(Gore Verbinski, 2013)
An insanely ambitious, barking mad western adventure epic, it feels somehow miraculous that The Lone Ranger exists at all. It's commercial underperformance only underlines this - what studio would be mad enough to spend (a reputed) $200 million on a film in a genre which is always a box office gamble based upon a character who has largely faded from the pop culture memory?
But exist it does, and, though it is probably an hour longer than it has any right to be, it might actually be the most roundly entertaining of this summer's blockbuster movies.
It takes the theme park approach to the Western genre, bringing the audience on a tour through stock situations. So we have a bank robbery, a train holdup, cavalry versus indians, an ambush in a mountain pass, heroes buried up to their necks in the sand, the travelling construction of a raildoad by Chinese workers, an explosion in a silver mine, a whorehouse...
The story serves as an origin: John Reed (Armie Hammer, likeable throughout) travels back to his childhood home in the West after years studying law on the East coast. There the murder of his brother, legendary lawman Dan Reed (James Badge Dale) opens up a complex conspiracy involving the railroad, silver deposits, the exploitation of the Comanche and a vicious psychotic cannibal killer Butch (William Fichtner). Reed winds up believed dead and wearing a mask alongside the possibly insane Comanche Tonto (Johnny Depp).
The plot is unnecessarily convoluted, with too many characters and too many pointless episodes (Helena Bonham Carter as a Madame is entirely superfluous as is Barry Pepper and his Cavalry detachment) but that adds to the epic, frenzied feel. An issue is the way it all has to rise to an action crescendo every fifteen minutes or so. Luckily Verbinski has honed his abilities in that department over three Pirates of the Caribbean movies and some of the action set-pieces here are absolutely inspired, most obviously the climactic twin-train sequence, which nods to Buster Keaton in its mix of slapstick and complex action choreography.
That is only one of dozens of references, mostly to classic Westerns, with obvious homages to Sergio Leone and John Ford amongst them. This reflects one of the film's greatest strengths; in this season of big dumb movies with no ideas, it actually has a theme. It is about how history is written by the victors, no matter what the truth may be ("Print the legend") and also to some extent about the power of myth. The way it integrates this within it's packed narrative - the whole thing narrated by an aged Tonto (in what looks like a Little Big Man reference) to a young boy at a San Francisco fair in 1933 - is often problematic, but its ambition and the extent to which it succeeds is admirable.
Also likeable is its comedy; subtler and wittier than the Pirates films, it uses Depp's superb deadpan in contrast to the insanity often surrounding him, and scores some laughs through ironic takes on classic or corny old tropes.
It looks absolutely beautiful; cinematographer Bojan Bazelli and Verbinski stage and shoot some scenes which appear generically familiar with wit, invention and imagination, and of course that familiarity fades as the true sense of delirious fun here is revealed. It rollicks along, its humour and action balanced by some interesting darker elements, it's occasionally dull script enlivened by the direction, design and strong cast.
Showing posts with label James Badge Dale. Show all posts
Showing posts with label James Badge Dale. Show all posts
Thursday, 8 August 2013
Sunday, 5 May 2013
IRON MAN 3
(Shane Black, 2013)
It is startling just how many of the situations and beats familiar from Shane Black's previous work - most celebratedly as a screenwriter on action classics, yes, dammit, classics like Lethal Weapon and The Last Boyscout - are present and correct in Iron Man 3.
There's the Christmas setting, a Black obsession. There's the scene where the hero, captured, bound and seemingly hopelessly doomed, calmly tells the evil goons holding him that they're dead, then proceeds somehow to make good on his word. There is also a scene of a mismatched pair of action heroes - in this case Robert Downey Jr as Tony Stark and Don Cheadle as James Rhodes, better known as War Machine, or in this film; the Iron Patriot - bickering amusingly in the middle of much action mayhem.
But more than that, Iron Man 3 has that Shane Black feeling to it, an ability to seem quick-witted and sharp-tongued while dealing in material that seems slightly heavier than anything in the first two Iron Man films, a creative approach to the chaotic destruction demanded by the genre which works because the emotions and audience experience of those kinds of scenes is so well-understood by the storyteller, and the sense that the storyteller in question is just as interested in comedy as action, and indeed, prefers to see the two working in harmony.
Black has always been excellent at the sort of satisfying action beats that a truly great genre film needs, and curiously, that may be where Iron Man 3 is weakest. Super-hero films - Nolan's Batman trilogy apart - inescapably boil down to a scene where cgi characters fight, and what matters then is how well the film sets up that sequence, and how capably it delivers it. The Avengers, for instance, is ok in the set-up, but just about overwhelms the audience with the scale of the climactic action scene, whereas the first two Iron Man films, both directed with vaguely anonymous efficiency by Jon Favreau, returning here in a small part, are good in the set-up but fudged in the climax. Black gets a lot right here - his dialogue (the script is co-written with Drew Pearce, creator of the brilliant and underseen UK superhero sitcom No Heroics) is consistently funny and clever, his villains (Guy Pearce at his smarmiest and Ben Kingsley, surprisingly funny as the kind of Mandarin created to bait fans of the source material) are relatively interesting and their connection to Stark gives the film a nice charge, and the film is full of great, quirky little details that make it feel less of a corporate product than its predecessors.
And the challenge of the superhero genre seems to have brought the best out of him in some ways; he finds inventive ways to make Stark the underdog, and the scenes where he has to fight superpowered thugs with little more than some semi-functioning technology and his considerable wits are the best and most involving action scenes in the movie.
The story finds Stark after the cosmic events of The Avengers having panic attacks while a terrorist named the Mandarin bombs seemingly random targets and a corporate Scientist rival (Pearce's Aldritch Killian) is tinkering with technology provided by an old one-night stand of Starks (Rebecca Hall). Her work seems to allow the body to heal itself, providing Killian with an army of unbeatable soldiers.
It ends up with Stark out of action and hiding out in small-town Tennessee where he teams up with a young boy to repair his malfunctioning armour and get to the bottom of teh mystery of the Mandarin.
Odd scenes stand out for their quality; the bits with Stark and the boy, which should be awful, are instead funny and charming, and an action scene after the bombing of Air Force One is absolutely terrific. Downey Jr owns the role of Stark to the extent that his portrayal almost seems more definitive than the character in the comics - and has massively influenced that character - and Black writes well to his old collaborator's strengths; he knows how to emphasise Downey's wit yet still make him likeable.
As a director, he's similar to Favreau - not much visual identity is evident in his work, but he doesn't get much wrong. And yet, it all comes down to the usual smash-fest in a dockyard, like so many action films, and though it is never boring, I couldn't help but wish I was seeing a bit more of Shane Black and a bit less of Marvel.
Even under corporate and genre constraints he does consistently entertaining work, but off the leash he is capable of so much more. Maybe next time...
It is startling just how many of the situations and beats familiar from Shane Black's previous work - most celebratedly as a screenwriter on action classics, yes, dammit, classics like Lethal Weapon and The Last Boyscout - are present and correct in Iron Man 3.
There's the Christmas setting, a Black obsession. There's the scene where the hero, captured, bound and seemingly hopelessly doomed, calmly tells the evil goons holding him that they're dead, then proceeds somehow to make good on his word. There is also a scene of a mismatched pair of action heroes - in this case Robert Downey Jr as Tony Stark and Don Cheadle as James Rhodes, better known as War Machine, or in this film; the Iron Patriot - bickering amusingly in the middle of much action mayhem.
But more than that, Iron Man 3 has that Shane Black feeling to it, an ability to seem quick-witted and sharp-tongued while dealing in material that seems slightly heavier than anything in the first two Iron Man films, a creative approach to the chaotic destruction demanded by the genre which works because the emotions and audience experience of those kinds of scenes is so well-understood by the storyteller, and the sense that the storyteller in question is just as interested in comedy as action, and indeed, prefers to see the two working in harmony.
Black has always been excellent at the sort of satisfying action beats that a truly great genre film needs, and curiously, that may be where Iron Man 3 is weakest. Super-hero films - Nolan's Batman trilogy apart - inescapably boil down to a scene where cgi characters fight, and what matters then is how well the film sets up that sequence, and how capably it delivers it. The Avengers, for instance, is ok in the set-up, but just about overwhelms the audience with the scale of the climactic action scene, whereas the first two Iron Man films, both directed with vaguely anonymous efficiency by Jon Favreau, returning here in a small part, are good in the set-up but fudged in the climax. Black gets a lot right here - his dialogue (the script is co-written with Drew Pearce, creator of the brilliant and underseen UK superhero sitcom No Heroics) is consistently funny and clever, his villains (Guy Pearce at his smarmiest and Ben Kingsley, surprisingly funny as the kind of Mandarin created to bait fans of the source material) are relatively interesting and their connection to Stark gives the film a nice charge, and the film is full of great, quirky little details that make it feel less of a corporate product than its predecessors.
And the challenge of the superhero genre seems to have brought the best out of him in some ways; he finds inventive ways to make Stark the underdog, and the scenes where he has to fight superpowered thugs with little more than some semi-functioning technology and his considerable wits are the best and most involving action scenes in the movie.
The story finds Stark after the cosmic events of The Avengers having panic attacks while a terrorist named the Mandarin bombs seemingly random targets and a corporate Scientist rival (Pearce's Aldritch Killian) is tinkering with technology provided by an old one-night stand of Starks (Rebecca Hall). Her work seems to allow the body to heal itself, providing Killian with an army of unbeatable soldiers.
It ends up with Stark out of action and hiding out in small-town Tennessee where he teams up with a young boy to repair his malfunctioning armour and get to the bottom of teh mystery of the Mandarin.
Odd scenes stand out for their quality; the bits with Stark and the boy, which should be awful, are instead funny and charming, and an action scene after the bombing of Air Force One is absolutely terrific. Downey Jr owns the role of Stark to the extent that his portrayal almost seems more definitive than the character in the comics - and has massively influenced that character - and Black writes well to his old collaborator's strengths; he knows how to emphasise Downey's wit yet still make him likeable.
As a director, he's similar to Favreau - not much visual identity is evident in his work, but he doesn't get much wrong. And yet, it all comes down to the usual smash-fest in a dockyard, like so many action films, and though it is never boring, I couldn't help but wish I was seeing a bit more of Shane Black and a bit less of Marvel.
Even under corporate and genre constraints he does consistently entertaining work, but off the leash he is capable of so much more. Maybe next time...
Saturday, 14 January 2012
SHAME
(Steve McQueen, 2011)
I love Steve McQueen's style. Theres something magisterial in his compositional sense, and the way he likes to find a single, telling angle on a scene and lets it all play out without editing away gives his work a pleasingly deliberate rhythm. That aspect of his approach reminds me somewhat of both Hou Hsiao Hsien and M Night Shyamalan, but his work has it's own character. There is a coldness to his sensibility, which makes the strong emotional currents which surface near the end of both Hunger and Shame all the more surprising and effective.
You don't expect to be moved after work that is so chilly, intellectual and alienating. And yet you are.
Shame is mainly a character study of Brandon (Michael Fassbinder), a young single executive at a successful Manhattan firm who also happens to be a sex addict. This infects every facet of his life; he goes to work where his computer is "filthy" with pornography. On the way in his searing stare at a married woman on the subway turns into a wordless flirtation-cum-seduction. At home he masturbates, hires escorts, picks up girls in clubs, and has webcam sex with strangers. His life - he has an addicts steady routine - is thrown into turmoil by the arrival of his equally damaged sister Cissy (Carey Mulligan), a neurotic screw-up of a lounge singer who promptly sleeps with his married lech of a boss (played with a nice edge by James Badge Dale) and sets up messy camp in his scrupulously neat apartment, forcing him to confront some emotional issues through her own extreme neediness.
McQueen sets all this in a Manhattan seen through the prism of Brandon's own alienation. He lives in a bubble of his own desire and shame, and this is a wintry, curiously depopulated New York which seems almost timeless; Blondie and Tom Tom Club songs play in clubs (the titles - The Genius of Love, I Want Your Love and Rapture seem almost to mock the loveless Brandon) and the gay club where he ends up during a climactic binge could have come from William Freidkin's 1980 Cruising.
Brandon's relationship - or lack thereof - with Manhattan is stunningly captured in a scene where he goes for a late night run to escape the sounds of his sister and boss in his bed. In a single long tracking shot McQueen follows his run through the city, blocked off by the classical music in his headphones and his own focus and speed.
Fassbinder and Mulligan are fearless and raw throughout, Fassbinder in particular plumbing depths within himself few actors could access. He is never better than in the quietly comic scenes with an attractive co-worker he dates and actually seems to care about. A restaurant date is repeatedly interrupted by an eagerly attentive waiter, and a subsequent sexual encounter rapidly degenerates into agonisingly painful tension when Brandon cannot perform. His final plunge to absolute despair is convincing and moving, and McQueen has tied his addiction to universality by ensuring we see that Brandon drinks a lot and likes the odd narcotic. Any scorn one may have for sex addiction is rendered irrelevant by a close reading of Shame. Brandon is sick, spiritually and emotionally, and anyone can understand that and empathise with the pain and emptiness he seeks to escape from in modern life. Fassbinder's final oblivion is beautifully played in a cracked orgasmic rictus of utter horror which is an amazing piece of acting.
The film is not flawless, but it is still magnificent in places. The implied events in Brandon and Cissy's past are slightly reductively played, though always coy and never explicit. As well as McQueen and the cast, Harry Escott's score and Sean Bobbitt's pin-sharp cinematography are both superb and ensure that this remains a classy piece of cinema thoughout.
I love Steve McQueen's style. Theres something magisterial in his compositional sense, and the way he likes to find a single, telling angle on a scene and lets it all play out without editing away gives his work a pleasingly deliberate rhythm. That aspect of his approach reminds me somewhat of both Hou Hsiao Hsien and M Night Shyamalan, but his work has it's own character. There is a coldness to his sensibility, which makes the strong emotional currents which surface near the end of both Hunger and Shame all the more surprising and effective.
You don't expect to be moved after work that is so chilly, intellectual and alienating. And yet you are.
Shame is mainly a character study of Brandon (Michael Fassbinder), a young single executive at a successful Manhattan firm who also happens to be a sex addict. This infects every facet of his life; he goes to work where his computer is "filthy" with pornography. On the way in his searing stare at a married woman on the subway turns into a wordless flirtation-cum-seduction. At home he masturbates, hires escorts, picks up girls in clubs, and has webcam sex with strangers. His life - he has an addicts steady routine - is thrown into turmoil by the arrival of his equally damaged sister Cissy (Carey Mulligan), a neurotic screw-up of a lounge singer who promptly sleeps with his married lech of a boss (played with a nice edge by James Badge Dale) and sets up messy camp in his scrupulously neat apartment, forcing him to confront some emotional issues through her own extreme neediness.
McQueen sets all this in a Manhattan seen through the prism of Brandon's own alienation. He lives in a bubble of his own desire and shame, and this is a wintry, curiously depopulated New York which seems almost timeless; Blondie and Tom Tom Club songs play in clubs (the titles - The Genius of Love, I Want Your Love and Rapture seem almost to mock the loveless Brandon) and the gay club where he ends up during a climactic binge could have come from William Freidkin's 1980 Cruising.
Brandon's relationship - or lack thereof - with Manhattan is stunningly captured in a scene where he goes for a late night run to escape the sounds of his sister and boss in his bed. In a single long tracking shot McQueen follows his run through the city, blocked off by the classical music in his headphones and his own focus and speed.
Fassbinder and Mulligan are fearless and raw throughout, Fassbinder in particular plumbing depths within himself few actors could access. He is never better than in the quietly comic scenes with an attractive co-worker he dates and actually seems to care about. A restaurant date is repeatedly interrupted by an eagerly attentive waiter, and a subsequent sexual encounter rapidly degenerates into agonisingly painful tension when Brandon cannot perform. His final plunge to absolute despair is convincing and moving, and McQueen has tied his addiction to universality by ensuring we see that Brandon drinks a lot and likes the odd narcotic. Any scorn one may have for sex addiction is rendered irrelevant by a close reading of Shame. Brandon is sick, spiritually and emotionally, and anyone can understand that and empathise with the pain and emptiness he seeks to escape from in modern life. Fassbinder's final oblivion is beautifully played in a cracked orgasmic rictus of utter horror which is an amazing piece of acting.
The film is not flawless, but it is still magnificent in places. The implied events in Brandon and Cissy's past are slightly reductively played, though always coy and never explicit. As well as McQueen and the cast, Harry Escott's score and Sean Bobbitt's pin-sharp cinematography are both superb and ensure that this remains a classy piece of cinema thoughout.
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