THE PROGRAM

(Stephen Frears, 2015)

The first act here strikes an odd balance. It portrays Lance Armstrong (Ben Foster)

as a sympathetic protagonist, forced into doping because if he wanted to win, well then that was the only way. Everybody else was doing it, so why shouldn’t he? Especially when he has had to fight off cancer, a time in his life depicted as an awful battle  in grim, shadowed hospital rooms.

Lance’s return sees him convinced that doping is the only way, and he embraces the work of his Doctor Michele Ferarri (Guillaume Canet) and is rewarded with seven consecutive tour de France victories.

He is friend to Presidents and celebrities, adored for his charity which raises millions for cancer research, happily married with children, and one of the greatest athletes on Earth.

Only David Walsh (Chris O’Dowd) is disgusted. If everybody can see there is something wrong within cycling, then everybody is happy to stay silent. But Walsh cannot. He rants and asks questions, and it is then, when he is backed into a corner, that we see another side of Lance. He bullies, threatens, sues. He uses cancer and his charity as a shield. He gets away with it. Until he doesn’t anymore.

The procedural aspects of this story are its most interesting element.

How Armstrong and his team doped, how he escaped detection for so long. But director Frears and screenwriter John Hodge want this to be something of a character study, and that is where the film comes somewhat unstuck.

Armstrong loves winning, loves a battle. But that doesn’t explain him, explain his controlling aggression, explain the way he destroys those who oppose him. Ben Foster does his best, but when his Armstrong looks into a mirror he seems like an empty puppet. These filmmakers don’t understand this man. And that leaves the film curiously hollow.

LONE SURVIVOR

(Peter Berg, 2013)

America: Fuck Yeah!
Four heroic Navy SEALs on a recon mission in Afghanistan find themselves caught in open ground by multiple Taliban fighters. Without access to communications and with nowhere to run, they begin a desperate rearguard action, killing dozens of enemy soldiers. But they are whittled down gradually until only one remains...
Reminiscent of Ridley Scott's superior Black Hawk Down, this a a combat movie that sentimentalises the band of brothers at its heart while turning the faceless enemy combatants into little better than 1st person shooter video game cannon fodder. That is, when the enemy is not being identified as evil Taliban leadership, responsible directly for the deaths of US soldiers. Berg isn't interested in the politics or morals of the conflict in Afghanistan, and so he reduces it to a jingoistic claptrap of black and white, good versus evil.
In this case the good are represented by American movie stars: Mark Wahlberg, Taylor Kitsch, Emile Hirsch and Ben Foster (the standout) play the four SEALs, with Eric Bana their commanding officer. Berg knows what he's doing and the battle scenes here are ferocious, and crucially always maintain some spatial coherence - you know exactly where everybody is in relation to everybody else, despite all the gunfire and explosions.
Documentary footage over the opening credits shows how tough SEAL training is and that should serve as a warning of sorts - these men (literally) jump off two cliffs as part of their retreat, and this film is really as much of a gruelling survival ordeal as it is a War movie. The cast are fine, the script efficient but hideously bombastic - Afghans die rapidly, meaninglessly, one after another. Each American death, meanwhile, is underlined somehow; in slow motion, given a heavy musical backing, crosscut with another event: these men are HEROES, and don't you forget it, son.
It works if you like that sort of thing, I guess.

CONTRABAND

(Baltasar Kormákur, 2012)

Mark Wahlberg's stock screen persona differs little from his offscreen persona; lying somewhere between Jason Statham and James Cagney, he generally plays an honest, blue collar tough guy who has to be driven to violence, but excels at it when that occurs.
Contraband is really no different. Wahlberg plays Chris Farraday, an expert smuggler gone straight who is dragged back into "the life" by the stupidity of his young brother-in-law, who finds himself in debt to some bad people after a run goes wrong. To pay the debt and get some lowlifes (led by Giovanni Ribisi) off his back, Farraday takes on one last run, bringing him to Panama and into contact with some dangerous Latin gangs, all while his wife (Kate Beckinsale) and two little boys are left at home in New Orleans, somewhat at the mercy of the criminal elements newly reinterested in his business.
All of that is terribly stale; familiar elements rearranged into a slightly different order. The plot is overly complex, with the Panamanian excursion in particular turning into an overstuffed - if entertaining - series of suspense and action beats one after another, including a Double-cross, a massive gun battle and a race against time, all of it presided over by Diego Luna chewing scenery as a deranged Gang chief.
The script has a few good lines and no interesting characters, but Baltasar Kormákur's direction enriches it somewhat; he keeps it grungey, gritty and grainy, thick with atmosphere and dense with texture. This is a portrayal of a New Orleans seldom seen in cinema, and Panama city registers vividly in that passage too, while life aboard a colossal cargo ship is pungently rendered, all cheap, scuffed carpets and oily corridors.
Contraband is best appreciated for its exemplary collection of shifty, distinctive character actors in the supporting and villain roles, modelling various brands of facial hair and sneer; from Ribisi and Luna to the ever-reliable Ben Foster and J.K Simmons, together with Lukas Haas and Caleb Landry Jones. They, far more than Wahlberg and Beckinsale, its star turns, mean that it's rarely boring, even at its most predictable and derivative.

THE MECHANIC

(Simon West, 2011)

Proudly a b-movie to the core, the way in which this Jason Statham vehicle understands the nature of its stars appeal is the key to its success. Statham is a slightly underrated actor who has been good in some more demanding roles, but he is more-or-less unmatched in current cinema as a brooder. In many of his action parts, he plasters on a grumpy scowl, exudes physical menace, struts about, full of shaven-headed machismo, growls tough-guy lines in his mid-Atlantic whisper, then kicks the hell out of people. Best not to ask him for too much emotion or even dialogue. His presence is refreshingly simple and lacking in irony. He's like Bruce Willis without the humour. Such simplicity is best suited to a certain kind of film; ideally the stripped-back, streamlined directness of a b-movie action film.
The Mechanic is just such a film. Its set-up is clear: Statham plays Bishop, a cool assassin who is devoted to professionalism. But after accepting the assignment to kill hs only friend and mentor, he weakens somewhat and takes on his friend's disappointment of a son as a protege, showing him the Hitman ropes. But of course that only leads to further conflict down the road..
Director Simon West has steered enough mega-budget blockbusters through the studio system wringer to understand what works in the action genre, and his assured touch makes The Mechanic a smooth ride. It is also disarming beautiful in places, full of lush sunsets and city skylines against coppered horizons, while the action scenes all deliver; each a brutal, nicely shot and edited piece of pure visceral impact, the kind of thing Stathham excels at.
Ben Foster adds another damaged and vulnerable loser to his growing collection, and he helps the movie to function, while also starting in a couple of terrifyingly bruising set-pieces; while Donald Sutherlands early appearance is perhaps the highlight of the entire film, dramatically speaking of course.
The script is clipped and intent upon its own momentum, so that Bishop has no back-story and is defined more or less purely by what he does. Which is probably as I should be in a Statham film.

THE MESSENGER

(Oren Moverman, 2010)

The sort of handsome, tidy, serious, slightly old-fashioned independent film that fulfils its modest ambitions without much fat or any flights of pure visual expression, Moverman's debut is an assured piece of work; a beautifully calibrated drama following a "Casualty Notification Team" as they do the dirty, utterly thankless job of telling parents and spouses that their loved ones are dead. Set during the early years of the Iraq War, it avoids politics to focus on the experiences of the men fighting and dying and finds the ancient drama in that. It laces that with a buddy movie, as Ben Foster's injured, somewhat traumatised veteran and Woody Harrelson's cynical lifer grow from initial wariness to a warm friendship.
Their performances, alongside Samantha Morton's stunned widow and a great cameo from Steve Buscemi, anchor the film and give it real emotional weight, although Harrelson, bizarrely, delivers a similar performance to his work in Zombieland, albeit in an entirely different emotional context.
Some of the scenes of the men at work are unbearably tense and sad: Moverman is strong on textures and sensual details - an early scene of Foster dining in a restaurant with an ex-girlfriend is intent upon his intimate slurping and gnashing - and his camera generally stays tight to his characters. We feel like we are right there with them as they deliver awful news and witness people collapse when they hear it.
But it's all a little schematic and predictable, even if it ends in a satisfying, upbeat manner.