(Jeff Nichols, 2015)
Nichols' "voice" makes perfect sense here, applied to a sci-fi thriller which refers to Spielberg's sci-fi cinema of the late '70s and early '80s; like J.J. Abrams' Super 8, Midnight Special seems hugely indebted to E.T. and Close Encounters of the Third Kind, as well as John Carpernter's Starman.
The difference is that while Abrams is a skilled mimic, Nichols has his own sensibility and style. It is artier than most mainstream Hollywood cinema, patient and precise, with much attention paid to tone and mood. Visually he uses almost-Hawksian simple set-ups, eschewing flashy cutting or ostentatious angles.
Each of his films is imbued with a strong sense of emotion, perhaps at the expense of plot. So here there is no exposition, meaning that the audience is involved in an intriguing game of catch-up from the start. We meet two men, on the run from the authorities across the South of the U.S. with a little boy in tow. The boy wears swimming goggles and headphones. They travel by night, the driver wearing night-vision goggles so that their car travels in darkness. They use cardboard to blackout motel room windows in the daytime. The Government is searching for them, as is the cult they appear to have escaped. The boy is spoken of in reverent terms by cult members, and appears to have powers of some sort. One of the men (Michael Shannon) is revealed as his birth father.
Nichols lets the details come slowly, focusing instead on the mood of desperation and fear around the fugitives. This is really a story of a father's struggle to protect his child, and as such it accrues tremendous emotional power as it moves with gathering speed towards a climax. The sci-fi elements are all sudden shocks in the story, and the naturalism of the setting and playing gives them an awesome effect; a scene at a gas station is interrupted by a shower of falling satellite debris. Shannon is woken from sleep by the house being shaken off the ground by the light shooting from his sons eyes. The boys touch kills patches of grass.
While the film is without any Spielbergian sentimentality, it does try for Spielbergian awe, and the context and tone helps it achieve something like that. It is a slow burn that sparks to life impressively.
Nichols is great with actors as ever. Shannon, Edgerton and Dunst are all excellent, while Driver shows good range as the Government expert on their trail. Perhaps most impressive is the cinematography of regular Nichols collaborator, Adam Stone; he paints a muted, wintry picture of the Southern States by night, lit by halogen and headlamps.
Showing posts with label Thriller. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Thriller. Show all posts
Sunday, 17 April 2016
Sunday, 13 March 2016
THE GUNMAN
(Pierre Morel, 2015)
So hilariously generic in its particulars that it plays almost like a parody, The Gunman is a pretty waste of an awful lot of acting talent.
Sean Penn plays the action lead here, but he is not really fully committing to a Liam Neeson career revival which this was obviously envisioned as. Instead, he co-wrote the screenplay and presumably ensured that this otherwise stock Euro-spy action thriller has some worthy stuff about mining in the Congo and multinational culpability. He's in good shape for a middle-aged man and does well with the action stuff, but director Morel seems more concerned with making everything look painterly than mounting effective action sequences.
Then there's the fact that the characters are all flat and underwritten. And no matter how charismatic Idris Elba, Javier Bardem and Ray Winstone are, they can't make puppets any more realistic. Only Mark Rylance really animates his role. The love triangle is awful - pointless and desultory.
The locations look great, Morel has a fine eye and a nose for ambience, and there are a few divertingly well-done action beats, but overall, and considering it is based on Manchette's The Prone Gunman, this feels like a major missed opportunity.
So hilariously generic in its particulars that it plays almost like a parody, The Gunman is a pretty waste of an awful lot of acting talent.
Sean Penn plays the action lead here, but he is not really fully committing to a Liam Neeson career revival which this was obviously envisioned as. Instead, he co-wrote the screenplay and presumably ensured that this otherwise stock Euro-spy action thriller has some worthy stuff about mining in the Congo and multinational culpability. He's in good shape for a middle-aged man and does well with the action stuff, but director Morel seems more concerned with making everything look painterly than mounting effective action sequences.
Then there's the fact that the characters are all flat and underwritten. And no matter how charismatic Idris Elba, Javier Bardem and Ray Winstone are, they can't make puppets any more realistic. Only Mark Rylance really animates his role. The love triangle is awful - pointless and desultory.
The locations look great, Morel has a fine eye and a nose for ambience, and there are a few divertingly well-done action beats, but overall, and considering it is based on Manchette's The Prone Gunman, this feels like a major missed opportunity.
Friday, 7 August 2015
MARSHLAND
aka LA ISLA MINIMA
(Alberto Rodriguez, 2014)
Set in the political twilight between the death of Franco and the coming of democracy in early '80s Spain, Marshland is an extremely intense, emotionally charged thriller. When two girls disappear in rural Andalucia, a pair of detectives are dispatched to find them. When they do find them, the girls have been raped, tortured and killed. During their investigation, the detectives find themselves stonewalled by small-town Spain, where distrust and secretiveness are seemingly everywhere. Their own differences reflect the divides in Spanish society during that era; the younger Pedro (Raúl Arévalo) believes in democracy, talks angrily of Fascists, and was angling for a career in Madrid before a letter to a newspaper landed him in trouble with the government. The older Raul (Javier Gutiérrez) has a shadowed past working for the regime, medical problems (he urinates blood and pops pills) and a cynical attitude to the job of getting results. Together they stumble through an investigation that gets knottier and more complex by the day. Again, Rodriguez suggests that this reflects Spain itself; people protecting the powerful, a general sense of fear and suspicion, secrets and lies beneath the sun.
It is beautifully made. Rodriguez favours a series of lovely birds eye view shots of his marshes and the mighty river around which his action takes place, and they eerily contextualise the action. These human stories, however important they seem, are pitiful and minute compared to the nature surrounding them. Those shots do much of the work creating atmosphere; this little claustrophobic town is powerfully evoked, all smoky bars and sweaty car lots, as is life on the river and marshes, the abandoned hunting lodges and houses set around the bleak countryside which the detectives find themselves searching. The two leads are well-cast; they have great faces - Arévalo handsome in a cruel way, Gutiérrez kind and friendly-looking, which helps complicate their characters and relationship.
The whole thing is terrifically textured and visceral so that when the action starts in the last act, it has real impact - a couple of brilliantly intimate car chases and a shootout are utterly engrossing, and the film has a satisfyingly cynical ending. It is a superior piece of genre entertainment aimed squarely at grown-ups.
(Alberto Rodriguez, 2014)
Set in the political twilight between the death of Franco and the coming of democracy in early '80s Spain, Marshland is an extremely intense, emotionally charged thriller. When two girls disappear in rural Andalucia, a pair of detectives are dispatched to find them. When they do find them, the girls have been raped, tortured and killed. During their investigation, the detectives find themselves stonewalled by small-town Spain, where distrust and secretiveness are seemingly everywhere. Their own differences reflect the divides in Spanish society during that era; the younger Pedro (Raúl Arévalo) believes in democracy, talks angrily of Fascists, and was angling for a career in Madrid before a letter to a newspaper landed him in trouble with the government. The older Raul (Javier Gutiérrez) has a shadowed past working for the regime, medical problems (he urinates blood and pops pills) and a cynical attitude to the job of getting results. Together they stumble through an investigation that gets knottier and more complex by the day. Again, Rodriguez suggests that this reflects Spain itself; people protecting the powerful, a general sense of fear and suspicion, secrets and lies beneath the sun.
It is beautifully made. Rodriguez favours a series of lovely birds eye view shots of his marshes and the mighty river around which his action takes place, and they eerily contextualise the action. These human stories, however important they seem, are pitiful and minute compared to the nature surrounding them. Those shots do much of the work creating atmosphere; this little claustrophobic town is powerfully evoked, all smoky bars and sweaty car lots, as is life on the river and marshes, the abandoned hunting lodges and houses set around the bleak countryside which the detectives find themselves searching. The two leads are well-cast; they have great faces - Arévalo handsome in a cruel way, Gutiérrez kind and friendly-looking, which helps complicate their characters and relationship.
The whole thing is terrifically textured and visceral so that when the action starts in the last act, it has real impact - a couple of brilliantly intimate car chases and a shootout are utterly engrossing, and the film has a satisfyingly cynical ending. It is a superior piece of genre entertainment aimed squarely at grown-ups.
Saturday, 23 May 2015
PHOENIX
(Christian Petzold, 2014)
Petzold's control just gets more nuanced and precise by the movie. This noir set in the rubble of post-war Berlin and haunted by the shadow of the Holocaust is a frustrating, cold but compelling watch until an extraordinary climactic scene transforms it into something transcendent.
Nina Hoss plays Nelly, a Berlin singer who has barely survived Auschwitz and is horribly disfigured. After plastic surgery, while she awaits transport to Palestine, she searches for her husband Jonny (Roland Zehrfeld) through the ruins of the city and eventually finds him working in a nightclub in the American sector. Assuming she is dead, he doesn't recognise her but sees that she somehow resembles his wife and involves her in a scheme which involves her pretending to be herself while he remakes her in Nelly's image, adjusting her walk, hair and make-up, buying her clothes...
In this way an entirely twisted romance plays out, as Nelly re-learns herself through the eyes of the husband who hid and protected her but may have given her up to save himself.
Petzold has a minimalist, deceptively simple style that demands much of his cast. But Hoss and Zehrfeld are equal to the task, each delivering in tricky parts. Hoss is sensational, evoking her character's traumatised fragility in her face but also her body language, then slowly blooming as she re-discovers her husband and the reality of her past. Zehrfeld is always conflicted by what he is doing: desperate yet furious with himself, drawn to this woman he knows cannot be his wife. That intense final scene is all about their faces and they are both immense, giving it an emotional charge which is shattering.
Prior to that the film is a noir and appropriately tense. Berlin is all shadows and bombed-out houses, off-duty US soldiers and furtive encounters in alleyways. Petzold prominently references Eyes Without A Face and Vertigo. And yet the holocaust gives his film a sting unlike either of those films, best manifested in the character of Lene (Nina Kunzendorf), working to get herself and Nelly to Palestine and sadly tracking down the evidence that the rest of their friends died in the camps. Her fate is cold and shocking, and it seems to foreshadow that ending, where Nelly's serial number tattoo is seen for the first time.
Petzold's control just gets more nuanced and precise by the movie. This noir set in the rubble of post-war Berlin and haunted by the shadow of the Holocaust is a frustrating, cold but compelling watch until an extraordinary climactic scene transforms it into something transcendent.
Nina Hoss plays Nelly, a Berlin singer who has barely survived Auschwitz and is horribly disfigured. After plastic surgery, while she awaits transport to Palestine, she searches for her husband Jonny (Roland Zehrfeld) through the ruins of the city and eventually finds him working in a nightclub in the American sector. Assuming she is dead, he doesn't recognise her but sees that she somehow resembles his wife and involves her in a scheme which involves her pretending to be herself while he remakes her in Nelly's image, adjusting her walk, hair and make-up, buying her clothes...
In this way an entirely twisted romance plays out, as Nelly re-learns herself through the eyes of the husband who hid and protected her but may have given her up to save himself.
Petzold has a minimalist, deceptively simple style that demands much of his cast. But Hoss and Zehrfeld are equal to the task, each delivering in tricky parts. Hoss is sensational, evoking her character's traumatised fragility in her face but also her body language, then slowly blooming as she re-discovers her husband and the reality of her past. Zehrfeld is always conflicted by what he is doing: desperate yet furious with himself, drawn to this woman he knows cannot be his wife. That intense final scene is all about their faces and they are both immense, giving it an emotional charge which is shattering.
Prior to that the film is a noir and appropriately tense. Berlin is all shadows and bombed-out houses, off-duty US soldiers and furtive encounters in alleyways. Petzold prominently references Eyes Without A Face and Vertigo. And yet the holocaust gives his film a sting unlike either of those films, best manifested in the character of Lene (Nina Kunzendorf), working to get herself and Nelly to Palestine and sadly tracking down the evidence that the rest of their friends died in the camps. Her fate is cold and shocking, and it seems to foreshadow that ending, where Nelly's serial number tattoo is seen for the first time.
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.
Sunday, 22 March 2015
RUN ALL NIGHT
(Jaume Collet-Serra, 2015)
Neeson has an obvious advantage over all of his current competitors for the title of King of Action Movies: he can really act. When the Rock or Vin Diesel or Jason Statham turns in a performance with any depth or emotion, we are surprised that they've managed that "Any". With Neeson, it's expected.
His only real current rival in that area is Keanu Reeves, who has added a surprising amount of melancholy and gravity to his persona as age has taken hold.
But Neeson has always been melancholy - he wears it like a cloak, swishing in his massive wake - its just that these days his action parts seem tailor-made for his presence. In Run All Night he plays an ageing, useless hit man for the Irish mob in New York, Jimmy Conlon. Apparently kept around out of sentimentality by mob boss Sean Maguire (Ed Harris, adding to his list of Irish mobsters), a childhood friend, Jimmy is a broke alcoholic , crippled by memories of all the people he has murdered. A convoluted first act sets up a situation whereby Jimmy ends up killing Sean's reckless gangster son in order to protect his own, civilian boy Michael (Joel Kinnaman), setting the two of them off on a night of chase and survival through New York as Sean sets hit men and flunkies after them. Also in on the hunt are the NYPD, though the detective who has been after Jimmy for decades (Vincent D'onofrio) may be their only hope of survival.
Collet-Serra is one of the more talented craftsmen working in mainstream American cinema right now and his classy, slick touch makes Run All Night one of the better Neeson actioners of the last few years. If the action scenes are somewhat underwhelming - and the low-key, small scale, determinedly local feel to the whole thing may even explain that to some extent - then the fine work by a great cast is more than enough to compensate. Crucially, Neeson is actor enough to rise to the task of playing opposite the likes of Harris and D'Onofrio, and his scenes with the former, particularly, lend this film an oddly poetic sense of longtime male friendships in the twilight years.
That's not to criticise the action scenes - a brutal, to-the-death fight between Neeson and Holt McCallany in a public toilet is a highlight, closely followed by a lengthy car-chase that avoids most of the cliches of that convention - rather to emphasise that the elements that really set Run All Night apart are the gritty feel it has for New York and the character acting throughout.
Probably the weakest element is the one that feels most like it has come from a different sort of genre film - Common as a preppy assassin Price, sporting a trench-coat and a laser-sighting on his pistol.
But generally Run All Night works splendidly; it is an unusually emotional, visceral mix of crime, thriller and action movies, and it uses Liam Neeson about as well as any recent film has.
Neeson has an obvious advantage over all of his current competitors for the title of King of Action Movies: he can really act. When the Rock or Vin Diesel or Jason Statham turns in a performance with any depth or emotion, we are surprised that they've managed that "Any". With Neeson, it's expected.
His only real current rival in that area is Keanu Reeves, who has added a surprising amount of melancholy and gravity to his persona as age has taken hold.
But Neeson has always been melancholy - he wears it like a cloak, swishing in his massive wake - its just that these days his action parts seem tailor-made for his presence. In Run All Night he plays an ageing, useless hit man for the Irish mob in New York, Jimmy Conlon. Apparently kept around out of sentimentality by mob boss Sean Maguire (Ed Harris, adding to his list of Irish mobsters), a childhood friend, Jimmy is a broke alcoholic , crippled by memories of all the people he has murdered. A convoluted first act sets up a situation whereby Jimmy ends up killing Sean's reckless gangster son in order to protect his own, civilian boy Michael (Joel Kinnaman), setting the two of them off on a night of chase and survival through New York as Sean sets hit men and flunkies after them. Also in on the hunt are the NYPD, though the detective who has been after Jimmy for decades (Vincent D'onofrio) may be their only hope of survival.
Collet-Serra is one of the more talented craftsmen working in mainstream American cinema right now and his classy, slick touch makes Run All Night one of the better Neeson actioners of the last few years. If the action scenes are somewhat underwhelming - and the low-key, small scale, determinedly local feel to the whole thing may even explain that to some extent - then the fine work by a great cast is more than enough to compensate. Crucially, Neeson is actor enough to rise to the task of playing opposite the likes of Harris and D'Onofrio, and his scenes with the former, particularly, lend this film an oddly poetic sense of longtime male friendships in the twilight years.
That's not to criticise the action scenes - a brutal, to-the-death fight between Neeson and Holt McCallany in a public toilet is a highlight, closely followed by a lengthy car-chase that avoids most of the cliches of that convention - rather to emphasise that the elements that really set Run All Night apart are the gritty feel it has for New York and the character acting throughout.
Probably the weakest element is the one that feels most like it has come from a different sort of genre film - Common as a preppy assassin Price, sporting a trench-coat and a laser-sighting on his pistol.
But generally Run All Night works splendidly; it is an unusually emotional, visceral mix of crime, thriller and action movies, and it uses Liam Neeson about as well as any recent film has.
Friday, 20 February 2015
BLACKHAT
(Michael Mann, 2015)
Nobody but Michael Mann could possibly have made this film.
In his later, digitally shot movies, Mann's narrative brusqueness has become something more refined and deliberate; a seemingly premeditated step towards abstraction. This echoes the visual abstraction that has always been a part of his work, but has become more pronounced since his decision to embrace new technologies. In Blackhat, exposition and character development are either rattled off in a let's-get-this-done hurry or faded out mid-dialogue; lines crucial to the plot are mumbled, figures given no time to establish who they are before they are processed through the film. And yet, to a grown-up, attentive viewer, it always make sense. I never wondered what was going on, or who was who, or why they were doing what they were doing, because Mann is such a bold, confident visual storyteller. He tells his story through sounds and images. The meltdown at a Chinese Nuclear plant, so crucial to the plot, is depicted, thrillingly, without any dialogue whatsoever. In this sequence, Mann shows us how information flows across a network between computers with dizzying tracking shots across the landscapes of hard drive interiors, where data washes over his speeding camera like a wave, the whole thing resembling nothing so much as an action scene from Tron. This is pure cinema, and it is wonderful.
The story traces the efforts of a small team of American and Chinese agents to find and capture a "blackhat" computer hacker responsible for that meltdown and some financial market chaos in the US. To this end they recruit Nicholas Hathaway (Chris Hemsworth), a jailed hacker and college roommate to the Chinese Commander of the operation, Chen Dewai (Wang Leehom). Hathaway soon proves his worth as they follow the trail from America to Hong Kong and Jakarta as the stakes grow increasingly higher.
In some ways, this plays like a compendium of Mann's tropes and obsessions. There are images, plot points, and characterisations here familiar from his other films, even a few phrases hardcore fans will recognise ("That's what you're doing, isn't it, you son of a bitch?"). The themes are a constant. He has always addressed the difficulties of communication in the modern world, and likes to contrast that idea with a romance which is instinctual and near-wordless. In Blackhat, Hathaway and Chen's sister Lien (Tang Wei) conduct a courtship composed chiefly of glances and gestures before they end up in bed together. This - like much of the material in Mann's universe - is the stuff of deepest cliche, and yet Mann does it so well, and with such earnest poetry, it is impossible not to be compelled by it. A sequence here of Hathaway noticing the details of Lien's beauty as they travel together to a meet is beautifully evocative and detailed - Mann is one of modern cinema's great sensualists, and moments like this one recall Wong Kar-Wai.
This film is filled with such moments. If this director is celebrated as a visual stylist, it is with good reason. Few filmmakers have directed architecture as well, and here he captures cites in spare, devastatingly beautiful shots, yet is generally more interested in the faces and bodies of his cast. Hemsworth is all swagger with a hint of melancholy, and as such is perfect for this part, and his chemistry with Tang Wei gives their romance a charge and grip which is crucial in the final act. Viola Davis does an awful lot with a small but crucial role and the way Mann stages and shoots her last scene is beautiful.
That is the thing about Mann; he makes a film like this, about the cold violence and loneliness of the modern world (among other things), and he makes it look ravishing. His use of digital tools allows for a new sort of cinematic beauty, one no other director has really grappled with yet - the halogen glare of a highway at night, the glitter of a cityscape at sundown, the murk of dawn through apartment blinds. And then of course, is his way with action. Blackhat is, after all, an action film. And he retains that ability to immerse us in the action, starting with a fistfight in a Koreatown restaurant, shot the same way he handled a few of the fights in the magnificent Ali - the camera so close to the combatants it judders with impact, and continuing through a handful of blistering gunfights in various urban spaces that are terrifyingly visceral and brutal.
Through all this we stay close to Hathaway, another in a long line of Mann's existential romantic heroes, and though this narrative has been hugely refined, all inessentials removed in favour of textures and poetic detail, it is still gripping and moving, still more intelligent than most American cinema ever dares contemplate. Mann occupies that blessed spot where the multiplex meets the arthouse, which is why his films so often flirt with commercial failure, and also partly why they are so impressive.
Blackhat isn't quite the perfect statement of Heat or the late masterpiece of Miami Vice, but it isn't far off, either.
Nobody but Michael Mann could possibly have made this film.
In his later, digitally shot movies, Mann's narrative brusqueness has become something more refined and deliberate; a seemingly premeditated step towards abstraction. This echoes the visual abstraction that has always been a part of his work, but has become more pronounced since his decision to embrace new technologies. In Blackhat, exposition and character development are either rattled off in a let's-get-this-done hurry or faded out mid-dialogue; lines crucial to the plot are mumbled, figures given no time to establish who they are before they are processed through the film. And yet, to a grown-up, attentive viewer, it always make sense. I never wondered what was going on, or who was who, or why they were doing what they were doing, because Mann is such a bold, confident visual storyteller. He tells his story through sounds and images. The meltdown at a Chinese Nuclear plant, so crucial to the plot, is depicted, thrillingly, without any dialogue whatsoever. In this sequence, Mann shows us how information flows across a network between computers with dizzying tracking shots across the landscapes of hard drive interiors, where data washes over his speeding camera like a wave, the whole thing resembling nothing so much as an action scene from Tron. This is pure cinema, and it is wonderful.
The story traces the efforts of a small team of American and Chinese agents to find and capture a "blackhat" computer hacker responsible for that meltdown and some financial market chaos in the US. To this end they recruit Nicholas Hathaway (Chris Hemsworth), a jailed hacker and college roommate to the Chinese Commander of the operation, Chen Dewai (Wang Leehom). Hathaway soon proves his worth as they follow the trail from America to Hong Kong and Jakarta as the stakes grow increasingly higher.
In some ways, this plays like a compendium of Mann's tropes and obsessions. There are images, plot points, and characterisations here familiar from his other films, even a few phrases hardcore fans will recognise ("That's what you're doing, isn't it, you son of a bitch?"). The themes are a constant. He has always addressed the difficulties of communication in the modern world, and likes to contrast that idea with a romance which is instinctual and near-wordless. In Blackhat, Hathaway and Chen's sister Lien (Tang Wei) conduct a courtship composed chiefly of glances and gestures before they end up in bed together. This - like much of the material in Mann's universe - is the stuff of deepest cliche, and yet Mann does it so well, and with such earnest poetry, it is impossible not to be compelled by it. A sequence here of Hathaway noticing the details of Lien's beauty as they travel together to a meet is beautifully evocative and detailed - Mann is one of modern cinema's great sensualists, and moments like this one recall Wong Kar-Wai.
This film is filled with such moments. If this director is celebrated as a visual stylist, it is with good reason. Few filmmakers have directed architecture as well, and here he captures cites in spare, devastatingly beautiful shots, yet is generally more interested in the faces and bodies of his cast. Hemsworth is all swagger with a hint of melancholy, and as such is perfect for this part, and his chemistry with Tang Wei gives their romance a charge and grip which is crucial in the final act. Viola Davis does an awful lot with a small but crucial role and the way Mann stages and shoots her last scene is beautiful.
That is the thing about Mann; he makes a film like this, about the cold violence and loneliness of the modern world (among other things), and he makes it look ravishing. His use of digital tools allows for a new sort of cinematic beauty, one no other director has really grappled with yet - the halogen glare of a highway at night, the glitter of a cityscape at sundown, the murk of dawn through apartment blinds. And then of course, is his way with action. Blackhat is, after all, an action film. And he retains that ability to immerse us in the action, starting with a fistfight in a Koreatown restaurant, shot the same way he handled a few of the fights in the magnificent Ali - the camera so close to the combatants it judders with impact, and continuing through a handful of blistering gunfights in various urban spaces that are terrifyingly visceral and brutal.
Through all this we stay close to Hathaway, another in a long line of Mann's existential romantic heroes, and though this narrative has been hugely refined, all inessentials removed in favour of textures and poetic detail, it is still gripping and moving, still more intelligent than most American cinema ever dares contemplate. Mann occupies that blessed spot where the multiplex meets the arthouse, which is why his films so often flirt with commercial failure, and also partly why they are so impressive.
Blackhat isn't quite the perfect statement of Heat or the late masterpiece of Miami Vice, but it isn't far off, either.
Thursday, 15 January 2015
WHIPLASH
(Damien Chazelle, 2014)
A drama that plays like a gut-wrenching thriller, Whiplash is impressive in enough ways that its flaws cease to matter early on.
It tells the story of Andrew Neman (Miles Teller), a 19 year old music student at the prestigious Schaffer Institute in New York who wants to be the world's greatest jazz drummer. To that end, he craves the attention and approval of Fletcher (J.K. Simmons), the leader of the Institute's house band and a fearsome taskmaster and moulder of talent. Fletcher notices him, drafts him into said band, and begins a campaign of attrition seemingly designed to break the young man, insulting and threatening him, humiliating him in front of peers and rivals, making him play until he literally bleeds onto his drums. Meanwhile Andrew alienates his sweet new girlfriend when he tells her she will only distract him from his quest to be "great", insults his fathers friends when they patronise his calling, and generally finds his life shrinking down to himself, Fletcher and his drum-kit. And then things get worse.
This is in every way a debut; it feels tightly controlled and planned in every particular the way debut films are, by hungry young filmmakers eager to make sure their first shot is the one. The screenplay is tight and a little too rote in parts; the scene where Andrew returns home seems as if it has been inserted just to show us what he is actually like, since up to this point we have mainly watched him react to things and people and heard relatively little from him about what he thinks or feels. It feels a little like the result of some feedback from a screenwriting seminar. Later on the story reaches a few silly heights, but it has you in it's grip then, and will not let go, for all the silly coincidences and unbelievable actions may strain your belief.
That should not diminish Chazelle's achievement; Whiplash is powerful, pitiless stuff. He shoots it mainly in tight, gorgeous close-ups and his colour palette is phenomenal and seems somehow to echo this romantic, lush music - deep crimsons, rich golden hues, chestnut backgrounds surround the faces, pooled in light. Cutaways and inserts give a real sense of the texture of life in a big band. The script is full of great lines, the majority given to Simmons, who tears away at Fletcher like his career depended on it. He is ferocious, witty, passionate, and he finally meets a match in Teller's blank-eyed slave to ambition and Buddy Rich. These duelling sociopaths would destroy everything in their path, but their own clash makes for terrific drama, and much of the credit has to go to the two actors, who are wonderful.
Chazelle orchestrates the tension beautifully - a few scenes are almost unwatchably intense, based on nothing more than human drama - and he knows when to let the music play too; Whiplash is filled with great tunes.
A drama that plays like a gut-wrenching thriller, Whiplash is impressive in enough ways that its flaws cease to matter early on.
It tells the story of Andrew Neman (Miles Teller), a 19 year old music student at the prestigious Schaffer Institute in New York who wants to be the world's greatest jazz drummer. To that end, he craves the attention and approval of Fletcher (J.K. Simmons), the leader of the Institute's house band and a fearsome taskmaster and moulder of talent. Fletcher notices him, drafts him into said band, and begins a campaign of attrition seemingly designed to break the young man, insulting and threatening him, humiliating him in front of peers and rivals, making him play until he literally bleeds onto his drums. Meanwhile Andrew alienates his sweet new girlfriend when he tells her she will only distract him from his quest to be "great", insults his fathers friends when they patronise his calling, and generally finds his life shrinking down to himself, Fletcher and his drum-kit. And then things get worse.
This is in every way a debut; it feels tightly controlled and planned in every particular the way debut films are, by hungry young filmmakers eager to make sure their first shot is the one. The screenplay is tight and a little too rote in parts; the scene where Andrew returns home seems as if it has been inserted just to show us what he is actually like, since up to this point we have mainly watched him react to things and people and heard relatively little from him about what he thinks or feels. It feels a little like the result of some feedback from a screenwriting seminar. Later on the story reaches a few silly heights, but it has you in it's grip then, and will not let go, for all the silly coincidences and unbelievable actions may strain your belief.
That should not diminish Chazelle's achievement; Whiplash is powerful, pitiless stuff. He shoots it mainly in tight, gorgeous close-ups and his colour palette is phenomenal and seems somehow to echo this romantic, lush music - deep crimsons, rich golden hues, chestnut backgrounds surround the faces, pooled in light. Cutaways and inserts give a real sense of the texture of life in a big band. The script is full of great lines, the majority given to Simmons, who tears away at Fletcher like his career depended on it. He is ferocious, witty, passionate, and he finally meets a match in Teller's blank-eyed slave to ambition and Buddy Rich. These duelling sociopaths would destroy everything in their path, but their own clash makes for terrific drama, and much of the credit has to go to the two actors, who are wonderful.
Chazelle orchestrates the tension beautifully - a few scenes are almost unwatchably intense, based on nothing more than human drama - and he knows when to let the music play too; Whiplash is filled with great tunes.
Wednesday, 10 December 2014
BLACK SEA
(Kevin MacDonald, 2014)
MacDonald is now that rare thing; an excellent genre craftsman who never makes a bad film. His work in fiction - setting aside his excellent documentaries - goes from pretty good (State of Play, How I Live Now) to excellent (The Eagle). He has a skilful way with actors and a feel for textures which makes each of his films smell and play very differently.
Black Sea is an old-fashioned men-on-a-mission movie transplanted into the submarine genre. As such, it features a great cast of grizzled character actors playing strong, instantly recognisable types. Jude Law (attempting a passable Scottish accent) is Robinson, fired by his long-term employers at the start of the film, sulking in his dingy Aberdeen flat (MacDonald finds the poetry in the net curtains dancing the breeze) and missing his ex-wife and son, who left him because he was at sea too much. An old colleague suggests he take on a dangerous job - leading a team into the black sea in search of a Nazi U-boat that sank during the Second World War, stuffed with tons of gold.
They have to get the backing of a wealthy patron, recruit a team of Brits and Russians, buy a second-hand submarine, and evade the Russian fleet en route to the gold. Only their team contains one shifty psychopath (Ben Mendelsohn, good as ever), a weaselly Corporate American (Scoot McNairy, doing Paul Reiser in Aliens, and doing him pretty well) and a bunch of Russians and Brits who do not trust one another and cannot communicate. Tensions rise as their journey begins, and inevitably lead to death and disaster.
The cast, MacDonald's intense direction and a taut script by Dennis Kelly mean that early on the tension settles in like an extra actor and it is never off screen. This is one of those submarine films that is excellent on the sheer terror of the alien world beyond the sub's hull ("Just cold, black death", as Michael Smiley's character puts it, sharing all of the film's best lines with David Threlfall) and features a terrifying diving sequence alongside some equally eerie shots of the sub cutting through the murk. Those scenes only increase the claustrophobic feverishness of the paranoia crackling between the men onboard, all of them familiar from the sort of mission movies that were popular four or five decades ago. I mean that as a compliment; Black Sea is a great little yarn, suspenseful, gripping and unexpectedly funny in places.
It is also a study in working class rage - Robinson is motivated by fury at "them", the men who have ruined his industry and taken his career, and he inspires his men with promises of wealth, only to find himself turned and somewhat corrupted by so much beautiful gold, captured by MacDonald glimmering and reflecting across his wide-eyed face. A mission movie for our times, then, and a thoroughly satisfying one, the odd lapse in plot logic aside.
MacDonald is now that rare thing; an excellent genre craftsman who never makes a bad film. His work in fiction - setting aside his excellent documentaries - goes from pretty good (State of Play, How I Live Now) to excellent (The Eagle). He has a skilful way with actors and a feel for textures which makes each of his films smell and play very differently.
Black Sea is an old-fashioned men-on-a-mission movie transplanted into the submarine genre. As such, it features a great cast of grizzled character actors playing strong, instantly recognisable types. Jude Law (attempting a passable Scottish accent) is Robinson, fired by his long-term employers at the start of the film, sulking in his dingy Aberdeen flat (MacDonald finds the poetry in the net curtains dancing the breeze) and missing his ex-wife and son, who left him because he was at sea too much. An old colleague suggests he take on a dangerous job - leading a team into the black sea in search of a Nazi U-boat that sank during the Second World War, stuffed with tons of gold.
They have to get the backing of a wealthy patron, recruit a team of Brits and Russians, buy a second-hand submarine, and evade the Russian fleet en route to the gold. Only their team contains one shifty psychopath (Ben Mendelsohn, good as ever), a weaselly Corporate American (Scoot McNairy, doing Paul Reiser in Aliens, and doing him pretty well) and a bunch of Russians and Brits who do not trust one another and cannot communicate. Tensions rise as their journey begins, and inevitably lead to death and disaster.
The cast, MacDonald's intense direction and a taut script by Dennis Kelly mean that early on the tension settles in like an extra actor and it is never off screen. This is one of those submarine films that is excellent on the sheer terror of the alien world beyond the sub's hull ("Just cold, black death", as Michael Smiley's character puts it, sharing all of the film's best lines with David Threlfall) and features a terrifying diving sequence alongside some equally eerie shots of the sub cutting through the murk. Those scenes only increase the claustrophobic feverishness of the paranoia crackling between the men onboard, all of them familiar from the sort of mission movies that were popular four or five decades ago. I mean that as a compliment; Black Sea is a great little yarn, suspenseful, gripping and unexpectedly funny in places.
It is also a study in working class rage - Robinson is motivated by fury at "them", the men who have ruined his industry and taken his career, and he inspires his men with promises of wealth, only to find himself turned and somewhat corrupted by so much beautiful gold, captured by MacDonald glimmering and reflecting across his wide-eyed face. A mission movie for our times, then, and a thoroughly satisfying one, the odd lapse in plot logic aside.
Friday, 7 November 2014
NIGHTCRAWLER
(Dan Gilroy, 2014)
Instantly announcing itself as one of the great Los Angeles films, Nightcrawler does so many things so well. It is a gripping, utterly atmospheric thriller. It features the best performance of Jake Gyllenhal's career. It says some scary, hilarious things about the way the current US Economic situation demands a certain amorality and even creates and rewards sociopaths. And it looks absolutely beautiful.
That is mainly down to veteran cinematographer Robert Elswit, who together with debutant director Dan Gilroy (brother of Tony) depicts L.A. as we rarely see it; street-level, devoid of cliches, an exciting, living, beautiful sprawl of a city, pulsing with colour and energy.
And Gilroy's story ensures that we see an awful lot of it. Following Lou Bloom (Gyllenhal), an eager, intensely focused sociopath getting by as a petty thief when we first encounter him, the film traces his burgeoning career as a freelance "Nightcrawler". Armed with a police scanner and a camera, he prowls L.A. by night, filming crime scenes and accidents and selling the results to local TV news, where he strikes up a creepy, co-dependent relationship with News producer Rene Russo. As he learns his trade and begins to make money he takes on an employee, Rick (Riz Ahmed) and develops a rivalry with Bill Paxton's cocky veteran. And then Lou's real personality begins to emerge - the positive thinking and corporate jargon he spouts fails to hide his ruthless willingness to go to any lengths to succeed, leading him and Rick into dangerous territory.
Gyllenhal plays Lou as a force of nature, lacking in any scruples or shame, totally focused upon success, the people around him only tools he can use. If the film has a real flaw, it's the queasy glee it seems to take in pointing out the creepiness of his character. There is no insight or empathy here, only a sort of "look at the weirdo" feeling which is a tad disappointing in a film that is otherwise so cleverly conceived and made.
Even that is leavened by the way it is developed as a theme; the world is full of people like Lou, Gilroy seems to be saying, in fact they are rewarded for the inhuman qualities they possess. People like Lou end up running things in this world. That's a dark, ballsy thing for a little crime thriller to articulate, and a big part of what is so impressive about Nightcrawler is that it is able to express that without ever sacrificing any of it's tension or excitement.
It climaxes with a terrific action sequence, though the scene where Lou reveals his true self to Russo over dinner might just shade that one as the film's most thrilling.
Instantly announcing itself as one of the great Los Angeles films, Nightcrawler does so many things so well. It is a gripping, utterly atmospheric thriller. It features the best performance of Jake Gyllenhal's career. It says some scary, hilarious things about the way the current US Economic situation demands a certain amorality and even creates and rewards sociopaths. And it looks absolutely beautiful.
That is mainly down to veteran cinematographer Robert Elswit, who together with debutant director Dan Gilroy (brother of Tony) depicts L.A. as we rarely see it; street-level, devoid of cliches, an exciting, living, beautiful sprawl of a city, pulsing with colour and energy.
And Gilroy's story ensures that we see an awful lot of it. Following Lou Bloom (Gyllenhal), an eager, intensely focused sociopath getting by as a petty thief when we first encounter him, the film traces his burgeoning career as a freelance "Nightcrawler". Armed with a police scanner and a camera, he prowls L.A. by night, filming crime scenes and accidents and selling the results to local TV news, where he strikes up a creepy, co-dependent relationship with News producer Rene Russo. As he learns his trade and begins to make money he takes on an employee, Rick (Riz Ahmed) and develops a rivalry with Bill Paxton's cocky veteran. And then Lou's real personality begins to emerge - the positive thinking and corporate jargon he spouts fails to hide his ruthless willingness to go to any lengths to succeed, leading him and Rick into dangerous territory.
Gyllenhal plays Lou as a force of nature, lacking in any scruples or shame, totally focused upon success, the people around him only tools he can use. If the film has a real flaw, it's the queasy glee it seems to take in pointing out the creepiness of his character. There is no insight or empathy here, only a sort of "look at the weirdo" feeling which is a tad disappointing in a film that is otherwise so cleverly conceived and made.
Even that is leavened by the way it is developed as a theme; the world is full of people like Lou, Gilroy seems to be saying, in fact they are rewarded for the inhuman qualities they possess. People like Lou end up running things in this world. That's a dark, ballsy thing for a little crime thriller to articulate, and a big part of what is so impressive about Nightcrawler is that it is able to express that without ever sacrificing any of it's tension or excitement.
It climaxes with a terrific action sequence, though the scene where Lou reveals his true self to Russo over dinner might just shade that one as the film's most thrilling.
Wednesday, 29 October 2014
GONE GIRL
(David Fincher, 2014)
Something in the caustic, blistering satire of Gillian Flynn's novel is beautifully suited to Fincher's gifts; this film is slick and dark and funny and utterly entertaining and something about it feels effortless.
It has a pleasing ambivalence about each of its characters - Affleck nicely plays his protagonist, Nick Dunne, as variously a schmuck, a cheat, a bore, and a smug yuppie. The structure means that we partly see him through the eyes of the titular girl, his wife Amy (Rosamund Pike), as she recounts their meet-cute and perfect courtship in her diary, and partly as he suffers through the aftermath of her disappearance, when he is demonised by the media and becomes hunted and paranoid. As such, he is sympathetic - Affleck remains a charming presence - but is believably flawed and human. Amy is similarly complex, and Pike doesn't shy away from portraying her spoiled little rich girl vanity alongside her wit and intelligence. The supporting cast is just as richly populated with nuance and authentic tics - Carrie Coon and Kim Dickens play perhaps the two strongest characters as, respectively, Nick's twin sister and the detective working the case, both of whom seem cynical about everything the world throws at them.
Fincher textures the whole thing with that beautiful darkness he can sprinkle throughout a film. Here it is suburbia that is depicted with a clinical detachment, its dark corners illuminated by his camera, and the final act reveals this film as a devastating and hilarious critique of modern marriage, slickly hidden inside a twisty thriller, and drolly entertaining throughout.
Something in the caustic, blistering satire of Gillian Flynn's novel is beautifully suited to Fincher's gifts; this film is slick and dark and funny and utterly entertaining and something about it feels effortless.
It has a pleasing ambivalence about each of its characters - Affleck nicely plays his protagonist, Nick Dunne, as variously a schmuck, a cheat, a bore, and a smug yuppie. The structure means that we partly see him through the eyes of the titular girl, his wife Amy (Rosamund Pike), as she recounts their meet-cute and perfect courtship in her diary, and partly as he suffers through the aftermath of her disappearance, when he is demonised by the media and becomes hunted and paranoid. As such, he is sympathetic - Affleck remains a charming presence - but is believably flawed and human. Amy is similarly complex, and Pike doesn't shy away from portraying her spoiled little rich girl vanity alongside her wit and intelligence. The supporting cast is just as richly populated with nuance and authentic tics - Carrie Coon and Kim Dickens play perhaps the two strongest characters as, respectively, Nick's twin sister and the detective working the case, both of whom seem cynical about everything the world throws at them.
Fincher textures the whole thing with that beautiful darkness he can sprinkle throughout a film. Here it is suburbia that is depicted with a clinical detachment, its dark corners illuminated by his camera, and the final act reveals this film as a devastating and hilarious critique of modern marriage, slickly hidden inside a twisty thriller, and drolly entertaining throughout.
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.
Friday, 3 October 2014
THE EQUALIZER
(Antoine Fuqua, 2014)
Is it Denzel Washington's unique star persona that makes so many of his vehicles feel like '90s throwbacks? He chooses projects which skew older in terms of target audience than perhaps any other major movie star, and that means that his action-thrillers in particular have a strangely retro "mature" feel. The Equalizer is no different. Over-long and over-familiar, it spends most of it's time setting up the world of Robert McCall, an ex-something-deadly-or-other-for-the-Government who has escaped his old life after the death of his beloved wife and lives an anonymous, normal existence, working in a DIY store.
That is, until, of course, the young prostitute (Chloe Moretz) he has bonded with over his nocturnal visits to a local coffee shop is beaten almost to death by her Russian pimp. So McCall - until now a perfectly normal bloke, albeit one with Serious OCD - confronts the Russian and his gang and, and when they mock him, he kills them all in more or less 20 seconds, shot by Fuqua in a meticulously fetishized slo-mo manner that goes on for about 2 minutes and is undeniably satisfying in time-honoured "they messed with the wrong guy and what a way to find out" style. So the Russian Mob send legendary psycho-fixer Teddy (Martin Csokas, hamming it up as ever) to figure out who has destroyed their Boston operation, which ultimately leads to McCall taking on the Russian Mafia single-handedly.
To the extent that it works at all, The Equalizer works because of Denzel Washington. He gives McCall a mournful intelligence crossed with a subtle sense of humour - not unlike Edward Woodward's performance in the tv show on which the movie is loosely based - and though there is never really any tension (his character is too smart to lose to these gangsters) it is pleasurable watching him kill many many goons in various creative ways.
Fuqua owes his journeyman career to Washington's star power turning Training Day into a huge hit over a decade ago, and he directs with slick, anonymous competence.
Is it Denzel Washington's unique star persona that makes so many of his vehicles feel like '90s throwbacks? He chooses projects which skew older in terms of target audience than perhaps any other major movie star, and that means that his action-thrillers in particular have a strangely retro "mature" feel. The Equalizer is no different. Over-long and over-familiar, it spends most of it's time setting up the world of Robert McCall, an ex-something-deadly-or-other-for-the-Government who has escaped his old life after the death of his beloved wife and lives an anonymous, normal existence, working in a DIY store.
That is, until, of course, the young prostitute (Chloe Moretz) he has bonded with over his nocturnal visits to a local coffee shop is beaten almost to death by her Russian pimp. So McCall - until now a perfectly normal bloke, albeit one with Serious OCD - confronts the Russian and his gang and, and when they mock him, he kills them all in more or less 20 seconds, shot by Fuqua in a meticulously fetishized slo-mo manner that goes on for about 2 minutes and is undeniably satisfying in time-honoured "they messed with the wrong guy and what a way to find out" style. So the Russian Mob send legendary psycho-fixer Teddy (Martin Csokas, hamming it up as ever) to figure out who has destroyed their Boston operation, which ultimately leads to McCall taking on the Russian Mafia single-handedly.
To the extent that it works at all, The Equalizer works because of Denzel Washington. He gives McCall a mournful intelligence crossed with a subtle sense of humour - not unlike Edward Woodward's performance in the tv show on which the movie is loosely based - and though there is never really any tension (his character is too smart to lose to these gangsters) it is pleasurable watching him kill many many goons in various creative ways.
Fuqua owes his journeyman career to Washington's star power turning Training Day into a huge hit over a decade ago, and he directs with slick, anonymous competence.
Tuesday, 23 September 2014
A WALK AMONG THE TOMBSTONES
(Scott Frank, 2014)
A Walk Among the Tombstones is a classical - almost generic - detective noir. And in the modern filmmaking climate of bombast and narratives so post-modern they're self-reflexive without even knowing it, that makes it feel almost radical in its purity and simplicity.
Adapted by writer-director Scott Frank (who has had success with tricky crime adaptations like Out of Sight and Get Shorty in the past) from one of Lawrence Block's long-running Matt Scudder novels, it casts Liam Neeson as the hero, a recovering alcoholic and ex-NYPD detective who now works as a private and unlicensed investigator. Refreshingly, Scudder is not the invincible super-warrior Neeson has played in the Taken films. Instead he is made a little vulnerable by his continued attendance at AA meetings. He takes a couple of beatings here, though his dry wit and fearlessness more than compensate in ensuring he still feels like a hard-boiled tough guy. Neeson is a rare action actor who is equally comfortable with emotional drama, and he gives Scudder a weighty soulfulness and melancholy. That is mostly expressed in the scenes depicting his relationship with TJ, a precocious street kid who fancies himself a detective.
The case brings a streak of nastiness to the film that all the best detective stories really need; throwing a tarnished white Knight into opposition against pure evil raises the stakes massively, and here that pure evil is in the form of two men who abduct the wives and girlfriends of drug dealers and traffickers and torture and kill them. Scudder is put on the case by Kenny (Dan Stevens), a middle class trafficker who paid the ransom demanded by the voice on the telephone and then had his wife delivered in small bags. Digging deep he discovers that these men are serial kidnappers, their depravity shocking.
It all leads, of course, to the sort of extreme ultra violence and gunplay that led Scudder to quit the police, and which Frank shoots with the same sort of classical precision which characterises most of the films old-fashioned virtues. It feels a little like the sort of modest crime adaptation that thrived in the '60s and '70s - Frank knows how this sort of pulp works, understands its pleasures and delivers them. He gets how important the villains are, he can see how crucial a strong sense of place is, and his film takes the time to do both these things right. It is tight, atmospheric, and commendably streamlined in its accurate recreation of the world of Block's novels. It's good to see a star like Neeson use his profile to get a film like this made.
A Walk Among the Tombstones is a classical - almost generic - detective noir. And in the modern filmmaking climate of bombast and narratives so post-modern they're self-reflexive without even knowing it, that makes it feel almost radical in its purity and simplicity.
Adapted by writer-director Scott Frank (who has had success with tricky crime adaptations like Out of Sight and Get Shorty in the past) from one of Lawrence Block's long-running Matt Scudder novels, it casts Liam Neeson as the hero, a recovering alcoholic and ex-NYPD detective who now works as a private and unlicensed investigator. Refreshingly, Scudder is not the invincible super-warrior Neeson has played in the Taken films. Instead he is made a little vulnerable by his continued attendance at AA meetings. He takes a couple of beatings here, though his dry wit and fearlessness more than compensate in ensuring he still feels like a hard-boiled tough guy. Neeson is a rare action actor who is equally comfortable with emotional drama, and he gives Scudder a weighty soulfulness and melancholy. That is mostly expressed in the scenes depicting his relationship with TJ, a precocious street kid who fancies himself a detective.
The case brings a streak of nastiness to the film that all the best detective stories really need; throwing a tarnished white Knight into opposition against pure evil raises the stakes massively, and here that pure evil is in the form of two men who abduct the wives and girlfriends of drug dealers and traffickers and torture and kill them. Scudder is put on the case by Kenny (Dan Stevens), a middle class trafficker who paid the ransom demanded by the voice on the telephone and then had his wife delivered in small bags. Digging deep he discovers that these men are serial kidnappers, their depravity shocking.
It all leads, of course, to the sort of extreme ultra violence and gunplay that led Scudder to quit the police, and which Frank shoots with the same sort of classical precision which characterises most of the films old-fashioned virtues. It feels a little like the sort of modest crime adaptation that thrived in the '60s and '70s - Frank knows how this sort of pulp works, understands its pleasures and delivers them. He gets how important the villains are, he can see how crucial a strong sense of place is, and his film takes the time to do both these things right. It is tight, atmospheric, and commendably streamlined in its accurate recreation of the world of Block's novels. It's good to see a star like Neeson use his profile to get a film like this made.
Wednesday, 17 September 2014
A MOST WANTED MAN
(Anton Corbijn, 2014)
A modern spy story - meaning it details the obsessive efforts of a small team of intelligence operatives to halt the activities of Islamist extremists - A Most Wanted Man deals in the classic iconography and conventions of a Cold War thriller. It is set in an Autumnal Northern European city - Hamburg, in this case. Its characters are rumpled and cynical, broken by their profession. People smoke a lot, drink even more, conduct meetings beneath motorway overpasses and in waste ground. Betrayal is a constant possibility.
Lead Gunther (Phillip Seymour Hoffman) trails a traumatic, career-destroying disaster in the Middle East, where an American error blew his Intelligence networks and agents who trusted him died. Banished to Hamburg, his small team spots the arrival of a Chechen with links to terrorism. Gunther spots a way to use him to trap some much bigger game; a famed Muslim activist named Dr Abdullah (Homayoun Ershadi), who uses his charitable works to conceal links with Al Qaeda.
The plot follows Gunther's attempts to keep his superiors and rivals within German Intelligence at bay while also fending off the CIA (personified here by Robin Wright's cold, sharp agent). At the same time he is using a Liberal immigration lawyer (Rachel McAdams) to manoeuvre the Chechen into helping capture Abdullah.
Corbijn directs it all with a great feel for architecture and place - the 60s block where Gunther's team are based is a beautifully brutalist location - which helps lend it a nice chilly feel. The people are guarded and paranoid, driven by duty and mostly untroubled by conscience until everything goes wrong, which it does in every spy story ever. This is a Le Carre adaptation and Gunther is a classic Le Carre hero - more of an idealist than he initially seems, excellent at his job, not the smoothest of politicians. Hoffman is typically superb; his wheeze convenys more emotion than most actors can manage in long monologues.
Although this is the type of film where everybody speaks English in a German accent, it is never less than utterly convincing, and it builds up slowly into a quietly riveting thriller for grown-ups, no set-pieces, just engrossing dialogue scenes.
A modern spy story - meaning it details the obsessive efforts of a small team of intelligence operatives to halt the activities of Islamist extremists - A Most Wanted Man deals in the classic iconography and conventions of a Cold War thriller. It is set in an Autumnal Northern European city - Hamburg, in this case. Its characters are rumpled and cynical, broken by their profession. People smoke a lot, drink even more, conduct meetings beneath motorway overpasses and in waste ground. Betrayal is a constant possibility.
Lead Gunther (Phillip Seymour Hoffman) trails a traumatic, career-destroying disaster in the Middle East, where an American error blew his Intelligence networks and agents who trusted him died. Banished to Hamburg, his small team spots the arrival of a Chechen with links to terrorism. Gunther spots a way to use him to trap some much bigger game; a famed Muslim activist named Dr Abdullah (Homayoun Ershadi), who uses his charitable works to conceal links with Al Qaeda.
The plot follows Gunther's attempts to keep his superiors and rivals within German Intelligence at bay while also fending off the CIA (personified here by Robin Wright's cold, sharp agent). At the same time he is using a Liberal immigration lawyer (Rachel McAdams) to manoeuvre the Chechen into helping capture Abdullah.
Corbijn directs it all with a great feel for architecture and place - the 60s block where Gunther's team are based is a beautifully brutalist location - which helps lend it a nice chilly feel. The people are guarded and paranoid, driven by duty and mostly untroubled by conscience until everything goes wrong, which it does in every spy story ever. This is a Le Carre adaptation and Gunther is a classic Le Carre hero - more of an idealist than he initially seems, excellent at his job, not the smoothest of politicians. Hoffman is typically superb; his wheeze convenys more emotion than most actors can manage in long monologues.
Although this is the type of film where everybody speaks English in a German accent, it is never less than utterly convincing, and it builds up slowly into a quietly riveting thriller for grown-ups, no set-pieces, just engrossing dialogue scenes.
Friday, 12 September 2014
NIGHT MOVES
(Kelly Reichardt, 2014)
Reichardt's brand of hushed, precise art cinema proves a surprisingly good fit for a paranoid thriller here. Following three novice Environmental terrorists as they plan and execute the destruction of a dam in Oregon, Night Moves concentrates on the cross-currents and dynamics between these people, most effectively as the tension mounts in the hours before the bombing and as their paranoia grows in the aftermath.
Shot mostly in muted, autumnal hues, Reichardt is as sensitive as ever to the landscapes in which she sets her story. But her camera is also attuned to the faces and body language of this trio.
Their plan has come from Josh (Jesse Eisenberg), a tightly wound, humourless young man who lives in a Yurt on a farming co-operative. His awkward gracelesness is nicely, subtly contrasted with the chattering charm of Dee (Dakota Fanning), a little rich girl who funds some of Josh's smaller acts of rebellion but finds herself unprepared for the real-life repercussions of their bombing. They are joined by an old friend of Josh's, Harmon (Peter Sarsgaard), an ex-Marine, ex-Con who handles the explosives and deals with their situation better than his co-conspirators.
The film steadily follows their preparations as they buy a boat and fertiliser, make explosives and get into position. We get glimpses of their differing philosophies and reasons for doing this; Josh's anger about salmon dying so people can charge their iPods, Harmon on the bloat of Portland into the countryside, and Dee on how industrial fishing is destroying ocean bio-diversity. That all makes their actions seem righteous and motivated, but there is the unmistakable sense that they do not know quite what they are doing. In the aftermath, Reichardt allows Josh's boss to casually destroy the meaning of their act when he calls it "theatre" and we can see in Josh's eyes that - after a tragic and unexpected consequence has struck him - he doesn't even disagree.
The atmosphere is thick with angst and tension, and that only increases once the act has taken place and Josh is spiralling, worried about his accomplices and the future. The ending is ambiguous and haunting in a way that provides a perfect fit with the quiet tone of the film.
Reichardt's brand of hushed, precise art cinema proves a surprisingly good fit for a paranoid thriller here. Following three novice Environmental terrorists as they plan and execute the destruction of a dam in Oregon, Night Moves concentrates on the cross-currents and dynamics between these people, most effectively as the tension mounts in the hours before the bombing and as their paranoia grows in the aftermath.
Shot mostly in muted, autumnal hues, Reichardt is as sensitive as ever to the landscapes in which she sets her story. But her camera is also attuned to the faces and body language of this trio.
Their plan has come from Josh (Jesse Eisenberg), a tightly wound, humourless young man who lives in a Yurt on a farming co-operative. His awkward gracelesness is nicely, subtly contrasted with the chattering charm of Dee (Dakota Fanning), a little rich girl who funds some of Josh's smaller acts of rebellion but finds herself unprepared for the real-life repercussions of their bombing. They are joined by an old friend of Josh's, Harmon (Peter Sarsgaard), an ex-Marine, ex-Con who handles the explosives and deals with their situation better than his co-conspirators.
The film steadily follows their preparations as they buy a boat and fertiliser, make explosives and get into position. We get glimpses of their differing philosophies and reasons for doing this; Josh's anger about salmon dying so people can charge their iPods, Harmon on the bloat of Portland into the countryside, and Dee on how industrial fishing is destroying ocean bio-diversity. That all makes their actions seem righteous and motivated, but there is the unmistakable sense that they do not know quite what they are doing. In the aftermath, Reichardt allows Josh's boss to casually destroy the meaning of their act when he calls it "theatre" and we can see in Josh's eyes that - after a tragic and unexpected consequence has struck him - he doesn't even disagree.
The atmosphere is thick with angst and tension, and that only increases once the act has taken place and Josh is spiralling, worried about his accomplices and the future. The ending is ambiguous and haunting in a way that provides a perfect fit with the quiet tone of the film.
Saturday, 6 September 2014
THE GUEST
(Adam Wingard, 2014)
The sort of lowish budget genre mash-up that makes mega-budget blockbusters look really inept. Many of those movies can't get one genre right, but here Wingard and screenwriter Michael Barrett manage to successfully, gleefully combine a few in a nifty, modest little thriller with wit, style and impact.
Dan Stevens is beautifully used. His character, the too-nice-to-be true soldier David, returns to the U.S. after a stint somewhere in the Middle East and checks in on the family of his friend who has been killed in action. Only there is something off about David. Something studied and watchful, and when he is left alone, his face reverts to a malevolent scowl. These are the best passages in the movie; as David sets about getting to know this family and helping them in his own way, Wingard focuses on Stevens' piercing blue eyes and the actor emphasises his own bland charm until it becomes something vaguely sinister. He brutally, spectacularly beats up the bulles who have been making teen nerd Luke's life hell, listens to Dad's (Leland Orser) work woes, shares tales of their deceased son with Mom (Sheila Kelley) and accompanies Anna (Maika Monroe) to a party where his studly decency and decisiveness in dealing with the arrival of an angry ex-boyfriend goes down very well.
But Anna is suspicious, and soon people start to turn up dead, and we learn that David is not quite what he seems, and that there are serious, extremely armed people after him.
The last act, then, transforms into a mixture of shoot-em-up action film and stalker film, but Wingard handles both genres well. The finale takes place in a high school gym set up for a Halloween Ball, including a Halloween maze and lots of dry ice, and there are moments referring to everything from John Carpenter and The Terminator to The Hitcher and Hitchcock. A big set-piece gun battle decimating an isolated farmhouse is nicely done, and the whole thing makes a virtue of it's few locations and small cast, upping the tension through an intense focus on the dynamic within the home of one family after they invite one guest to stay.
Wingard directs with style and precision - there is a vivid, warm colour palette here and some beautiful compositions, and the '80s-esque electro soundtrack by Steve Moore helps to build a thickly suspenseful atmosphere.
The sort of lowish budget genre mash-up that makes mega-budget blockbusters look really inept. Many of those movies can't get one genre right, but here Wingard and screenwriter Michael Barrett manage to successfully, gleefully combine a few in a nifty, modest little thriller with wit, style and impact.
Dan Stevens is beautifully used. His character, the too-nice-to-be true soldier David, returns to the U.S. after a stint somewhere in the Middle East and checks in on the family of his friend who has been killed in action. Only there is something off about David. Something studied and watchful, and when he is left alone, his face reverts to a malevolent scowl. These are the best passages in the movie; as David sets about getting to know this family and helping them in his own way, Wingard focuses on Stevens' piercing blue eyes and the actor emphasises his own bland charm until it becomes something vaguely sinister. He brutally, spectacularly beats up the bulles who have been making teen nerd Luke's life hell, listens to Dad's (Leland Orser) work woes, shares tales of their deceased son with Mom (Sheila Kelley) and accompanies Anna (Maika Monroe) to a party where his studly decency and decisiveness in dealing with the arrival of an angry ex-boyfriend goes down very well.
But Anna is suspicious, and soon people start to turn up dead, and we learn that David is not quite what he seems, and that there are serious, extremely armed people after him.
The last act, then, transforms into a mixture of shoot-em-up action film and stalker film, but Wingard handles both genres well. The finale takes place in a high school gym set up for a Halloween Ball, including a Halloween maze and lots of dry ice, and there are moments referring to everything from John Carpenter and The Terminator to The Hitcher and Hitchcock. A big set-piece gun battle decimating an isolated farmhouse is nicely done, and the whole thing makes a virtue of it's few locations and small cast, upping the tension through an intense focus on the dynamic within the home of one family after they invite one guest to stay.
Wingard directs with style and precision - there is a vivid, warm colour palette here and some beautiful compositions, and the '80s-esque electro soundtrack by Steve Moore helps to build a thickly suspenseful atmosphere.
Thursday, 28 August 2014
SORCERER
(William Friedkin, 1977)
They really, really don't make them like this anymore.
You can take that in two senses: that this sort of analogue spectacle, filmed on location in extremely difficult conditions and filled with set pieces which are extraordinary because they contain no digital effects, is now a monument to a vanished mode of filmmaking. Or that this sort of adult adventure film - existential, with themes and weight and aimed squarely at a grown-up audience - is no longer produced by a film culture eager to feed only a teenage audience raised on comic books and video games.
Either way: they don't make them like this anymore.
And that is a shame, for Sorcerer is something close to a masterpiece, tough, taut and poetic, made by a confident director at the absolute peak of his powers.
It is adapted from the same novel that was the basis for Clouzot's terrific The Wages of Fear. It follows four men from different parts of the globe until they converge in the jungle in South America, where they accept a job transporting six cases of dynamite needed to fix an oil rig. The only problem is that the dynamite is old and unstable, and the men have to deliver it through miles of jungle, when any significant bump will set off the whole lot. Cue an hour of sickening tension as lorries inch across ruined rope bridges during hurricanes and the men decide to use some dynamite to clear a blockage from the road.
These set pieces as astonishing; beautifully shot and edited, their combination of white knuckle suspense and beauty is utterly winning. It also helps that Friedkin and screenwriter Walon Green have spent so much time establishing these men and their back-stories. For that is what the first twenty minutes of Sorcerer are; a series of terrific litte vignettes, each one showing us how and why these men ended up hiding out in a jungle hellhole. Jackie Scanlon (Roy Scheider, convincingly hollowed out and haunted) is part of an Irish gang that holds up a New Jersey Bingo haul run by the mob. A subsequent argument causes a car crash, killing all his accomplices. He limps off but the mob has put a price on his head and he has to flee the country. Other men flee financial irregularities in Paris (a terrific Bruno Cremer), a terrorist bombing in Jersualem (Amidou) and an assassination in Vera Cruz.
These vignettes are incredibly well-paced, filled with passages of pure cinematic storytelling, and rich with place and atmosphere. That only increases when the film settles down in it's dingy Colombian village; you can smell the sweaty dankness as these Western men stumble unhappily around, awaiting fate to choose their next blow.
That appears to be the key theme here; the way fate twists and decides our lives. These men are all doomed from early on. They just don't know it yet, though Scheider's cynical, exhausted Scanlon suggests a certain pessimistic outlook on everything.
The score from Tangerine Dream is terrific but sparely used, instantly adding a layer of smoothly rolling menace to a film which already has a healthy dose of dread in its veins. For all it's existential view on human relations and romantic loners, Sorcerer is at heart a thriller, and as such it is a great success; suspenseful, intriguing and forceful throughout.
They really, really don't make them like this anymore.
You can take that in two senses: that this sort of analogue spectacle, filmed on location in extremely difficult conditions and filled with set pieces which are extraordinary because they contain no digital effects, is now a monument to a vanished mode of filmmaking. Or that this sort of adult adventure film - existential, with themes and weight and aimed squarely at a grown-up audience - is no longer produced by a film culture eager to feed only a teenage audience raised on comic books and video games.
Either way: they don't make them like this anymore.
And that is a shame, for Sorcerer is something close to a masterpiece, tough, taut and poetic, made by a confident director at the absolute peak of his powers.
It is adapted from the same novel that was the basis for Clouzot's terrific The Wages of Fear. It follows four men from different parts of the globe until they converge in the jungle in South America, where they accept a job transporting six cases of dynamite needed to fix an oil rig. The only problem is that the dynamite is old and unstable, and the men have to deliver it through miles of jungle, when any significant bump will set off the whole lot. Cue an hour of sickening tension as lorries inch across ruined rope bridges during hurricanes and the men decide to use some dynamite to clear a blockage from the road.
These set pieces as astonishing; beautifully shot and edited, their combination of white knuckle suspense and beauty is utterly winning. It also helps that Friedkin and screenwriter Walon Green have spent so much time establishing these men and their back-stories. For that is what the first twenty minutes of Sorcerer are; a series of terrific litte vignettes, each one showing us how and why these men ended up hiding out in a jungle hellhole. Jackie Scanlon (Roy Scheider, convincingly hollowed out and haunted) is part of an Irish gang that holds up a New Jersey Bingo haul run by the mob. A subsequent argument causes a car crash, killing all his accomplices. He limps off but the mob has put a price on his head and he has to flee the country. Other men flee financial irregularities in Paris (a terrific Bruno Cremer), a terrorist bombing in Jersualem (Amidou) and an assassination in Vera Cruz.
These vignettes are incredibly well-paced, filled with passages of pure cinematic storytelling, and rich with place and atmosphere. That only increases when the film settles down in it's dingy Colombian village; you can smell the sweaty dankness as these Western men stumble unhappily around, awaiting fate to choose their next blow.
That appears to be the key theme here; the way fate twists and decides our lives. These men are all doomed from early on. They just don't know it yet, though Scheider's cynical, exhausted Scanlon suggests a certain pessimistic outlook on everything.
The score from Tangerine Dream is terrific but sparely used, instantly adding a layer of smoothly rolling menace to a film which already has a healthy dose of dread in its veins. For all it's existential view on human relations and romantic loners, Sorcerer is at heart a thriller, and as such it is a great success; suspenseful, intriguing and forceful throughout.
Sunday, 17 August 2014
THE ROVER
(David Michod, 2014)
What exactly is it that makes Antipodean filmmakers so good at post-apocalyptic stories? The Mad Max trilogy, The Quiet Earth...even The Road was directed by an Australian (John Hillcoat). Can it just be that the Outback is such a desolate landscape, or does it say something more complex about some aspect of the national character?
The Rover is another great Australian post-apocalyptic tale. Set ten years after "the collapse", it follows taciturn loner Guy Pearce in his determined efforts to recover his car after it is stolen by a trio of thugs fleeing a botched robbery. Dragging "halfwit" Robert Pattinson, brother of one of the car thieves but left for dead at the robbery, with him, they cross a landscape occasionally hellish in its casual violence and degradation, but also one that is darkly funny and stunningly beautiful.
Such a slight story relies hugely upon direction and performances to achieve some of the mythic status for which it strives, and director Michod delivers, his arty style never overwhelming of obfuscating the narrative. He keeps it simple - filming long tense scenes with uncluttered compositions in classic set-ups - two shots, some stunning establishing shots. The Australian landscape provides beauty but cinematography from Natasha Braier makes the most of that, and her work - twinned with a terrifically visceral score by Anthony Partos - means that this film is thick with atmosphere. This world is a different kind of post-apocalyptic wasteland; dingy, almost mundane in its abandonment of civilisation.
Yes there are guns and grotesquerie, but nothing quite so gothic as in George Miller's vision (which has donated more or less all of post-apocalyptic cinema since Mad Max 2 was released). Here are tired, sweaty, dirty people selling water and petrol in empty, run-down towns. Soldiers patrol the wasteland, unsure of what policies they are enforcing or why. Endless trains cross the desert from the mines.
Pearce's character begins as a mystery; a grim-faced loner who kills without hesitation, and seems ridiculously fixated on getting his car back. But the actor's terrific performance slowly reveals the character to us as the film goes on; here is a man broken by what has happened, suffering because of each murder he has committed, and finally, a man clinging to what little sentiment he has left. He speaks little save for one scene with a soldier, so much of his work is in long unbroken close-ups and we have to read it in his eyes. But there it is - pain, rage, a sort of angry desperation. His is a great performance.
If The Rover is unquestionably (and like many films in this genre) a Western, which even its title suggests, it is also a weird sort of buddy movie, intent as much of it is with the odd dynamic between the two men on a journey together at the heart of its story. Pattinson has the showier role, turning and nervously grinning his way through thickly-accented monologues as his character grows more confident and assured, somehow gaining strength from his relationship with Pearce's cold-eyed killer. But again, Pattinson finds depth there, giving the climax of the film some charge.
But despite the quality of the two leads work, this is really Michod's film. His precise direction is crucial; muscular and assured, it gives The Rover it's own distinctive tone and emotional feel.
This is a mesmeric, tense film which also manages to be mordantly funny and genuinely beautiful.
What exactly is it that makes Antipodean filmmakers so good at post-apocalyptic stories? The Mad Max trilogy, The Quiet Earth...even The Road was directed by an Australian (John Hillcoat). Can it just be that the Outback is such a desolate landscape, or does it say something more complex about some aspect of the national character?
The Rover is another great Australian post-apocalyptic tale. Set ten years after "the collapse", it follows taciturn loner Guy Pearce in his determined efforts to recover his car after it is stolen by a trio of thugs fleeing a botched robbery. Dragging "halfwit" Robert Pattinson, brother of one of the car thieves but left for dead at the robbery, with him, they cross a landscape occasionally hellish in its casual violence and degradation, but also one that is darkly funny and stunningly beautiful.
Such a slight story relies hugely upon direction and performances to achieve some of the mythic status for which it strives, and director Michod delivers, his arty style never overwhelming of obfuscating the narrative. He keeps it simple - filming long tense scenes with uncluttered compositions in classic set-ups - two shots, some stunning establishing shots. The Australian landscape provides beauty but cinematography from Natasha Braier makes the most of that, and her work - twinned with a terrifically visceral score by Anthony Partos - means that this film is thick with atmosphere. This world is a different kind of post-apocalyptic wasteland; dingy, almost mundane in its abandonment of civilisation.
Yes there are guns and grotesquerie, but nothing quite so gothic as in George Miller's vision (which has donated more or less all of post-apocalyptic cinema since Mad Max 2 was released). Here are tired, sweaty, dirty people selling water and petrol in empty, run-down towns. Soldiers patrol the wasteland, unsure of what policies they are enforcing or why. Endless trains cross the desert from the mines.
Pearce's character begins as a mystery; a grim-faced loner who kills without hesitation, and seems ridiculously fixated on getting his car back. But the actor's terrific performance slowly reveals the character to us as the film goes on; here is a man broken by what has happened, suffering because of each murder he has committed, and finally, a man clinging to what little sentiment he has left. He speaks little save for one scene with a soldier, so much of his work is in long unbroken close-ups and we have to read it in his eyes. But there it is - pain, rage, a sort of angry desperation. His is a great performance.
If The Rover is unquestionably (and like many films in this genre) a Western, which even its title suggests, it is also a weird sort of buddy movie, intent as much of it is with the odd dynamic between the two men on a journey together at the heart of its story. Pattinson has the showier role, turning and nervously grinning his way through thickly-accented monologues as his character grows more confident and assured, somehow gaining strength from his relationship with Pearce's cold-eyed killer. But again, Pattinson finds depth there, giving the climax of the film some charge.
But despite the quality of the two leads work, this is really Michod's film. His precise direction is crucial; muscular and assured, it gives The Rover it's own distinctive tone and emotional feel.
This is a mesmeric, tense film which also manages to be mordantly funny and genuinely beautiful.
Thursday, 24 July 2014
NON-STOP
(Jaume Collet-Serra, 2014)
Over the course of a few mid-budget genre entertainments, Serra has transformed himself into one of Hollywood's premier craftsmen. His movies operate as efficient thrill-machines, yet there is undoubtedly more on offer if you want it; in Non-Stop it's not too difficult to detect an allegory for modern America and its troubled relationship with its security services. But it works perfectly well as an action-thriller too, giving Liam Neeson more to do than the Taken franchise does.
Neeson possesses an air of soulful melancholy and Serra has utilised that both here and in Unknown, in each film pushing Neeson's protagonist through a sort of identity crisis before he can really indulge in teh sort of righteous ass-kicking his fanbase presumably expect.
Here he plays Marks, an Air Marshall with numerous problems - debts, alcoholism, guilt over the death of his daughter a decade before. What should be a routine New York to London flight is derailed when Marks starts receiving texts from a mysterious passenger who knows an awful lot about him. Demanding $150 Million be wired to an account, the mystery man tells Marks that if he does not co-operate then a passenger will die every 20 minutes.
Marks then has to figure out who his opponent is, keep the passengers safe, and keep himself together, while the stakes keep on escalating; the plan is seemingly to frame Marks, and his own actions don't help him prevent that - he stumbles from mistake to disaster while the media decides he is a hijacker and the passengers begin to panic.
Over the course of a few mid-budget genre entertainments, Serra has transformed himself into one of Hollywood's premier craftsmen. His movies operate as efficient thrill-machines, yet there is undoubtedly more on offer if you want it; in Non-Stop it's not too difficult to detect an allegory for modern America and its troubled relationship with its security services. But it works perfectly well as an action-thriller too, giving Liam Neeson more to do than the Taken franchise does.
Neeson possesses an air of soulful melancholy and Serra has utilised that both here and in Unknown, in each film pushing Neeson's protagonist through a sort of identity crisis before he can really indulge in teh sort of righteous ass-kicking his fanbase presumably expect.
Here he plays Marks, an Air Marshall with numerous problems - debts, alcoholism, guilt over the death of his daughter a decade before. What should be a routine New York to London flight is derailed when Marks starts receiving texts from a mysterious passenger who knows an awful lot about him. Demanding $150 Million be wired to an account, the mystery man tells Marks that if he does not co-operate then a passenger will die every 20 minutes.
Marks then has to figure out who his opponent is, keep the passengers safe, and keep himself together, while the stakes keep on escalating; the plan is seemingly to frame Marks, and his own actions don't help him prevent that - he stumbles from mistake to disaster while the media decides he is a hijacker and the passengers begin to panic.
Serra is excellent on the claustrophobia of his setting. This is a red-eye flight and cinematographer Flavio Martinez Labiano lights it in purples and blues. The rows of seats become as much a plot point as a visual motif - they obscure the actions of passengers from Marks, and one great shot pans from his anxious, doubtful face to a sea of eyes on faces turned and peering at him over seat-backs.
The action is sparse here; this is more of a pure thriller, with lots of slow-burning suspense, but Serra pulls off a couple of fine set-pieces, most obviously the brutal fist-ight inside the onboard toilet.
The final act is undoubtedly silly, as the villains and their motivations are revealed, but by then its too late and most audiences will be hooked. Neeson is excellent and the supporting cast are all fine, but Serra is the real star here, taking such unpromising material and making a rousingly skillful entertainment of it.
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