Cop Car (2015)

16 Sunday Aug 2015

Tags

Crime, Drama, Drugs, Hays Wellford, James Freedson-Jackson, Jon Watts, Kevin Bacon, Murder, Review, Shea Whigham, Sheriff, Stolen car, Thriller

D: Jon Watts / 86m

Cast: Kevin Bacon, James Freedson-Jackson, Hays Wellford, Shea Whigham, Camryn Manheim

Two boys, Travis (Freedson-Jackson) and Harrison (Wellford) have run away from their respective homes, and are travelling across country when they stumble upon a police cruiser in a small wooded area. Nervous about being discovered and taken home, they approach the vehicle with caution but soon realise that whoever it belongs to isn’t anywhere nearby. They get in and pretend to be driving it when Travis finds the keys. Caught up in the excitement of finding the car, they drive off, eventually reaching a main road where they almost collide with a woman driver (Manheim).

Meanwhile, Sheriff Kretzer (Bacon), whose cruiser it is, is busy disposing of a body he had in the trunk. When he returns to the car to dispose of a second body, he of course finds it’s gone. Confused, he uses his mobile phone to call Dispatch and ask the operator if she’s heard anything unusual over the radio. Kretzer is relieved when she says no, but knows that it could be just a matter of time before his car is seen or stopped. He begins to run across country until he comes to a trailer park. There he steals a car, and uses it to head home where he can regroup. When another call to Dispatch reveals reports of a stolen cop car, he dismisses the idea and arranges for all the local units to switch to another channel.

That done, he uses the radio in his truck to try and contact whoever’s stolen his cruiser. The boys don’t hear him at first, but they do hear a noise from the trunk. When they open it they discover a badly beaten man (Whigham) who is also tied up. He implores them to free him, saying the sheriff is a bad man and his life is still in danger. But when Travis and Harrison do free him, he overpowers them, and when Kretzer calls through again, the man forces Harrison to give him their location. While Kretzer heads to meet them, the man takes the sheriff’s assault rifle and hides nearby with the intention of killing him when he arrives. But when the sheriff does arrive, he senses something’s wrong, and so begins a game of cat-and-mouse that sees the two friends trapped in the back of the cruiser, and at the mercy of both the man and the sheriff.

Cop Car‘s basic premise is a simple one: boys steal a sheriff’s cruiser, sheriff tries to get cruiser back, things get messy and complicated very quickly. In fact, it’s such a simple premise that it doesn’t need much more embellishment than a woman driver who can’t believe what’s she seen (two boys driving a sheriff’s car). And director/co-writer (along with Christopher J. Ford) Watts knows it, paring down the action and the drama to the point where only the most essential requirements are needed or used. It makes a refreshing change to see a thriller that’s pared down in such an effective way, and it’s all credit to Watts and Ford that they maintain such a tightly focused narrative throughout.

Of course, they’re helped enormously by the presence of Bacon (sporting a moustache that could qualify as either a special effect or a character in its own right). As the cocksure sheriff whose crooked endeavours are brought to heel by the intervention of two unsuspecting ten year olds, Bacon is a mix of sweaty terror and ambivalent menace; there’s a moral compass in there, but thanks to the script and Bacon’s interpretation of the character the viewer can’t be sure which way he’ll turn when it comes to dealing with the two boys (as opposed to Whigham’s unequivocally bad guy, who in the movie’s most cruelly effective scene, tells the boys just what he’ll do if they try and double cross him).

With Bacon on such fine form, it’s a good job that Freedson-Jackson and Wellford are able to match him for credibility, their easy-going camaraderie and childish naïvete another of the movie’s wealth of positives. In this day and age of computer whizz-kids and their seemingly inevitable rush to adulthood, it’s good to see a couple of kids who aren’t tech savvy, don’t know about safety catches on guns, and believe that someone they find bound and bloodied in the trunk of a car isn’t on the wrong side of the law (their ease in driving does raise a few questions however). Travis is the more confident of the two, and Freedson-Jackson – making his feature debut – shows how vulnerable he really is beneath all the bravado. By contrast, Harrison is the more cautious and reserved of the two, and Wellford portrays his gradual toughening up with a skill that belies his age and experience.

There’s very little in the way of subplot either, with Kretzer’s pursuit of his car, and the man’s determination to kill him providing all the required tension and drama. By putting the two boys square in the middle of the two men’s determination to kill each other, Watts adds a layer of vulnerability to a story that would otherwise be a straightforward slab of testosterone set in wide open spaces. And what wide open spaces they are, the Colorado locations beautifully lensed by Matthew J. Lloyd and Larkin Seiple, the rolling grasslands often overwhelmed by some impressively glowering skies. The locations give the movie a sense of place and dimension, making even Kretzer’s run across country seem entirely possible, despite the seemingly endless vistas he has to travel through.

For all Watts’ and Ford’s careful attention to detail and the way in which they’ve carefully structured their story, there are still a few problems. The scene where Kretzer persuades the woman driver to look for his keys isn’t as clever or convincing as it needs to be, and leaves the viewer feeling a little disappointed at the way in which the movie is heading towards its conclusion. And the outcome of the sheriff’s showdown with the man feels forced, while what follows seems hopelessly contrived, as if the movie needed to be a certain length and this was the best way they could come up with to meet that need. It undermines all the good work that’s gone before, but not so much to negate it entirely, though some viewers will probably be left shaking their heads in dismay.

Rating: 7/10 – let down by a final quarter hour that flouts the carefully constructed narrative that’s gone before, Cop Car is still a great little thriller that is much better than you’d expect; eschewing cynicism (in a genre that can’t help itself sometimes), and focusing on the situation the boys find themselves in, it has a knowing depth that rewards on closer examination.

The Road Within (2014)

19 Thursday Mar 2015

Posted by dullwood68 in Movies

≈ 1 Comment

Tags

Anorexia, Bereavement, Comedy, Dev Patel, Drama, Gren Wells, Kyra Sedgwick, OCD, Review, Road trip, Robert Patrick, Robert Sheehan, Stolen car, Therapy, Tourette's, Zoë Kravitz

D: Gren Wells / 100m

Cast: Robert Sheehan, Dev Patel, Zoë Kravitz, Robert Patrick, Kyra Sedgwick, Ali Hills

Following the death of his mother, Vincent (Sheehan) is persuaded by his estranged father, Robert (Patrick), to attend an experimental treatment centre for his Tourette’s. After meeting with the head of the centre, Dr Rose (Sedgwick), Vincent is taken to the room where he’ll be staying, and meets OCD sufferer, Alex (Patel). Alex is horrified at having a roommate and does what he can to get Vincent moved to another room but his plans fail. Vincent also meets Marie (Kravitz), who is there because she suffers from anorexia (and who almost died a few months before).

Vincent and Marie strike up a friendship, but when he gets into trouble with Dr Rose, it’s she who offers an unexpected solution: take Dr Rose’s car and go wherever he wants to go. Vincent decides on the ocean so that he can scatter his mother’s ashes. He and Marie take off one night, but not without first having to abduct Alex and take him with them (he was going to inform on them to Dr Rose). When their absence is discovered, Dr Rose contacts Vincent’s father and tells him what’s happened. Despite being a politician in the middle of an election campaign, Robert agrees to come and help find his son.

He and Dr Rose struggle to get along as they pursue the runaways, while Vincent, Marie and Alex begin to forge stronger relationships. When Robert and Dr Rose catch up with them at a lake, they manage to get away. As they travel to the ocean they begin to learn to trust each other, and Vincent and Marie grow closer, while Robert, through talking about his son to Dr Rose, begins to realise that he’s not been the kind of father that Vincent needed while he was growing up. Meanwhile, Vincent and Marie’s relationship becomes intimate, but this angers Alex, who has seen her manipulate other patients at the centre in the same way. He takes off and leaves them stranded.

They catch up with him at the next town, and there is a violent confrontation, but it leads to a reconciliation, and they carry on to the ocean. But when they get there, Marie has a relapse and is taken to hospital, leaving Vincent to make the hardest decision of his life so far.

A dramatic comedy – or comic drama, whichever you prefer – The Road Within is an enjoyable, if formulaic, road movie that pitches itself somewhere to the left of inspirational, and partly to the right of sentimental. It’s a feelgood movie about people who can’t always, if ever, feel good about themselves, and as such has an air of wish fulfilment about it that it never quite shakes off. Alex’s OCD is a good case in point: he has to open and close doors four times before going through them but this comes and goes at the script’s discretion, and when he doesn’t do it it’s ignored rather than celebrated. But in the end, the movie is intelligent enough not to administer any miracle cures to Vincent, Marie or Alex, just some appropriate development in the way they deal with their conditions.

First-time director Wells, working from her own script, creates a narrative that most viewers will recognise from other road movies, and while sometimes familiarity can cause viewers to react in a blasé, seen-it-all-before way, here the journey is entirely important for the way in which it makes the characters interact. If the movie had been set entirely at the centre, then the metaphor of travelling toward an understanding of themselves would have been negated. And sometimes, comfort zones have to be left behind if we’re going to make any progress. These are obvious points to make, but the movie makes them with a sincerity and a sense of humour that allows the viewer to invest in the characters and care about what happens to them.

Thanks to the cast’s clever and often intuitive performances, the characters of Vincent, Marie and Alex never seem like the caricatures they could so easily have turned out to be. Vincent lives in the shadow of his father’s disappointment in having a son who causes him embarrassment, while Marie’s rebellious nature hides a young woman’s need for approbation despite how her illness makes her feel about herself. And Alex wants to be normal even though he knows at the same time that the likelihood of that ever happening is so minimal as to be impossible. Sheehan displays a vulnerable side to Vincent’s character that makes him instantly likeable, but there’s a deeply angry side to him that Sheehan exhibits with equal effectiveness, both aspects given due weight throughout. Kravitz gives Marie a bruised quality that highlights the suffering she’s endured and makes her the most damaged of the trio; it’s a surprisingly delicate performance, and one that keeps the viewer’s attention on her in any scene she’s in.

Patel, however, operates at the opposite end of the spectrum to Kravitz, portraying Alex as a screaming, panic-driven doomsayer – every pothole he hits while driving is someone he’s run over, like a pregnant woman – and providing someone for Vincent and Marie to play tricks on. It’s a confident performance, strident at times, but as with Sheehan and Kravitz, he portrays the character’s burden with sincerity and no small amount of sympathy. (This helps offset the several occasions when his tantrums make the viewer want to reach through the screen and give him a good slap – or wish the other characters would.)

The movie is attractive to watch, with beautiful location work at Yosemite National Park proving a highlight, and the various themes of longing, connection and displacement given pertinent, if sometimes too gentle, attention, and Wells’ direction keeps the focus on the main characters’ often unsteady but quietly determined steps toward making their lives better, even if it’s just in small ways. This keeps the movie grounded and credible, and if the way in which Robert opens up to Dr Rose near the movie’s end seems a little too predictable or unlikely, then it’s a small misstep in an otherwise very enjoyable production.

Rating: 8/10 – not without some minor flaws – but none that keep the movie from being entertaining – The Road Within takes three people with serious illnesses and refuses to use those illnesses to define them; blackly comic in places – Vincent’s outburst at his mother’s funeral sets the tone – and with its heart in the right place, this is a movie that rewards the viewer on a small scale, but very effectively nevertheless.

The Rover (2014)

22 Friday Aug 2014

Posted by dullwood68 in Movies

≈ 3 Comments

Tags

Australia, David Michôd, Economic collapse, Guy Pearce, Outback, Review, Robbery, Robert Pattinson, Scoot McNairy, Stolen car

D: David Michôd / 103m

Cast: Guy Pearce, Robert Pattinson, Scoot McNairy, Gillian Jones, David Field, Tawanda Manyimo, Anthony Hayes, Susan Prior

Set ten years after a global economic collapse, and in the Australian outback, an embittered loner named Eric (Pearce) stops at a bar for a drink. His car is stolen by a trio of thieves led by Henry (McNairy), after their own car crashes following a robbery that has seen Henry wounded in the leg, and forced to leave his brother behind. With the car being his only remaining possession, Eric gets their car started again and chases after them. They stop and there is a confrontation that sees Eric knocked unconscious. When he comes to, Henry and his friends are gone. Eric journeys on to the next town where he obtains a gun; he also meets Rey (Pattinson), who turns out to be Henry’s younger brother. Like his brother, Rey is suffering from a gunshot wound. In return for finding medical help for him, Rey agrees to help Eric track down his brother.

Once Rey is seen by a doctor (Prior), the duo head for the next town where they stay at a motel. While in their room, Rey is shot at by a soldier but Eric comes to his rescue. The next day, while camping, Eric is apprehended by army sergeant Rickofferson (Hayes) and taken to a nearby army base. Eric reveals why he is so bitter and angry but the sergeant is uninterested. A few moments later, Rey bursts in having come to rescue Eric; with the sergeant and his men all dead, the pair escape and head for the next town, where Henry and his gang are hiding out. At the house where they’re staying, Rey, armed with a gun, goes in first…

The Rover is, at first glance, a meticulously crafted thriller that confirms the promise shown in its director’s previous movie Animal Kingdom (2010), but on closer inspection the movie proves to be a case of the emperor’s new clothes rather than anything more substantial. It’s a shame because it has much to recommend it, with often stunning visuals that underpin its lead character’s psychological distance from the people he meets. Eric is a man alone, both in company and in the vast stretches of the Outback that he travels through. He’s adrift in his own life, but he keeps his resentment of past events close to him, feeding off it, letting it keep him going; without it he would stop moving altogether. As portrayed by Pearce, Eric is a man clinging on to his sanity, a hair’s breadth away from taking his anger and pain out on everyone he meets. That he manages to keep himself in check so much speaks of the shadow of the man he used to be, and which is still inside him somewhere. Pearce gives an appropriately intense performance and makes Eric a fiercely relentless force of nature, largely unrepentant, and borderline psychotic. It’s a darkly hypnotic portrayal, and easily Pearce’s finest in years.

He’s matched in the performance stakes by Pattinson, who as the slow-witted Rey, commands as much attention as Pearce does, his slack-eyed look and simplistic understanding of his situation making Rey as much a casualty in his own way as Eric is. Rey is needy, so much so that he attaches himself to Eric in lieu of his brother’s presence, his loyalty changing depending on his proximity to whoever shows an interest in him or supports him. He’s the opposite of Eric, a (younger) man in constant need of company in order to validate his own existence, and almost incapable of acting independently, such is his reliance on others. Pattinson subverts his pretty boy image to make Rey effectively an awkward adolescent, his semi-vacant gaze never wavering, his panic in situations he can’t control the reaction of an emotionally under-developed child. It’s a stirring performance, one that proves beyond a shadow of a doubt that Pattinson has a greater range than perhaps many people give him credit for.

With two such riveting performances it’s a shame then that Michôd’s script isn’t as well-structured, or clever, as it seems at first glance. There are too many moments where convenience drives the plot forwards, and few occasions where The Rover feels like an organic story, where the events involving Eric and Rey seem entirely plausible. The confrontation between Eric and Henry that results in Eric being knocked unconscious is a serious case in point: why doesn’t Henry just kill Eric, instead of leaving him alive, and with their car, and with the keys tossed carelessly aside where they’re easily found? The movie displays a keen sense of nihilism elsewhere, but here, with the encounter happening so early on, it just undermines the whole notion of Henry’s gang being any kind of threat to Eric, and the script pretty much abandons them from this point on, only bringing them back for the finale (it also undermines the notion that, in the future, life has become even less of a commodity than it is now).

There’s also the reason for Eric being so dogmatic in wanting his car back. It’s not until the very end that we discover the reason for his relentless pursuit, and it’s a reason that is bound to cause endless debate amongst moviegoers for some time to come. For this reviewer, it’s a “twist” that doesn’t quite work, and serves only to try and (in a way) rehabilitate Eric with the audience. It’s a brave move on Michôd’s part but again, for this reviewer, adds little to what’s gone before. Perhaps it would have been better not to know.

Where the movie is on firmer ground is with its location work and glorious photography courtesy of Natasha Braier, the Australian Outback looking both vast and unexpectedly restraining at the same time, its untamed wilderness as much a character as the people that inhabit it. Its rugged, inhospitable backdrop serving as a reflection of the hardships the characters have to endure to survive, Braier’s lensing brings out its beauty as well, and in the process, rewards the viewer with breathtaking vista after breathtaking vista. To complement the visuals there is a strong, percussive score by Anthony Partos that underlines the starkness of the surroundings, but which becomes more emotive as the relationship between Eric and Rey begins to change. It’s a subtle process but very well done.

Rating: 5/10 – with many aspects that don’t work as well as its writer/director may have intended, The Rover is likely to divide audiences for some time to come; what isn’t in doubt, though, is the quality of the lead performances which are well worth the price of admission.