(Jeremy Saulnier, 2013)
Saulnier's storytelling is the thing that elevates Blue Ruin.
A modest, tightly-focused little revenge thriller, it follows Dwight (Macon Blair, brilliant) from a few days before he learns that the man who murdered his parents twenty years before has been released from prison. Dwight is a drop-out. Bearded and long-haired, we first encounter him having a bath only to jump out the window when the owners of the house return. He lives in a battered old pontiac near the sea, scavenges food from bins, and reads by torchlight. The first 15 minutes or so where we follow Dwight through his days are a fine example of pure cinema - there is no dialogue until Dwight is informed by a kindly Police Officer of what has happened. Even then Saulnier lets the sound drop out as Dwight enters an altered state of sorts, from which he will never recover. He travels to his home state of Virginia, bent on revenge, and after that the film is about revenge, family, cycles, and violence. Saulnier shows the messy awfulness of it in visceral, ultra-close up detail. Once the killing begins, Dwight realises what he must do to end this blood-feud, bringing the film to a horrible climax.
The story is never terribly original, and the plotting is a little shaky at times, but Saulnier's deliberate pacing and the obtuse way he approaches certain scenes means that much of it is exceptionally gripping.
Focusing on Dwight's panicked, sweaty face in the foreground while we can see armed men moving, hunting for him, out-of-focus behind. Lingering on the procedural aspects of his planning to emphasise just how ordinary and out of his depth he is as he tries to procure a gun or to remove a crossbow bolt from his leg. Dropping us straight into the lives of a stressed single mother with little girls for a few minutes unexplained before Dwight's arrival reveals that she is his sister.
Blair has massive, expressive eyes, and the fact that so much of the film forces him to tell us how he is feeling purely through his facial expressions is one of its strengths.
It may be minor, but what Blue Ruin does, it does very well, serving notice that Saulnier may be a director to keep and eye on.
Showing posts with label Revenge. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Revenge. Show all posts
Saturday, 10 May 2014
Wednesday, 8 February 2012
ROLLING THUNDER
(John Flynn, 1977)
Probably better-known these days as one of Quentin Tarantino's favourite films than for any other reason, Rolling Thunder was originally written by Paul Schrader in his 1970s pomp, just a year after the (similar in a few respects) triumph of Taxi Driver. The screenplay was rewritten by journeyman Heywood Gould, but Schrader retains a credit, and you can hear his voice throughout the film.
His story follows Air Force Major Charles Rane (William Devane), who returns to San Antonio, Texas after seven years in a Vietnamese POW Camp. His homecoming sees him rewarded by his grateful hometown with a silver dollar for every day of his incarceration, a new red chevy, and the news that his wife is leaving him for another man. Things get worse when a gang of thugs invade his home, torture him for the whereabouts of those silver dollars - the meeting between his hand and a garbage disposal is unforgettable - then murder his wife and child and leave him for dead. So Rane sets out for revenge with the help of an old POW buddy (Tommy Lee Jones) and Mexico and gunplay inevitably ensue.
That plot makes the film sound like a typical piece of 70s B-movie pulp, and that is what Rolling Thunder is. But it is more interesting than a synopsis suggests. Alongside the sleaze and nastiness and the casually racist portrayal of Mexico, its depiction of its Vietnam veteran protagonists presents them as almost inhuman. Both Devane and Jones constantly - and with no little foreboding - wear sunglasses, their eyes hidden, faces unreadable. They are damaged men, utterly desensitised by the violence inflicted upon them. This gives rise to a few amazing scenes. If Devane's explanation of how to survive torture and consequent homoerotic re-enactment with his wife's lover is disturbing, then his explanation that he is "dead", that they had taken something from him and he would never feel anything again explains both that and his entire performance. He underplays throughout, mostly expressionless, only really seeming to come alive in the scenes of violence. His insistence upon living in the garden shed as if it were his cell in Vietnam contrasts with Jones' prison; he is suffocating within the warm embrace of his family, his haunted eyes flat in response to their banalities. Like Devane, his glee at the apocalyptic violence of the climax is nicely, frighteningly played. Where Devane is prickly and complicated, Jones is beautiful, magnetic.
But Rolling Thunder does succeed as a piece of pulp, too. Director Flynn works with a lean, muscular economy, like Walter Hill, only lacking his ambition and imagination, but with a similar gift for staging and even, at times, for composition. Noirish lighting and precise cutting add to the murky atmosphere, and the action scenes are terrific; brutishly, graphically violent and blunt in their clarity. There are some fine pulp details, too: the hissably awful villains, Devane sharpening his claw until it is a blade, Jones' lack of response with a whore turning into delight once the gunfire starts, and the gratuitous nudity at various points.
Easy then to see just what Tarantino likes so much.
Probably better-known these days as one of Quentin Tarantino's favourite films than for any other reason, Rolling Thunder was originally written by Paul Schrader in his 1970s pomp, just a year after the (similar in a few respects) triumph of Taxi Driver. The screenplay was rewritten by journeyman Heywood Gould, but Schrader retains a credit, and you can hear his voice throughout the film.
His story follows Air Force Major Charles Rane (William Devane), who returns to San Antonio, Texas after seven years in a Vietnamese POW Camp. His homecoming sees him rewarded by his grateful hometown with a silver dollar for every day of his incarceration, a new red chevy, and the news that his wife is leaving him for another man. Things get worse when a gang of thugs invade his home, torture him for the whereabouts of those silver dollars - the meeting between his hand and a garbage disposal is unforgettable - then murder his wife and child and leave him for dead. So Rane sets out for revenge with the help of an old POW buddy (Tommy Lee Jones) and Mexico and gunplay inevitably ensue.
That plot makes the film sound like a typical piece of 70s B-movie pulp, and that is what Rolling Thunder is. But it is more interesting than a synopsis suggests. Alongside the sleaze and nastiness and the casually racist portrayal of Mexico, its depiction of its Vietnam veteran protagonists presents them as almost inhuman. Both Devane and Jones constantly - and with no little foreboding - wear sunglasses, their eyes hidden, faces unreadable. They are damaged men, utterly desensitised by the violence inflicted upon them. This gives rise to a few amazing scenes. If Devane's explanation of how to survive torture and consequent homoerotic re-enactment with his wife's lover is disturbing, then his explanation that he is "dead", that they had taken something from him and he would never feel anything again explains both that and his entire performance. He underplays throughout, mostly expressionless, only really seeming to come alive in the scenes of violence. His insistence upon living in the garden shed as if it were his cell in Vietnam contrasts with Jones' prison; he is suffocating within the warm embrace of his family, his haunted eyes flat in response to their banalities. Like Devane, his glee at the apocalyptic violence of the climax is nicely, frighteningly played. Where Devane is prickly and complicated, Jones is beautiful, magnetic.
But Rolling Thunder does succeed as a piece of pulp, too. Director Flynn works with a lean, muscular economy, like Walter Hill, only lacking his ambition and imagination, but with a similar gift for staging and even, at times, for composition. Noirish lighting and precise cutting add to the murky atmosphere, and the action scenes are terrific; brutishly, graphically violent and blunt in their clarity. There are some fine pulp details, too: the hissably awful villains, Devane sharpening his claw until it is a blade, Jones' lack of response with a whore turning into delight once the gunfire starts, and the gratuitous nudity at various points.
Easy then to see just what Tarantino likes so much.
Friday, 12 August 2011
FASTER
(George Tillman Jr, 2010)
Lean, tough and narratively streamlined, Faster is a revenge thriller done '70s style.
That means it has a grindhouse quality most evident in the visceral relish applied to the violence. Gunfights are loud and bloody. Fistfights are brief, brutal, agonising. Car chases are ferociously quick and thrilling. People are coldly executed, throats cut, shot in the head, stabbed repeatedly.
Yet it's never boring or repetitive. Tillman keeps it moderately stylish throughout - while never allowing it to be less than gritty - and the script is nicely paced, presenting the characters with appealing clarity and providing some witty dialogue. The main figures appear archetypes, at first. The Driver, The Cop and The Killer. Yet over the course of the film each is given a little depth, a smidgen of complexity, which makes the three-way confrontation at the climax all the more satisfying.
This is a film that understands the power of pulp, that sees which cliches work, and knows how best to apply them. The revenge thriller is an easy genre, in a way, but it's rarely done quite so well as it is here. The mission is established before the credits have finished, the stakes set up within a half hour, and then we just watch it twist it's way to a bloody conclusion.
Dwayne Johnson is obviously terrific in Tillman's vigorous action sequences, but he does well containing his natural warmth and humour throughout, presenting his Driver as a being driven purely on hate and finding that hard. The rest of a fine cast are impressive, and the sense of a surprisingly classy enterprise is further enhanced by Clint Mansell's great score.
An action film as they should be: taut, powerful, direct. Like a punch to the solar plexus.
Lean, tough and narratively streamlined, Faster is a revenge thriller done '70s style.
That means it has a grindhouse quality most evident in the visceral relish applied to the violence. Gunfights are loud and bloody. Fistfights are brief, brutal, agonising. Car chases are ferociously quick and thrilling. People are coldly executed, throats cut, shot in the head, stabbed repeatedly.
Yet it's never boring or repetitive. Tillman keeps it moderately stylish throughout - while never allowing it to be less than gritty - and the script is nicely paced, presenting the characters with appealing clarity and providing some witty dialogue. The main figures appear archetypes, at first. The Driver, The Cop and The Killer. Yet over the course of the film each is given a little depth, a smidgen of complexity, which makes the three-way confrontation at the climax all the more satisfying.
This is a film that understands the power of pulp, that sees which cliches work, and knows how best to apply them. The revenge thriller is an easy genre, in a way, but it's rarely done quite so well as it is here. The mission is established before the credits have finished, the stakes set up within a half hour, and then we just watch it twist it's way to a bloody conclusion.
Dwayne Johnson is obviously terrific in Tillman's vigorous action sequences, but he does well containing his natural warmth and humour throughout, presenting his Driver as a being driven purely on hate and finding that hard. The rest of a fine cast are impressive, and the sense of a surprisingly classy enterprise is further enhanced by Clint Mansell's great score.
An action film as they should be: taut, powerful, direct. Like a punch to the solar plexus.
Friday, 22 April 2011
THE MAN FROM NOWHERE
(Jeong Beom Lee, 2010)
The premise is near-parodic in it's generic familiarity; a traumatised ex-Intelligence Operative is just beginning to be drawn out of his depression and mourning by the irrepressible little girl who lives next door when she is abducted by mobsters who kill her junkie mother. He vows to get her back, and he's very very good at violence. From there on in it's mayhem.
But like many Korean genre films, it's the slightly offbeat sensibility and the intensity of the treatment of such cliched material that really makes the film work. The villains are vile; torturing and harvesting organs from children, the group are also given distinctive personalities (partly signalled by a variety of extravagant hairstyles, an emphasis echoed when the heroes final transformation into vengeful killer is signalled by him shaving off his moptop) making their eventual fates much more satisfying. The hero, played by Korean Superstar Bin Won, is a muted presence early on, but his eventual eruption into spectacular, expert violence is nicely played and the actor even makes the film's weakest element - his sentimental emotional breakthrough with the little girl - feel a lot less mawkish than it should.
But it's director Jeong Beom Lee's slick, dark direction that ensures the plot rips along without ever sacrificing any characterisation. His film is full of stunning sequences, including a couple of bravura action scenes - a fantastic final knife fight and the hero versus a roomful of armed mobsters leap immediately to mind - and is always a stylish, visually pleasurable watch. Yet it still feels more soulful and substantial than an American treatment of this material might. In fact, whereas American Action cinema seems to have split into two distinct streams; comprising of the post-Bourne Arthouse Action movie (Joe Wright's Hanna, for instance) and the more simplistic and exploitative popcorn Action movie (a recent example would be Fast Five, say), Korean Action Cinema manages to incorporate both tendencies into single films. The Man from Nowhere is undoubtedly an Action film, but it's never insulting or offensively dumb, and it is shaded an individual enough to remain interesting throughout.
The premise is near-parodic in it's generic familiarity; a traumatised ex-Intelligence Operative is just beginning to be drawn out of his depression and mourning by the irrepressible little girl who lives next door when she is abducted by mobsters who kill her junkie mother. He vows to get her back, and he's very very good at violence. From there on in it's mayhem.
But like many Korean genre films, it's the slightly offbeat sensibility and the intensity of the treatment of such cliched material that really makes the film work. The villains are vile; torturing and harvesting organs from children, the group are also given distinctive personalities (partly signalled by a variety of extravagant hairstyles, an emphasis echoed when the heroes final transformation into vengeful killer is signalled by him shaving off his moptop) making their eventual fates much more satisfying. The hero, played by Korean Superstar Bin Won, is a muted presence early on, but his eventual eruption into spectacular, expert violence is nicely played and the actor even makes the film's weakest element - his sentimental emotional breakthrough with the little girl - feel a lot less mawkish than it should.
But it's director Jeong Beom Lee's slick, dark direction that ensures the plot rips along without ever sacrificing any characterisation. His film is full of stunning sequences, including a couple of bravura action scenes - a fantastic final knife fight and the hero versus a roomful of armed mobsters leap immediately to mind - and is always a stylish, visually pleasurable watch. Yet it still feels more soulful and substantial than an American treatment of this material might. In fact, whereas American Action cinema seems to have split into two distinct streams; comprising of the post-Bourne Arthouse Action movie (Joe Wright's Hanna, for instance) and the more simplistic and exploitative popcorn Action movie (a recent example would be Fast Five, say), Korean Action Cinema manages to incorporate both tendencies into single films. The Man from Nowhere is undoubtedly an Action film, but it's never insulting or offensively dumb, and it is shaded an individual enough to remain interesting throughout.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)