Dear Dictator (2017)

25 Saturday Aug 2018

Tags

Black List script, Comedy, Coup d'Etat, Joe Syracuse, Katie Holmes, Lisa Addario, Michael Caine, Odeya Rush, Pen pals, Review, Satire, Suburbia

Original title: Coup d’Etat

D: Lisa Addario, Joe Syracuse / 90m

Cast: Michael Caine, Odeya Rush, Katie Holmes, Seth Green, Jason Biggs

Tatiana Mills (Rush) is fifteen years old when she decides to start writing letters to island dictator, Anton Vincent (Caine). Intrigued by her letters, Vincent writes back, and the pair develop a pen pal relationship that involves Tatiana telling him about her life and problems, and Anton proffering advice on how to deal with them. Many of her problems revolve around school (where she’s not the most popular girl), and her relationship with her mother, Darlene (Holmes). When Anton is the victim of a coup d’etat and has to flee his island country, he heads for the US, where Tatiana finds him hiding out in the garage. In return for allowing him to stay with them, Tatiana and Darlene let Anton help out with various jobs around the house, and continuing to help Tatiana with her problems. While Darlene becomes more confident in how to deal with her boss (and lover) Dr Seaver (Green), Anton teaches Tatiana how to deal with the girls who pick on her, and how to become a rebel – just like him. But the authorities are getting closer to finding him…

Yet another movie that has its origins in an unproduced Black List script – this time from 2006 – Dear Dictator is ostensibly a comedy that strives for relevance but falls well short thanks to its depiction of Anton as a sub-par Castro lookalike, and Tatiana’s tired teenage problems. It doesn’t help either that Anton vacillates between being a hard line dictator and a kindly surrogate grandfather figure. By adopting this approach to the character, writer/directors Addario and Syracuse miss out on the chance to make Anton’s stay in suburbia a truly subversive experience. Instead of making him a good man at heart, how much more satisfying it would have been if his extreme political practices had led to Tatiana adopting more than just his advice on how to deal with bullies. The movie makes a half-hearted attempt at this, but pulls Tatiana back from the edge before things can get too serious (it is a comedy, after all). Likewise, Tatiana’s problems are the stuff of too many previous movies to prompt much more than tired acknowledgment, followed quickly by deeply lodged ennui. As their relationship develops, the script shifts the balance of power between them backwards and forwards until one of them is required to make a wholly expected sacrifice.

So what we have here is an unproduced Black List script that could probably have written itself, such is its reliance on the clichés of teen dramas, and its determination to make Anton more sympathetic than dangerous. With both its central pairing and its central dynamic proving so unrewarding, there’s only Darlene’s interaction with Dr Seaver to fall back on. Ranging from exploitative to criminal (and with an element of co-dependency thrown in for good measure), their relationship provides the subversive ingredient the movie needs so desperately elsewhere (it’s certainly disturbing to see Green licking Holmes’s toes with such relish). But it’s not enough to rescue the movie from avoidable mediocrity, and despite surprisingly good performances from Caine, Rush and Holmes (particularly Holmes), it’s Addario and Syracuse’s inability to give the movie a coherent through line or tone that damages it most of all. Falling foul of that old no-no, the consecutive scenes that have no relation to each other, Dear Dictator is disjointed and unsure at times if drama or humour is the more appropriate context for the material it’s dealing with. Which is awkward as this is clearly meant to be a comedy – probably.

Rating: 4/10 – some of Caine’s more recent choices haven’t been the best, and Dear Dictator is another one to add to the list (though it’s not in the same league as Jaws: The Revenge (1987) – and what could be?); with only a fleeting awareness of how uneven it all is, the movie loses its way very early on and never finds its way back.

Mom & Dad (2017)

10 Sunday Jun 2018

Posted by dullwood68 in Movies

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Tags

Anne Winters, Black comedy, Brian Taylor, Drama, Filicide, Horror, Nicolas Cage, Review, Selma Blair, Suburbia, Thriller, Zackary Arthur

D: Brian Taylor / 83m

Cast: Nicolas Cage, Selma Blair, Anne Winters, Zackary Arthur, Robert T. Cunningham, Olivia Crocicchia, Lance Henriksen, Marilyn Dodds Frank

For the Ryans it’s just another ordinary, humdrum day. Dad Brent (Cage) is getting through another dull day at the office, mum Kendall (Blair) is trying to make sense of where her life has gone, teenage daughter Carly (Winters) is rebelling against her parents because they don’t approve of her boyfriend, Damon (Cunningham), and young son Josh (Arthur) is home for the day. But partway through the morning, news reports start referring to incidents of parents attacking and killing their children. Carly and her best friend, Riley (Crocicchia), discover this when groups of parents show up at their school with murderous intent. Kendall hears about these incidents too, and rushes home to ensure Josh is safe – but little realising that once she’s there he won’t be. With Carly reaching home accompanied by Damon, she finds Josh alive and well, but only just before Brent arrives home too, followed by Kendall. Soon, the three children are doing their best to stay alive as Brent and Kendall show their determination to kill their children, and if it has to be messy, well…

The basic premise of Mom & Dad – what would happen if parents took up filicide with gleeful enthusiasm – is evidenced in a number of cruel, horrific, and yet somehow satisfying ways. The movie begins with a mother leaving her baby in a car on some railroad tracks with a train fast approaching. Later, a first-time mum attempts to kill her newborn within moments of its birth, and as Kendall speeds home, another mum shoves a stroller with her child inside it in front of Kendall’s car. These and other examples of parental rage in suburbia are presented with a joyful sense of mischief that is unapologetic, and the source of much of the movie’s black comedy. Of course, whether or not the idea of filicide is an acceptable source of humour will be down to the individual, but Brian Taylor’s script offers no defence in the matter – and nor should it. It’s a crazy idea, but a perfect one for a low budget horror thriller that rolls along in the wake of The Purge series, and which doesn’t show anything too graphic, such as Georgie Denbrough losing an arm in It (2017). It’s all about the tone – which is admittedly warped – but Taylor pulls it off with brash exuberance, and more to spare.

In doing so he marshalls two terrific performances from Cage and Blair. It’s a given that Cage will go overboard in his portrayal of the world weary Brent (trapped in a life he never wanted), but this time it’s in full service to the story, and it’s entirely in context of his character’s insane, murderous intentions. But it’s Blair who impresses the most, going from shocked and horrified to eerily calm about murdering her children, and offering odd, quirky moments such as when she picks up a meat tenderiser and realises what it can be used for. Both actors are clearly having a lot of fun, and Taylor’s script allows them to explore (admittedly) basic notions of what it means to be a parent and the pressures that go with it. Taylor also gets the action right – as the co-writer/director of the Crank movies should – and does so with an acknowledgment that he’s on a restricted budget, which makes some of the set ups more inventive than expected. It’s not the subtlest of movies, and though it’s far-fetched nature sometimes works against it, it’s still an entertaining, and often very funny, look at what some parents would really like to do to their kids if they were able to.

Rating: 7/10 – surprisingly well put together, and shot through with a casual disregard for the sanctity of parenthood, Mom & Dad is a blithely amoral horror thriller that works well within its production boundaries and its basic premise; wisely choosing not to explain the reason or source of why parents start killing their children, it gets on with the challenge of making it as terrifying a situation as possible – and for the most part, succeeds admirably.