(Stephen Fingleton, 2015)
The Survivalist aims to depict a post-apocalyptic world without any of the iconography or mythology of the Road Warrior school of post-apocalyptic action. It focuses on one man living alone on a tiny farm hidden in Northern Irish woodland. When we first encounter him he is disposing of the corpse of an intruder, and we sense this is not the first time. He tends to his crops, sleeps, eats, masturbates. He is twitchy and paranoid about more intruders, and as we learn, he is right to be. This is - as it always is after an apocalypse in fiction - a world of Darwinian principles. Only the very strongest survive. Two women arrive. Mother and daughter, they say. They want food, perhaps a nights shelter. They trade sex with the younger woman for both. Meanwhile they plot to take the man's gun and his home away from him.
Fingleton carefully observes the shifting dynamics between these three people. The watchful, cunning older woman. The man's wariness soften as he develops feelings for the girl. The girl realise who she may be better off siding with. Eventually, other intruders come. They are armed. Loyalties are tested, realities faced. There is little dialogue, no non-diagetic music. We hear the characters breathe, the wind in the trees. We watch their eyes watch one another.
The space is precisely mapped out by Fingleton, the arena of the shed the three share, the clearing where the man confronts an intruder, the stream nearby. The pacing is deliberate, controlled. This is a slow world. No need to rush it. It acquires a mesmeric quality.
Martin McCann is excellent as the man, so stoic that any flicker of feeling in his eyes has a seismic effect. Mia Goth is just as mysterious as the young woman, while Olwen Fouere seems to have stepped from some medieval myth; wise and frightening, she possesses an unforgettable face.
This is tense, beautiful, though-provoking. Its quality makes a virtue of a small budget and modest ambition.
Showing posts with label British Cinema. Show all posts
Showing posts with label British Cinema. Show all posts
Saturday, 20 February 2016
Tuesday, 22 September 2015
45 YEARS
(Andrew Haigh, 2015)
British cinema can be so adept at the intimate small-scale middle-class drama it is frightening. Is it to do with the fact that the genre is so popular on UK television? Or the preponderance of classy, stage-trained thespians in the British industry? It seems to me that something in the British character - the boiling emotions beneath the still surface - is perfectly suited to these stories, and 45 Years is a fine example of this sort of story.
Jeff (Tom Courtenay) and Kate (Charlotte Rampling) are an elderly couple, living comfortably together in a nice little house in a beautiful, rural corner of Norfolk. They listen to digital radio, read literature, eat healthy, recycle, walk their dog Max, and are planning for their imminent 45th Anniversary party. And then Jeff receives a letter in the post from Switzerland. In 1962 he and his then-girlfriend Katya, were trekking together through the Alps when she fell into a crevice and died. Now, decades later, her body has been discovered, perfectly preserved inside a glacier.
This news unmoors Jeff, and slowly a distance develops between the couple as Kate begins to see the things she has never known about him, and suspects previously undiscovered motivations for some of the decisions which have shaped their life together.
All of this is patiently, subtly observed over the course of five days as they go about their normal lives. We see them meet friends for lunch, shop, eat dinner, chat before bed, go for walks, and yet the shadow of Katya looms larger and larger, especially after Jeff begins to dig about in the attic for photos of his old love and Kate begins to check into what he has been looking for.
The script is nicely modulated; gentle and polite, and yet the sense of tumultuous inner lives is awakened from the moment when Jeff calls his old love "my Katya" in the moments immediately following his opening of the letter. Most of the heavy lifting is done by Rampling and Courtenay, both communicating so much in their pauses and hesitations and the soulful, wary hurt in their eyes. Rampling is particularly astounding and Haigh rewards her with a stunning final prolonged close-up where we can see the seismic emotions beneath the surface of her face.
The intensity of their work and the delicacy of Haigh's script and direction allows the film to go beyond just their relationship in its gaze; it investigates age and memory, regret, love and commitment. It is all terribly middlebrow in its careful reticence, and even so it becomes quite powerful by the climactic party scene. And yet the real star of the film is probably the beauty of the winter light as it falls upon the fields and broads of Norfolk; a very English look for a very English treatment of this story.
British cinema can be so adept at the intimate small-scale middle-class drama it is frightening. Is it to do with the fact that the genre is so popular on UK television? Or the preponderance of classy, stage-trained thespians in the British industry? It seems to me that something in the British character - the boiling emotions beneath the still surface - is perfectly suited to these stories, and 45 Years is a fine example of this sort of story.
Jeff (Tom Courtenay) and Kate (Charlotte Rampling) are an elderly couple, living comfortably together in a nice little house in a beautiful, rural corner of Norfolk. They listen to digital radio, read literature, eat healthy, recycle, walk their dog Max, and are planning for their imminent 45th Anniversary party. And then Jeff receives a letter in the post from Switzerland. In 1962 he and his then-girlfriend Katya, were trekking together through the Alps when she fell into a crevice and died. Now, decades later, her body has been discovered, perfectly preserved inside a glacier.
This news unmoors Jeff, and slowly a distance develops between the couple as Kate begins to see the things she has never known about him, and suspects previously undiscovered motivations for some of the decisions which have shaped their life together.
All of this is patiently, subtly observed over the course of five days as they go about their normal lives. We see them meet friends for lunch, shop, eat dinner, chat before bed, go for walks, and yet the shadow of Katya looms larger and larger, especially after Jeff begins to dig about in the attic for photos of his old love and Kate begins to check into what he has been looking for.
The script is nicely modulated; gentle and polite, and yet the sense of tumultuous inner lives is awakened from the moment when Jeff calls his old love "my Katya" in the moments immediately following his opening of the letter. Most of the heavy lifting is done by Rampling and Courtenay, both communicating so much in their pauses and hesitations and the soulful, wary hurt in their eyes. Rampling is particularly astounding and Haigh rewards her with a stunning final prolonged close-up where we can see the seismic emotions beneath the surface of her face.
The intensity of their work and the delicacy of Haigh's script and direction allows the film to go beyond just their relationship in its gaze; it investigates age and memory, regret, love and commitment. It is all terribly middlebrow in its careful reticence, and even so it becomes quite powerful by the climactic party scene. And yet the real star of the film is probably the beauty of the winter light as it falls upon the fields and broads of Norfolk; a very English look for a very English treatment of this story.
Tuesday, 15 September 2015
LEGEND
(Brian Helgeland, 2015)
There's something sordid and seedy in the best British crime cinema. Something smalltime and banal. Try as it might, British crime cinema cannot grasp the glamour and slickness of American gangster films. Often, the attempt to produce a British equivalent is what creates a different, eccentric sort of magic.
Legend is conspicuously lacking in any such magic. Written and directed by an American (Brian Helgeland, who has great form in the genre, having adapted both LA Confidential and Mystic River) it never feels authentic or indeed, in any way "right". It relentlessly, almost nauseatingly glamourises the Kray twins (both played here by Tom Hardy) and presents the East End of London in the 1960s as a pretty, twee little neighbourhood playground lacking in any true poverty. In much of this, it is indebted to the spectre of Goodfellas. Like that film and its many imitators, Legend gets around the problem of tons of exposition with a voiceover. Here that features Francis (Emily Browning), Reggie Kray's girlfriend then wife, guiding the audience around their world of nightclubs, casinos and East End pubs. That wouldn't be so bad, if Helegeland didn't try to imbue Francis' narration with a sort of hard-bitten depth that never feels comfortable and instead is often cringe-inducingly trite. She actually refers to the "secret history of London" at one point, a sure sign of a writer who has fallen in love with his research (I wish that applied equally to his visuals, where London is all West End bright lights and East end red-brick terraces).
Another Goodfellas-ism is the way the entire film is caked in period music. Only Helegeland doesn't have Scorsese's ear for matching scene to song, and here it often feels as if he's left his iPod on shuffle.
Tom Hardy almost redeems the film in his dual roles. He is mannered but magnetic, making charming, handsome Reggie a down-to-earth heartthrob with a flair for combat and a head for business, who spends much of his time posing through a cigarette. Ron is a different proposition, literally insane, craving violence and awkward in most social situations, he gives the film most of its great scenes. Browning does well in an underwritten part and the supporting cast is filled with quality British character actors mouthing the kind of dialogue familiar from a dozen bad UK crime tv shows.
For all those problems, Legend is entertaining. The story of the twins is a fascinating one, and this film is just as engaging as Peter Medak's grittier The Krays was, even as it offers less depth and fewer answers.
There's something sordid and seedy in the best British crime cinema. Something smalltime and banal. Try as it might, British crime cinema cannot grasp the glamour and slickness of American gangster films. Often, the attempt to produce a British equivalent is what creates a different, eccentric sort of magic.
Legend is conspicuously lacking in any such magic. Written and directed by an American (Brian Helgeland, who has great form in the genre, having adapted both LA Confidential and Mystic River) it never feels authentic or indeed, in any way "right". It relentlessly, almost nauseatingly glamourises the Kray twins (both played here by Tom Hardy) and presents the East End of London in the 1960s as a pretty, twee little neighbourhood playground lacking in any true poverty. In much of this, it is indebted to the spectre of Goodfellas. Like that film and its many imitators, Legend gets around the problem of tons of exposition with a voiceover. Here that features Francis (Emily Browning), Reggie Kray's girlfriend then wife, guiding the audience around their world of nightclubs, casinos and East End pubs. That wouldn't be so bad, if Helegeland didn't try to imbue Francis' narration with a sort of hard-bitten depth that never feels comfortable and instead is often cringe-inducingly trite. She actually refers to the "secret history of London" at one point, a sure sign of a writer who has fallen in love with his research (I wish that applied equally to his visuals, where London is all West End bright lights and East end red-brick terraces).
Another Goodfellas-ism is the way the entire film is caked in period music. Only Helegeland doesn't have Scorsese's ear for matching scene to song, and here it often feels as if he's left his iPod on shuffle.
Tom Hardy almost redeems the film in his dual roles. He is mannered but magnetic, making charming, handsome Reggie a down-to-earth heartthrob with a flair for combat and a head for business, who spends much of his time posing through a cigarette. Ron is a different proposition, literally insane, craving violence and awkward in most social situations, he gives the film most of its great scenes. Browning does well in an underwritten part and the supporting cast is filled with quality British character actors mouthing the kind of dialogue familiar from a dozen bad UK crime tv shows.
For all those problems, Legend is entertaining. The story of the twins is a fascinating one, and this film is just as engaging as Peter Medak's grittier The Krays was, even as it offers less depth and fewer answers.
Thursday, 23 July 2015
THE RISE
aka WASTELAND
(Rowan Athale, 2012)
The central idea in The Rise is an interesting one; for here is a heist film set in a social-realist world. Not any social realist world, either, no: Athale invokes the entirety of the Kitchen sink movement from 1950s/60s British cinema by setting his story in a rundown Northern city (Leeds in this case).
That setting is nicely evoked early on. Red-brick houses tight on claustrophobic streets, working mens clubs, tacky suburban discos and high-rise flats are all captured with grit, atmosphere and a nice eye. Athale is a young director who makes more or less every shot count - this movie is filled with beautifully composed, lovingly lit frames, long and complex tracking shots and clever editing gambits. It is reminiscent of Guy Ritchie in his early work; flashy and ostentatious, but Athale has an eye for poetry that Ritchie never had and there are glimpses of poetic realism here. The character work is good early on too. The protagonists here are young men adrift in a recession-era Britain, dead-end jobs, no prospects, clinging to their friendship as one of the few worthwhile things in their lives.
This is all more or less lost when the heist component gives the movie a populist surge in the final act, and that too is patiently set up. Harvey (Luke Treadaway) has just been released after a year in prison for drug dealing. But Harvey was set up by local kingpin and thug Roper (Neil Maskell) and as revenge, he wants to steal a lot of money from Roper's safe so that he and his three best mates can escape their hometown for a new life running a cafe in Amsterdam. The whole story is told in flashback by a bleeding Harvey in a police interview room to Detective Inspector West (Timothy Spall). That allows Athale to play with perception and expectation as Harvey twists the tale this way and that, and DI West tries to find the truth. And while it's a shame that Athale couldn't sustain the social realism of the early stages of the story (though it could be argued that young men stealing from a working mens club is a neat metaphor for some of the issues around generational conflict in modern England), the last act is undeniable fun. Stylish, pacy and derivative, it's thoroughly crowd-pleasing.
(Rowan Athale, 2012)
The central idea in The Rise is an interesting one; for here is a heist film set in a social-realist world. Not any social realist world, either, no: Athale invokes the entirety of the Kitchen sink movement from 1950s/60s British cinema by setting his story in a rundown Northern city (Leeds in this case).
That setting is nicely evoked early on. Red-brick houses tight on claustrophobic streets, working mens clubs, tacky suburban discos and high-rise flats are all captured with grit, atmosphere and a nice eye. Athale is a young director who makes more or less every shot count - this movie is filled with beautifully composed, lovingly lit frames, long and complex tracking shots and clever editing gambits. It is reminiscent of Guy Ritchie in his early work; flashy and ostentatious, but Athale has an eye for poetry that Ritchie never had and there are glimpses of poetic realism here. The character work is good early on too. The protagonists here are young men adrift in a recession-era Britain, dead-end jobs, no prospects, clinging to their friendship as one of the few worthwhile things in their lives.
This is all more or less lost when the heist component gives the movie a populist surge in the final act, and that too is patiently set up. Harvey (Luke Treadaway) has just been released after a year in prison for drug dealing. But Harvey was set up by local kingpin and thug Roper (Neil Maskell) and as revenge, he wants to steal a lot of money from Roper's safe so that he and his three best mates can escape their hometown for a new life running a cafe in Amsterdam. The whole story is told in flashback by a bleeding Harvey in a police interview room to Detective Inspector West (Timothy Spall). That allows Athale to play with perception and expectation as Harvey twists the tale this way and that, and DI West tries to find the truth. And while it's a shame that Athale couldn't sustain the social realism of the early stages of the story (though it could be argued that young men stealing from a working mens club is a neat metaphor for some of the issues around generational conflict in modern England), the last act is undeniable fun. Stylish, pacy and derivative, it's thoroughly crowd-pleasing.
Saturday, 6 June 2015
TESTAMENT OF YOUTH
(James Kent, 2015)
Though it plays and feels very much like a modern BBC period production - all tasteful costumes and furnishings, semi-repressed passions and clipped accents - Testament of Youth works much better than that suggests. It has an earnest, even stirring sense of passionate feeling absent from much period drama. That is probably because it is about the effect of the First World War on a generation of young Britons, and as such, much of the story is suffused with a sense of loss, sadness and grief. Not only that, but here we see that effect through the eyes of a woman.
Vera Brittain (Alicia Vikander) is a headstrong, intelligent young woman who yearns to go to Oxford, and needs no husband. And then she meets her brothers friend Roland (Kit Harington) and falls in love; at first tentatively, and then in a headlong rush of romance, poetry and excitement. These scenes are full of sensual details reminiscent of a sort of watered down Malick or Wong Kar Wai. Sheets blow on lines, heathers ripples in the breeze, there are extended shots - fleeting, as if in memory - of Roland's arm and neck. While Vikander is sensational, Harington is a little dull in that first act, but improves during the passage when he returns, traumatised, on leave, and Vera has to shock him back to her.
And then, of course, he dies. As does her brother and all of his friends. WW1 destroys the world and the people she loves, and as she has signed up as a nurse and witnessed horrors of her own, it almost destroys her too.
Vera's journey is dark and full of pain, and Vikander is fearless in confronting that. Just as good and in fewer scenes is Dominic West, as her stiff-upper-lip father, who collapses upon losing his son. Taron Egerton is all charm and enthusiasm as that brother and Hayley Atwell brings a welcome touch of lightness to the role of a businesslike matron on the front. The structure nicely evokes the sense of an innocent world destroyed by an epochal apocalypse, and though Kent reveals a sensitivity to performance in his direction, he never formally echoes this, which is something of a shame.
But still; stolid and solid as this is, it always works, and is consistently powerful and impressive.
Though it plays and feels very much like a modern BBC period production - all tasteful costumes and furnishings, semi-repressed passions and clipped accents - Testament of Youth works much better than that suggests. It has an earnest, even stirring sense of passionate feeling absent from much period drama. That is probably because it is about the effect of the First World War on a generation of young Britons, and as such, much of the story is suffused with a sense of loss, sadness and grief. Not only that, but here we see that effect through the eyes of a woman.
Vera Brittain (Alicia Vikander) is a headstrong, intelligent young woman who yearns to go to Oxford, and needs no husband. And then she meets her brothers friend Roland (Kit Harington) and falls in love; at first tentatively, and then in a headlong rush of romance, poetry and excitement. These scenes are full of sensual details reminiscent of a sort of watered down Malick or Wong Kar Wai. Sheets blow on lines, heathers ripples in the breeze, there are extended shots - fleeting, as if in memory - of Roland's arm and neck. While Vikander is sensational, Harington is a little dull in that first act, but improves during the passage when he returns, traumatised, on leave, and Vera has to shock him back to her.
And then, of course, he dies. As does her brother and all of his friends. WW1 destroys the world and the people she loves, and as she has signed up as a nurse and witnessed horrors of her own, it almost destroys her too.
Vera's journey is dark and full of pain, and Vikander is fearless in confronting that. Just as good and in fewer scenes is Dominic West, as her stiff-upper-lip father, who collapses upon losing his son. Taron Egerton is all charm and enthusiasm as that brother and Hayley Atwell brings a welcome touch of lightness to the role of a businesslike matron on the front. The structure nicely evokes the sense of an innocent world destroyed by an epochal apocalypse, and though Kent reveals a sensitivity to performance in his direction, he never formally echoes this, which is something of a shame.
But still; stolid and solid as this is, it always works, and is consistently powerful and impressive.
Wednesday, 27 May 2015
FAR FROM THE MADDING CROWD
(Thomas Vinterberg, 2015)
Chemistry is so important to on-screen romance. And in this tale of one woman and three men, it is important that she have some chemistry with at least two of them.
And while Cary Mulligan and Matthias Schoenaerts have an undeniable bucketload of chemistry as the two leads here - Batsheba Everdeene and Gabriel Oak, and yes, like Dickens, Thomas Hardy had a serious case of give-your-characters-apallingly-unsubtle-clues-to-their-personalities-in-their-names-itis - that mysterious quality is conspicuous by its absence in her scenes with Michael Sheen (as Mr Boldword) and Tom Sturridge (as the caddish soldier Frank Troy). And while that works in the movies favour in one sense (we really really want Batsheba and Gabriel to end up together), it absolutely does not in another (there is never really any doubt that Batsheba and Gabriel will end up together).
Still, three of those four actors are fine, and Sturridge is easily hateable as Frank, partly because the character is utterly unsympathetic and partly because he is so terrible in the role; modern and smug and posturing, he fails to communicate the suffering that has made Frank what he is.
Vinterberg's film does a good job of capturing what makes Hardy, well, Hardy. The landscape is a character here; beautiful and terrible and ever-present. Cutaways of nature between scenes suggest the small scale of the human problems on display. Passion broils beneath the surface of everyone, and Mulligan and - especially - Schoenearts do a good job of showing that, with each of their scenes seeming on the brink of something. It always looks fantastic, with a rich palette of browns and deep greens reflecting the earthy passions of Hardy's world in contrast to the more delicate tones of Jane Austen, say. and while novelist David Nicholls' script skirts romcom cliche, it never quite mis-steps, instead finding the simple dramas in Hardy's tale.
All in all it works because it treats the cliches of period romantic drama as if they are not cliches at all, as if they are the best thing ever. And that makes them feel somewhat fresh.
Chemistry is so important to on-screen romance. And in this tale of one woman and three men, it is important that she have some chemistry with at least two of them.
And while Cary Mulligan and Matthias Schoenaerts have an undeniable bucketload of chemistry as the two leads here - Batsheba Everdeene and Gabriel Oak, and yes, like Dickens, Thomas Hardy had a serious case of give-your-characters-apallingly-unsubtle-clues-to-their-personalities-in-their-names-itis - that mysterious quality is conspicuous by its absence in her scenes with Michael Sheen (as Mr Boldword) and Tom Sturridge (as the caddish soldier Frank Troy). And while that works in the movies favour in one sense (we really really want Batsheba and Gabriel to end up together), it absolutely does not in another (there is never really any doubt that Batsheba and Gabriel will end up together).
Still, three of those four actors are fine, and Sturridge is easily hateable as Frank, partly because the character is utterly unsympathetic and partly because he is so terrible in the role; modern and smug and posturing, he fails to communicate the suffering that has made Frank what he is.
Vinterberg's film does a good job of capturing what makes Hardy, well, Hardy. The landscape is a character here; beautiful and terrible and ever-present. Cutaways of nature between scenes suggest the small scale of the human problems on display. Passion broils beneath the surface of everyone, and Mulligan and - especially - Schoenearts do a good job of showing that, with each of their scenes seeming on the brink of something. It always looks fantastic, with a rich palette of browns and deep greens reflecting the earthy passions of Hardy's world in contrast to the more delicate tones of Jane Austen, say. and while novelist David Nicholls' script skirts romcom cliche, it never quite mis-steps, instead finding the simple dramas in Hardy's tale.
All in all it works because it treats the cliches of period romantic drama as if they are not cliches at all, as if they are the best thing ever. And that makes them feel somewhat fresh.
Sunday, 24 May 2015
MACBETH
(Roman Polanski, 1971)
Polanski made Macbeth in the middle of one of the greatest runs of films in the history of cinema. He also made it soon after his pregnant wife, Sharon Tate, was murdered by the Manson family. Both are evident in the film itself, a hugely accomplished Shakespeare adaptation that nevertheless always plays and feels like a Polanski film, filled as it is with darkness, violence, grief and pain.
What is perhaps most impressive is the atmosphere. From the first sequence of the Witches on a beach, performing a spell as they bury items, the score by the Third Ear Band - which could have been played at any time over the last few centuries - and the muted, painterly cinematography of Gil Taylor combine to create an awful, almost physical sense of foreboding. Jon Finch plays Macbeth as a man weighed down by everything, only truly free amidst the violence of the last scenes, and Francesca Annis makes Lady Macbeth ambitious and manipulative, yes, but never the evil villainess some other actresses have given us.
Polanski struggles to make a few of the dialogue scenes sing - Macbeth engaging the assassins to kill Banquo is a real low point - but each of the set-pieces is fabulous, and the film works well at conjuring up a vision of the ancient, weird Britain hinted at in the play.
Polanski made Macbeth in the middle of one of the greatest runs of films in the history of cinema. He also made it soon after his pregnant wife, Sharon Tate, was murdered by the Manson family. Both are evident in the film itself, a hugely accomplished Shakespeare adaptation that nevertheless always plays and feels like a Polanski film, filled as it is with darkness, violence, grief and pain.
What is perhaps most impressive is the atmosphere. From the first sequence of the Witches on a beach, performing a spell as they bury items, the score by the Third Ear Band - which could have been played at any time over the last few centuries - and the muted, painterly cinematography of Gil Taylor combine to create an awful, almost physical sense of foreboding. Jon Finch plays Macbeth as a man weighed down by everything, only truly free amidst the violence of the last scenes, and Francesca Annis makes Lady Macbeth ambitious and manipulative, yes, but never the evil villainess some other actresses have given us.
Polanski struggles to make a few of the dialogue scenes sing - Macbeth engaging the assassins to kill Banquo is a real low point - but each of the set-pieces is fabulous, and the film works well at conjuring up a vision of the ancient, weird Britain hinted at in the play.
Saturday, 28 March 2015
RANSOM
AKA The Terrorists
(Caspar Wrede, 1974)
Ransom wastes Sean Connery. Easily the greatest leading man of his generation, Connery was often misused in the decades between leaving the James Bond franchise and a sort of rebirth as an elder statesman megastar. Only Sidney Lumet seemed to understand his acting ability, and his outsized charisma and macho presence were really only truly capitalised upon by the series of brilliant historical adventures he made in the 1970s. Alongside those he starred in some odd misfires and oddities - thrillers and dramas of questionable value, of which Ransom is a prime example.
Following the machinations and politics around the handling of a dual hostage and hijacking situation in the nation of "Scandinavia" (which appears to be Norway), Connery plays the security chief of the nation who finds himself at odds with his own and the British Government about how to deal with the terrorists involved. Ian McShane plays one, though he, like everyone else, like Connery, has barely any character to speak of.
Finnish director Wrede is competent but his staging and style are inarguably dull; despite cinematography by the legendary Sven Nykvist and a score by the equally legendary Jerry Goldsmith, Ransom rarely feels like a movie, instead carrying a lingering whiff of television with it. The plot sees Connery arrange various plans to end the twin sieges, and even the action scenes feel flat, though there are a few moments of tension. The best thing here is the location work - wintry Norwegian locations are instantly atmospheric, and even the cynically-appropriated library material of bombing in '70s Britain adds to the feel of Europe during a low, dirty decade. Connery is always watchable, but his character, Nils Tahlvik, is a gruff military man who seems more irritated by the situation in which he finds himself than he is emotionally torn. The actor is capable of so much more than this film.
(Caspar Wrede, 1974)
Ransom wastes Sean Connery. Easily the greatest leading man of his generation, Connery was often misused in the decades between leaving the James Bond franchise and a sort of rebirth as an elder statesman megastar. Only Sidney Lumet seemed to understand his acting ability, and his outsized charisma and macho presence were really only truly capitalised upon by the series of brilliant historical adventures he made in the 1970s. Alongside those he starred in some odd misfires and oddities - thrillers and dramas of questionable value, of which Ransom is a prime example.
Following the machinations and politics around the handling of a dual hostage and hijacking situation in the nation of "Scandinavia" (which appears to be Norway), Connery plays the security chief of the nation who finds himself at odds with his own and the British Government about how to deal with the terrorists involved. Ian McShane plays one, though he, like everyone else, like Connery, has barely any character to speak of.
Finnish director Wrede is competent but his staging and style are inarguably dull; despite cinematography by the legendary Sven Nykvist and a score by the equally legendary Jerry Goldsmith, Ransom rarely feels like a movie, instead carrying a lingering whiff of television with it. The plot sees Connery arrange various plans to end the twin sieges, and even the action scenes feel flat, though there are a few moments of tension. The best thing here is the location work - wintry Norwegian locations are instantly atmospheric, and even the cynically-appropriated library material of bombing in '70s Britain adds to the feel of Europe during a low, dirty decade. Connery is always watchable, but his character, Nils Tahlvik, is a gruff military man who seems more irritated by the situation in which he finds himself than he is emotionally torn. The actor is capable of so much more than this film.
Friday, 6 February 2015
KINGSMAN: THE SECRET SERVICE
(Matthew Vaughn, 2015)
Kingsman makes sure that you know it has the James Bond films in mind from early on, and there are several explicit references. But this film, based on a comic book, accordingly takes a much more comic book angle on the material, making everything even bigger and broader and sillier than most Bond films usually go. It even has a dig at modern 007 - too serious, apparently - and so here that serious nature is replaced by ludicrous action scenes and some lame gags. It actually bears more resemblance to the recent G.I. Joe films than any Bond movies.
The story follows young petty criminal Eggsy (Taron Egerton) after he is saved from prison by Galahad (Firth), an agent of the titular organisation. Firth sponsors him to enter the recruitment process for a new Kingsman, run by Merlin (Mark Strong) while he investigates the scheme cooked up by Internet Billionaire Valentine (Samuel L Jackson). That scheme involves culling the majority of earth's population, and gives rise to one impressive action sequence, where Firth's dapper, old-school agent kills about two dozen people in a berserker fury. Like all of the action scenes here, that one is almost ruined by an over-reliance on CGI, and throughout the film flirts with being a tasteless and embarrassing mess. It has a particular weakness for the obvious; from the choice of music to the product placement to the action beats to the gags, there is nothing surprising or witty here, just a whole lot of boxes being ticked. Some of those boxes work and are undeniably satisfying to watch; others are cringe-inducing and eye-rollingly dumb.
There is also a streak of class warfare running through the plot, with prole Eggsy taking on the Oxbridge Elite and showing them that a pleb can have what it takes, but even that is messy, what with the way the film fetishises upper-class British culture.
The performances barely matter, but Jackson and Firth have fun, while Egerton does what he needs to do. It is massively overlong, but scattered sequences are enjoyable and funny.
Kingsman makes sure that you know it has the James Bond films in mind from early on, and there are several explicit references. But this film, based on a comic book, accordingly takes a much more comic book angle on the material, making everything even bigger and broader and sillier than most Bond films usually go. It even has a dig at modern 007 - too serious, apparently - and so here that serious nature is replaced by ludicrous action scenes and some lame gags. It actually bears more resemblance to the recent G.I. Joe films than any Bond movies.
The story follows young petty criminal Eggsy (Taron Egerton) after he is saved from prison by Galahad (Firth), an agent of the titular organisation. Firth sponsors him to enter the recruitment process for a new Kingsman, run by Merlin (Mark Strong) while he investigates the scheme cooked up by Internet Billionaire Valentine (Samuel L Jackson). That scheme involves culling the majority of earth's population, and gives rise to one impressive action sequence, where Firth's dapper, old-school agent kills about two dozen people in a berserker fury. Like all of the action scenes here, that one is almost ruined by an over-reliance on CGI, and throughout the film flirts with being a tasteless and embarrassing mess. It has a particular weakness for the obvious; from the choice of music to the product placement to the action beats to the gags, there is nothing surprising or witty here, just a whole lot of boxes being ticked. Some of those boxes work and are undeniably satisfying to watch; others are cringe-inducing and eye-rollingly dumb.
There is also a streak of class warfare running through the plot, with prole Eggsy taking on the Oxbridge Elite and showing them that a pleb can have what it takes, but even that is messy, what with the way the film fetishises upper-class British culture.
The performances barely matter, but Jackson and Firth have fun, while Egerton does what he needs to do. It is massively overlong, but scattered sequences are enjoyable and funny.
Wednesday, 4 February 2015
GOD HELP THE GIRL
(Stuart Murdoch, 2014)
Personal passion projects are always something of a worry. By their very nature they suggest self-indulgence, and that is certainly the case for God Help the Girl, written and directed by Belle & Sebastian singer-songwriter Murdoch and inspired by his recent girl-singer-focused side-project.
That is not to say it is bad; it certainly is not. In fact, it has several winning elements and a great deal of breezy charm, but it is also occasionally amateurish and overwhelmingly twee.
It fuses two hugely different narrative strands and moods into one often-awkward confection. In the first, Eve (Emily Browning, carrying the film) struggles with depression and an eating disorder and tentatively mounts a recovery through music. In the second, Eve and her new friends Cassie and James (Olly Alexander) spend a quirky summer lolling around the leafy Victorian suburbs of Glasgow, talking about music, playing it the odd time and generally doing not very much.
Thats it. The songs are generally good, the routines worked out for them sometimes less than that, and much of it feels like it was made by an undergraduate high on the Nouvelle Vague and Jacques Demy. But: it is earnest in an old-fashioned, determinedly unfashionable (despite all the hipster window dressing) manner, and that gives it a quiet integrity and soul which makes it likeable. Murdoch stages some scenes with wit and style.
The actors are winning, which makes a few of their more adolescent conversations just about bearable, while others are touching in the naked vulnerability on display. And everything looks great, from Glasgow to the costumes to the cinematography; vibrant and energetic and pretty all the way through.
Personal passion projects are always something of a worry. By their very nature they suggest self-indulgence, and that is certainly the case for God Help the Girl, written and directed by Belle & Sebastian singer-songwriter Murdoch and inspired by his recent girl-singer-focused side-project.
That is not to say it is bad; it certainly is not. In fact, it has several winning elements and a great deal of breezy charm, but it is also occasionally amateurish and overwhelmingly twee.
It fuses two hugely different narrative strands and moods into one often-awkward confection. In the first, Eve (Emily Browning, carrying the film) struggles with depression and an eating disorder and tentatively mounts a recovery through music. In the second, Eve and her new friends Cassie and James (Olly Alexander) spend a quirky summer lolling around the leafy Victorian suburbs of Glasgow, talking about music, playing it the odd time and generally doing not very much.
Thats it. The songs are generally good, the routines worked out for them sometimes less than that, and much of it feels like it was made by an undergraduate high on the Nouvelle Vague and Jacques Demy. But: it is earnest in an old-fashioned, determinedly unfashionable (despite all the hipster window dressing) manner, and that gives it a quiet integrity and soul which makes it likeable. Murdoch stages some scenes with wit and style.
The actors are winning, which makes a few of their more adolescent conversations just about bearable, while others are touching in the naked vulnerability on display. And everything looks great, from Glasgow to the costumes to the cinematography; vibrant and energetic and pretty all the way through.
Tuesday, 27 January 2015
EX MACHINA
(Alex Garland, 2015)
It's not a criticism of Ex Machina to say it resembles an extremely good episode of The Outer Limits stretched to feature length. In fact, it may be a compliment.
This provocative piece of science fiction, filled with ideas and founded around three strong characters makes for an intense, unsettling experience.
Domhnail Gleeson is Caleb, a coder at a hugely successful search engine company who wins a workplace lottery to spend a week at the isolated, beautiful estate of the reclusive founder-owner-genius Nathan (Oscar Isaac). There he discovers that Nathan has created a robot named Ava (Alicia Vikander), and he wants Caleb to perform a turing test on it through conversation.
Writer-director and former novelist Garland has structured his debut like a novel; it is split, with onscreen titles pages, into days and once during each day Caleb has a conversation with Ava. Afterwards he hangs out with the Bro-like Nathan (who gets drunk late at night, and alternates detox and boxing a punchbag in the mornings), becoming increasingly disturbed and suspicious about his methodology and motivations. This may have something to do with the fact that he might in fact be falling in love with Ava, who is worryingly beautiful, and even seems to be flirting with him.
Gleeson and Isaac are brilliantly cast here, with the former's jumpy anxiety a fine contrast to the cocky intensity of the latter. Isaac gets the best speeches and the most interesting depths, and much of this film plays like a theatrical two-hander - intense exchanges and arguments between intelligent individuals about abstract ideas. Their dynamic is perfect; Isaac penetrating, patronising and deliberately cool. Gleeson struggling to retain any composure.
Vikander's Ava then, comes out of left field. First seen in silhouette, she makes a lovely electronic whirring noise as she moves. But she seems more and more human with each scene, though Vikander never loses the odd, alien quality she gives the character - there in the way she holds herself, the way she turns her head. She seems to fall for Caleb just as much as he has fallen for her, but the film is full of dire warnings of the consequences for her creation: early on, Caleb equates Nathan with a God (Nathan's deliberate (?) misremembering of this moment is a quiet comic highlight) , and later, Nathan speculates that one day A.Is will view humans as we regard fossils on the plains of Africa - dumb apes and their clumsy tools. All of this and the growing tension between the three characters (together with Nathan's silent maid, Kyoko) makes for a growing sense of unease. Garland's cinematographer, Rob Hardy, is a vital contributor here - he shoots Nathan's house-cum-research facility with long, muted tracking shots down corridors, plenty of oblique angles on Ava, observed and aware, in her room, the nearby vastness of the green mountainsides and waterfalls emphasising the isolation of these characters as their drama plays out.
And it is a drama which has a great ending that makes perfect sense and seems inevitable, in retrospect. As if nothing else could have happened, it could have gone no other way. That's what's in the eyes of the three principals in the climactic moments: This is how it always had to be.
Garland should have a hell of a career ahead of him.
It's not a criticism of Ex Machina to say it resembles an extremely good episode of The Outer Limits stretched to feature length. In fact, it may be a compliment.
This provocative piece of science fiction, filled with ideas and founded around three strong characters makes for an intense, unsettling experience.
Domhnail Gleeson is Caleb, a coder at a hugely successful search engine company who wins a workplace lottery to spend a week at the isolated, beautiful estate of the reclusive founder-owner-genius Nathan (Oscar Isaac). There he discovers that Nathan has created a robot named Ava (Alicia Vikander), and he wants Caleb to perform a turing test on it through conversation.
Writer-director and former novelist Garland has structured his debut like a novel; it is split, with onscreen titles pages, into days and once during each day Caleb has a conversation with Ava. Afterwards he hangs out with the Bro-like Nathan (who gets drunk late at night, and alternates detox and boxing a punchbag in the mornings), becoming increasingly disturbed and suspicious about his methodology and motivations. This may have something to do with the fact that he might in fact be falling in love with Ava, who is worryingly beautiful, and even seems to be flirting with him.
Gleeson and Isaac are brilliantly cast here, with the former's jumpy anxiety a fine contrast to the cocky intensity of the latter. Isaac gets the best speeches and the most interesting depths, and much of this film plays like a theatrical two-hander - intense exchanges and arguments between intelligent individuals about abstract ideas. Their dynamic is perfect; Isaac penetrating, patronising and deliberately cool. Gleeson struggling to retain any composure.
Vikander's Ava then, comes out of left field. First seen in silhouette, she makes a lovely electronic whirring noise as she moves. But she seems more and more human with each scene, though Vikander never loses the odd, alien quality she gives the character - there in the way she holds herself, the way she turns her head. She seems to fall for Caleb just as much as he has fallen for her, but the film is full of dire warnings of the consequences for her creation: early on, Caleb equates Nathan with a God (Nathan's deliberate (?) misremembering of this moment is a quiet comic highlight) , and later, Nathan speculates that one day A.Is will view humans as we regard fossils on the plains of Africa - dumb apes and their clumsy tools. All of this and the growing tension between the three characters (together with Nathan's silent maid, Kyoko) makes for a growing sense of unease. Garland's cinematographer, Rob Hardy, is a vital contributor here - he shoots Nathan's house-cum-research facility with long, muted tracking shots down corridors, plenty of oblique angles on Ava, observed and aware, in her room, the nearby vastness of the green mountainsides and waterfalls emphasising the isolation of these characters as their drama plays out.
And it is a drama which has a great ending that makes perfect sense and seems inevitable, in retrospect. As if nothing else could have happened, it could have gone no other way. That's what's in the eyes of the three principals in the climactic moments: This is how it always had to be.
Garland should have a hell of a career ahead of him.
Sunday, 28 December 2014
MR. TURNER
(Mike Leigh, 2014)
Director of photography Dick Pope's attempts to paint with light - an obvious nod to the subject of this sprawling biopic - make Mr. Turner easily Mike Leigh's most beautiful film. For a director most obviously acclaimed for his studies of modern British life, class and morals, it is telling that I find his period dramas effortlessly superior to his films on contemporary themes. Part of that is his approach to setting and texture; Leigh's historical dramas are visceral and earthy, keeping his characters front and centre, never distracted by the costumes or locations many examples of this particular genre obsess over. The caricatures which litter his work also fit better into this period world where class seems so much more starkly demarcated than in the complex landscape of modern Britain, where some of Leigh's characters are impossibly stagey, self-indulgent creations, walking embodiments of the flaws in his improvisation-and-rehearsal-to-create-a-script approach. There is still some of that in Mr. Turner, to be sure; a particular weakness for a funny voice or a gurning facial expression is a real Leigh signature, his fallback when he needs a laugh.
It's even there in Timothy Spall's fine lead performance - his Turner grunts more than he speaks, often to great comic effect. A telling character detail, yes; but also a decision made by an actor that does not always work.
Mr. Turner elliptically, messily chronicles the last quarter century of the artists life; already an illustrious and controversial master, he is increasingly eccentric, pursuing his art and his passions with little regard for anything else. He has several complex relationships with women; (barely) endures the death of his father, meets with patrons, friends and rivals, and paints, paints, paints, using food and spit to achieve the effects he needs.
This is a dense film, full of detail and characters and complicated inter-relationships and mysterious ambiguities, and though it sprawls in several directions, it always feels controlled and even concise; Leigh knows what he wants to show us of Turner, his visionary genius allied with his difficult personality, his charm with his sentimentality (it does feel a little autobiographical at times). The ellipses largely help the film avoid traditional biopic problems - it is rarely predictable. It feels like life, a life lived by a genius, a full, singular life. Spall is crucial here, letting us see the fleet, quick mind of this man trapped inside the "gargoyle" he sees in the mirror, together with his at-times overwhelming emotional intensity, and the supporting cast are mostly terrific too.
A lovely score by Gary Yershon helps illuminate something of Turner's melancholy and obsession, but it is only fair to return to the work of Pope. This is a film about a man obsessed with light, and Pope and Leigh seem to have understood that light is central to not only Turner, but cinema. Their film makes that case eloquently enough.
Director of photography Dick Pope's attempts to paint with light - an obvious nod to the subject of this sprawling biopic - make Mr. Turner easily Mike Leigh's most beautiful film. For a director most obviously acclaimed for his studies of modern British life, class and morals, it is telling that I find his period dramas effortlessly superior to his films on contemporary themes. Part of that is his approach to setting and texture; Leigh's historical dramas are visceral and earthy, keeping his characters front and centre, never distracted by the costumes or locations many examples of this particular genre obsess over. The caricatures which litter his work also fit better into this period world where class seems so much more starkly demarcated than in the complex landscape of modern Britain, where some of Leigh's characters are impossibly stagey, self-indulgent creations, walking embodiments of the flaws in his improvisation-and-rehearsal-to-create-a-script approach. There is still some of that in Mr. Turner, to be sure; a particular weakness for a funny voice or a gurning facial expression is a real Leigh signature, his fallback when he needs a laugh.
It's even there in Timothy Spall's fine lead performance - his Turner grunts more than he speaks, often to great comic effect. A telling character detail, yes; but also a decision made by an actor that does not always work.
Mr. Turner elliptically, messily chronicles the last quarter century of the artists life; already an illustrious and controversial master, he is increasingly eccentric, pursuing his art and his passions with little regard for anything else. He has several complex relationships with women; (barely) endures the death of his father, meets with patrons, friends and rivals, and paints, paints, paints, using food and spit to achieve the effects he needs.
This is a dense film, full of detail and characters and complicated inter-relationships and mysterious ambiguities, and though it sprawls in several directions, it always feels controlled and even concise; Leigh knows what he wants to show us of Turner, his visionary genius allied with his difficult personality, his charm with his sentimentality (it does feel a little autobiographical at times). The ellipses largely help the film avoid traditional biopic problems - it is rarely predictable. It feels like life, a life lived by a genius, a full, singular life. Spall is crucial here, letting us see the fleet, quick mind of this man trapped inside the "gargoyle" he sees in the mirror, together with his at-times overwhelming emotional intensity, and the supporting cast are mostly terrific too.
A lovely score by Gary Yershon helps illuminate something of Turner's melancholy and obsession, but it is only fair to return to the work of Pope. This is a film about a man obsessed with light, and Pope and Leigh seem to have understood that light is central to not only Turner, but cinema. Their film makes that case eloquently enough.
Wednesday, 15 October 2014
'71
(Yann Demange, 2014)
Finding the sweet spot between a visually poetic art house drama and an adrenalised action thriller, '71 is a beautiful, gripping, supremely pared-down experience.
It's first 20 minutes or so may be the most impressive passage in the film. With little dialogue we are introduced to Hook (Jack O'Connell, as good as ever), training with the British army in 1971 in scenes captured with a beautiful feel for tone and texture by Demange and cinematographer Tat Radcliffe. Hook and his comrades spar, run, attempt obstacle courses and bond in the bleakness of Northern England. Here David Holmes' sublime, atmospheric score rises up on the soundtrack, while we have the bland conformity and uniformity of our protagonist made evident as we struggle to distinguish him from all of the other young squaddies, young men in green with shaven heads.
Sent to Belfast in 1971, just as the Troubles began to get truly nasty, these young men, led as they are by an equally youthful, clueless rookie Officer (a later line of dialogue defines the army as "Posh cunts, telling thick cunts to shoot poor cunts") are thrust into a hideously complex situation.
In their first operation, Hook is separated from his unit and his weapon and soon finds himself on the run from everybody - IRA, undercover British agents - on the nocturnal streets of West Belfast.
'71 is therefore a quite unrelenting action-thriller, filled with suspense and a couple of riveting, visceral set-pieces, but it manages a few surprisingly articulate comments of the subject of Northern Ireland too. It never simplifies its portrayal of the politics of the region or the era, instead depicting, well, everyone as diabolical and scheming. The IRA is split between the old-school organisation and a younger, more aggressive generation (who are the main predators hunting for Hook), while the UVF and the RUC are just as anti-Catholic as one another, and the undercover agents seem to play everybody off against each other for their own unfathomable reasons.
Hook stumbles from one situation and character to another, always vulnerable, never quite in control of what is happening to him, generally uncomprehending of who anybody is. The two branches of the IRA play out a power struggle while the undercover men, lead by the terrific Sean Harris in another of his long line of terrifying sociopath roles, do deals on each side and work their long-term schemes.
All of this fills in the world Hook moves through, but it is the way he moves that keeps this film so electrifying. With nighttime scenes shot digitally - its rare to see a film that captures so well what the light looks life like beneath halogen streetlamps, all deep shadows and sickly yellows - Demange maintains an almost queasy sense of tension as Hook tries to make his way back to barracks.
The action scenes are fantastic, but what works best of all are those first minutes on the streets of Belfast. We can feel the bewilderment and dislocation of these young men to see streets that look so familiar littered with destroyed cars, to encounter young boys who throw bottles of urine at them.
This world has never been captured quite so vividly before.
Finding the sweet spot between a visually poetic art house drama and an adrenalised action thriller, '71 is a beautiful, gripping, supremely pared-down experience.
It's first 20 minutes or so may be the most impressive passage in the film. With little dialogue we are introduced to Hook (Jack O'Connell, as good as ever), training with the British army in 1971 in scenes captured with a beautiful feel for tone and texture by Demange and cinematographer Tat Radcliffe. Hook and his comrades spar, run, attempt obstacle courses and bond in the bleakness of Northern England. Here David Holmes' sublime, atmospheric score rises up on the soundtrack, while we have the bland conformity and uniformity of our protagonist made evident as we struggle to distinguish him from all of the other young squaddies, young men in green with shaven heads.
Sent to Belfast in 1971, just as the Troubles began to get truly nasty, these young men, led as they are by an equally youthful, clueless rookie Officer (a later line of dialogue defines the army as "Posh cunts, telling thick cunts to shoot poor cunts") are thrust into a hideously complex situation.
In their first operation, Hook is separated from his unit and his weapon and soon finds himself on the run from everybody - IRA, undercover British agents - on the nocturnal streets of West Belfast.
'71 is therefore a quite unrelenting action-thriller, filled with suspense and a couple of riveting, visceral set-pieces, but it manages a few surprisingly articulate comments of the subject of Northern Ireland too. It never simplifies its portrayal of the politics of the region or the era, instead depicting, well, everyone as diabolical and scheming. The IRA is split between the old-school organisation and a younger, more aggressive generation (who are the main predators hunting for Hook), while the UVF and the RUC are just as anti-Catholic as one another, and the undercover agents seem to play everybody off against each other for their own unfathomable reasons.
Hook stumbles from one situation and character to another, always vulnerable, never quite in control of what is happening to him, generally uncomprehending of who anybody is. The two branches of the IRA play out a power struggle while the undercover men, lead by the terrific Sean Harris in another of his long line of terrifying sociopath roles, do deals on each side and work their long-term schemes.
All of this fills in the world Hook moves through, but it is the way he moves that keeps this film so electrifying. With nighttime scenes shot digitally - its rare to see a film that captures so well what the light looks life like beneath halogen streetlamps, all deep shadows and sickly yellows - Demange maintains an almost queasy sense of tension as Hook tries to make his way back to barracks.
The action scenes are fantastic, but what works best of all are those first minutes on the streets of Belfast. We can feel the bewilderment and dislocation of these young men to see streets that look so familiar littered with destroyed cars, to encounter young boys who throw bottles of urine at them.
This world has never been captured quite so vividly before.
Wednesday, 20 August 2014
THE INBETWEENERS 2
(Damon Beesley, Iain Morris, 2014)
What made the television show The Inbetweeners so good - apart from the fact that it was genuinely funny - was that the four teenage boys at its centre were instantly recognisable as authentic, realistic teenage boys. Not the heightened, glamourised versions we usually get in tv and (especially) cinema, no; these boys were pathetic, confused, socially awkward, bitter, ignorant, sexually frustrated and generally horrible to one another. The writers and creators - Beesley and Morris, who here take over the direction too - placed these figures in some recognisable situations too, adding just a touch of comedic exaggeration and letting them loose. The result was a show that usually reduced me to tears of laughter at least once an episode, while always retaining its truthfulness in the form of the four boys at its heart.
This sequel to the original 2011 cinematic spin-off from the series finds those boys just on the cusp of manhood. Will (Simon Bird) and Simon (Joe Thomas) are at university, while Neil (Blake Harrison) works in a bank and Jay (James Buckley) is on a Gap Year in Australia. His email home to Neil, full of lies and fantasies, convinces the others to visit him for a two week holiday, but there tensions surface between a resentful Will and the others.
Where this is less successful than the tv show or even the first film is in it's story; there is a little too much obvious invention here, too much that feels like the silly imaginings of screenwriters trying desperately to find funny situations for their heroes. The pretentions and ridiculousness of British backpackers is surgically skewered here (competitive conversations about "amazing experiences", people playing guitar badly by campfires, white rastas etc) but it never has teh universality of the best story lines from the tv series. But even then, it is consistently funny, and one of the big comic set-pieces is brilliantly managed despite it's awesomely crude, broad humour.
It never really looks like a movie, but what really makes it work is what always made the tv show so good: it might just be the truest, most believable portrayal of teenage boys and friendship I've ever seen. That is partly down to the four leads, and mostly to the writing. These boys are always at each other, never letting anything go, always competing and bickering, their insults reliably bitter and hurtful. If that sounds unpleasant, then it ignores the warmth in the characterisation, the fondness for these boys and the dynamic between them, one that the film itself explicitly acknowledges.
What made the television show The Inbetweeners so good - apart from the fact that it was genuinely funny - was that the four teenage boys at its centre were instantly recognisable as authentic, realistic teenage boys. Not the heightened, glamourised versions we usually get in tv and (especially) cinema, no; these boys were pathetic, confused, socially awkward, bitter, ignorant, sexually frustrated and generally horrible to one another. The writers and creators - Beesley and Morris, who here take over the direction too - placed these figures in some recognisable situations too, adding just a touch of comedic exaggeration and letting them loose. The result was a show that usually reduced me to tears of laughter at least once an episode, while always retaining its truthfulness in the form of the four boys at its heart.
This sequel to the original 2011 cinematic spin-off from the series finds those boys just on the cusp of manhood. Will (Simon Bird) and Simon (Joe Thomas) are at university, while Neil (Blake Harrison) works in a bank and Jay (James Buckley) is on a Gap Year in Australia. His email home to Neil, full of lies and fantasies, convinces the others to visit him for a two week holiday, but there tensions surface between a resentful Will and the others.
Where this is less successful than the tv show or even the first film is in it's story; there is a little too much obvious invention here, too much that feels like the silly imaginings of screenwriters trying desperately to find funny situations for their heroes. The pretentions and ridiculousness of British backpackers is surgically skewered here (competitive conversations about "amazing experiences", people playing guitar badly by campfires, white rastas etc) but it never has teh universality of the best story lines from the tv series. But even then, it is consistently funny, and one of the big comic set-pieces is brilliantly managed despite it's awesomely crude, broad humour.
It never really looks like a movie, but what really makes it work is what always made the tv show so good: it might just be the truest, most believable portrayal of teenage boys and friendship I've ever seen. That is partly down to the four leads, and mostly to the writing. These boys are always at each other, never letting anything go, always competing and bickering, their insults reliably bitter and hurtful. If that sounds unpleasant, then it ignores the warmth in the characterisation, the fondness for these boys and the dynamic between them, one that the film itself explicitly acknowledges.
Tuesday, 22 April 2014
LOCKE
(Steven Knight, 2013)
Locke is based around such a simple premise that the execution has to be more or less perfect or else it fails utterly.
Tom Hardy is Ivan Locke, a foreman on a massive Birmingham building project who is driving down the M6 to London at night in order to be with a woman (Olivia Coleman) who is about to have his baby. While he drives he makes and takes a series of Bluetooth phone calls. It emerges that the baby is the product of a one-night stand and Locke barely knows the woman. He is leaving his project the night before a massive and massively important concrete pour, possibly jeopardising a $100 Million operation by leaving it in the hands of Donal (Andrew Scott), and virtually guaranteeing his own dismissal.
His wife and two sons are waiting for him to come home and watch football with them, but events force his hand, and by the time he reaches London, he hopes to have settled everything, both professional and personal.
Hardy is the only actor we see, sat behind the wheel of his BMW for most of this film, the others just a series of evocative voices on the other end of the line. He is strapped in, which helps, somehow, forcing us and Knight to focus upon his face and head, and guaranteeing that every tic and slightest expression has a seismic impact. Hardy is sensational here, portraying a good, principled man as he rapidly watches his life fall apart, all because of one mistake. We watch as his Locke goes from efficiency to despair, and Hardy sells it all. This is an intimate, precise study of this man, and much of the credit for that should go to the leading man.
Knight plays his part too, ensuring that Locke remains surprisingly, impressively cinematic throughout. The constant funnel of light that is the motorway is frequently beautiful, and Knight shoots Hardy from a variety of angles, colour and shadow passing across his face in lovely washes.
And it all works; works so well that what is essentially a small-scale family drama has accrued the level of tension and suspense more commonly experienced with a thriller. A giant step forward for Knight from Hummingbird, and further evidence that Hardy is currently one of our greatest screen actors.
Locke is based around such a simple premise that the execution has to be more or less perfect or else it fails utterly.
Tom Hardy is Ivan Locke, a foreman on a massive Birmingham building project who is driving down the M6 to London at night in order to be with a woman (Olivia Coleman) who is about to have his baby. While he drives he makes and takes a series of Bluetooth phone calls. It emerges that the baby is the product of a one-night stand and Locke barely knows the woman. He is leaving his project the night before a massive and massively important concrete pour, possibly jeopardising a $100 Million operation by leaving it in the hands of Donal (Andrew Scott), and virtually guaranteeing his own dismissal.
His wife and two sons are waiting for him to come home and watch football with them, but events force his hand, and by the time he reaches London, he hopes to have settled everything, both professional and personal.
Hardy is the only actor we see, sat behind the wheel of his BMW for most of this film, the others just a series of evocative voices on the other end of the line. He is strapped in, which helps, somehow, forcing us and Knight to focus upon his face and head, and guaranteeing that every tic and slightest expression has a seismic impact. Hardy is sensational here, portraying a good, principled man as he rapidly watches his life fall apart, all because of one mistake. We watch as his Locke goes from efficiency to despair, and Hardy sells it all. This is an intimate, precise study of this man, and much of the credit for that should go to the leading man.
Knight plays his part too, ensuring that Locke remains surprisingly, impressively cinematic throughout. The constant funnel of light that is the motorway is frequently beautiful, and Knight shoots Hardy from a variety of angles, colour and shadow passing across his face in lovely washes.
And it all works; works so well that what is essentially a small-scale family drama has accrued the level of tension and suspense more commonly experienced with a thriller. A giant step forward for Knight from Hummingbird, and further evidence that Hardy is currently one of our greatest screen actors.
Monday, 24 March 2014
UNDER THE SKIN
(Jonathan Glazer, 2013)
Part shudder, part sigh, Glazer's adaptation of Michel Faber's blackly satirical novel is not quite like any other film I've seen.
It follows an alien in the form of a young woman (Scarlett Johansson, always underplaying and correspondingly magnetic) as she drives a van around a grey, Autumnal Scotland on the hunt for lone men. She lures them back to a dilapidated house on the edge of Glasgow, where they are swallowed by a black liquid which seems to turn them into empty skin-bags. Another alien, in the form of a mute motorcyclist, monitors her activities, tidying up the occasional mess in ruthless fashion. But after an encounter with a disfigured young man, she appears to change, softening in her attitude to the people surrounding her, putting her mission at risk.
That makes the plot sound straightforward, which it never really is. Nor is it really the point. Instead, Glazer immerses us in a visceral mindfuck. That begins with the slow opening reveal of an eyeball being constructed in minute detail, Mica Levi's hypnotic, often disturbing soundtrack grinding on the nerves. The scenes of Johansson on the streets and in the clubs and shopping centres of Glasgow were largely shot with hidden cameras, and there are long montages of ordinary people walking, getting on with their quotidian business, unaware of any camera. Men chat to Johansson, oblivious to her celebrity, plainly shocked by her exoticism and beauty.
This conjures up a heavily atmospheric fog of place; somewhat reminiscent of Tavernier's Death Watch (also set in a crumbling Glasgow), Glazer teases it by juxtaposing these scenes with the bizarre sci-fi sequences. The scene where we follow a man down into the black pool and he watches as another victim implodes is horrifying, yet, like so much here, absolutely beautiful. All of this combines to create a dreamlike mood - Johansson moves through the real world, curiously removed from it, always watching, rarely understanding, her curiosity slowly awakening. Her alien consciousness is thus implicit - we are seeing this world as she sees it, and it is flat, odd, abstract, and oddly, surprisingly beautiful, even at its ugliest.
And there are many haunting scenes - the scene where she watches a family die on a beach, the child left wailing. Her encounter with the disfigured man, tentative and sad in a way nothing else here is. Her interlude with a kind stranger. The final shot, of snow falling towards the camera.
Glazer is a visionary, something made increasingly clear with each film, and his control of atmosphere and texture is precise and beautifully utilised. Levi's sensational score and Daniel Landlin's lovely cinematography don't hurt.
This is a unique film; eerie, mysterious, stunning, unforgettable. It is still with me , vividly, a day later, something which rarely happens with modern films.
Part shudder, part sigh, Glazer's adaptation of Michel Faber's blackly satirical novel is not quite like any other film I've seen.
It follows an alien in the form of a young woman (Scarlett Johansson, always underplaying and correspondingly magnetic) as she drives a van around a grey, Autumnal Scotland on the hunt for lone men. She lures them back to a dilapidated house on the edge of Glasgow, where they are swallowed by a black liquid which seems to turn them into empty skin-bags. Another alien, in the form of a mute motorcyclist, monitors her activities, tidying up the occasional mess in ruthless fashion. But after an encounter with a disfigured young man, she appears to change, softening in her attitude to the people surrounding her, putting her mission at risk.
That makes the plot sound straightforward, which it never really is. Nor is it really the point. Instead, Glazer immerses us in a visceral mindfuck. That begins with the slow opening reveal of an eyeball being constructed in minute detail, Mica Levi's hypnotic, often disturbing soundtrack grinding on the nerves. The scenes of Johansson on the streets and in the clubs and shopping centres of Glasgow were largely shot with hidden cameras, and there are long montages of ordinary people walking, getting on with their quotidian business, unaware of any camera. Men chat to Johansson, oblivious to her celebrity, plainly shocked by her exoticism and beauty.
This conjures up a heavily atmospheric fog of place; somewhat reminiscent of Tavernier's Death Watch (also set in a crumbling Glasgow), Glazer teases it by juxtaposing these scenes with the bizarre sci-fi sequences. The scene where we follow a man down into the black pool and he watches as another victim implodes is horrifying, yet, like so much here, absolutely beautiful. All of this combines to create a dreamlike mood - Johansson moves through the real world, curiously removed from it, always watching, rarely understanding, her curiosity slowly awakening. Her alien consciousness is thus implicit - we are seeing this world as she sees it, and it is flat, odd, abstract, and oddly, surprisingly beautiful, even at its ugliest.
And there are many haunting scenes - the scene where she watches a family die on a beach, the child left wailing. Her encounter with the disfigured man, tentative and sad in a way nothing else here is. Her interlude with a kind stranger. The final shot, of snow falling towards the camera.
Glazer is a visionary, something made increasingly clear with each film, and his control of atmosphere and texture is precise and beautifully utilised. Levi's sensational score and Daniel Landlin's lovely cinematography don't hurt.
This is a unique film; eerie, mysterious, stunning, unforgettable. It is still with me , vividly, a day later, something which rarely happens with modern films.
Sunday, 15 December 2013
ALAN PARTRIDGE: ALPHA PAPA
(Declan Lowney, 2013)
The opening fifteen minutes of Coogan's first big-screen Alan Partridge production are the highlight of the film. They depict Partridge, still every inch the pumped-up, insecure, awkwardly semi-aware "presenter" bore familiar from several classic UK tv series in his natural environment; presenting an afternoon music & chat radio show on Norfolk radio while living in Norwich. The show sounds abysmal but is beautifully observed, Partridge joshing and judging his way through it alongside a sheepishly wry sidekick, playing classic hits and making dreadful puns, bantering with callers while his younger, hipper co-workers mock him behind his back.
This material is so good because it gets right to the core of what makes Partridge such a joy: the minute attention to human foibles, pomposity and prejudice. Coogan knows people, and Partridge allows him to move between sharp caricature and agonising realism with dazzling fluidity. This is the appeal of teh tv shows and its the appeal of the early stages of this film.
The problem with Alan Partridge: Alpha Papa is that sooner or later, an actual plot has to kick in. In this case its a plot including an armed siege, police SWAT teams and Partridge plunged in at the deep end. And it's not bad. It remains funny throughout, no matter how silly the storyline gets, with a couple of set-pieces that showcase Partridge at his best (worst?): his peacock act once he realises he has an audience outside the siege, for instance, and his rambling story about karaoke and retitling Brian Adams "Summer of '69" "Summer of '29". It is rare to see Coogan in such a straight-ahead comedic role as this in cinema, but here he gurns and grimaces and pulls faces throughout, and his judgement is usually terrific about what he can make work.
The rest of the cast is solid, the plotting workable, and the direction no more than efficient, but none of that really matters: they all exist to support Coogan in delivering his greatest creation in a vehicle for cinema, and it just about works.
The opening fifteen minutes of Coogan's first big-screen Alan Partridge production are the highlight of the film. They depict Partridge, still every inch the pumped-up, insecure, awkwardly semi-aware "presenter" bore familiar from several classic UK tv series in his natural environment; presenting an afternoon music & chat radio show on Norfolk radio while living in Norwich. The show sounds abysmal but is beautifully observed, Partridge joshing and judging his way through it alongside a sheepishly wry sidekick, playing classic hits and making dreadful puns, bantering with callers while his younger, hipper co-workers mock him behind his back.
This material is so good because it gets right to the core of what makes Partridge such a joy: the minute attention to human foibles, pomposity and prejudice. Coogan knows people, and Partridge allows him to move between sharp caricature and agonising realism with dazzling fluidity. This is the appeal of teh tv shows and its the appeal of the early stages of this film.
The problem with Alan Partridge: Alpha Papa is that sooner or later, an actual plot has to kick in. In this case its a plot including an armed siege, police SWAT teams and Partridge plunged in at the deep end. And it's not bad. It remains funny throughout, no matter how silly the storyline gets, with a couple of set-pieces that showcase Partridge at his best (worst?): his peacock act once he realises he has an audience outside the siege, for instance, and his rambling story about karaoke and retitling Brian Adams "Summer of '69" "Summer of '29". It is rare to see Coogan in such a straight-ahead comedic role as this in cinema, but here he gurns and grimaces and pulls faces throughout, and his judgement is usually terrific about what he can make work.
The rest of the cast is solid, the plotting workable, and the direction no more than efficient, but none of that really matters: they all exist to support Coogan in delivering his greatest creation in a vehicle for cinema, and it just about works.
Saturday, 30 November 2013
THE LAST DAYS ON MARS
(Ruairí Robinson, 2013)
One of those genre films that plays mainly like a compendium of memorable moments from other genre movies, this lowish budget sci-fi horror just about has enough merit to stand alone as an efficient piece of pulp hokum. That is mainly down to director Robinson, whose style is tough, direct and pleasingly classical, together with an impressive cast in roles that seem underwritten.
The plot focuses on a group of astronauts entering their last 24 hours stationed on a Mars base where they collect samples and conduct experiments. They are pretty stock types: Elias Koteas is defined by the fact that he is the leader, Liev Schreiber is the closest thing to a stock hero, with his square-jawed insistence on always doing the right thing and his heroic flaw, Romola Garai is the "normal" human being among them, Olivia Williams is the cynical, grumpy bitch, Johnny Harris the weak coward who you know will fold at the worst possible moment, their other colleagues even more forgettable.
Well, of course that last sample-collecting excursion goes wrong, and astronauts are turned into zombies, attacking their friends with power tools and anything else near at hand while the dwindling survivors desperately defend themselves inside besieged labs and tunnels. There is much business in airlocks and worry about spacesuits, and the practicalities of life on Mars - energy sources, dust-storms etc - are dealt with cleverly.
Robinson handles the scares well enough, but it never feels different enough, or distinctive enough to make that sufficient. The early scenes suggest Alien in their concentration on a group of colleagues just doing a job in an extraordinary environment, but once the genre make-up changes, the main influence appears to be John Carpenter's near-perfect The Thing, where paranoid, terrified professionals turn on one another and the dread steadily mounts. But The Last Days on Mars is nowhere near as good as those films, even when it finds the right pitch and tone as its flawed, frightened characters struggle to deal with what is happening.
The cast make these scenes work, and the film is satisfyingly bleak in its unsentimental equanimity about disposing of characters, and has a nicely ambiguous ending. With the right script, Robinson could do good work in genre cinema. This ain't the right script.
One of those genre films that plays mainly like a compendium of memorable moments from other genre movies, this lowish budget sci-fi horror just about has enough merit to stand alone as an efficient piece of pulp hokum. That is mainly down to director Robinson, whose style is tough, direct and pleasingly classical, together with an impressive cast in roles that seem underwritten.
The plot focuses on a group of astronauts entering their last 24 hours stationed on a Mars base where they collect samples and conduct experiments. They are pretty stock types: Elias Koteas is defined by the fact that he is the leader, Liev Schreiber is the closest thing to a stock hero, with his square-jawed insistence on always doing the right thing and his heroic flaw, Romola Garai is the "normal" human being among them, Olivia Williams is the cynical, grumpy bitch, Johnny Harris the weak coward who you know will fold at the worst possible moment, their other colleagues even more forgettable.
Well, of course that last sample-collecting excursion goes wrong, and astronauts are turned into zombies, attacking their friends with power tools and anything else near at hand while the dwindling survivors desperately defend themselves inside besieged labs and tunnels. There is much business in airlocks and worry about spacesuits, and the practicalities of life on Mars - energy sources, dust-storms etc - are dealt with cleverly.
Robinson handles the scares well enough, but it never feels different enough, or distinctive enough to make that sufficient. The early scenes suggest Alien in their concentration on a group of colleagues just doing a job in an extraordinary environment, but once the genre make-up changes, the main influence appears to be John Carpenter's near-perfect The Thing, where paranoid, terrified professionals turn on one another and the dread steadily mounts. But The Last Days on Mars is nowhere near as good as those films, even when it finds the right pitch and tone as its flawed, frightened characters struggle to deal with what is happening.
The cast make these scenes work, and the film is satisfyingly bleak in its unsentimental equanimity about disposing of characters, and has a nicely ambiguous ending. With the right script, Robinson could do good work in genre cinema. This ain't the right script.
Saturday, 5 October 2013
HOW I LIVE NOW
(Kevin MacDonald, 2013)
How I Live Now presents WWIII from a single viewpoint. That viewpoint belongs to Daisy (Saoirse Ronan), an annoying American teen spending a summer in rural England with her cousins. Daisy has issues - ignored by her father who has remarried and is enjoying a new baby, she mourns the mother who died giving birth to her, and we overhear the white noise of her thoughts, a stream of unfocused anger and self-help tips. But her cousins are joyously unsupervised (their mother is tellingly absent working on some "peace process") and Daisy is soon won over by their chaotic, fun lifestyle. She also falls in love with the eldest, the intense, moony Edmund (George MacKay), as the world appears to open up to her. MacDonald shoots all this to best emphasise the picturesque beauty of rural England; sunlight through trees, streams twisting alongside fields, children skipping across meadow. These scenes of rural idyll are scored to the likes of the Fairport Convention and Nick Drake, and the beauty of it all makes it unsurprising - unavoidable, perhaps - that Edmund and Daisy should fall so hard for each other.
And then the bomb falls. One scene is interrupted by a sudden rush of wind, a distant whomp, and then a rain of ash. The children freeze, the quiet horror of what has happened evident even to them. London has been bombed, the war begun. Soon the power will be gone, the food run out.
After that the army will come, separating girls and boys. Daisy and her young cousin Piper wind up on a work farm, but Daisy has told Edmund she will return to the house, and driven by her love for him, she and Piper desperately attempt to gain their freedom.
The last act of the film is harrowing and unbelievably dark for what is otherwise a teenage coming of age romance. The scenes of war, when they do come, are beautifully effective for being limited to one viewpoint. Daisy barely has any idea of what is going on - tv and radio speak of terrorists, poisoned water supplies, and the countryside is transformed into a sinister landscape like something from a 1970s UK television show (Survivors, most obviously) - grimly pretty, filled with threatening strangers, burning houses, eerily abandoned towns and clapped out land rovers. The glimpses we get of the enemy are frightening but vague; we don't know who they are or where they're from, but they kill young men, rape women and burn villages down.
Through this world Daisy and Piper trek; driven remorselessly by Daisy's need to see Edmond again. The all-consuming nature of her passion for him is skillfully evoked by MacDonald and his trio of screenwriters, but more specifically by Ronan and MacKay, whose mute physical chemistry is aided by her charisma and his introspective charm. The link they forge early on carries the emotional load through the ordeal of the third act, making the climax surprisingly emotionally charged and moving.
Daisy's character arc feels hard-won and true, not mandated by screenwriting rules, a rarity in a film based on a young adult novel.
Ronan's commitment plays a big part in that, but it is MacDonald's direction that makes the film feel so gritty, its textures so vivid and distinctive. He includes one too many montages, but How I Live Now is beautiful, tough, and strange. He has had an odd, schizophrenic career, from his many high-quality documentaries (Touching the Void, most impressively) to his somewhat anonymous but generally decent feature films, which makes him seem like an exceptionally capable craftsman without much of an individual voice. There are worse things for a director to be.
How I Live Now presents WWIII from a single viewpoint. That viewpoint belongs to Daisy (Saoirse Ronan), an annoying American teen spending a summer in rural England with her cousins. Daisy has issues - ignored by her father who has remarried and is enjoying a new baby, she mourns the mother who died giving birth to her, and we overhear the white noise of her thoughts, a stream of unfocused anger and self-help tips. But her cousins are joyously unsupervised (their mother is tellingly absent working on some "peace process") and Daisy is soon won over by their chaotic, fun lifestyle. She also falls in love with the eldest, the intense, moony Edmund (George MacKay), as the world appears to open up to her. MacDonald shoots all this to best emphasise the picturesque beauty of rural England; sunlight through trees, streams twisting alongside fields, children skipping across meadow. These scenes of rural idyll are scored to the likes of the Fairport Convention and Nick Drake, and the beauty of it all makes it unsurprising - unavoidable, perhaps - that Edmund and Daisy should fall so hard for each other.
And then the bomb falls. One scene is interrupted by a sudden rush of wind, a distant whomp, and then a rain of ash. The children freeze, the quiet horror of what has happened evident even to them. London has been bombed, the war begun. Soon the power will be gone, the food run out.
After that the army will come, separating girls and boys. Daisy and her young cousin Piper wind up on a work farm, but Daisy has told Edmund she will return to the house, and driven by her love for him, she and Piper desperately attempt to gain their freedom.
The last act of the film is harrowing and unbelievably dark for what is otherwise a teenage coming of age romance. The scenes of war, when they do come, are beautifully effective for being limited to one viewpoint. Daisy barely has any idea of what is going on - tv and radio speak of terrorists, poisoned water supplies, and the countryside is transformed into a sinister landscape like something from a 1970s UK television show (Survivors, most obviously) - grimly pretty, filled with threatening strangers, burning houses, eerily abandoned towns and clapped out land rovers. The glimpses we get of the enemy are frightening but vague; we don't know who they are or where they're from, but they kill young men, rape women and burn villages down.
Through this world Daisy and Piper trek; driven remorselessly by Daisy's need to see Edmond again. The all-consuming nature of her passion for him is skillfully evoked by MacDonald and his trio of screenwriters, but more specifically by Ronan and MacKay, whose mute physical chemistry is aided by her charisma and his introspective charm. The link they forge early on carries the emotional load through the ordeal of the third act, making the climax surprisingly emotionally charged and moving.
Daisy's character arc feels hard-won and true, not mandated by screenwriting rules, a rarity in a film based on a young adult novel.
Ronan's commitment plays a big part in that, but it is MacDonald's direction that makes the film feel so gritty, its textures so vivid and distinctive. He includes one too many montages, but How I Live Now is beautiful, tough, and strange. He has had an odd, schizophrenic career, from his many high-quality documentaries (Touching the Void, most impressively) to his somewhat anonymous but generally decent feature films, which makes him seem like an exceptionally capable craftsman without much of an individual voice. There are worse things for a director to be.
Saturday, 14 September 2013
HUMMINGBIRD
aka REDEMPTION
(Steven Knight, 2013)
Hummingbird is about as close as Jason Statham gets these days to working in non-genre cinema. That is to say it's still a genre film, it just has fewer action sequences than the majority of his films do. In their place there is much more dramatic content which requires a lot more from him as an actor, and he delivers fairly well, giving a sensitive, sustained and committed reading of a particular shade to his usual grim and ultra-violent hero.
He plays Joey, an ex Special forces soldier who has escaped from a Military Asylum after an incident in Afghanistan and is living rough in the streets of Central London. A violent encounter leads him to take shelter in the vacant Covent Garden apartment of a photographer, and while recovering there, Joey begins to put his life back together. He finds work as an enforcer for the Chinese mob, using his earnings to help the mission for the homeless run by Sister Cristina (Agata Buzek), while searching for the killer of his friend Isabel. Of course, he and Cristina develop feelings for one another, and Joey's past is never very far away.
While it initially seems like it might be a boiler plate Statham revenge actioner, Hummingbird eventually emerges as a love story between two damaged people. Joey and Cristina's story is told against the complicated tapestry writer-director Knight paints of modern London, here luminously shot by old master Chris Menges as a neon-slicked nocturnal city. This tale takes in protection rackets, prostitution, the restaurant trade, the art world and the police, and Statham broods his way through all of it, only occasionally allowed to explode into violence. He and Buzek have some chemistry, and their relationship is oddly touching despite the awkward set-up of some entirely cliched material.
But Statham's very presence seems to tug the film in another direction; for all it's evenly paced seriousness and the many talky scenes about emotions and plot, it almost feels as if it wants to be an action film, and Knight correspondingly stages the few brutal fight scenes with vivid panache.
Still, it's an interesting change of pace for the star, and it reveals a few more emotional registers within his range, even while it is much more entertaining when he is hurting people.
(Steven Knight, 2013)
Hummingbird is about as close as Jason Statham gets these days to working in non-genre cinema. That is to say it's still a genre film, it just has fewer action sequences than the majority of his films do. In their place there is much more dramatic content which requires a lot more from him as an actor, and he delivers fairly well, giving a sensitive, sustained and committed reading of a particular shade to his usual grim and ultra-violent hero.
He plays Joey, an ex Special forces soldier who has escaped from a Military Asylum after an incident in Afghanistan and is living rough in the streets of Central London. A violent encounter leads him to take shelter in the vacant Covent Garden apartment of a photographer, and while recovering there, Joey begins to put his life back together. He finds work as an enforcer for the Chinese mob, using his earnings to help the mission for the homeless run by Sister Cristina (Agata Buzek), while searching for the killer of his friend Isabel. Of course, he and Cristina develop feelings for one another, and Joey's past is never very far away.
While it initially seems like it might be a boiler plate Statham revenge actioner, Hummingbird eventually emerges as a love story between two damaged people. Joey and Cristina's story is told against the complicated tapestry writer-director Knight paints of modern London, here luminously shot by old master Chris Menges as a neon-slicked nocturnal city. This tale takes in protection rackets, prostitution, the restaurant trade, the art world and the police, and Statham broods his way through all of it, only occasionally allowed to explode into violence. He and Buzek have some chemistry, and their relationship is oddly touching despite the awkward set-up of some entirely cliched material.
But Statham's very presence seems to tug the film in another direction; for all it's evenly paced seriousness and the many talky scenes about emotions and plot, it almost feels as if it wants to be an action film, and Knight correspondingly stages the few brutal fight scenes with vivid panache.
Still, it's an interesting change of pace for the star, and it reveals a few more emotional registers within his range, even while it is much more entertaining when he is hurting people.
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