids of old men that have died”), and isn’t afraid to include some really bad puns, such as, “It’s a cutthroat world, you know”, after slitting Ella’s throat. There’s the aforementioned sexual innuendo of Mr Zabek (which often settles for the single entendre), and some of DJ Dan’s observations (“You’re not Olivia Newton-John. You’re more like Elton John”) are so cruelly insulting that you can’t help laughing at them, even though you shouldn’t. And Ruth herself, in her disjointed, socially awkward way, says things that only she could (mostly) get away with. It’s through the dialogue that Lowe builds her characters, fleshing them out and giving the cast much more to work with than it seems at first.
When it comes to the gore, the movie doesn’t hold back, with each death played out in the style of an Eighties British horror, and there’s a mundanity to each one that adds to the overall effectiveness (Ruth’s weapon of choice is a carving knife). Again, Lowe isn’t afraid to show how awful each murder is, nor how it affects Ruth the longer she continues. In the lead role, Lowe gives a terrific performance, one that’s brimming with quiet verve and sincerity, and is thoughtful and brave. When she applies make up for Halloween and takes to the streets, it’s easy to see just how disturbed she is thanks to the design she’s created (even though you can see it just as well by the look in Ruth’s eyes). Ruth is a wonderful creation, and Lowe does her justice, never striking a false note, and staying true to the character throughout. The movie could almost be a one-woman show, were it not for a battery of equally commendable performances from the likes of Hartley and Dickie, and if the men – for the most part – come off as douchebags and unreliable pricks, then it’s a small price to pay when a movie is this good and this rewarding.
Rating: 8/10 – a movie about a damaged soul that comes complete with plenty of heart and soul amidst all the carnage, Prevenge is uncompromising, poignant and hilarious, and a major feather in Lowe’s cap; marred only by some poor lighting choices made on too many occasions, and a final scene that goes against everything that’s gone before, it’s a movie that’s full of surprises and confidently assembled by its very talented writer/director/star.
Cast: Noel Clarke, Arnold Oceng, Jason Maza, Cornell John, Shanika Warren-Markland, Tonia Sotiropoulou, Leeshon Alexander, Lashana Lynch, David Ajala, Nick Nevern, Jack McMullen, Michael “Stormzy” Omari, Daniel Anthony, Adjoa Andoh, Red Madrell
And this year’s award for worst second sequel of a British movie goes to…
It’s a category you’re not likely to see at the BAFTAs this year (or any year for that matter), but if you did then Brotherhood would be the odds-on, hands-down winner. A broad mix of revenge drama, juvenile comedy, awkward social commentary, and baffling thriller, Noel Clarke’s conclusion to The Hood Trilogy – following Kidulthood (2006) and Adulthood (2008) – sees him return to the character of Sam Peel and provide fans of the previous entries with a disjointed, exploitation-heavy, credibility-free movie that is let down by Clarke most of all.
Which is a huge shame, as Clarke has consistently fought to make British movies on his own terms and for British audiences first and foremost. When Kidulthood was released, it was the kind of movie that audiences were unfamiliar with. Its gritty, though exaggerated look at a South London teenage sub-culture, was challenging, and a bold statement of intent from Clarke himself, who wrote the script. As well as Clarke, it contained roles for the likes of Adam Deacon, Nicholas Hoult and Rafe Spall, and grabbed enough attention that it spawned a slew of similar, like-minded movies over the next few years. Two years later, Adulthood cemented Clarke’s reputation as an indie movie maker, retaining the original’s gritty, challenging demeanour while exploring themes of revenge and personal responsibility that attempted to add depth to the events of the movie.
The same themes are explored even further in Brotherhood, but as with most second sequels, the law of diminishing returns hits hard, and sees Clarke struggle to piece together a storyline that makes any sense. Ten years on from the events seen in Kidulthood, Sam is holding down four jobs in his efforts to keep his family – partner Kayla (Warren-Markland), and their two young children – together, but it means he doesn’t see as much of them as he needs to. Meanwhile, his younger brother, Royston (Anthony), an up-and-coming singer, is shot and wounded at a gig; the gunman leaves a note “For Sam Peel”.
When Sam learns of the note through one of Royston’s friends, Henry (Oceng), it leads him to an East End gangster called Daley (Maza). Daley explains that Sam, and his family, has been targeted for “past sins”, sins that can be erased if he takes a job working for him. Sam refuses, and is then confronted by Curtis (John), the uncle of Trife, a young man Sam killed ten years before. He wants revenge, and wants Sam to know what it’s like to have nothing. Matters are made worse when a stupid mistake on Sam’s part causes Kayla to leave with the children, and a sudden death pushes Sam over the edge and seeking his own revenge on both Curtis and Daley.
Brotherhood is a mess, both in terms of its plot and storyline, and its overall approach. Clarke can’t seem to connect things in an organic, natural manner, and there are too many scenes that bump up against each other like strangers. Whether or not this was intended from the start – and it’s unlikely that it was – what it means for the movie as a whole is it becomes a succession of unlikely situations and confrontations connected by the thinnest of motivations or a variety of ill-considered choices. Chief among these is the note left for Sam by Royston’s assailant: Henry takes the note home, leaves it there for a day or two (the movie’s timeline is hazy at the best of times), runs into Sam by accident, and only then tells him about it. It’s one of several occasions when the movie prompts disbelief in the viewer, and makes you wonder if Clarke was in too much of a rush to get the movie made, and was forced to cut several corners in the process.
If so, it still doesn’t excuse just how clumsily the plot has been assembled, or how badly it’s been executed. Clarke the writer and Clarke the director often seem at odds with each other, offering contradictions in scene after scene and never meshing together in a way that allows the tortured narrative to make any sense. Early on, Sam catches on that one of Daley’s gang is following him. Sam attacks him, beating him to the ground and injuring his leg, but in the very next minute, Hugs (Alexander), Daley’s enforcer, arrives on the scene and Sam immediately backs down and behaves like a scared child. It’s such an about-face that it’s actually shocking to see Clarke the screenwriter and Clarke the director expose Clarke the actor in such a terrible way, and make what should be a tense, memorable moment one that encourages laughter and further disbelief.
As a result of Clarke’s poorly constructed script, and his equally poor directorial choices, the rest of the cast fare just as badly, and are as poorly served as Clarke himself. Maza gives a mannered performance that’s meant to be menacing, but he’s about as scary as the villain in a Scooby-Doo! movie. John, who’s appeared in all three movies, plays the vengeful Curtis with all the subtlety of a tank crushing roses, while Oceng is the comic relief whose performance is surprisingly enjoyable, but whose character, and his involvement, is at odds with the tone of the rest of the movie.
But worst of all is the callous streak of misogyny that runs throughout the movie, with several scenes that feature “European prostitutes” being paraded completely naked or wearing the kind of lingerie that makes no difference. Their inclusion provides a sour taste that the movie never overcomes (or makes any apology for), and Clarke makes sure that he has sex scenes with Warren-Markland and Sotiropoulou that fail to add to the plot or advance it in any way. The movie seems happier when it’s being violent, and there’s a particularly nasty – and yet, cathartic – scene where Sam takes a nail gun to one of Daley’s goons. But it doesn’t rescue the movie from the tonal and narrative disasters it propagates throughout its running time, and despite everyone’s best efforts, Brotherhood proves to be an unfortunate conclusion to a saga that has never really escaped its rough and ready appearance, or its raw, ill-defined acting.
Rating: 3/10 – low-budget, British “meh”; an unfortunate conclusion to a trilogy of movies that have always been well regarded (though against the odds), Brotherhood is unlikely to be thought of in the same way as either of its predecessors, and is let down by an amateurish sheen that is the responsibility of all concerned, and not just its overstretched writer/director/actor.
Cast: Isabelle Huppert, Laurent Lafitte, Anne Consigny, Charles Berling, Virginie Efira, Judith Magre, Christian Berkel, Jonas Bloquet, Alice Isaaz, Vimala Pons, Raphaël Lenglet, Arthur Mazet, Lucas Prisor
“She” of the title is Michèle Leblanc (Huppert). Michèle is divorced – from Richard (Berling) – has one adult son, Vincent (Bloquet), runs a video games company with her best friend, Anna (Consigny), is having an affair with Anna’s husband, Robert (Beckel), and lives alone with her cat. She is independent, self-assured, and a little reserved around others. And then, one day, a masked intruder breaks into her home and rapes her. But Michèle’s response to this isn’t typical. She cleans up the mess made during the attack, and carries on with her life as if – outwardly at least – nothing has happened.
Inwardly, though, Michèle begins to wonder if her attacker is someone she knows. At first she thinks it might be one of the designers at the company, some of whom don’t like her for her abrasive, no-nonsense attitude. She buys some pepper spray, and a small axe that she takes to sleeping with. But all the while she tells no one what’s happened, not even her mother, Iréne (Magre). She and her mother, though, have other issues. Iréne wants Michèle to visit her father, who is prison for mass murder, but Michèle wants nothing to do with him. The murders occurred when she was ten, and afterwards, her father involved her in the aftermath, something she has never forgiven him for.
Because of this, Michèle refuses to involve the police, as it will also stir up memories of the past and she will again be the subject of press attention. When it becomes clear that her attacker isn’t one of her male employees, it seems as if it could be anyone. But when she is attacked again by the same masked intruder, she is able to defend herself and pull off his mask. Her attacker proves to be someone she knows, but again, she doesn’t report it to the police, and she resumes her life, again as if nothing has happened. Instead, she develops a closer relationship with the man, gaining his trust and encouraging him and his sexual desires. Believing her to be something of a kindred spirit, he also believes their relationship will continue, but Michèle has another plan entirely…
It’s entirely likely that, if you’re a feminist, you’re not going to like Elle. It’s main character is raped, but doesn’t report it; in fact, she gets on with her life as if nothing has happened. And later, when she knows the identity of her attacker, she begins a complicit relationship with him where his raping her gives him sexual satisfaction (while she doesn’t even get any masochistic pleasure out of it). And when she does admit to her friends that she’s been raped, she’s so matter-of-fact about it, and so dismissive of their concerns, she might as well not have told them for all the difference it makes. In short, she’s not reacting in the way that a woman who’s been raped should react; she’s not behaving in the way that she should behave.
At Cannes last year, where the movie was first shown, Elle was branded a “rape comedy”, an invidious term that was trying to be clever but which does have some relation to Elle’s complex, unflinching narrative. While the rape itself is sufficiently horrible (even when it’s only heard at the movie’s beginning, it’s still disturbing), it’s not the whole movie. As we begin to learn more about Michèle, humour begins to creep into the material, and largely from the way in which she interacts with her family and friends and colleagues. She’s caustic when she feels it’s necessary, and this leads to us smiling at her behaviour, and appreciating her all the more. She’s not letting being raped define her, or hold any power over her; and when she suspects one of her staff, she takes charge and does her best to find out who it could be. Like it or not, Michèle is being proactive, but in a way that we don’t often see in movies, even in so-called rape-revenge flicks.
Of course, there’s a strong psychological element to all this that drives the movie forward, with Michèle’s past informing and determining her present, and the feelings that she’s not quite in touch with. Part of the strength of the movie is the way in which it refuses to confirm or deny just what Michèle is doing, or how she’s feeling. It’s left to the viewer to decide for themselves what her mindset is – but be warned, for the most part you’re likely to get it wrong. This is also due to an absolutely magnificent performance by Huppert that is a masterpiece in delicate emotional shading. Verhoeven has praised Huppert for bringing things to the character of Michèle that he would never have thought of, and the actress – as ever – is fearless in the role, and endlessly inventive. It’s an hypnotic portrayal, fascinating and complex, and she doesn’t miss one single emotional beat throughout the entire movie. If there really is such a thing as “being true to the character”, then Huppert achieves that, and does it with consummate skill.
But while Huppert gives a stunning, tour-de-force performance, she’s matched in directorial terms by Verhoeven, here making what many regard as his best movie. (Away from his fantasy and sci-fi movies they’re right; otherwise an equal number of people will say that RoboCop (1987) is his best movie.) The Dutch director effortlessly weaves together the main storyline and its various subplots with the same consummate skill that Huppert brings to the role of Michèle. Thanks to Verhoeven’s sureness of touch, Elle remains endlessly provocative as a psychological drama, and equally riveting as a daring thriller. He also treads a fine line between the aforesaid drama and the movie’s humour, expertly blending the two elements into an unforgettable whole. As the story unfolds, and Michèle’s actions become clearer, the veteran director still manages to use the material at hand to wrongfoot the audience and keep them guessing – a neat trick in this day and age of Internet transparency.
There will be some who will write this off as just another revenge movie, but that isn’t the movie’s raison d’etre. Instead it’s about a woman taking a courageous and difficult route to self-empowerment; and she does it all on her own terms. This is to be applauded, whatever the circumstances, and in the hands of the masterful Huppert and the on-form Verhoeven, Elle paints a vivid portrait of how one woman strives for and maintains her own unique place in both a grossly misogynist workplace, and in the wider world at large. It’s often uncomfortable to watch – after Michèle is raped she has a bath, and blood rises to the water line, a terrible indication of just how violent the attack was – and it offers no easy answers, either in terms of whether or not Michèle’s reaction to being raped is the right one (whatever that is), or whether her search for her attacker is motivated by revenge or curiosity or a mixture of both. It’s a movie that is likely to provoke intense debate for some time to come, but even if it does, one thing is for sure: this is a movie that won’t be forgotten too easily by anyone who sees it.
Rating: 9/10 – a superb thriller unjustly snubbed by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences as an entry for the Best Foreign Language Film at this year’s Oscars, Elle is a brilliant, elaborate movie that doesn’t pull any of its punches, and makes a virtue out of being uncompromising; with a daring, exceptional performance by Huppert, and Verhoeven fully in command of the material, the movie deserves every bit of praise it’s received so far, and should be on many people’s Top 10 lists come the end of the year.
Akemi (Kaji) is the head of the notorious Tachibana gang. During an attack on a rival gang, she kills the gang’s leader and inadvertently injures his sister. A spell in prison sees Akemi bond with five of her fellow inmates and they all have part of a larger dragon tattoo inked onto their backs. Three years later, and Akemi is head of the Tachibana clan again but she has determined to go straight. This doesn’t sit well with some of her followers, particularly Tatsu (Ôtsuji), who plots with a rival yakuza gang leader, Dobashi (Abe), to have her overthrown. Tatsu ensures that two of the Tachibana clan are killed by Dobashi’s men so as to incite war between the two gangs, but Akemi is forebearing and doesn’t rise to the bait.
Shortly after, Dobashi is approached by a blind woman, Aiko (Tokuda), who offers him her services as a swordswoman. Impressed by her skill with a blade, Dobashi accepts. But before he can devise the next stage of his plot against Akemi, one of her friends from prison is found murdered, and with her tattoo removed from her back. A note attached to the body promises further violence and makes it clear that Akemi is the ultimate target. Matters between the two gangs escalate, including the murder of Akemi’s uncle (Katô) and the kidnapping of his daughter, Chie (Takagi). With the aid of a wandering fighter-for-hire called Tani (Satô), Akemi eventually decides to face Dobashi head on, but finds herself facing the blind woman instead.
Blind Woman’s Curse is a weird concoction, combining as it does a vengeful blind woman, warring yakuza gangs, an eye-rolling, wild-haired hunchback, an opium den full of topless female addicts, gory violence, references to William Tell, a curse involving a black cat, an underwater torture sequence, a hint of the supernatural, and a third gang leader who wears a bowler hat and a loose, buttock-revealing red loincloth. There’s rarely a dull moment, or a shot that doesn’t make the viewer sit up and take notice, but even with all this going on, there’s a nagging feeling that all these elements don’t quite add up to a satisfying whole. As the movie progresses, the various plot strands sometimes tie themselves up in so many knots that they need the aid of a samurai blade to solve things. By the time Tani and Chie escape the underwater torture devised for them by Dobashi, and do so miraculously and without explanation, it’s clear that the movie – scripted by director Ishii with Chûsei Sone – is in a hurry to reach a conclusion, and if the movie’s internal logic needs to be sacrificed, then so be it.
And yet, the bizarre combination of elements does work for the most part, and the movie does have its fair share of entertaining set-pieces – the opening slow-motion, rain-soaked battle between Akemi’s men and a rival gang is a good example. It’s all shot with a mix of painterly formality and tense immediacy by Shigeru Kitaizumi, and for once, the editing (by Osamu Inoue) doesn’t hamper the flow and rhythm of the movie in the way that a lot of similar Japanese movies of this ilk are affected. Ishii, better known for the ten-movie Abashiri Prison series, brings out the usual themes of honour and regret, and makes Akemi a more solemn character than might be expected. He also keeps any humour to a minimum, choosing instead to focus on the theme of revenge. It all adds up to a better-than-average outing within the genre, and well worth seeking out.
Rating: 7/10 – Ishii’s take on yakuza versus yakuza is an intense, often thrilling example of Japanese movie making gone berserk; Blind Woman’s Curse throws in everything but the kitchen sink, and in the process proves largely rewarding, even if it does go off at a tangent too many times for its own good.
Cast: Kate Winslet, Judy Davis, Liam Hemsworth, Hugo Weaving, Sarah Snook, Kerry Fox, Shane Bourne, Alison Whyte, Caroline Goodall, James Mackay, Sacha Horler, Gyton Grantley, Julia Blake, Barry Otto, Rory Potter
It’s Australia, and it’s 1951. The tiny rural town of Dungatar sees the return of Myrtle “Tilly” Dunnage (Winslet) after having been sent away as a child twenty-five years before for the suspected murder of Stewart Pettyman (Potter), the son of town councillor Evan Pettyman (Bourne). She’s back for two reasons: to look after her mother, Molly (Davis), who is suffering from dementia, and to discover the truth about what happened twenty-five years ago (Tilly doesn’t remember). The townsfolk aren’t exactly pleased to see her, with only Sergeant Farrat (Weaving) treating her fairly. Unconcerned, Tilly goes about caring for her mother, while also stirring things up around town, appearing in sexy, haute couture gowns and turning the heads of all the eligible and not-so-eligible men, and in particular, Teddy McSwiney (Hemsworth).
With the townsfolk treating her with suspicion and disrespect, she lets them know that she can make any of them bespoke dresses or outfits. Her first customer is young bride-to-be Gertrude Pratt (Snook). Going against her mother’s wishes, Gertrude is over the moon with the dress Tilly makes for her, and it’s not long before most of the women in town have followed suit. Pettyman employs the services of another dressmaker, Una Pleasance (Horler), but her efforts aren’t anywhere near as successful. Meanwhile, Tilly begins a tentative relationship with Teddy, while her mother’s memory improves, and her investigation into what happened to Stewart Pettyman starts to gather momentum.
Along the way, town secrets are exposed, simmering animosities boil over, and Tilly’s skills as a dressmaker serve as a way of exacting revenge for the way she was treated as a child. Answers are revealed, lives are changed irrevocably, a tragedy ensues, and Dungatar’s entry into a local Eisteddfod affords Tilly the opportunity to carry out her ultimate revenge.
An adaptation of the novel by Rosalie Ham, The Dressmaker is a mixed bag indeed. Combining drama, comedy and romance, and mashing them all together (sometimes in the same scene), it’s a movie that is likely to divide audiences into two camps: those who prefer to have their revenge dramas played entirely straight throughout, and those who prefer to have their comedies unspoiled by dramatic stretches that restrict the belly laughs found elsewhere. Your tolerance for this mash-up will depend very much on going with the movie’s very particular flow, as Moorhouse and her co-screenwriter, husband P.J. Hogan, have embraced both the jaundiced drama and the wicked comedy inherent in Ham’s novel.
The result is a movie that’s tonally uneven and switches focus from comedy to drama and back again with unrestrained abandon. Moorhouse concentrates on the humour during the first hour, and gifts Davis with some great lines, some of them throwaways that make you wish the actress had made more comedies before this. When Tilly tells Gertrude the cost of the dress she wants made, Gertrude remarks that the cost is “outrageous”. Quick as a flash, Molly says, “So’s your bum.” Davis’ timing is simply brilliant. There are other moments that are equally as funny, and the cast can be seen to be enjoying themselves tremendously during these scenes. But all good things must come to an end, and the movie’s second half slowly sheds the comedy in order to concentrate more fully, and with more necessity, on the drama.
But as well as shedding the humour, the script also sheds the shading and carefully orchestrated character beats, and leaves the viewer overwhelmed by increasing levels of melodrama. As well as the tragedy already alluded to, there is madness, murder, and extended bouts of retribution. There’s so much in fact, that Moorhouse struggles to find a way of making it all feel organic, with most scenes feeling forced by the need for resolution of the various subplots involving the townsfolk. By the time Tilly leaves Dungatar behind, the viewer may well be heaving a sigh of relief before laughing in gratitude at her final line of dialogue.
Thankfully, the movie’s flaws are more than compensated for by the performances. Davis steals the movie as the raddled, alcoholic, dementia-suffering Molly. It’s possibly the least glamorous role you’re likely to see for some time, but Davis is superb in it, caustic and sharp despite the dementia, and effortlessly dominating the scenes she’s in. Alongside her, Winslet gives another impressive performance, expressing Tilly’s determination and anger at how she was treated as a child, and yet also displaying an uncertainty and a mistrust surrounding her memories of her childhood. There are moments where Winslet is called upon to point up the character’s emotional fragility, and she does so in such an honest way that it’s entirely credible.
In support, Weaving is a delight as the crossdressing Sergeant Farrat, fey on the one hand, sturdy on the other, and a hoot as Rudolph Valentino. Hemsworth does enough to avoid giving an entirely wooden performance, but against Winslet still looks like a complete amateur. Further down the list there are good roles for, and good performances from, the likes of Kerry Fox as the acid-tongued schoolteacher, Bourne as the philandering town councillor, Blake as the ailing wife of the town’s doctor (Otto), Snook as the initially vapid but later viperish Gertrude, and Grantley as Teddy’s brother, Barney, who holds the key to what happened to Stewart Pettyman.
As befits a movie concerned with dressmaking, the costumes, designed by Marion Boyce and Margot Wilson, are fantastic, beautiful creations that flatter and enhance the female cast they were made for in exactly the way they were meant to flatter and enhance the characters. Winslet gets to show off her curves in a variety of figure hugging outfits, and there’s one scene where the dress she wears is – in terms of the time in which the movie is set – a precursor to the one worn by Anita Ekberg in La Dolce Vita (1960). And the overall look of the movie is like that of a Western, with Tilly “riding” back into town as an avenging angel á la Clint Eastwood in Hang ‘Em High (1968) or Pale Rider (1985). There are other references to other movies, some quite easy to spot, and some more subtly placed, but these don’t detract from the movie at all, but do add to the fun that can be had (in the first hour).
Rating: 7/10 – on balance, The Dressmaker‘s imbalance in terms of its storyline and tone should make this at least an awkward or unfulfilling watch, but somehow it’s a movie where it works more often than it doesn’t; with a standout turn from Davis, ravishing costumes, and a spare visual sense that suits the material, this is one of those movies where it’s unlikely for two different viewers to come to a consensus – but strangely, that’s one of its strengths.
Cast: John Travolta, Christopher Meloni, Amanda Schull, Sam Trammell, Patrick St. Esprit, Rebecca De Mornay, Asante Jones, Paul Sloan, Luis Da Silva Jr, Robert Forte Shannon III, James Logan
You’re an ex-Black Ops veteran turned law-abiding car engineer about to work for Honda (probably). You come home from a job interview and meet up with your wife who’s working on an independent review of a proposed water pipeline that’s being backed by the state governor. Both of you are approached by a shady looking guy who wants help paying his parking ticket. You warn him off but he gets offended. The next thing you know, you’ve been hit over the head and are on the floor, then the shady looking guy pulls out a gun and shoots your wife. She dies instantly. Thanks to your knowledge of cars, you recognise the sound of the car engine the shady looking guy and his two accomplices drive off in. Later, at the police station, the detectives assigned to your wife’s murder are sympathetic and helpful. Even later, those same detectives tell you they’ve got someone who may have been involved. At a line-up, you pick out the shady looking guy thanks to the distinctive fly tattoo he has near his right eye. And right then and there, the rug gets pulled out from under you: the detectives don’t have enough evidence to arrest him. The shady looking guy goes free. Now what do you do?
Well, if you’re John Travolta, and the movie you’re starring in is called I Am Wrath, then you tool up and go after the man who killed your wife, and his two accomplices. But what is it that prompts you to do this? Is it a profound sense of justice needing to be done? Is it anger and a need for revenge? Is it because you’re fed up with leading a “normal” life and you want to get back to killing bad guys? Or is it because a Bible the priest at your wife’s funeral gave you, lands open at a particular place (Jeremiah 6:11 to be precise) after you’ve thrown it to the floor? And is it because the phrase “But I am full of the wrath of the LORD, and I cannot hold it in” is featured there, and it seems like God’s giving you permission to go out and kill some people? Well, praise the Lord. Seems he doesn’t mind people committing murder after all.
This is exactly how Travolta’s character, called Stanley Hill (and since when did Travolta ever look like a Stanley?), comes to make the momentous decision to take the law into his own hands and seek vengeance on shady looking guy and his pals. If you’re in any doubt as to how good or bad this movie is at this point, then rest assured the scene with the Bible is as far from cinematic gold as it’s possible to get. Travolta hurls the good book to the floor. It lands cover side down and open at the aforementioned passage. Travolta looks over at it. He gets up, a look of consternation on his face. As he approaches the Bible he begins to look as if he already knows what he’s going to read when he picks it up. And once he does, there’s no doubt: it’s a sign! And he knew it was a sign! Stanley has been given a sign from God (even though he’s not a praying man)! Say Hallelujah everyone!
Unfortunately for I Am Wrath, any further religious overtones or connotations are abandoned with undue haste. Save an artless confessional scene much later on, the script and direction steer well clear of any religious undertones and concentrate on Travolta – aided by Meloni as his pal from their Black Ops days – and his mission to avenge his wife’s death. Along the way he discovers a conspiracy that involves the police, a local crime lord, and – shock! horror! – the state governor. What could have been an intriguing, finely balanced exercise in the nature of faith versus morality, instead becomes yet another tired actioner where one man and his friend take on a whole bunch of bad guys, break every law going in the process, and are cheered as heroes for “taking out the trash” (quite literally at one point).
First optioned as a vehicle for Nicolas Cage back in 2012, and with William Friedkin set to direct, the project derailed six months later. Watching this finished result, it’s hard not to see why, as it’s difficult to tell if Paul Sloan’s script – he also plays crime lord Lemi – is the same now as it was then, free from any revisions or amendments. It’s a screenplay that signposts everything so far in advance, that even the most naïve or inexperienced of viewers would have no trouble predicting each step or move made by the characters before they happen. From Travolta reassuring his daughter (Schull) that the drive-by shooting that nearly killed her will be the only time she’s put in danger (yeah, right!), to the police (Trammell, Jones) being in the pocket of both the crime lord and the governor, to the epilogue that apparently sees Travolta at the mercy of a “surprise” (not really) gunman, I Am Wrath diligently avoids doing anything that might be construed as original or different.
Those with fond memories of The Blob (1988), or The Mask (1994), might be encouraged by the presence of Chuck Russell in the director’s chair, but any hopes that the fourteen year hiatus since The Scorpion King (2002) has left him pumped and raring to go should be abandoned from the start. It’s clear that Russell is just a director for hire, and his bland, uninspired approach to the material reflects this idea all too well. He’s unable to motivate his cast either, with Travolta going through the motions, Meloni playing the sidekick with a (much needed) sense of humour, Schull reduced to creating a character out of whatever reaction she’s required to have from scene to scene, St. Esprit oozing venom like it’s expected of him whatever the circumstances, Trammell and Jones playing detectives who don’t have an ounce of depth between them, and Sloan snarling away at everyone in lieu of providing a proper characterisation. It’s all as bad as it looks, dispiriting too, and without even a sense of its own absurdity to redeem matters.
Rating: 3/10 – another nail in the coffin of Travolta’s career, I Am Wrath is disjointed, mediocre, passionless, and calamitous in equal measure, with lacklustre direction, a weak script, perfunctory performances, and woeful continuity (look for Travolta’s disappearing/reappearing forehead contusions); when movies look and sound this stale, you have to wonder what could possibly have motivated everyone to have taken part, the answer to which would probably make for a better movie than this one could ever be.
Cast: Jing Wu, Nan Yu, Scott Adkins, Dahong Ni, Xiao Zhou, Qiang Ma, Zhaoqi Shi, Zibin Fang, Sen Wang, Tengyuan Liu, Yongda Zhang, Xiaolong Zhuang, Yi Zhao, Zi Liang
Action movies, when executed properly, can provide some of the most exhilarating movie moments it’s possible to experience. From John McClane’s exhortation to “take this under advisement, jerkweed” before dumping a chair load of C4 down a lift shaft in Die Hard (1988), to the spectacular destruction of the White House in Independence Day (1996), and the lobby shootout in The Matrix (1999), the movies have given us the kind of goosebump-inducing, jaw-dropping moments that make us want to go back to them time and again, so impressive are they.
But the flipside of this is the number of action movies that fail to deliver even the barest hint of one of these moments. There’s more of them, of course, and they often fall back on tried and trusted elements: running gunfire that never hits anyone, pyrotechnics rather than proper explosions, poorly orchestrated hand-to-hand combat (the kind of heavily edited sequences that end up looking as if they’ve had frames cut here and there), a scenario that sees one lone hero fend off an army of soldiers/mercenaries/thugs, a sneering villain who meets a nasty end (if the script is clever enough), a romantic interest who may or may not be abducted by the sneering villain, and/or a daring rescue mission that means certain death if anyone attempts it – usually against a heavily fortified hideout. (There are plenty of other, similar elements, but you get the general idea.)
It’s easy to take some comfort from all this familiarity; after all, action movies are often the cinematic equivalent of socially sanctioned vigilantism, even if there’s a police officer involved (a la Dirty Harry Callahan). After policemen, action movies like to employ members of the military as their protagonists, ex-soldiers home on leave in their troubled hometown, or maverick individuals who have trouble following orders. Again, it’s comforting; these characters know how to handle themselves, they know how to comfortably beat up a minor bad guy (and several of his buddies), and their grit and detemination will allow them to overcome all kinds of injuries and take down the sneering villain.
All of which makes watching Wolf Warrior such a pleasant, though unremarkable experience. Many of the basic action movie tropes are here, from Jing Wu’s stoic yet romantically cocky sniper Leng Feng, to the top brass (Yu, Zhou) forced to watch events unfold from a command room, and the leader of a group of mercenaries (Adkins) whose resourcefulness proves no match for the hero (and who is reduced to, yes, sneering). Leng also overcomes several injuries sustained throughout the movie, including a gunshot wound to the left shoulder that he promptly ignores. It’s all entirely predictable stuff, competently shot and edited, but offering little in the way of reward for the viewer.
It’s comforting, though, because this is a Chinese action movie, but it has the look and feel of an American low budget action movie but with a few extra dollars spent on it. Its basic plot – sniper kills drug dealer, drug dealer’s brother hires mercenaries to kill sniper – is very basic indeed, but the screenplay (by Wu and three others) wanders away from it so often and so consistently, the average viewer could be forgiven for thinking the basic plot, if the makers had stuck to it exclusively, would have led to the movie lasting maybe fifty minutes tops. And there are several narrative decisions and developments that imply the script was made up as the production progressed, from the inclusion of a scene where Leng and his fellow wolf warriors (they’re an elite Chinese army outfit) fend off a pack of badly CGI-rendered wolves, to the idea that trying to kill Feng would best be achieved while he’s on manoeuvres and surrounded by dozens of fellow soldiers (the mercenaries are only five in number).
The mix of action movie tropes and Chinese movie making sensibilities leads to Wolf Warrior having its fair share of comedy moments too. Wu can’t resist making Leng the kind of chirpy, up for a laugh character who would usually end up as cannon fodder at some point in other action movies, and while he can be serious when required, it’s a strange sight to see him holding back on grinning when Leng steps on a mine. He also spends as much time as possible flirting with his superior (Nan Yu), which of course is reciprocated so that they can ride off together at the end (there’s no sunset, but it’s implied). And Leng’s maverick anti-authority tendencies, the subject of an enquiry at the beginning, are soon applauded once the mercenaries are defeated and the drug dealer’s brother is apprehended at the border.
In the director’s chair, Wu proves to be an erratic presence, strangely confident when focusing on scenes that don’t involve any action, and unable to muster any tension or excitement in the scenes that do. Fans of both Wu and Adkins will be waiting for their final showdown with a fair degree of anticipation, but that anticipation is soon dispatched by the fight’s pedestrian moves and awkward wire work (it’s over too quickly as well). Adkins, whose presence in low budget action movies is often the best thing about them, is saddled with some dreadful dialogue, but he still manages to inject his character with enough venom to make his appearance fairly memorable, while Wu and his fellow cast members play up their stereotypical roles in such a way that the words ‘by rote’ spring to mind.
All this makes it sound as if Wolf Warrior is one to avoid, but while it’s certainly not a good movie, it does have a certain charm that redeems it somewhat. The Chinese setting is different, even if the overall mise-en-scene is overly familiar, and there are times when the absurdity of it all is more than capable of bringing a smile to the viewer’s face. Aside from several patriotic nods to the sanctity of the Republic of China, the movie doesn’t take itself too seriously and its running time keeps things lean and (occasionally) mean. Fans of Asian cinema might want to check it out, but if they do, they’d do well to keep their expectations in check.
Rating: 5/10 – the usual vagaries of Chinese movie making – story developments that don’t make complete sense, less than consistent characterisations, narrative inconsistencies, haphazard editing – are all present and correct in Wolf Warrior, but can’t completely derail what is basically an inoffensive, painless viewing experience; the kind of movie that’s perfectly suited to an evening’s viewing with pizza and beers, it’s an action thriller that doesn’t try too hard and should be approached accordingly.
Cast: Jason Bateman, Rebecca Hall, Joel Edgerton, Allison Tolman, Tim Griffin, Busy Philipps, Adam Lazarre-White, Beau Knapp, Wendell Pierce, Mirrah Foulkes, Nash Edgerton, David Denman, Katie Aselton
You move to California from Chicago to start afresh. You try and put behind you the pain of a miscarriage. If you’re the husband you work hard and press for that promotion at work that you really deserve. If you’re the wife you stay at home and redesign the new home you’re living in, because interior design is what you do. And if you’re someone who used to know the husband years ago in high school then you suddenly show up out of the blue and start making things awkward.
Such is the basic set-up of Joel Edgerton’s first foray into feature directing – he also wrote the script – a dark, psychological thriller that asks that old chestnut once more: what do you do when your sins come back to haunt you? The sins in question belong to Simon Callum (Bateman). He’s smart, he’s determined, he’s likeable – in short, he’s too good to be true. And so it proves, with past behaviours having been retained twenty-five years on, and his moral centre somewhat askew. When Simon is approached by a man who claims to know him (but who he doesn’t recognise), his offhand, dismissive attitude is covered by a thin veneer of acceptance. But when a bottle of wine appears on Simon and his wife Robyn’s doorstep, with a note from the same man – whose name is Gordon Mosley (Edgerton) – Simon is made uncomfortable. And this being a thriller, the audience knows that Simon is going to feel a lot more uncomfortable before the movie’s conclusion.
But Edgerton the writer pulls a bit of a switch, and instead of having Gordon (known as Gordo) continue to make Simon’s life uncomfortable, the old high school classmate starts dropping in unexpectedly when Simon isn’t around. Robyn (Hall) is polite, and always invites him in, and even though she’s a little bit unnerved by his presence, she’s also sympathetic towards him, suspecting that his life hasn’t turned out as well as Simon’s has. She lets him set up their new TV, and increasingly seems pleased to see him when he visits. Simon is less than happy with this, and wants nothing more to do with Gordo, even though he can’t specify why.
An invitation to dinner at Gordo’s house doesn’t go well, however, and Simon uses the opportunity to end their renewed relationship. But when an incident at their house sends Simon back to Gordo’s home, he learns something alarming: it isn’t Gordo’s home at all, but belongs to someone he works for. The police become involved, briefly, but without any evidence of a crime committed against the Callums, they’re powerless to intervene. Later, Gordo sends an apology, but Simon is angry, while Robyn is more accepting. This is the beginning of a rift that will grow between them, but right then, Simon’s bid for promotion is going well, and he feels able to control everything that’s happening around them.
Of course, this proves foolish, as Gordo continues to manipulate their lives from afar. Robyn falls pregnant, and later learns some disturbing information about Simon and Gordo’s time in high school. She delves deeper, and what she finds out throws everything into sharp relief, and places her marriage in jeopardy. And all the while, Gordo hovers in the background, a shadow figure that may or may not be seeking justice for wrongs done to him in the past, or a malevolent force of the present, with undisclosed reasons for targetting Simon.
The Gift is a movie that tells its fairly straightforward tale with a small amount of visual flair, and a deeper understanding of untrammelled arrogance. Simon is a creep, something that’s made clear almost from the start, and his character is off-putting and insincere. It makes feeling sorry for him virtually impossible, and as the audience learns more and more about him, and his true colours shine through (however blackly), any potential sympathy is washed away in a tide of unhealthy revelations. Bateman makes the most of Simon’s more despicable justifications for his behaviour, and revels in playing the movie’s real bad guy, but it’s a role that doesn’t allow for much development or depth. And by the end, when the full extent of what’s been going on is revealed, the viewer’s main reaction is likely to be that of ennui rather than satisfaction.
As the harried, semi-stalked Robyn, Hall is her usual intelligent but emotionally removed self, peeling back the layers of Robyn’s past with more dexterity than Bateman is allowed to do, but ultimately falling short of showing us why Robyn is with Simon in the first place (or why she stays with him until events give her no choice). Hall is also let down by the script’s decision to introduce a drug problem for Robyn, and then have it resolved within fifteen minutes. Other subplots are either forgotten or abandoned, with the disappearance of the Callum’s dog, Mr Bojangles – potentially an occurrence that could ensure a great deal of suspense – again resolved far too quickly and far too easily. Likewise the matter of Gordo’s using his boss’s house; viewers may not be surprised by this development, but they might well be surprised at the way in which it’s not used to further the plot and is just abandoned along with so much else that acts as filler for the movie’s first half.
As the drama mutates uneasily into melodrama – Simon assaults Gordo and warns him off, Simon’s promotion suffers a serious setback – the tension increases, but Edgerton the director doesn’t have the experience to really make an audience sit on the edge of their seat or hold their breath in anxious anticipation. Some scenes fall flatter than a pancake, while others maintain a sense of unease that is undone by the use of too little light. There are a handful of dream sequences that seem out of place, but Edgerton integrates them with the narrative more effectively than some other (more experienced) directors would have done, but there’s still the lingering feeling that even though he’s done his homework, the writer/director/star could have done with a little bit of assistance in pulling it all together.
Rating: 6/10 – better than most psychological thrillers (but only just), The Gift should more accurately be called The Gifts, or even Several Gifts Left on a Doorstep; Edgerton does his best to explore notions of guilt and retribution but fails to fully engage with his audience, leading to a movie that promises a lot but only delivers a fraction of what’s needed to make it completely successful.
Cast: Gerard Butler, Aaron Eckhart, Morgan Freeman, Angela Bassett, Alon Moni Aboutboul, Robert Forster, Jackie Earle Haley, Melissa Leo, Radha Mitchell, Sean O’Bryan, Charlotte Riley, Colin Salmon, Waleed Zuaiter
Three years have passed since the events of Olympus Has Fallen. Benjamin Asher (Eckhart) is in his second term of office as the US President, and Mike Banning (Butler) is still his most trusted Secret Service agent. Mike and his wife, Leah (Mitchell), are expecting their first child, and this newly approaching responsibility has prompted Mike to consider resigning from the Secret Service. But before he can make a final decision, the unexpected death of the British Prime Minister means a state funeral and the attendance of around forty heads of state from around the globe, including Asher.
In London, their arrival at the funeral triggers a series of terrorist attacks on some of the various heads of state: a barge explosion on the Thames that kills the French President, bombs going off at either end of Chelsea Bridge where the Japanese Prime Minister is held up in traffic, a further explosion at the Houses of Parliament where the Italian Prime Minister is canoodling with his latest girlfriend, and gunfire outside Buckingham Palace where the German Chancellor is mowed down. A firefight between the Secret Service and heavily armed terrorists ends with Asher, Banning, and Secret Service director Lynne Jacobs (Bassett) escaping by car and then by helicopter. But soon their helicopter is shot down, and Asher and Banning have to find safety before they’re found by the terrorists.
They find temporary sanctuary at an MI6 safe house, along the way learning that the main target of the attacks is Asher himself, and that he’s wanted alive so that he can be executed, live on the Net, for everyone in the world to see. At the safe house they also discover the reason why: two years before, Asher ordered a drone strike on a notorious arms dealer, Aamir Barkawi (Aboutboul). Barkawi survived, as did his son Kamran (Zuaiter), but his daughter was killed in the blast. This is his revenge. Aided by MI6 agent Jacquelin Marshall (Riley), Asher and Banning also discover that someone is aiding Barkawi by providing access to the British security systems.
With the safe house compromised, Asher and Banning escape but they’re ambushed, and Asher is taken. Banning learns the terrorists’ location at the same time the US and British security services do, and together with an SAS unit, he makes a last ditch effort to rescue Asher and put an end to Barkawi’s plan.
Olympus Has Fallen was a surprising success back in 2013, a thick-eared, jingoistic action movie that took its premise seriously and wasn’t afraid of being occasionally brutal and uncompromising (Banning’s interrogation technique). That it was also hugely absurd and as dumb as a bag of nails didn’t seem to hurt its performance at the box office, and it was helped immensely by Butler’s no-nonsense attitude in the role of Banning. Here he’s similarly resolute, only cracking a smile when discussing being a parent, or delivering occasional wisecracks as and when the script requires him to. And the rest of the returning cast all retain that poker-faced sincerity, pulling horrified faces when needed and looking shocked the rest of the time (except for Freeman, who remains passive pretty much throughout).
The narrative is predicatably inane, the kind of illogical mix of coincidence and haphazard plotting that sees perfectly orchestrated attacks occur in a matter of minutes, but which would have had to rely on the alignment of too many variables to ever work in reality (and yes, of course this isn’t reality, it’s escapism, but even escapism can keep a foothold in the real world). There’s a degree of fun to be had in seeing so many iconic London landmarks blown up or strafed by bullets or suffering incidental damage due to car chases, but it’s all strangely unimpressive. The first movie was made for $70m, but this time round it feels as if the budget was lower, and as a result, the CGI employed looks rougher and less convincing. And the action sequences have that speeded-up, over-edited approach that makes everything happen in a blur, and robs them of any impact.
London Has Fallen crams a lot into its relatively short running time, but most of it is to little effect. Once London has “fallen” the movie doesn’t really know what to do, and resorts to having Asher and Banning running around and killing bad guys at every turn. Barkawi is a better villain than Olympus‘s Korean antagonist, his personal vendetta a better reason for events than any political ideology, but his son Kamran is soon reduced from being his sister’s avenger to just another thug spouting anti-Western sentiments. Back home, Leah’s expecting a baby is meant to show that Banning isn’t all dour looks and grim forebodings (at one point he even suggests their baby has a Kevlar mattress), but with no likelihood of any threat being aimed in their direction, and with Banning being practically indestructible, all talk of his getting back safely to be a dad is redundant. And the subplot involving the mole? You’ll know who it is the moment they appear on screen.
The change of location means a further devaluing of the premise, as the series charges around London (and Romania) with all the subtlety of a Pamplona bull, and the city’s iconic landscape gives way to a series of nondescript back alleys and buildings that have all the character of slum dwellings. You can see the movie getting cheaper and cheaper as it progresses, and by the end you could be forgiven for thinking you were watching a DTV movie made entirely in Romania (something with Steven Seagal in it perhaps). And the freshness and creativity of the first movie’s action scenes is abandoned in favour of an abundance of hallway shootouts where Banning seeks cover behind every available nook and cranny, while the bad guys stand out in the open so they can be more easily despatched.
Replacing Frederik Bond in the director’s chair, Najafi makes a half-decent fist of things, but he doesn’t bring anything memorable or enticing to the movie, shooting it in a flat, perfunctory way that keeps things from getting too exciting or involving. But with a script that never tries to be anything more than simplistic or pedestrian, Najafi was unlikely to be able to elevate the material, and the result is a movie that stalls far too often on its way to its inevitably dreary conclusion. Scenes rarely connect one to the next, and the movie’s one attempt at tragedy is ruined by the predictable outcome attached to the phrase, “Yes, I’ll be a godmother”.
If there is to be a third movie – and it’s possible, Asher still has two years in office to see out – then it’s to be hoped that a better story can be found than this one to suit the needs of the series. Butler continues to be the main draw, dishing out punishment with a viciousness that few action heroes indulge in, and he also dishes out a handful of one liners with the appropriate acknowledgment of how corny/risible/absurd they are in the given circumstances. Eckhart has only to keep up and get punched repeatedly when captured, while Freeman dons his Mantle of Gravitas with all the enthusiasm of an actor given nothing to do that’s different from before. Forster, Leo, O’Bryan and Haley all get occasional lines of dialogue, and the British contingent, led by Salmon as a befuddled Chief Inspector(!), has its ineptitude made plain until Riley’s appearance as a smart, methodical, and cynical MI6 agent.
As action sequels go, London Has Fallen isn’t going to set the box office alight, and it isn’t going to impress many viewers with its uninspired plotting, featherweight storylines and blink-and-you’ll-miss-it direction from Najafi. With most of its final forty minutes shot at night, it’s also one of the murkiest, most visually unrewarding movies made in recent years, and by the time Butler as Banning is making googly-eyes at his son, audiences will have been moved to lethargy. All of which makes the final shot, where Banning decides whether or not to resign, one that carries a tremendous amount of hope with it – and not that he stays in the service.
Rating: 5/10 – not so bad that it should be avoided, and not so good that it should be applauded, London Has Fallen sets its stall out early on and doesn’t deviate from its intention of being as thick-eared as its predecessor; laughable in places – especially to anyone who lives in London – but determined to ignore how absurd it is, the movie lumbers through the motions and never shows any sign that it wants to be any better than it is.
Cast: Soledad Miranda (as Susann Korda), Fred Williams, Paul Muller, Howard Vernon, Ewa Strömberg, Horst Tappert, Jesús Franco
In a career that began with the documentary short El árbol de España (1957), Jesús Franco (better known as Jess) made over two hundred movies. He was a fiercely independent movie maker who worked quickly and never went over-budget. This allowed him to make the movies he wanted to make, and though the general conception is that he made a lot of awful exploitation movies from the late Sixties until his death in 2013 – his last movie was Revenge of the Alligator Ladies (2013) – there are those who would claim Franco as an auteur. It’s true he wrote and directed a lot of his movies, and was also a cinematographer, an editor, a composer, and sometimes an actor, and his movies are recognisable for their visual aesthetic (an ethereal picture postcard quality), but Franco’s style is often his own worst enemy. When watching his movies, there’s a distinct feeling that what happens doesn’t matter, that as long as the appropriate atmosphere is created – a kind of heightened reality – then everything else is of secondary importance. This can lead to many of his movies proving difficult to watch, and sometimes they’re like an endurance test.
Fortunately, She Killed in Ecstacy is one of his more well-known and accessible movies. It’s also got a more straighforward plot than usual, as the wife (Miranda) of a disgraced doctor (Williams), sets out to punish the board members who have rejected her husband’s work – something to do with human foetuses and growth hormones – and banned him from medical practice for life. The doctor, plagued by the accusations made by the board, and driven to despair, kills himself. His wife becomes an avenging angel, and one by one, she aims to have her revenge.
But being a Franco movie, she does so using sex. She seduces the first member of the board (Franco regular Howard Vernon) in his hotel room before killing and then emasculating him. She leaves a note warning the other three that they too will suffer a similar fate, and this is found by another board member (played by Franco himself). He warns his colleagues and even tells them that a woman was involved. However, this doesn’t stop the doctor’s wife from pursuing her revenge. Next, she seduces and murders the female member of the board (Strömberg), suffocating her with a plastic cushion while in the throes of passion. She leaves a further note.
The last member of the board (Muller) goes to the police with his fears and tells the investigating officer (Tappert) of his suspicion that the murders are linked to the doctor’s disgrace. The officer is unconcerned and dismissive. And sure enough the board member finds himself being pursued by the doctor’s wife, trailed and followed through a series of encounters that lead to a third seduction and his murder at the wife’s hands. This now leaves one remaining board member. Can the doctor’s wife complete her mission before the police find and stop her?
Shot in a spare, otherworldly style by Franco in his choice of locations, all isolated and with extraneous people removed – the board members’ hotel is devoid of any staff – She Killed in Ecstacy is one of those movies that exerts a strange fascination. Its basic revenge plot is bolstered by some odd narrative diversions, such as the doctor’s corpse laid out in bed for his wife to have conversations with, and the initial meeting between the doctor’s wife and the female board member where the wife is reading a John le Carré novel in English. Strange quirks and decisions like these add a further element of the unusual to what is already in some respects a strange movie (such as the doctor’s work on human embryos having, apparently, been conducted in his lounge at home).
But the strangeness of Franco’s narrative fits perfectly with his approach to the material, keeping the viewer slightly off-balance, and highlighting the increasingly disturbed actions of the doctor’s wife. Until her untimely death in 1970, Miranda had become one of Franco’s muses, and their work together showcases both her skills as an actress, and Franco’s as a director; for some reason they brought out the best in each other. Here, the actress gives a terrific performance that shows the character’s pain and suffering, as well as the effects her violent activity begin to have on her. It’s not quite the sort of depth of character that you’d expect from a Franco movie, but it’s there nonetheless, and it elevates the movie out of its standard low-budget formula.
But there are still plenty of Franco’s trademark idiosyncracies for fans to revel in. His use of the zoom lens at odd, inexplicable moments is there, as is his shooting through glass or other translucent materials (the plastic cushion). At one point, Miranda positions a wine glass directly in front of the camera (and appears to break the fourth wall while doing so), so as to obscure her seduction of the female doctor. These are just a couple of the things that Franco litters his movies with, and while some viewers may find them off-putting and annoying, once you’ve seen a few of Franco’s movies, they become less intrusive.
Miranda’s performance aside, the rest of the cast indulge in varying degrees of histrionics, with Muller coming closest to the usual kind of performance you’d expect. Even Franco, not always the best cast member in his movies, displays a coolness of character that is broadly effective, and Tappert’s unhurried, almost frivolous portrayal works as close to comic relief as you’re likely to get. But in the end, these are bonuses, as the performances aren’t the main attraction of a Franco movie. It’s the man himself, and discovering what new perpsective on his somewhat perverse world view is going to be explored on each particular occasion that makes viewing his movies so worthwhile in the end.
Rating: 7/10 – in usual terms this is no masterpiece, but amongst Franco’s work this is easily one of his best, a brooding, provocative revenge movie that proves unexpectedly rewarding; as an entry level movie to Franco’s ouevre, She Killed in Ecstacy is a great place to start, and better still, works well on its own.
Cast: Chiwetel Ejiofor, Nicole Kidman, Julia Roberts, Dean Norris, Michael Kelly, Joe Cole, Alfred Molina, Zoe Graham
Remakes of foreign language movies are never easy. Not everything translates as well in another language, and some of the idiosyncracies or nuances of the original movie will be lost in the process. But that’s not to say that foreign language movies shouldn’t be remade in English, or that movie makers shouldn’t try to put their own stamp on an existing idea/concept/storyline, just that if they do, we shouldn’t be too surprised if the end result isn’t as compelling or as satisfying as the original.
Such is the case with Secret in Their Eyes, the English language remake of El secreto de sus ojos (2009), an Argentinian thriller that was a bit of a surprise when it was released, and which garnered critical acclaim around the world. It’s a gripping, very stylishly realised movie, and easily one of the best movies of that particular year, a fact supported by its taking home the Oscar for Best Foreign Language Film. With that version being so successful, the question that needs to be asked is: do we need this one as well?
The answer is not really, no. It was always going to be a difficult challenge, but when it was announced that the writer of Captain Phillips (2013), Billy Ray, was going to write and direct the movie, and the services of Messrs Ejiofor, Kidman and Roberts had been secured for the trio of lead roles, you could have been forgiven for thinking that this was one remake that couldn’t go wrong. But right from the start there’s a sense that something’s not quite right, that whatever magic made the original such a breath of fresh air is missing, and that what follows is likely to be more disappointing than rewarding.
And so it proves. The basic plotting and structure are retained but where the original wove its connected stories over a distance of twenty-five years, Ray reduces it to thirteen (perhaps to avoid having to cast two sets of actors in the lead roles). He also retains the cutting back and forth between the two time periods, as Ejiofor’s obsessed FBI Counter-Terrorism expert Ray Kasten investigates the death of his friend and colleague Jess Cobb’s daughter (Graham). While Jess (Roberts) is overwhelmed by grief, Karsten determines to bring her daughter’s killer to justice, but soon finds himself in hot water when his main suspect, Marzin (Cole), is connected to a surveillance operation he’s a part of, and none of his superiors, including DA Martin Morales (Molina), want to know anything about his potential involvement in a murder.
While Kasten battles political expediency, he finds an ally in newly appointed Assistant DA Claire Sloan (Kidman). Together they try to build a strong enough case against Marzin, but their efforts go unrewarded. Thirteen years later, and with Marzin having gone to ground in the meantime, Kasten stumbles across new evidence that points to Marzin’s whereabouts. He gets back in touch with Claire (now the DA, having succeeded Morales) and Jess, and vows that this time they’ll get Marzin. Claire is hesitant and unconvinced, while Jess seems unimpressed and unwilling to help. Kasten presses on, but as before his plans go awry, and catching Marzin proves as difficult as it was thirteen years before.
By retaining the twin storylines and having them run side by side as the movie unfolds, Ray strives to keep the audience guessing as to the eventual outcome of both, but in the process he robs the material of any pace, and makes some scenes appear out of context to what’s gone before. Others seem to have sprung out of thin air, with certain relationship developments – a lukewarm romance between Kasten and Claire being the main culprit – stuttering in and out of life. It’s as if certain editorial choices were made in the cutting room, and the structure was the ultimate loser. It also makes for several frustrating moments when the viewer has to stop and remind themselves of where they (and the movie) are.
And unfortunately, Ray isn’t anywhere near as good a director as he is a writer. Too many scenes lack the appropriate energy, and his use of the camera doesn’t always show a knack for effective framing, leading to some shots where his cast are marginalised unnecessarily at the expense of the broader composition. He and the audience should be grateful then that, despite all these bars to their doing so, Ejiofor and Roberts both come up with terrific performances (Kidman is good but as with so many of her performances in recent years, she somehow manages to fall just shy of impressing completely). Kasten’s dogged, guilt-charged determination gives Ejiofor the chance to flex his acting muscles to highly charged effect, while Roberts steals every scene she’s in as the detached, grief-stricken mother who is a shadow of her former self; her de-glammed features display Jess’s sorrow so perfectly it’s heartbreaking to look at her.
But these are two unexpected positives in a movie that steadfastly refuses to provide its audience with anything other than a concerted diet of perfunctory plot and character developments, and which also asks said audience to take several leaps of faith in terms of the narrative and how it plays out (at one point, Kasten and Claire make a deduction – which Ray clumsily illustrates – that they can’t possibly have arrived at in the way that they do). And the end, which should be quietly powerful, as well as disturbing, lacks the necessary heightened emotion to provide the payoff the movie so badly needs by this point.
Thanks to an ill-considered approach to the material, Ray’s adaptation lacks appeal and falls flat far too often to be excusable. As remakes of foreign language movies go it’s not up there with the best, but rather occupies a place much lower down the table, and serves as an object lesson in how not to compensate for the loss of nuance and subtlety present in the original. Some movies, as we all know – and studio executives should know by now – deserve not to be remade, and this is as good an example as any that El secreto de sus ojos should have been one of them.
Rating: 4/10 – laborious, and lacking in too many departments to be anywhere near as effective as it needs to be, Secret in Their Eyes may well be too much of a chore for some viewers to watch all the way through; however this would be doing a disservice to Ejiofor and Roberts, but their performances aside, there’s really very little to recommend this particularly unnecessary remake.
Comments made following an advance US screening of The Transporter Refueled:
“When did Jason Statham get a facelift? Damn, he looks good!”
“Why was Florida full of French people?”
“Where can I learn to drive like the transporter?”
“Why was the transporter’s dad such a manwhore?”
“Who’s Ed Skrein?”
“A roundabout with four conveniently placed fire hydrants – what are the odds?”
“What a great idea to have the final showdown take place on a boat. Well done!”
“The four women looked really good after being prostitutes for fifteen years. What was their skin care regime?”
“It was good that the Russian bad guy and the English good guy had served in the same army at some point.”
“Will the next one be called, The Transporter: Are We There Yet?”
“Shouldn’t it be spelt refuelled?”
Rating: 4/10 – for a fast-paced action movie, The Transporter Refueled is instead quite sluggish, and easily the least of the four movies so far; Skrein doesn’t have Statham’s intensity (or his moves), and the plot – as usual – relies on far too many things falling conveniently into place for comfort, leaving the viewer with the feeling that the three screenwriters weren’t interested in scripting a movie that might have had audiences on the edge of their seats.
Cast: Viola Davis, Jennifer Lopez, Shea Whigham, Julius Tennon, Aml Ameen, Ron Caldwell, Andre Royo, Chris Chalk, Michole Briana White, Yolonda Ross
Following the death of her eldest son Stephon (Ameen) in a drive-by shooting, single mother Lila (Davis) finds herself at a loss as to how to continue with her life. She puts on a brave front for her youngest son Justin (Caldwell), and struggles with the lack of progress the police are making in finding her son’s killer. When she attends a local support group she meets Eve (Lopez), who lost her nine year old daughter. Eve persuades Lila to look into Stephon’s death herself, and they start by looking into why the intended victim of the drive-by shooting was the target. They learn that the victim was dealing drugs where he shouldn’t have been and his death was just a matter of “business”. In the process of learning this, Eve shoots and kills the drug dealer who gives them the information, but not before he’s given them the names of the men who supplied him.
The detectives investigating Stephon’s death, Holliston (Whigham) and Skaketti (Royo), are assigned to this new shooting. While it looks like another gang hit, Holliston isn’t so sure. Lila, meanwhile, having been shocked by Eve’s actions, tries to put it behind her. A burgeoning romance with her neighbour, Ben (Tennon), keeps her occupied until Eve pressures her into finding the men who supplied the dead dealer. They follow them to the roof of a car park; once there, Lila pulls a gun on them and when they try to resist she shoots and wounds one and kills another (as well as another dealer). This time the wounded man gives them the name of the man who carried out the shooting, Alonzo (Chalk), then Lila kills him. Holliston begins to piece together what’s happening and becomes suspicious of Lila. And then she and Eve find Alonzo, and Lila prepares to take her revenge…
A female-driven murder/revenge movie that features a bravura performance from Viola Davis, Lila and Eve has a fatalistic 70’s feel to it that suits the mood and the tone of the narrative, and keeps its tale of hate-filled revenge refreshingly simple and straightforward. It does stretch credulity at times in terms of how easily Lila and Eve find out who’s responsible for Stephon’s death, and how inept it makes the otherwise quite astute Holliston look in comparison, but this corner-cutting by screenwriter Patrick Gilfillan keeps the movie from meandering, and allows the pace to aid in keeping the audience involved.
It helps that the viewer also remains involved thanks to Davis’s emotive, fearless portrayal of Lila, a woman pushed to the edge by the sense of injustice she feels regarding her son’s death, and who finds the strength within herself to navigate the moral maze revenge throws up in her path. For a movie that looks to have been made on a fairly low budget, and which aims for a gritty realism (which it achieves for the most part), Davis’s presence elevates the material and makes the movie much more than a simple revenge drama. As her friend and confederate in revenge, Lopez is much more effective here than she was in The Boy Next Door (2015), bringing a coiled, steely energy to her role that fits comfortably with Lila’s hesitant, uncertain belief in what they’re doing. Whigham is equally good as the detective who cites Columbo as a role model for cops, and Tennon (Davis’s real life husband) adds a layer of humility and gentleness that provides the movie with some necessary breathing room.
Rating: 7/10 – directed with confidence and unassuming flair by Stone III, Lila and Eve is a spirited, enjoyable crime drama that isn’t afraid to show the human consequences of random violence; a pleasant surprise amongst all the other crime dramas out there and well worth watching for the performances alone (even Royo’s, whose character is written as an idiot, and is subsequently played like one).
Cast: Rosamund Pike, Shiloh Fernandez, Nick Nolte, Camryn Manheim, Alexi Wasser, Rumer Willis, Illeana Douglas
Miranda Wells (Pike) is a nurse aiming to transfer to another hospital and become a surgical nurse. She lives alone and has few friends beyond her colleagues at work. She also has obsessive-compulsive tendencies, preferring to use her own pens, and work and rest in a (mostly) clean environment. Unattached, she’s persuaded by a friend to go on a blind date. On the day in question she’s getting ready for her date when she realises someone is at her front door. Thinking it’s her date, she tells him he’s too early but allows him in. When she becomes uncomfortable with his being there, Miranda asks him to leave. Instead, he locks the front door and assaults her, eventually raping her in the kitchen.
The man, whose name is William Finn (Fernandez), is caught, tried and sent to prison. Miranda’s recovery is aided by her father, Mitchell (Nolte), but her ordeal has affected her to the point where her transfer is denied and she finds her right hand trembles uncontrollably without warning. She experiences outbursts of anger, and is unable to move from her home because no one will buy a house where a rape occurred. Some time later she decides to write a letter to Finn. The letter comes back to her marked ‘Return to Sender’, but Miranda continues to send Finn letters until on one returned letter he writes “You win”. Keeping all this from her father, Miranda travels to the prison where Finn is incarcerated.
Her visits increase until Finn is able to tell her that he is being released. He asks her if she would want to see him once he’s out; she says yes. When Finn arrives at her home she is in the middle of having some work done on the outside, work that Mitchell has been trying to help her with. Miranda gets Finn to do some of the work as recompense for what he did, but when her father finds out he’s been there, Miranda has to persuade him that it’s all part of her coming to terms with what happened and being able to move on. Mitchell is disgusted by her attitude, and stays away, leaving Miranda and Finn by themselves…
An odd mix of character study and thriller, Return to Sender is a colourless movie that tries to squander a very good performance from Pike, plays flatly throughout, and shies away from anything too controversial in its efforts to tell its story. It’s a dull movie as well, with Patricia Beauchamp and Joe Gossett’s script lacking any real punch or tension, and it’s further undermined by Mikati’s weak direction.
With all this it’s a wonder that Pike that comes off as well as she does, elevating her performance above and beyond the production’s attempts to stifle her. It’s the main reason why the movie doesn’t work as well as it should, as from the beginning it almost strives to make Miranda unappealing and unsympathetic, so much so that when she is raped, the shock isn’t there for the viewer; it makes it all the harder to feel the appropriate sadness and horror for her. Even in the following scenes, where we see her battered and bruised in hospital, Miranda’s vacant stare is tellingly depicted by Pike but lacks the emotional heft that should come with it. Thanks to Mikati’s matter-of-fact approach to the scenes, Pike is left adrift, emoting in a way that should have audiences hoping Finn gets his just desserts – and then some – but which in truth does nothing of the sort. Instead, Finn disappears from the movie while Miranda spends her time aimlessly watching TV or trying to control her hand tremors.
As this section takes some time to work itself through, Miranda’s sudden decision to write to Finn seems like a turn out of left field, a way of propelling the plot forward but without any appreciable conviction. It does lead to some misdirection (or confusion, depending on your point of view), as Miranda and Finn begin to bond in prison, and the possibility of her attempting to extract some kind of revenge becomes apparent. And yet, it’s also possible that some form of emotional, even physical relationship may develop between them, and it’s all thanks to Pike’s glacial features and the way in which she makes Miranda a blank slate to look at. Again, without Pike’s performance, the movie – and this part of it – wouldn’t be anywhere near as effective as it is, and this despite any attempt to support the actress and the presentation of her character.
Fernandez fares even worse, with the reasons for Finn’s actions glossed over in a couple of mumbled sentences. As a character, Finn is too “wet” for the actor to have any chance of doing anything worthwhile with him, and Fernandez looks uncomfortable in most of his scenes, as if he’s realised early on that nothing he does will make Finn hated or pitied, or more than just a necessary plot device. Nolte coasts along, putting in the minimum effort required, and there’s an awkward scene where he’s required to fall over a porch swing and be helped up by Pike; the redundancy of the moment is shocking.
With so little effort made to sell the plot and with Pike stranded as if she’s been imported from another thriller entirely, the movie fails in other areas as well, not least in its look, which is like that of a slightly more expensive TV movie. As mentioned above, it leaves the movie feeling colourless, and there’s little going on in most scenes that grabs the attention (even the rape scene is shot in such a way that you become too aware of the choreography and the camera positions). And the movie ends so abruptly, the average viewer will be thinking, “Really? That’s it?” With all this to detract from potential enjoyment, it’ll be a fortunate viewer who takes anything more from this movie than Pike’s sterling performance.
Rating: 4/10 – muddled, poorly assembled, and lacking in focus, Return to Sender is a misfire that seems to have achieved such a status deliberately; Pike – if you haven’t guessed by now – is the only reason for watching, but good as she is, it’s a recommendation that should only be taken up after a lot of consideration and forethought.
Cast: Clive Owen, Morgan Freeman, Cliff Curtis, Aksel Hennie, Ayelet Zurer, Tsuyoshi Ihara, Peyman Moaadi, Noah Silver, Shohreh Aghdashloo, Sung-kee Ahn, Daniel Adegboyega, Si-Yeon Park, Dave Legeno
In an unnamed medieval land, Raiden (Owen) is the leader of an order of knights called the Seventh Rank. He also acts as a retainer to Lord Bartok (Freeman), who took him in when he was younger and gave him a purpose. Bound by honour and his loyalty to his master, Raiden is disturbed to learn that Bartok has been summoned by Geza Mott (Hennie), a minister of the Emperor (Moaadi). Being nothing more than an attempt to extort money from him, Bartok makes the trip knowing full well that he will incur Mott’s enmity by not paying the fealty Mott expects. Mott confronts Bartok and there is a fight during which Mott is injured. The Emperor sides with his minister in the matter and condemns Bartok to death. When Raiden protests, matters are made worse by the Emperor’s insistence that Raiden be his master’s executioner.
With Bartok gone, his lands are dispersed and Raiden and his fellow knights are disavowed. They go their separate ways, with Raiden descending into alcoholism and losing all faith and honour. A year passes. While Raiden continues to be lost to drink and is distant to his wife, Naomi (Zurer), some of his men, led by Lt. Cortez (Curtis), are planning to break into the Emperor’s palace and kill Mott in revenge for their master’s death. But Mott has been paranoid about such a thing happening, and along with tasking his retainer, Ito (Ihara) with keeping watch on Raiden and his men, has fortified the palace to make it as impenetrable as possible.
With their plans in place, Cortez and the rest of the knights begin their infiltration of the Emperor’s palace, but instead of getting inside without being detected, they run into a group of guards. Now they have to battle through the Emperor’s entire garrison before they can reach Mott and take their revenge.
It’s hard to know where to start with a movie like Last Knights. Do you wonder at the involvement of actors of the calibre of Owen, Freeman and Hennie, or how bad their performances are? Do you look to the script by Michael Konyves and Dove Sussman and wonder why did it have to be so derivative of every other medieval actioner, or so full of clunky dialogue? Or do you look to the uninspired, gloomy visuals and wonder why DoP Antonio Riestra mistook “natural lighting” for “atmosphere”? Or do you look at the movie as a whole and pin the blame entirely at the door of Kiriya, who seems to have left the heady promise of Casshern (2004) far behind him?
In truth, you could task everyone concerned with how bad the movie is, and you wouldn’t be far off the mark. There’s not a moment in Last Knights that doesn’t remind the viewer of better movies, better performances, or better all-round experiences. With the look and feel of a low budget Nineties Euro pudding but without the rural location work, Kiriya’s ode to the kind of honour-bound warrior caste that can be traced back to The Adventures of Robin Hood (1938) (and probably beyond) is a misfire from start to finish. It’s so full of cliché and deadly longueurs that it chokes on its good intentions from the moment that Freeman begins to expound the tortured premise that marks out Mott’s villainy. With a line of political intrigue that stops dead with the Emperor’s complicit awareness of Mott’s scheming, and the kind of daring, suicidal attack on a heavily fortified building that is supposed to create tension – but here only generates ennui – the movie doesn’t even attempt to capitalise on the potential of its basic idea.
Owen, no stranger to playing moody characters who don’t say much, looks bored for much of the running time; it’s one of the few times where it looks as if an actor can’t wait for a scene to be over so he can get back to his trailer and do something more challenging. Freeman at least attempts to engage with the po-faced solemnity of it all, but he’s undermined by the sheer dreariness of the dialogue, and falls back on looking autocratically passive as a defining character trait. Hennie goes the opposite way, hamming it up with fierce disregard for credibility and swamped in the kind of costumes that wouldn’t look amiss on Fu Manchu. The rest of the cast also struggle with the demands of the script and Kiriya’s lacklustre direction, though there are odd moments when it seems as if a performance might raise its head above the level of mediocrity (if only briefly).
There’s a bloated middle section that’s like wading through glue as it follows Raiden and his men as they adjust to their new lives and plot their revenge. And the assault on the palace, when it finally arrives, features the kind of poorly choreographed combat where the knights only have to wave their swords around for an adversary to fall down dead. But by the time the viewer – if they’re still watching – gets to this point, the attack proves only fitfully exciting, and it becomes another impediment to the movie’s finally ending (and even then there’s an extended coda that tries to be poignant and speak to the nature of honour – unsuccessfully of course).
Rating: 3/10 – as much of a chore to sit through as it must have been to film, Last Knights never gets off the ground and appears content to keep itself mired in apathy-inducing banality; tired – and tiring – it’s a movie that all concerned must have committed to, and then decided never to mention it again.
Cast: Darío Grandinetti, María Marull, Rita Cortese, Julieta Zylberberg, César Bordón, Leonardo Sbaraglia, Walter Donado, Ricardo Darín, Nancy Dupláa, Oscar Martínez, Osmar Núñez, Germán de Silva, Érica Rivas, Diego Gentile
On a plane, catwalk model Isabel (Marull) meets classical music critic Salgado (Grandinetti). They discover they both know Gabriel Pasternak, Isabel’s ex-boyfriend. Soon, it becomes apparent that everyone on the flight knows Gabriel, and they’ve all held him back or made him angry in some way. But now Gabriel is flying the plane…
At a diner late one night, a man (Bordón) comes in and is rude to the waitress (Cortese). She recognises him as the man who caused her father’s death and made advances to her mother two weeks after her father’s funeral. The cook (Zylberberg), upon hearing this, suggests they put rat poison in his food. The waitress is horrified by the idea, but when the food goes out and she discovers the cook has added the poison, she makes little effort to stop the man from eating it. It’s only when the man’s son arrives and begins eating the food as well that she tries to take the food away, with terrible consequences…
Driving through the countryside, Diego (Sbaraglia) is deliberately held up by another driver, Mario (Donado). Diego finally overtakes him and yells abuse at him as he goes by. Several miles later, he gets a flat tyre just as he reaches a bridge. Just as he’s finishing putting a new wheel on, Mario arrives and pulls up directly in front of Diego’s car. Diego hides inside his car, while Mario takes the opportunity to vandalise it. When he’s finished, Mario gets back in his truck but before he can move off, an incensed Diego pushes Mario’s vehicle down the incline at the side of the bridge where it topples over into the river. Mario survives and clambers back up to the road, threatening to find Diego and kill him as Diego drives off. But Diego finds he can’t leave things as they are, and turns back…
Respected demolitions expert Simón (Darín) stops off on his way home to pick up a birthday cake for his daughter. While he does, his car is towed away for being in a No Parking zone. He goes to the towing depot and despite explaining that he couldn’t have known he was parked illegally, still has to pay to get his car released. He also finds that he has to pay the parking fine as well, but before he does he loses his temper and takes a fire extinguisher to the teller’s window. His subsequent arrest leads to his losing his job, which leads to his wife wanting a divorce, which – in a twist of fate – leads to his car being towed again. But this time, he makes the necessary payments, before embarking on a plan of revenge…
Well-off businessman Mauricio (Martínez) wakes one morning to learn that his teenage son has knocked down and killed a pregnant woman. He calls his lawyer (Núñez), who comes over straight away. They hit on a plan to persuade Mauricio’s groundskeeper Jose (de Silva) to take the blame for the hit-and-run in return for $500,000. When the fiscal prosecutor arrives he realises Jose isn’t the culprit, but proves willing to go along with Mauricio’s plan if he can be paid as well. When the cost of keeping things quiet begins to spiral out of control, Mauricio realises there’s only one thing he can do…
On the day of their wedding, Romina (Rivas) and Ariel (Gentile) are as happy as any newly-wed couple can be. Until Romina spies Ariel with a woman that he works with, and being more friendly than is comfortable. She confronts him and eventually he concedes that he’s slept with the other woman. Romina, angry and upset, runs off to the roof where she encounters one of the kitchen staff. He consoles her, which leads to Romina deciding to go back down and make this one wedding reception to remember…
With each of its six stories painting a picture of emphatic revenge, Wild Tales is a treasure trove of violence, pent-up emotion, unbridled anger, personal despair, and cathartic expression. It’s an often no-holds-barred experience where average people find themselves willing and able to do things they wouldn’t normally consider. As such it works on a visceral level that will have some viewers cheering in parts and laughing heartily in others; it’s that kind of feelgood movie.
The stories themselves vary in intensity, with several proving satisfactory on a wish fulfilment level, while a couple lack the bite of the rest. The opener has the initial feel of a Twilight Zone episode, but soon morphs into the ultimate revenge tale as one man decides to kill everyone who’s ever crossed him. It’s funny and horrifying at the same time and packs a punch with its final shot that isn’t forgotten very easily. The second tale has a classic structure, and is where revenge is complicated by the arrival of an innocent into the proceedings. It’s stylishly done, with a noir feel to it that complements and enhances the storyline, and Zylberberg’s fierce portrayal of the cook is an unexpected bonus.
The pick of the bunch is definitely the third tale, with its two protagonists descending rapidly from macho posturing to murderous determination with no attempt made to work things out. It’s brutal, uncompromising, and shocking in the way that these two men resort to such extreme measures – and with so little compunction. And then there’s the ironic postscript, where two investigators sum up their opinion of what happened, a perfect coda that subverts the savagery that’s gone before. By contrast, the fourth tale is a more considered tale of revenge, the kind that’s taken after one too many setbacks, reversals of fortune, or bad breaks. The issue of being towed away will be familiar to many people in many countries, and it’s this familiarity that gives the story it’s resonance. As Simón fights against an uncaring bureaucracy, you know it’s just a matter of time before he puts his “special set of skills” to good, vengeful use. And when he does, you can’t help but cheer, even though you know the system won’t let him get away with it.
The fifth tale is perhaps the weakest of the six, where the concept of revenge is used in its loosest form, with Mauricio taking a firm stand against the people who, seeing an opportunity, are looking to benefit from the awful situation his son has put him in. There’s a humorous side to the tale that manifests itself through the spiralling costs of people’s willingness to “help”, and finally by Mauricio’s assertion that enough is enough and all deals are off. But corruption has a way of winning out, and the outcome – while never in doubt – provides a sad, sour note that doesn’t feature elsewhere in the movie. The sixth tale is a riot, one of those stories that we’d like to think happens more often than it actually does, where fidelity is exposed and leads to the kind of publicly humiliating, extreme, morally indignant behaviour where verbal cruelty is the order of the day. It’s similar to the first tale in that it’s funny and horrifying at the same time, but on reflection, viewers may well find that it doesn’t go far enough, and that Romina’s actions aren’t quite as vindictive as they could have been. Still, it’s an entertaining tale, and in contrast to all the carnage and terrible behaviour seen in the previous stories, has a final scene that ends the movie on a positive note.
On the whole, Wild Tales is a darkly comic look at the various ways in which revenge can colour and alter our lives and lead us down some very dark paths indeed. As assembled by writer/director Szifrón, the movie is absorbing and compelling and bitingly satirical in its reflection of how quickly we dispense with so-called decent behaviour when we feel the need to. It’s difficult to detect any moral judgment in the stories, with Szifrón apparently content to let his audience make their own minds up as to how guilty or innocent each character is, but some will definitely have their supporters.
Each segment starts off slow then picks up speed, which does lead to the feeling that the movie is a bit of a stop-start experience, but the characters are concisely and effectively drawn, and Szifrón makes sure each tale is told in a lean, measured way that augments the material and ensures there’s nothing extraneous to deal with. The cast are uniformly excellent, with special mention going to Darín and Rivas. And each tale benefits from Javier Julia’s often invigorating and beautifully lit photography.
Rating: 8/10 – as portmanteau movies go, Wild Tales has such a high success rate it could be almost embarrassing; with its theme of revenge expressed in such an impressive fashion, the movie has so much to offer, and rewards on so many levels, that it can be returned to time and time again and still maintain its effectiveness.
Cast: Mark Drake, Sophie Barker, Rosie Akerman, Miles Jovian, Julian Glover
When Ralph (Drake) undergoes past life regression at the suggestion of his friend Claudia (Akerman), he has visions of Nazis in the small English village of Plumpton, and the deaths of an unknown woman and her three children. Confused and upset by this, Ralph manages to persuade his girlfriend, Andrea (Barker), along with Claudia and her boyfriend Lucas (Jovian), to go on a camping trip to the South Downs, and to investigate the area that Ralph saw glimpses of. Finding the village proves more difficult than expected, and while Ralph and Claudia explore further afield, Andrea and Lucas stay with the tents and continue the affair they’ve been having. While in the midst of having sex, an old man knocks Lucas unconscious and threatens Andrea with a shotgun. He ties up both of them and takes them to an old farm building where he tortures them before leaving to find Ralph and Claudia.
Ralph and Claudia return to the tents but don’t immediately realise that their partners have been abducted. Later they do, but by then it’s late and they decide to bed down for the night and go for help in the morning. The old man attempts to grab them but they manage to escape. Having got away, Claudia suggests that Ralph undergo further regression in an effort to find out more about what happened in Plumpton, and if it has any bearing on what’s happening to them now. Ralph learns he was one of the Nazis he saw before, and that he was responsible for the deaths of the woman and her children. He and Claudia seek shelter in a church but the old man is laying in wait for them; they too find themselves held captive with their partners in the old farm building and at the mercy of the old man’s thirst for revenge.
Sometimes, when watching horror films – especially if you’ve seen way too many of them for your own good – there’s often a point where you know exactly what’s going to happen next, and how, and why. This is the feeling you get after the first five minutes of Backtrack, and the feeling persists throughout. For example, when Ralph and Claudia realise their other halves have been abducted, neither of them can make a call on their mobile phones (naturally). Or when Ralph realises he was a Nazi – something the viewer’s known all along. Or when Claudia tells Ralph to keep a Swiss Army knife in his pocket because, you know, it just might come in handy later on. But these examples of lazy storytelling aside, this is a movie that gets it wrong on so many levels it’s almost embarrassing.
While the basic idea of Backtrack is okay for this sort of thing – revenge-driven World War II survivor targets reincarnated souls who killed his family – the movie is defeated from the beginning by some really really really terrible dialogue (think Harrison Ford’s famous quote, “You can type this shit, but you can’t say it”, and you’ll find you’re not even close to how bad the dialogue is). Defeat comes as well through its cast’s complete inability to make the dialogue sound even remotely normal (even Glover, a classically trained actor, can’t do anything with it). And to make matters worse, the cast are uniformly awful, giving amateurish performances and exposing their lack of experience, and lack of knowledge of their craft in every scene.
Stepping away from the world of documentaries for which he’s best known, Sands does a ham-fisted job in every sense, and fails to inject any tension or drama into the proceedings, leaving the cast to fend for themselves and showing no sign that he’s recognised the absurdities of Mick Sands’ apparently first draft script (the old man stalks the two couples by tractor, one that must have the biggest muffler in the world attached to it, as it doesn’t make a sound). With basic attempts at framing and composition, and the feeling that a lot of shots were first takes, the look and feel of Backtrack is that of a movie that should have had a lot more attention paid to it at all stages of its production.
Rating: 1/10 – dire in every way possible, Backtrack is an object lesson in how not to make a low budget horror movie; if the choice is watching this or watching paint dry, then watch the paint – at least it’s got a more credible story arc.
D: Andrew Jones / 81m
Cast: Lee Bane, Georgina Blackledge, Tessa Wood, Vivien Bridson
When screenwriter John Davies (Bane) rents a house for a couple of months in order to work on his latest screenplay, he finds there’s a sitting tenant up on the third floor: a blind old lady (Bridson) who never leaves her room. Annoyed at first because there was no mention of the old lady in the advertisement he saw, John is reassured by the estate agent (Wood) that it won’t interfere with his work. He spends a day or so visiting the nearby town and reminiscing on the visits he made to the area as a child. Then, one day, he meets a young woman, Cassie (Blackledge) in the garden. She apologises for being there, but John is unconcerned and, slightly smitten, tells her she can visit again if she wants to.
As his relationship with Cassie develops into something more romantic, John begins to have nightmares and experience strange phenomena. At night, a record player comes on and plays the same song each time. A doll in one of the bedrooms is found on the stairs, and a picture that hangs in the hallway ends up on the floor without being touched. He contacts the estate agent to see if the house has a history, but she says there’s nothing to tell. Cassie suggests using a ouija board, but John rejects the idea – at first. One night he uses one to find out if anything has happened in the past, and it tells him that there was a murder there. Convinced that the old lady must know what’s going on, he visits her, only to find that nothing is quite as it seems, and that his life is now in danger.
With the look and feel of a short movie expanded to meet the needs of a full-length feature, The Last House on Cemetery Lane contains a lot of padding and a shortage of actual drama. The first twenty minutes contain enough off-putting moments to make even die-hard horror fans tune out from boredom, and though the introduction of the blind old lady adds a bit of mystery to proceedings, John’s walk through the nearest town, and then along the beach (accompanied on the soundtrack by a trenchant piece of AOR) seems almost like a test: if you can endure this, then the rest of the movie will be a piece of cake (or a walk on said beach). And even though writer/director Jones begins throwing the odd bit of supernatural phenomena into the mix, the movie finds itself focusing on John and Cassie’s relationship instead, subjecting the viewer to mildly interesting scenes where they get to know each other and trade inane lines of dialogue.
It’s not until John consults the ouija board that the movie begins to pick up pace and reminds itself as to why it’s here. The old lady’s revelations, though, prove less than original and lead to a violent showdown that borrows from Halloween (1978) for a key moment, and which lacks any real tension thanks to the clumsy way in which it’s shot and edited. And with a clear resolution to the tale, the script then undermines and ignores its own logic, both insulting itself and the patient viewer. With so much going on that lacks adequate attention from Jones, it’s left to Bane to carry the bulk of the movie, and while he’s worked with Jones on several previous occasions, even he can’t help the viewer along when the going becomes dull.
A haunted house mystery where the real mystery is why the movie was ever produced, Jones’ strives for atmosphere but misses it by a mile, and never develops his own tale beyond its mundane opening scene. There’s the germ of a good movie here, but Jones and his crew can’t quite get a grip on it.
Rating: 3/10 – only occasionally intriguing, The Last House on Cemetery Lane is a throwback to the kind of rural thrillers made in the Seventies, but without any energy or attempts at effective pacing; with a score that’s more irritating than eerie (not to mention too loud in places), any pleasure to be had will come from its brevity, and its brevity alone.
Cast: Keanu Reeves, Michael Nyqvist, Alfie Allen, Willem Dafoe, Dean Winters, Adrianne Palicki, Toby Leonard Moore, Daniel Bernhardt, Omer Barnea, Lance Reddick, Ian McShane, John Leguizamo, Bridget Moynahan
Having lost his wife, Helen (Moynahan), to an unexpected illness, retired assassin John Wick (Reeves) receives a posthumous gift from her: a puppy called Daisy. They begin to bond, and Wick takes her with him when he travels anywhere. At a gas station one day, Wick encounters a trio of Russian gang members; their leader, Iosef (Allen) asks to buy his car but Wick rebuffs him. Later that night, the trio break into Wick’s home, beat him up, kill Daisy, and make off with his car. While he recovers, Iosef takes the car to a chop shop run by Aurelio (Leguizamo) but he refuses to have anything to do with Iosef or the car. Wick visits Aurelio and learns that Iosef is the son of his former boss, Viggo Tarasov (Nyqvist). When Viggo finds out what his son has done, he’s less than happy; he tells Iosef that Wick was the best hitman in the business, not the boogeyman, but the man you sent to kill the boogeyman.
Viggo attempts to placate Wick but has no luck. He sends a hit squad to kill Wick at his home but Wick despatches them all. Viggo then puts out an open contract for $2 million on Wick, and approaches Marcus (Dafoe), Wick’s mentor, directly; Marcus agrees to take the job. Meanwhile, Wick checks in to the Continental, a hotel run by Winston (McShane) that caters to assassins. Wick learns that Iosef is being protected at a nightclub called Red Circle. He goes there but is stopped from killing Iosef by the intervention of Viggo’s enforcer Kirill (Bernhardt). Wounded, he returns to the hotel where he is attacked by fellow assassin Ms Perkins (Palicki). Overpowering her, he forces her to tell him where Viggo keeps both his private papers and the bulk of his personal cash.
The papers and cash are in a church vault; Wick burns it all. When Viggo arrives, Wick ambushes him and his men, but Kirill uses an SUV to knock Wick unconscious. Taken to an abandoned warehouse and tied up, Viggo remonstrates with Wick over his idea that he could ever lead a normal life. He leaves Wick to be killed by Kirill, but things don’t turn out as he expects.
A revenge movie with a distinctive visual style, John Wick is a huge breath of fresh air in a genre that often feels stodgy and underwhelming, and which often relies on rapid cross-cutting and headache-inducing editing tricks to give energy to its action scenes. This definitely isn’t the case here, with directors Stahelski and Leitch’s background as stunt coordinators bringing an impressive edge to the fight sequences, as they bring a whole new meaning to the phrase “gun-fu”.
Even more impressive than the action is the world created by the directors and writer Derek Kolstad. It’s at such a remove from our own world that it seems to operate independently, with its own rules and hierarchies. The Continental is a case in point, an establishment that allows no “business” on its premises, and inflicts the severest of penalties if that rule is ignored. It’s a world where respect and a person’s reputation carry as much caché as money, and where John Wick has the most respect of anyone. It’s also a world that appears bleached of positive feeling, where people hide behind polite, expressionless façades but are quick to display fear, anger and mistrust. And it’s a criminal underworld that mixes old-fashioned codes of conduct with a modern disregard for them when necessary. Against this, Wick acts like an old time vigilante, dismantling Viggo’s business and men with grim determination and no shortage of inner rage. And even though he’s not as invulnerable as he once was, he’s still the ne plus ultra of assassins.
With the world he inhabits so clearly defined, Wick strides through it like a colossus, giving Reeves his most commanding role for years. After non-starters Generation Um… (2012), Man of Tai Chi (2013) and 47 Ronin (2013), it’s good to see Reeves back on form, playing Wick with a taciturn, single-minded demeanour that suits him perfectly as an actor. His brief scenes with Moynahan also show convincingly the other John Wick, the loving husband and all-round “normal” guy. It’s a great performance, and one that’s given more than adequate support by the likes of Nyqvist, Dafoe and Palicki, all relishing their roles and the wonderfully expressive dialogue Kolstad has provided them with. The cast are obviously having a great time with the material, and it’s not surprising that this helps boost the audience’s enjoyment as a result. The interplay between Wick and Viggo is particularly effective, operating on several levels at once, and imparting more emotion than would normally be expected.
As for the action scenes these are tremendously shot and edited, full of fluid tracking shots, and with Reeves in the thick of it all, punching, kicking and blasting away with vicious, yet detached intent, and shooting more people in the head than probably any other hitman in movie history. One extended sequence, at the Red Circle nightclub, is as inventive and as thrilling as any action sequence in recent memory. Using their experience as stunt co-ordinators, Stahelski and Leitch (who thanks to the Directors Guild of America isn’t credited on the movie), keep the fight scenes breathtaking and immersive, and there’s not one moment during any of them where the viewer isn’t fully aware of what’s happening and who’s doing what to whom (something that Taken 3, for example, avoids doing throughout its disheartening running time).
In keeping with the overall mise en scene, the production design by Dan Leigh helps to reinforce the idea of a separate world where all this takes place, and is gloriously lensed by Jonathan Sela. The action is complemented by a pulsing, propulsive score by Tyler Bates and Joel J. Richard, and at times feels like it could be another of Wick’s opponents.
Rating: 8/10 – a modern day noir thriller that doesn’t pull its punches and has an emotional core that resonates throughout, John Wick is a wonderful surprise; with not an ounce of fat on it, and one of the tightest scripts of recent years, this is an action movie that constantly surprises and rewards in equal measure.
Cast: Daniel Candia, Alejandra Yañez, Daniel Antivilo, Ariel Mateluna, Jennifer Salas, Don Willie, Paula Leoncini
Jorge (Candia) is a quiet family man who works as a caretaker at a forest research site. One night he’s mugged near to his home by a man called Kulale (Antivilo) and some of his gang; they steal his money and his insulin kit. He tells his wife, Marta (Yañez) and Jorgito (Mateluna). Jorgito knows who Kulale is and tells his father that he can get his insulin kit back for 5,000 pesos. Jorge demurs but later that night he realises his son has gone out. He goes to look for him and hears a gunshot from the nearby projects. He finds Jorgito has been shot. As he tends to him, Kulale appears and, weighing up the situation, shoots and wounds himself.
While Jorgito spends three months in hospital recovering, Kulale’s prosecution goes ahead. He contends Jorge and his son attacked and shot him first and he was defending himself when he shot Jorgito, but the court rules against him. To the family’s shock, however, his sentence is restricted to eighteen months due to a technicality. Following the trial, cracks begin to appear in Jorge and Marta’s marriage, and she blames him for Jorgito’s being shot.
Two years pass. Jorge and Marta are now divorced, though he visits his family often. One day at work he receives a call from Kulale who tells him he’s not finished with Jorge and his family and that they have a debt to settle. This proves to be the beginning of a campaign of harassment carried out by Kulale and his gang, which includes abusive phone calls, trapping Jorgito in the back of his truck, throwing rocks at the family home, and assaulting Jorge’s teenage daughter, Nicole (Salas). Each time, Jorge and his family report the incidents but the police and the prosecutor’s office seem unconcerned or unwilling to proceed without any witnesses.
Realising that the chances of anything being done to stop Kulale’s harassment and intimidation of his family are minimal, Jorge decides to take matters into his own hands. One night he lures Kulale out of his home and forces him at gunpoint into the back of Jorgito’s truck. It’s at this point that Jorge must decide if killing Kulale is the right course of action, and if it is, if he can go through with it.
A sparse, quietly powerful movie, To Kill a Man is an intense, thought-provoking look at the way in which intimidation and bullying can lead even the most reserved of people to take the law into their own hands, and the subsequent ways in which their lives can be affected, both subtly and obviously. It’s a stark, poetic movie, one that carries a tremendous emotional wallop, and which portrays its central character as a simple man trying to lead a simple life, and struggling when that simplicity of existence is threatened.
The emotional turmoil suffered by Jorge and his family is soberly portrayed, and without recourse to melodrama. Their pain and anger is clearly felt and expressed both through their dealings with authority, and through the deteriorating relationship between Jorge and Marta. Even after they’ve divorced there’s a lingering sense of resentment and disapproval that undermines their ability to communicate with each other. Marta wants Jorge to be more assertive, but it’s not really in his nature; he’s a solitary man, even within his own family. Faced with the problem of Kalule and his aggressive behaviour, Jorge reacts as best he can but it’s not enough for Marta or Jorgito. He deflects their anger at the situation and appears weak in the process.
But all this turmoil is having an effect, and thanks to the combination of Almendras’ impressive script and Candia’s riveting portrayal, Jorge’s eventual decision to “deal” with the problem of Kalule displays an inner strength that abrogates any suggestion that he’s too reserved to cope with it all. Bolstered by an encounter on forest land with a man who pulls a knife on him, Jorge takes confidence from his dealing with that situation and commits to a course of action that tests both his sense of morality and his sense of himself as a man. For the viewer it’s a moment where the feeling of holding one’s breath gives way to a sense of relief at Jorge making such an important, difficult decision.
Candia gives a remarkable performance, Jorge’s withdrawn, taciturn nature given full articulation via the actor’s subtly expressive features. It’s a performance that proves unexpectedly gripping, and while the rest of the cast provide more than adequate support, Candia is the emphatic heart and soul of the movie. Even when he’s alone in a scene there’s little doubt as to how he’s feeling, or what he’s thinking. It’s gripping to watch, and a testament to Almendras’s decision to cast him.
As well as an examination of the morality of taking the law into your own hands, the movie also looks at the effects a shocking event can have the family involved, as well as its legacy. Even when they fight back against Kulale by going to the police there’s no real sense of a family united in their efforts, and Almendras rarely shows all four members spending time together. It’s beyond the movie’s scope but it would be interesting to see their reaction to Jorge’s abduction of Kulale and what happens as a consequence. The Chilean legal system comes in for some considerable criticism (though at present it is undergoing a radical change), and some aspects might seem a little far-fetched – the prosecutor’s home address being given out upon request, for example – but it’s all fuel for the predicament Jorge finds himself trying to cope with.
Visually, the movie is a dour experience in keeping with the material, but there are glimpses of the natural beauty in the forest area where Jorge works, plus some stunning coastal scenery. Almendras keeps things straightforward and direct, dispensing with any frills or unnecessary camera flourishes, and maintaining a tight focus on the characters and placing them in various cramped locations to highlight their sense of being hemmed in at all turns. There’s also an ominous score courtesy of Pablo Vergara that accentuates the drama and cleverly pre-empts the emotional result of Kulale’s abduction.
Rating: 9/10 – a striking, intelligently constructed exploration of one man’s alienation from his family and his attempt at redressing the wrongs done to him, To Kill a Man is a modest drama that succeeds by virtue of a strong central performance and a compelling narrative; apparently based on “real events”, Almendras’s third feature is a triumph of low-budget, independent movie making.
Cast: Annabella Sciorra, Rebecca De Mornay, Matt McCoy, Ernie Hudson, Madeline Zima, Julianne Moore, John de Lancie
Pregnant with her second child, Claire Bartel (Sciorra) attends a routine check up and finds she has a new obstetrician, Dr Mott (de Lancie). During the examination he sexually molests her; later she reports him to the police. Further women come forward and to avoid being brought to trial, Mott kills himself. His pregnant widow (De Mornay) loses her child as a result, and while she recuperates in hospital, she learns of Claire’s involvement in her husband’s problems.
Six months pass. Claire has given birth to a baby boy, Joey. With her husband, Michael (McCoy) and young daughter Emma (Zima) they make for a happy family, but it becomes clear that Claire can’t juggle the needs of looking after their home and children as well as the part-time work she does at a garden centre. They decide to hire a nanny, and soon after, Mott’s widow, posing as Peyton Flanders, gets the job. She moves in and soon begins to undermine the Bartels’ stability: she breast feeds Joey at odd hours so that he won’t feed from Claire; she persuades Emma to keep secrets from Claire; and she intimidates Solomon (Hudson), a mentally challenged man from a local charity home who does odd jobs around the Bartels’ garden.
Peyton does her best to make Claire seem like a bad mother, and tries to upset her relationship with Michael. When Peyton suggests to Michael that they organise a surprise party for Claire, and include their friend Marlene (Moore) in the planning of it, it leads to Claire believing that Michael and Marlene are having an affair. She accuses him on the evening of the party, unaware that Marlene and the rest of their guests are in the next room. Later, Claire tells Michael that she is beginning to have her suspicions about Peyton; this leads to Peyton booby-trapping Claire’s greenhouse in an attempt to kill her. However, the next day Claire goes out instead. Meanwhile, Marlene discovers Peyton’s true identity and rushes over to tell Claire what she’s found out, but Peyton tricks her into going into the greenhouse. The booby-trap works and Marlene is killed. When Claire finds her it triggers an asthma attack that sees her hospitalised.
When she returns home Claire decides to find out why Marlene was at the house that day. She discovers the same truth about Peyton that Marlene did, and tells Michael. They confront her and she leaves… but not for long.
While there have been plenty of variations on the “home invasion/cuckoo in the nest” storyline prior to the release of The Hand That Rocks the Cradle – Pacific Heights (1990) for example – and a whole shedload of further imitations and variations since its release – Trespass (2011) anyone? – the strength of this particular movie is in its confident direction courtesy of a debuting Hanson, a career best performance from De Mornay, and one of the most impressive (and crowd-pleasing) punches in cinema history.
The basic premise is as old as the hills, but in the hands of Hanson and screenwriter Amanda Silver, it receives a jolt in the arm that elevates the material beyond the type of hokey predictability we’re used to seeing nowadays. The “examination” Claire endures at the hands of Dr Mott is still one of the most uncomfortable scenes you’re ever likely to encounter in a mainstream thriller, a testament to the staging of the scene by Hanson and de Lancie’s disturbing performance. It’s matched by the moment when Peyton stands over Joey’s crib with a cushion in her hands, the viewer unsure if she’ll really smother him. And even though we all know it’s been planted there, the discovery by Claire of a pair of Emma’s panties in Solomon’s toolbox carries a frisson that is somehow all the more effective because of what it will mean for Solomon (though the script, conveniently, lets him off rather lightly considering the allusion being made).
There are other scenes that, while not carrying such dramatic weight, still manage to hook the audience and not let go. Peyton’s machinations are well-constructed and thought out, De Mornay’s icy beauty a perfect match for the character’s psychotic nature; even when she smiles it’s unnerving. Every time she sees an opportunity to further her plans for vengeance, Hanson ratchets up the tension and keeps it there until the inevitable payoff. As the Bartels continue to find their lives falling apart around them, it’s De Mornay who remains the focus, her unsettling malevolence waiting for yet another dastardly manoeuvre to present itself. She’s a hypnotic presence, alluring yet callous (to Solomon: “Are you a retard?”), outwardly supportive yet inwardly seething, and too dangerous to live. De Mornay is impressive from start to finish, playing Peyton as a calculating whirlwind of anger and violence whose path can lead to only one outcome.
As Peyton’s main protagonist, Claire, Sciorra matches De Mornay for intensity but faces an uphill struggle in trying to keep Claire entirely likeable. The script needs her to be too susceptible at times: Peyton only has to mention that she feels something is wrong and Claire will believe her, which, while it helps to drive the narrative forward, leaves the viewer wondering when she’ll stand back and see what’s really happening. Hampered by this too convenient character trait, Sciorra nevertheless succeeds in making Claire sympathetic, and when she unleashes that punch, any doubts the viewer has had about her will evaporate there and then.
With two such compelling performances from its female leads – plus an unsurprisingly strong supporting turn from Moore – it’s a shame then that the male characters suffer in comparison. Michael is a bit of a damp squib, easily sidelined by Peyton at the crunch, and played with a degree of reticence by McCoy, as if he’d realised the character’s shortcomings at an early script reading and decided to play the role accordingly. But it’s Solomon who really drags things down, a slow-witted simpleton intelligent enough to make jokes at the Bartels’ expense, but not so intelligent as to deny an accusation of inappropriate behaviour with a child. It’s not so much a terrible performance, but a terrible and unnecessary characterisation, and the kind that nowadays would be booed or jeered off the screen.
Played out against a background of white and brightly lit interiors, The Hand That Rocks the Cradle is buoyed up by a great original score by Graeme Revell, well-lit and sometimes unnerving photography by Robert Elswit, and in the last fifteen minutes, an effectively staged showdown that benefits greatly from the editing skills of John F. Link. But above it all, Hanson directs with all the skill and confidence of somebody making their tenth movie and not their first. Whether he’s using a Louma crane to follow Peyton from the house to the greenhouse, or employing a close up when she attacks Michael, Hanson makes the right choice of shot every time, and shows an economy of style that benefits the movie throughout.
8/10 – some minor issues aside – why don’t the Bartels check Peyton’s reference?, why isn’t anyone questioned about Marlene’s death? – The Hand That Rocks the Cradle is a classy, confidently crafted thriller that touches on themes of motherhood and sacrifice while rightly focusing on Peyton’s thirst for revenge; hard-edged and nail-biting in a way that has been watered down by repetition ever since, this is a thriller that deserves to be remembered for its transgressive moments as well as its formidable performance by De Mornay.
Cast: India Eisley, Samuel L. Jackson, Callan McAuliffe, Carl Beukes, Deon Lotz, Zane Meas
Some time after the death of her parents, Sawa (Eisley) starts killing members of the criminal organisation headed by the Emir (Meas), the man held responsible for her parents’ deaths. Sawa is helped by Karl Aker (Jackson), a detective who was her father’s partner. As she kills the Emir’s people, she gets closer and closer to him, but her dependency on a drug called Amp causes her to begin making mistakes, and soon her identity is in danger of being revealed.
While Aker covers up any evidence she leaves behind, Sawa is also helped by a young man named Oburi (McAuliffe). He says he knows her from before her parents’ death, and that they were friends, but thanks to Amp, Sawa’s memories of him are hazy and indistinct (along with most of her past). When a hit sees her being chased by some of the Emir’s people, Oburi helps her escape and, with no access to Amp, her withdrawal symptoms begin to help her remember exactly what happened when her parents were killed. And when she finally comes face to face with the Emir, the encounter leaves her with more questions than answers.
A live action version of Yasuomi Umetsu’s A kaito (1998), Kite was probably hoping that arriving so long after the original might mean any comparisons would be kept to a minimum. Sadly for the makers of this version, the gap in time isn’t an advantage, and the decision to “go live” has led to yet another dystopian vision of the future where street gangs dominate, crime appears to be the only growth industry, and the police are so jaded as to be little more than bystanders. We’ve seen this kind of movie so often now that it’s hard to get any kind of enjoyment out of it; the viewer can only sit back and watch as Kite ticks the boxes it so resolutely refuses to think outside of.
In the end, it’s all about the action, but despite some well choreographed moments of mayhem, including a bathroom shootout that’s reminiscent of the one in True Lies (1994), there’s nothing here that has any real impact. The characters are bland and/or one-dimensional, and nothing the cast does elevates the material in any way (not even Jackson, not exactly a stranger to crass or unconvincing dialogue, can do anything with lines that include “I can’t do this anymore”). As a result, there’s no one to care about, not even Sawa herself, and as the plot staggers towards the inevitable “twist” (that can be seen coming before the movie even starts), the sense of despair rises accordingly.
Rating: 3/10 – looking and feeling like a compendium of scenes and locations from every other ghetto-based action movie made in the last few years, Kite suffers from leaden direction and a script that fosters complacency all round; tiring and dispiriting, with missed opportunities galore, potential viewers should skip this altogether.
Cast: Frank Grillo, Carmen Ejogo, Zach Gilford, Kiele Sanchez, Zoë Soul, Justina Machado, John Beasley, Jack Conley, Michael K. Williams
March 31, 2023: The annual Purge is mere hours away. A police sergeant, Leo (Grillo) is preparing to use the twelve hour crime amnesty to murder the man who ran over and killed his son. A diner waitress, Eva (Ejogo) is on her way home to spend the evening with her daughter, Cali (Soul) and father, Rico (Beasley). And a couple, Shane (Gilford) and Liz (Sanchez), are travelling to see his sister; they have something important to tell her. Then the couple’s car breaks down, leaving them stranded and pursued by a gang of masked and face-painted Purgers. Meanwhile, Eva and Cali are doing their best to reassure their father that they will be able to cope with the increasing cost of his medical treatment, but Rico is dismissive. While they prepare dinner, he leaves their apartment, having made arrangements that will see both of them well taken care of… but at a price.
The Purge begins. Leo takes to the streets, while Shane and Liz continue to try and avoid the gang that’s pursuing them. Eva and Cali discover their father has gone – and the reason why. They also find their building under attack from a team of SWAT-like intruders led by Big Daddy (Conley). A more immediate threat comes from one of their neighbours but the women find themselves abducted by Big Daddy’s men instead. Leo happens to be passing by when he sees Eva and Cali being dragged into the street; against his better judgment he rescues the women, and without knowing it, Shane and Liz as well (they’ve taken the opportunity to hide in the back of his car). Their escape sees Leo’s car hit several times by bullets and later it breaks down. Eva tells Leo she has a friend nearby with a car and if he gets everyone to her friend’s apartment then she’ll persuade her friend, Tanya (Machado) to let him have the car. Leo agrees and they all set off on foot. The group finds itself under attack before they reach Tanya’s apartment, and Shane is wounded in the shoulder in the process.
Simmering tensions amongst Tanya’s family leads to unexpected bloodshed and the group are forced to leave – but without a car. Outside it isn’t long before Big Daddy’s men capture them. They are taken to a building that has been set up to provide rich patrons with the opportunity to have their own private Purge, and the five find themselves in a room being stalked by seven of the rich Purgers. Leo kills some of them, at which point the building is invaded by a group of anti-Purgists led by Carmelo (Williams). Leo, Eva and Cali flee in the confusion and they head to the home of the man who killed Leo’s son. The women try to convince Leo to let it go, but he enters the man’s home anyway…
It’s an ominous thought, but there’s a good possibility that we’ll be “treated” to a Purge movie every year until the law of dwindling financial returns convinces the producers to shut up shop and move on to pastures new. In the meantime, this first sequel does its best to expand on the original movie’s intriguing premise, but dulls matters despite its increased budget ($9 million, triple the original’s), and a broadening of the material that takes in everything from Government corruption to an anti-Purge movement to its third act Most Dangerous Game development. It’s a smart move, but it’s not too long before the viewer may well be wondering, Why didn’t they stick with the whole home under siege schtick of the first movie? The family under attack is briefly referenced when Eva and Cali’s building is stormed by Big Daddy’s men but it’s less an excuse for some carefully built-up tension and suspense than for Noel Gugliemi’s gun-toting neighbour to bring on the ham. And the makers have fallen into the trap of so many other filmmakers in the past, and failed to realise that having a group of people running around deserted streets at night while being pursued is about as exciting a prospect as watching an Uwe Boll double bill.
The main problem here is that none of the characters are particularly likeable, so it’s difficult to care if they’re killed or not. Where The Purge (2013) took some time to introduce its dysfunctional family, here the emphasis is on quick brush strokes and on to the next set up before anyone realises how little has been invested in creating a group the audience can root for. Leo is as taciturn as you’d expect from a character who occupies an uneasy moral high ground, while Eva, who you might also expect to turn out to be the resourceful heroine is instead relegated to bystander the longer the movie goes on. Cali is too whiny to care about, and Shane and Liz are as irritating as a paper cut – of all five, these are the ones you hope don’t make it to the next morning. However, this isn’t the actors’ fault, but returning writer/director DeMonaco’s, his script trying to cram too much in – the whole third act with the moneyed elite feels like it should be the focus of another instalment, and is as dramatically rushed as the rest of the movie.
Thanks to its hurried pacing and uninspired plotting, The Purge: Anarchy is only fitfully involving, and with only hints and oblique clues as to the even wider conspiracy still to be explored, the movie feels increasingly like a transition piece, something to keep the audience happy until the bigger story can be worked out and put on screen. That said, there are some nice, incidental touches: the woman covered in blood at the roadside, the bus on fire rolling by in the background, the return of the Stranger (Edwin Hodge) from the first movie, but they’re so few and far between, they make you wonder why the rest of the movie has to be so predictable. The cast do their best with the material but the limitations of their characters defeat them for the most part, and the lack of any real threat – having someone wearing face paint really isn’t scary or threatening any more, not on screen at least – leaves the group’s chances of survival looking more likely than not. DeMonaco directs efficiently enough but without bringing anything new visually or stylistically that we haven’t seen in a hundred other similar movies.
Rating: 5/10 – a calculated sequel that never really takes off, The Purge: Anarchy shows what can happen when a movie is unexpectedly successful and the idea of a franchise is borne; future Purges will need to be more tightly focused than this episode, and with characters the audience can invest in emotionally, otherwise the series may well find itself purged of anyone who’s interested.
Cast: Cameron Diaz, Leslie Mann, Nikolaj Coster-Waldau, Kate Upton, Don Johnson, Nicki Minaj, Taylor Kinney, David Thornton
When Carly Whitten (Diaz) discovers that her latest boyfriend, Mark (Coster-Waldau) is married, her attempts to move on are hampered by Mark’s wife, Kate (Mann), whose attempts to bond with her leads to their becoming unlikely friends. When they discover that Mark is seeing yet another woman, Amber (Upton), they enlist Amber’s help in getting back at him. Despite her initial intention to make Mark suffer, Kate relents and sleeps with him, which causes a rift between the three women. When Mark takes Kate with him on a trip to the Bahamas, Carly and Amber go along too, giving Kate the opportunity to see that Mark hasn’t changed his ways – they see him with yet another woman – and confirm that he’s been defrauding some of the companies he’s invested in via his work. They use this information to confront Mark and get Kate a divorce, while also exposing his fraudulent activities to his boss Nick (Thornton).
A comedy that relies largely on slapstick for its humour and unconvincing plot developments – Carly really knows Mark’s home address? – The Other Woman is tired almost before it begins, its attempts to be hip, funny, and relevant undermined by a lack of plausible characters and rational dialogue, as well as predictable lashings of girl power. The movie strives to be clever, but it never quite hits the mark, recycling old romantic comedy scenarios and ending with a showdown that requires Coster-Waldau to behave like a human cartoon. It’s also a movie that drags in certain scenes, its running time padded out with unnecessary bits and pieces and extended conversations, leaving the women’s final showdown with Mark feeling hurried and badly set up.
Directing from Melissa Stack’s outdated screenplay, Cassavetes directs capably enough but without bringing anything new or surprising to the material, leaving it to pass muster on its own without any support. Diaz plays Carly with all the commitment of someone filling in before the next, more exciting project, while Mann struggles to elevate Kate beyond stock comedy wife. Upton has little to do, Coster-Waldau is not as horrible as he needs to be, and Johnson’s role could have been played by anyone, so generic is it.
Rating: 4/10 – another disappointment in the rom-com arena, with no rom- and in dire need of decent -com, The Other Woman is dissatisfying and undercooked; a waste of everyone’s time and talent, and with a particularly ponderous script to reinforce how bland it is.
Following on from the events of The Tale of Zatoichi Continues (1962), New Tale of Zatoichi sees the blind masseur returning to his home village, there to find some peace after the showdown with his brother, Yoshiro. Zatoichi (Katsu) is in a melancholy mood, and as reluctant to fight as ever, but it’s not long before he’s challenged by Yasuhiko (Suga), the brother of Boss Kanbei, who Zatoichi killed in the previous movie. They fight, but it’s interrupted by the appearance of Zatoichi’s sensei, Master Banno (Kawazu). Banno makes Zatoichi a guest at his training school, and introduces him to his younger sister Yayoi (Tsubouchi); she is meant to marry a samurai called Mooroke but has no love for him. Her brother, meanwhile, is conspiring with a band of thieves called the Mito Tengo. They plan to kidnap the son of a local businessman and hold him to ransom.
A bond develops between Zatoichi and Yayoi, one that leads to her falling in love with him. She asks that he marry her and after confessing his past sins to her, and being forgiven for them, Zatoichi agrees and tells her he will renounce his old ways, including his sword fighting, in order that they might have a peaceful life together. At that moment, Yasuhiko calls on Zatoichi to finish their duel. He begs for mercy, leading Yasuhiko to devise an alternative plan for settling the issue between them: a throw of the dice – if Yasuhiko wins, Zatoichi will lose his right arm. Zatoichi does lose, but Yasuhiko takes pity on the couple and lies about the result. Later, Yayoi tells Banno of her love for the blind masseur, but her brother rejects her entreaties and tells Zatoichi to leave.
The kidnapping goes ahead as planned but Zatoichi becomes aware of Banno’s involvement, as does Yayoi. He saves the businessman’s son, and faces off against the Mito Tengo. He must then face Banno, knowing all the while that it will mean the end of his relationship with Yayoi.
The third entry in the series, New Tale of Zatoichi retains the usual themes of betrayal and redemption, and adds the prospect of a romantic, settled future for our wandering hero. If this had been the last in the series, such an ending might have been entirely appropriate, but the increasingly rootless nature of Zatoichi’s existence precludes such a conclusion (that and the success of the series so far). He’s a tragic figure, always seeking a peaceful existence but doomed to a life of violence. He’s also increasingly unlucky, both in love, and with his closest male relationships: first his brother betrays him, then his sensei. With Fate proving so ineluctable, Zatoichi can only struggle on, hoping that his continued loneliness will eventually come to an end (though his love for Yayoi appears to be the closest he’ll come to achieving that). It’s the kind of depth you don’t often find in a long-running series, and the fact that the makers have strived to maintain these themes throughout the series so far, is refreshing to watch.
Of course, such a wonderful character needs a wonderful actor, and once again Katsu puts in an incredible performance, his tender, compassionate nature seemingly at odds with his more aggressive abilities, but combining to paint a portrait of a man whose dual nature makes him so fascinating to watch. It’s a beautifully modulated achievement, the quiet power of his scenes with Tsubouchi holding the audience’s attention like a vice, their characters’ mutual desire for happiness – against all the odds – breathtaking in both its painful longing and its simplicity. That a movie which is essentially known for its fight scenes and good versus bad scenario can take the time to focus on its main character’s attempts to find joy, and make those scenes even more gripping than the rest, is truly impressive.
The first in the series to be filmed in colour, New Tale of Zatoichi doesn’t opt for a bright, colourful palette but settles instead for a dark-hued colour scheme that befits the subdued, sober approach to the material. (In comparison with the first two movies, which were shot in dazzling black and white, this entry doesn’t look half as good.) Behind the camera, director Tanaka retains many of the visual motifs used before, and encourages good performances from all concerned, especially Tsubouchi as Banno’s tender-hearted sister, the scene where she declares her love for Zatoichi demonstrating her skill at portraying someone whose yearning for happiness means everything. Suga too gives a good portrayal of a vengeful samurai out-manoeuvred by love. And there’s a terrific score by Akira Ifukube that complements both the emotional and the dramatic scenes, and is consistently rewarding.
Rating: 8/10 – another beautifully realised entry in the series, and one that reconfirms the care and attention that goes into each movie; more emotionally powerful than the first two movies, New Tale of Zatoichi takes its time with its characters, and this care pays off in dividends making the movie that rare beast: a second sequel that is as good as its predecessors.
Cast: Nicolas Cage, Rachel Nichols, Danny Glover, Max Ryan, Michael McGrady, Peter Stormare, Pasha D. Lychnikoff, Max Fowler, Aubrey Peeples, Jack Falahee, Ron Goleman
Paul Maguire (Cage) is a successful property developer with a beautiful wife, Vanessa (Nichols), and a precocious teenage daughter, Caitlin (Peeples). One evening, while Paul and Vanessa are out to dinner with the mayor, and Caitlin is at home with two friends, they’re interrupted by Detective St. John (Glover), who tells them that Caitlin has been kidnapped. Her two friends, Mike (Fowler) and Evan (Falahee) tell Paul and the police that three armed men broke into the house and took Caitlin; the men were brutal, efficient and said nothing. St. John warns Paul to let the police do their job and not use the skills he has to track the men down (it turns out Paul was part of a criminal gang but got out and has been straight ever since). Paul pays lip service to St. John’s advice and enlists the help of old friends Kane (Ryan) and Doherty (McGrady) in searching for his daughter.
Their own enquiries reveal nothing; no one knows who is behind the kidnapping. Then, after a few days, Caitlin’s body is found in a nearby river; she’s been shot in the head. At her funeral, Paul is stopped by his ex-boss, Francis O’Connell (Stormare), who warns him not to stir up any more trouble than already exists between O’Connell’s gang, and that of the Russians, led by Chernov (Lychnikoff). The warning brings back memories of a heist Paul and his two friends carried out nearly twenty years before, and which ended with them killing Chernov’s younger brother. Having kept their involvement a secret all these years, Paul wonders if someone now knows, and Caitlin’s death is a form of payback. Convinced this is the case, Paul, Kane and Doherty begin to target the Russians’ drug business, shutting down distribution houses and killing anyone that gets in their way.
Soon enough, Chernov begins to retaliate. He abducts Kane and tortures him, while at the same time, Paul begins to suspect that Doherty has told someone what they did to Chernov’s brother. With St. John doing his best to keep Paul out of trouble, and Chernov getting ever closer to finding out what happened to his brother, a sudden realisation leads Paul to the truth about Caitlin’s kidnapping and murder.
Tokarev, with its slipshod script and lacklustre mise-en-scène, re-confirms the downward spiral that seems to be Nicolas Cage’s career. Since World Trade Center (2006), Cage has appeared in twenty-one movies before this one, and the number of genuinely good movies he’s made can be counted on the fingers of one hand*. It’s also hard to believe Cage is an Oscar winner, such is the decline in quality of the movies he’s made since then (only Cuba Gooding Jr’s post-Oscar career contains more poor choices). Either Cage has some serious bills to pay, or his critical faculties are all burnt out, but either way, Tokarev is an out-and-out turkey.
None of it makes any sense, from Paul’s having been able to walk away clean from his criminal past, to the hackneyed “secret-no-one-knows” subplot, to St John’s leniency in the face of Paul’s flagrant vigilante behaviour, to O’Connell’s warning to Paul to let it go. Expediency is piled on top of artifice which is then topped off with preposterousness, and it all comes complete with a large side order of implausibility. The truth behind Caitlin’s abduction and murder is so unlikely even Cage can’t make it work (not that he’s trying very hard; his performance isn’t so much phoned in as faxed in from a different decade). It’s all so much nonsense it’s almost insulting, the script by Jim Agnew and Sean Keller adding up to a series of barely connected scenes and events that operate separately from each other, and sometimes, in complete isolation (the two or three scenes where Paul tries to persuade Vanessa to find somewhere safe to be while he does the things she’s asked him to do but really doesn’t want to know about).
Adding to the disappointment doled out by the script is the leaden direction courtesy of Cabezas, an amazing combination of apathy towards the material and disinterest in the characters, leaving the cast adrift and having to fend for themselves. What acting there is in the movie is mostly unexpected, as Cage et al. deliver their dialogue with all the capability of people for whom English is a second language. Doherty, in particular, seems unable to say anything without mangling the content, and even when he does manage a clean delivery, there’s no emotion or heart there; he’s like a robot who’s stuck in neutral. Nichols plays the upset second wife and stepmother as if she’s grateful to be there, while Stormare (in a glorified cameo) attempts an Irish accent with all the purpose of a man who knows he’s probably not going to be called back for redubbing. As for Glover, he’s hamstrung by a character so vapid and ineffectual (as a policeman) that he might as well be invisible.
It doesn’t help that the movie is also drab to look at, with uninspired lighting and camera movements, and pacing that kills the movie stone dead just minutes in (editor Robert A. Ferretti has the same problem as the script writers: he doesn’t know what to focus on or for how long). Scenes that should be powerful and dramatic are regularly stopped from doing so, and thanks to Cabezas, any potential interest in the story is quickly abandoned, leaving the viewer to count the minutes until the movie ends.
Rating: 3/10 – with the action sequences providing a bare minimum of excitement, Tokarev – the make of gun that kills both Chernov’s brother and Caitlin – has little to recommend it; fans of Nicolas Cage might give it a go, but otherwise this is one quasi-revenge movie that should be avoided completely.
*Those genuinely good movies: Kick-Ass (2010), The Croods (2013), and Joe (2013).
Cast: Dominic Cooper, Samuel L. Jackson, Gloria Reuben, Ryan Robbins, Erin Karpluk, Dylan Taylor
Pop quiz: You’re a mega-successful district attorney who’s never lost a case. After a night out celebrating another win in court, and having had a few drinks, you still drive home because you’re worried your car might be stolen while you take a taxi. On the way, you hit and injure a man. Do you: a) call for an ambulance using your mobile phone and stay with the man until it arrives? b) call for an ambulance by using a pay phone and then drive off? or c) carry on driving and don’t look back? If you answered b, then give yourself a gold star.
This is what hot shot DA Mitch Brockden (Cooper) does, and inevitably it sets in motion a series of events that ends with his wife, Rachel (Karpluk) and newborn child Ella being put in mortal danger. In between those two events, Mitch gets an uncomfortable case of the guilts. When Clinton Davis (Jackson) is arrested with the injured man – who is now dead – in his car later that evening, Davis’s assertion that he had found the man and was trying to get him to a hospital rings true with Mitch, even though Davis has tools in his car that match the weapons that caused the man’s other injuries. When Davis is charged with the man’s murder, it’s Mitch who gets to prosecute him.
For reasons too tiresome and unlikely to reveal here, Mitch’s estranged step-brother Jimmy (Robbins) testifies at the trial that he saw the hit and run. Davis is freed. Soon after, another man is found dead with similar injuries. Mitch now believes Davis did kill the man he knocked down, and when investigating Detective Kanon (Reuben) mentions other incidents that Davis is connected to, Mitch is convinced of Davis’s guilt. He decides to investigate further, but soon finds that Davis is more dangerous than he expected.
It’s not that the whole scenario of Reasonable Doubt is far-fetched, or that the motivations of both Mitch and Davis are about as convincing as a politician’s probity, nor even that the level of credibility is undermined continually by Cooper’s lacklustre performance – he demonstrates guilt by looking as if his haemorrhoids are playing up – it’s more that no one stopped to take stock of the movie while it was being made and said, “Hold on, isn’t this just the biggest load of rubbish?” If someone had, then perhaps we’d all have been spared this poor excuse for a thriller. As it is, the audience has to endure scene after scene of disjointed dialogue, uncomfortable plot contrivances, woeful acting (Cooper and Reuben are the worst offenders), and such dreadful direction that Peter Howitt’s name is changed in the credits (see above).
It’s always frustrating when movies like this are made. Reasonable Doubt could have been so much better, but the script by Peter A. Dowling comes across as a hastily assembled first draft. There is very little internal logic on display, and what there is is so ridiculous that even if you suspended all credulity you’d still be asking yourself if what you were seeing was really happening. The character of Mitch bears no resemblance to anyone in real life, he makes risky decisions based more on the script’s need for him to do so than any actual self-motivation, and for someone who is so good at his job – so much so that he knows a judge’s decision before he even makes it – he makes one stupid mistake after another, until he ends up arrested for the attempted murder of his step-brother.
And then the movie presents us with it’s most ridiculous and stupid moment: after receiving a call from Davis who tells him he’s going to kill Rachel and Ella, and after he overpowers a police officer, Mitch walks out of the police station without being stopped and while carrying the police officer’s gun! He doesn’t even try to hide it, just walks out with it in his hand! It’s when a script offers this as a development, and no one stops to say “Hold on, isn’t this just the biggest load of complete rubbish?” that you know no one really cares. So why should the audience?
There are – amazingly – worse thrillers out there, but these are mostly low-budget affairs with semi-professional casts and inexperienced directors. Here, there’s a level of conspicuous ability but it’s all for nought. Even Jackson phones in his performance, giving us a less intense, less convincing version of his character from Meeting Evil (2012). You could say that Reasonable Doubt is so bad it’s mesmerising… but that would be a whole other load of rubbish.
Rating: 3/10 – dreadful thriller that insults its own cast as well as the audience; proof if any were needed that some movies should have their productions shut down after day one.
Cast: Josh Brolin, Elizabeth Olsen, Sharlto Copley, Samuel L. Jackson, Michael Imperioli, Pom Klementieff, James Ransone, Max Casella, Linda Emond
There are times when you just know that the phrase “just because you can doesn’t mean you should” is going to apply to an upcoming remake or sequel, and that what will eventually hit cinemas – if the movie’s that lucky (or has enough money behind it) – is going to be as disappointing as sunbathing during an eclipse. It’s a very rare remake indeed that comes out as well as the original, and that’s mostly because those originals are lightning-in-a-bottle moments. From Gus Van Sant’s ill-advised and unexpectedly dull shot-for-shot remake of Psycho (1998) to the current vogue for remaking what seems like every horror movie from the Eighties, remakes are the lazy filmmaker’s way of keeping busy. And so it proves with Oldboy, Spike Lee’s remake of Chan-wook Park’s modern classic.
Even with Lee and writer Mark Protosevich saying they’ve gone back to the original manga that Park based his movie on, this version still fails on so many levels. The main character, Joe Doucett (played with his usual intensity by Brolin) is unlikeable from the start, so any sympathy we might have for him is dispensed with before he’s even held captive. There’s a cartoonish performance from Samuel L. Jackson as chief gaoler Chaney that comes complete with blond ponytail and which sits at odds with the rest of the performances, and the tone of the movie as a whole. When Joe meets Marie (Olsen) she gives him her number almost straight away in case he needs any help; yes, she’s an aid worker but would she really do that (but then how would the rest of the movie develop if she didn’t)?
The villain of the piece is played with pantomime bravura by Copley, and the only thing that’s missing from his performance is a bit of moustache-twirling (his vocal styling is quite irritating too). The sequence where Joe takes on Chaney’s goons with just a hammer now looks over-rehearsed and lacks any visceral quality. And the revelation of why Joe has been released is given a mock-opera makeover that resists any emotional engagement by the viewer because, in the set up, it appears that Copley’s character is able to install surveillance equipment wherever Joe goes and in advance of his knowing he’s going there.
In short, the movie relies on contrivance after contrivance and gives the viewer nothing to connect with. As a reinterpretation (which sounds more like prevarication than anything else), Oldboy ends up being like a mime interpreting a song: you wonder what was the point.
Rating: 5/10 – proficient on a technical level with excellent photography courtesy of Sean Bobbitt, Oldboy strips away the cultural depth of Chan’s version and gives us nothing in return; even judged on its own merits it’s still a movie that doesn’t work.
