(Quentin Tarantino, 2015)
Tarantino sells tickets. Meaning Tarantino - ever since his third film, Jackie Brown, at any rate - can do whatever the hell he wants. Self-indulgence wasn't exactly far away from projects like his double movie spaghetti-western-kung-fu-ninja revenge movie, Kill Bill (I & II) or his bizarro cinema-kills-the-nazis WW2 Mission movie, Inglorious Basterds.
With The Hateful Eight he's decided to make an Agatha Christie-style Murder mystery in a locked room. This despite the fact that he is shooting on epic 70mm. In a location set in a blizzard on a stunning Wyoming mountain. In a film that lasts three hours.
Like I said, Tarantino can do whatever the hell he wants.
The titular Eight are gathered together at Minnies Haberdashery, a stagecoach stop which is mysteriously lacking its owners. We first meet a stagecoach, carrying legendary bounty hunter John "the Hangman" Ruth (Kurt Russell rocking a John Wayne drawl) and the prisoner he is taking in chains to hang in Red Rock, Daisy Domergue (Jennifer Jason Leigh) as they pick up two passengers traveling through the snow on foot, Major Marquise Warren (Samuel L Jackson), who is another legendary bounty hunter, and Chris Mannix, an ex-Confederate Guerrilla and unrepentant racist, who is on his way to his post as new Sheriff of Red Rock. In this opening chapter, the tone of the film is set. Westerns are meant to be slow, but Tarantino takes that to ridiculous extremes. Each conversation is filled with loquacious tangents and long, sometimes brilliant speeches. The actors are clearly loving it, and some fare very well indeed (Goggins, Roth and Jackson best of all), but it feels like another 2 or 3 drafts were needed to find the essential film within this great shaggy beast.
The length and copious dialogue (and a nice Morricone score taken partly from rejected portions of score from Carpenters The Thing) does create tension, but Tarantino partly breaks that with his usual structural playfulness, flashing back to ear lie run the day, showing an event from a different perspective...
Most of this happens after the stage arrives at the haberdashery and there encounters four men, waiting out the storm. Both Warren and Ruth believe at least one of them is an accomplice of Daisy's, set on freeing her, and of course, they are correct. But it takes two more hours of those long speeches and anecdotes for the whole thing to resolve itself in some hilariously graphic (and surprisingly uninspired) slo-mo and spluttery violence.
There are a bunch of great moments, a few big laughs, and lots of great acting (or at least great line delivery), but throughout I was thinking how Delmer Davies or Budd Boetticher would have told the whole story, better, in about 82 minutes.
Showing posts with label Western. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Western. Show all posts
Thursday, 14 January 2016
Friday, 25 December 2015
THE REVENANT
(Alejandro Gonzalez Inarittu, 2015)
The Revenant starts with a sudden, brutally violent attack upon a trapper camp by a war party of Arikara Indians in 1823. Arrows abruptly appear in throats, blood spurts, and all of a sudden a pitched battle of horrific violence and chaos is underway. Obviously inspired by his work on Birdman, Inarittu shoots all of this in what appears to be a single, awesome take, as the men fight, die and begin a panicked retreat towards their boat on the river, the Indians in pursuit.
Shot by the genius cinematographer Emmanuel Lubezki, this scene reminded me of nothing so much as the work of Terrence Malick. His masterful The New World, also shot by "Chivu" created an utterly immersive, 360 degree world upon the American Frontier, and Lubezki's camera patrolled it incessantly, as it does here. Only the world summoned up by Inarittu has a lot of Sam Peckinpah in it too - it is tough and masculine, filled with big and peculiar characters and terrible deaths, a sense of relish for the violence and suffering on screen.
This focus upon action is new for Inarittu. It is also quite refreshing. His earlier work was often weighed down by a pompous sense of seriousness, of a director with an undergraduate understanding of the world filled with conviction that he had important things to say. Babel is perhaps the nadir of his work, a trite and simplistic thesis on communication, interconnectedness and the modern world.
The Revenant too strains for seriousness, but it is taciturn film, entirely wordless for long stretches, and Inarittu reduced to images is a much more impressive director than the man who relied on vacuous screenplays to communicate his themes. On one level, this film is an absolutely incredible action film, with its plot concerning a man struggling to survive in an unbelievably harsh environment and his quest for revenge after he is left for dead, and watches his son murdered. Only Inarittu fills it with long, slow scenes glorying in his sensational landscapes, and sequences revealing the state of mind of his protagonist, Glass (Leo DiCaprio), as he is haunted by memories of a massacre in an Indian village, the death of his wife and his own actions to save his son.
The action scenes are outstanding: both that stunning early battle, a later pursuit across a plain, an extended and terrifying bear attack, and the final confrontation each contains a few genuinely jaw-dropping moments, and they help make this an entirely gripping experience, for all that its director has greater pretensions.
The ferociously committed performances are a great boon, too. DiCaprio does most of his work without dialogue, and still manages to convey his agony and fierce will to survive with just his face and body language. Tom Hardy, as the man who betrays him, unveils another funny voice and accent, but creates a weak, believably complex antagonist in his Fitzgerald.
The likes of Will Poulter and Domhnall Gleeson match them in smaller parts.
For all that, Lubezki is undeniably the film's true star; his work here is sensational, and this is truly an every-frame-a-painting movie. For all the effort that Inarittu devotes to creating a strong thematic content here - his suggestions that Tarkovsky as an influence say it all - this film is amazing. Powerful, beautiful and riveting, it is hard to shake off.
The Revenant starts with a sudden, brutally violent attack upon a trapper camp by a war party of Arikara Indians in 1823. Arrows abruptly appear in throats, blood spurts, and all of a sudden a pitched battle of horrific violence and chaos is underway. Obviously inspired by his work on Birdman, Inarittu shoots all of this in what appears to be a single, awesome take, as the men fight, die and begin a panicked retreat towards their boat on the river, the Indians in pursuit.
Shot by the genius cinematographer Emmanuel Lubezki, this scene reminded me of nothing so much as the work of Terrence Malick. His masterful The New World, also shot by "Chivu" created an utterly immersive, 360 degree world upon the American Frontier, and Lubezki's camera patrolled it incessantly, as it does here. Only the world summoned up by Inarittu has a lot of Sam Peckinpah in it too - it is tough and masculine, filled with big and peculiar characters and terrible deaths, a sense of relish for the violence and suffering on screen.
This focus upon action is new for Inarittu. It is also quite refreshing. His earlier work was often weighed down by a pompous sense of seriousness, of a director with an undergraduate understanding of the world filled with conviction that he had important things to say. Babel is perhaps the nadir of his work, a trite and simplistic thesis on communication, interconnectedness and the modern world.
The Revenant too strains for seriousness, but it is taciturn film, entirely wordless for long stretches, and Inarittu reduced to images is a much more impressive director than the man who relied on vacuous screenplays to communicate his themes. On one level, this film is an absolutely incredible action film, with its plot concerning a man struggling to survive in an unbelievably harsh environment and his quest for revenge after he is left for dead, and watches his son murdered. Only Inarittu fills it with long, slow scenes glorying in his sensational landscapes, and sequences revealing the state of mind of his protagonist, Glass (Leo DiCaprio), as he is haunted by memories of a massacre in an Indian village, the death of his wife and his own actions to save his son.
The action scenes are outstanding: both that stunning early battle, a later pursuit across a plain, an extended and terrifying bear attack, and the final confrontation each contains a few genuinely jaw-dropping moments, and they help make this an entirely gripping experience, for all that its director has greater pretensions.
The ferociously committed performances are a great boon, too. DiCaprio does most of his work without dialogue, and still manages to convey his agony and fierce will to survive with just his face and body language. Tom Hardy, as the man who betrays him, unveils another funny voice and accent, but creates a weak, believably complex antagonist in his Fitzgerald.
The likes of Will Poulter and Domhnall Gleeson match them in smaller parts.
For all that, Lubezki is undeniably the film's true star; his work here is sensational, and this is truly an every-frame-a-painting movie. For all the effort that Inarittu devotes to creating a strong thematic content here - his suggestions that Tarkovsky as an influence say it all - this film is amazing. Powerful, beautiful and riveting, it is hard to shake off.
Friday, 30 October 2015
SLOW WEST
(John Maclean, 2015)
Slow West feels like an attempt to revive the quirky revisionist Westerns of the 1970s. Not the big ones, or the ones that matter, like the work of Leone or Peckinpah or Eastwood, even. It feels more like an attempt to capture the spirt of films like Peter Fonda's The Hired Hand (1971) or Robert Benton's Bad Company (1972). As such it is patient and loose, talky and random, its plot only really kicking in for the last act gun battle which is the most acute the film ever gets, and the first time Maclean really gets to grips with critiquing the genre while also making Slow West feel like a Western. It's an unusual, interesting film, if not always a successful one.
Kodie Smit-McPhee plays Jay, a young Scot who has travelled across the Atlantic after his lost love, Rose (Caren Pistorius), who has fled their homeland with her father after an unfortunate manslaughter has made them fugitives. Jay is an innocent and idealist, and he is lucky to survive the West long enough to run into Bounty Hunter Silas (Michael Fassbender, on charismatic cruise control). Silas agrees to keep him safe until he reaches his destination, in exchange for $100, all the while planning to collect the large bounty on both Rose and her father's heads. But he begins to warm to the kid, and the situation is complicated by the arrival of Ben Mendelsohn as Silas' old outlaw buddy and his pack of jackals, also after that reward, and set on tailing the duo until they get it.
In place of a plot, Maclean sends his characters on a picaresque, episodic journey through the West, encountering plenty of oddball characters and situations as they go. That keeps it entertaining, and it is always lovely (Robbie Ryan, Director of photography, is MVP here) but it always feels a little frustrating too - like it could be more powerful or more incisive.
But as a debut film, it is accomplished and never dull. Fassbender and Mendelsohn both feel right at home in a Western milieu - hopefully some day they will have a vehicle better-suited to demonstrating that.
Slow West feels like an attempt to revive the quirky revisionist Westerns of the 1970s. Not the big ones, or the ones that matter, like the work of Leone or Peckinpah or Eastwood, even. It feels more like an attempt to capture the spirt of films like Peter Fonda's The Hired Hand (1971) or Robert Benton's Bad Company (1972). As such it is patient and loose, talky and random, its plot only really kicking in for the last act gun battle which is the most acute the film ever gets, and the first time Maclean really gets to grips with critiquing the genre while also making Slow West feel like a Western. It's an unusual, interesting film, if not always a successful one.
Kodie Smit-McPhee plays Jay, a young Scot who has travelled across the Atlantic after his lost love, Rose (Caren Pistorius), who has fled their homeland with her father after an unfortunate manslaughter has made them fugitives. Jay is an innocent and idealist, and he is lucky to survive the West long enough to run into Bounty Hunter Silas (Michael Fassbender, on charismatic cruise control). Silas agrees to keep him safe until he reaches his destination, in exchange for $100, all the while planning to collect the large bounty on both Rose and her father's heads. But he begins to warm to the kid, and the situation is complicated by the arrival of Ben Mendelsohn as Silas' old outlaw buddy and his pack of jackals, also after that reward, and set on tailing the duo until they get it.
In place of a plot, Maclean sends his characters on a picaresque, episodic journey through the West, encountering plenty of oddball characters and situations as they go. That keeps it entertaining, and it is always lovely (Robbie Ryan, Director of photography, is MVP here) but it always feels a little frustrating too - like it could be more powerful or more incisive.
But as a debut film, it is accomplished and never dull. Fassbender and Mendelsohn both feel right at home in a Western milieu - hopefully some day they will have a vehicle better-suited to demonstrating that.
Sunday, 25 October 2015
BONE TOMAHAWK
(S. Craig Zahler, 2015)
I knew Zahler was a novelist before I checked his bio. The first two acts of Bone Tomahawk are full of scenes that play out much longer than they would in the majority of movies; Zahler lets us watch his characters talk the way a novelist would. Not in that Tarantino way, asking us to marvel at the wit and quality of the dialogue, but in a manner designed to increase our knowledge and understanding of the characters. We spend an hour and a half in their company before the stakes are suddenly raised, and - unlike in so many horror films - we actually care what happens to them.
That means that the first half of the film does feel a little post-Tarantno, a little like Deadwood (which Zahler has criticised in interviews), a little lazy and self-indulgent. Zahler's writing is fine, but it is his cast that sells the dialogue. Kurt Russell always feels like a natural fit in Westerns, and he is excellent here as an unflappable, confident Sheriff. Patrick Wilson presents yet another in his series of precise studies of masculinity under fire, before emerging in the climax as the true hero of the film. Matthew Fox turns the soulfulness of his presence into a shield, playing an amoral, unlikable killer with unplumbed depths. All, however, are outshone by Richard Jenkins in the Walter Brennan role, the loquacious old-timer who can barely keep quiet for 5 seconds and whose mutterings often contain great insights. These four set off on a journey ("Ride out to their doom!" as the hilarious, right-on-the-money end credits ballad would have it) after Wilson's nurse wife and a young deputy are abducted from the town jailhouse one night.
Their abductors are identified by the town's token Native American as a nameless, inbred tribe of cannibalistic troglodytes who live in caves days ride away and who are fearsome and savage. The men's journey is slow and detailed, their personality clashes and interactions containing longueurs and entertainment both, before the last act when what has been a lightly quirky Western with some comedy transforms into a brutally gory cannibal horror film. Zahler fills the script with interesting details; from a half-crippled Wilson's dialogue with God as he prepares to enter the troglodytes valley, to the cannibal's having whistles of bone sewn into their throats to aid their howling communication, to Fox revealing his back-story as he faces death, this is a beautifully imagined world which makes light of its modest budget.
Only the somewhat flat photography and constant reliance on mid-shots ( there is rarely a sense of the physical scale common to westerns here) let it down a little, while the spring use of a score helps in that last act when the tension starts to rise. Generally, it feels startlingly unique for a mash-up of such familiar genres, and is an interesting, entertaining watch throughout, questioning tropes and mythology as it goes.
I knew Zahler was a novelist before I checked his bio. The first two acts of Bone Tomahawk are full of scenes that play out much longer than they would in the majority of movies; Zahler lets us watch his characters talk the way a novelist would. Not in that Tarantino way, asking us to marvel at the wit and quality of the dialogue, but in a manner designed to increase our knowledge and understanding of the characters. We spend an hour and a half in their company before the stakes are suddenly raised, and - unlike in so many horror films - we actually care what happens to them.
That means that the first half of the film does feel a little post-Tarantno, a little like Deadwood (which Zahler has criticised in interviews), a little lazy and self-indulgent. Zahler's writing is fine, but it is his cast that sells the dialogue. Kurt Russell always feels like a natural fit in Westerns, and he is excellent here as an unflappable, confident Sheriff. Patrick Wilson presents yet another in his series of precise studies of masculinity under fire, before emerging in the climax as the true hero of the film. Matthew Fox turns the soulfulness of his presence into a shield, playing an amoral, unlikable killer with unplumbed depths. All, however, are outshone by Richard Jenkins in the Walter Brennan role, the loquacious old-timer who can barely keep quiet for 5 seconds and whose mutterings often contain great insights. These four set off on a journey ("Ride out to their doom!" as the hilarious, right-on-the-money end credits ballad would have it) after Wilson's nurse wife and a young deputy are abducted from the town jailhouse one night.
Their abductors are identified by the town's token Native American as a nameless, inbred tribe of cannibalistic troglodytes who live in caves days ride away and who are fearsome and savage. The men's journey is slow and detailed, their personality clashes and interactions containing longueurs and entertainment both, before the last act when what has been a lightly quirky Western with some comedy transforms into a brutally gory cannibal horror film. Zahler fills the script with interesting details; from a half-crippled Wilson's dialogue with God as he prepares to enter the troglodytes valley, to the cannibal's having whistles of bone sewn into their throats to aid their howling communication, to Fox revealing his back-story as he faces death, this is a beautifully imagined world which makes light of its modest budget.
Only the somewhat flat photography and constant reliance on mid-shots ( there is rarely a sense of the physical scale common to westerns here) let it down a little, while the spring use of a score helps in that last act when the tension starts to rise. Generally, it feels startlingly unique for a mash-up of such familiar genres, and is an interesting, entertaining watch throughout, questioning tropes and mythology as it goes.
Thursday, 20 August 2015
GOLD
(Thomas Arslan, 2013)
The first scene depicts a group of prospectors in a canoe, then trekking along trails through dense forest before they pan for gold in a creek. The lighting is dark, the palette a collection of rich muddy browns and deep greens. Trees and undergrowth dominate each of Arslan's precise, patiently gliding shots. We see barely any sky and the prospectors are faceless, hunched, their hats obscuring their features. This land has almost swallowed them, it seems.
This sets the tone for the rest of the film, which focuses on the ways the landscape drains and breaks down a group of Germans on an exhibition up the Klondike in Canada in the late 18th century, in search of gold. Among their party is Nina Hoss, as usual communicating oceans of emotion with the tiniest of facial adjustments. The group is riven with tension from the start, and as the road gets more difficult, that worsens.
For a film about process, what it is perhaps best at is interpersonal relations; the way the group falls slowly apart, the way certain people try to dominate, the way others allow them. It is also excellent on landscape, using the wild Canadian expanses partly for their beauty but mainly as a sort of claustrophobia trigger. Arslan makes sure to film the party moving, on horseback, with the entirety of the background entirely composed of woodland, and he does this over and over. This makes the forest seem threatening and malevolent, an impression only echoed by Daniel Carlson's (Neil Young in Dead Man-style) guitar-playing.
There is little tension, no humour and only one spurt of action, but this is still a sort of slowly hypnotic experience, and brilliantly made.
That is not to say there is no incident - the repetitive nature of shots of the characters on horseback beating on through the wilderness are broken up by uncomfortable conversations, failed hunting expeditions, accidents, improvised surgeries (a memorable scene), encounters with Indians who are characterised as cynically though understandably doing everything for money, and the odd random encounter with other prospectors. The scene where a man wanders through their camp without a word at twilight is haunting and beautiful.
The first scene depicts a group of prospectors in a canoe, then trekking along trails through dense forest before they pan for gold in a creek. The lighting is dark, the palette a collection of rich muddy browns and deep greens. Trees and undergrowth dominate each of Arslan's precise, patiently gliding shots. We see barely any sky and the prospectors are faceless, hunched, their hats obscuring their features. This land has almost swallowed them, it seems.
This sets the tone for the rest of the film, which focuses on the ways the landscape drains and breaks down a group of Germans on an exhibition up the Klondike in Canada in the late 18th century, in search of gold. Among their party is Nina Hoss, as usual communicating oceans of emotion with the tiniest of facial adjustments. The group is riven with tension from the start, and as the road gets more difficult, that worsens.
For a film about process, what it is perhaps best at is interpersonal relations; the way the group falls slowly apart, the way certain people try to dominate, the way others allow them. It is also excellent on landscape, using the wild Canadian expanses partly for their beauty but mainly as a sort of claustrophobia trigger. Arslan makes sure to film the party moving, on horseback, with the entirety of the background entirely composed of woodland, and he does this over and over. This makes the forest seem threatening and malevolent, an impression only echoed by Daniel Carlson's (Neil Young in Dead Man-style) guitar-playing.
There is little tension, no humour and only one spurt of action, but this is still a sort of slowly hypnotic experience, and brilliantly made.
That is not to say there is no incident - the repetitive nature of shots of the characters on horseback beating on through the wilderness are broken up by uncomfortable conversations, failed hunting expeditions, accidents, improvised surgeries (a memorable scene), encounters with Indians who are characterised as cynically though understandably doing everything for money, and the odd random encounter with other prospectors. The scene where a man wanders through their camp without a word at twilight is haunting and beautiful.
Wednesday, 5 August 2015
LAST MAN STANDING
(Walter Hill, 1996)
Early in his career, Hill was great at balancing genre pictures on the line right between arty abstraction and pulp detail. When he tries the same thing here, he miscalculates somewhat, meaning that Last Man Standing is a one-note trudge through the story of "Red Harvest" (actually credited as a remake of Yojimbo). The arty abstraction doesn't feel arty or interesting, the way it did in his classics two decades prior (The Warriors or Southern Comfort, say).
Instead this just feels like purest pulp, with Hill struggling to infuse it with some sort of poetry. That works to some extent in his film-making. Lloyd Ahern's beautiful dust-and-sunlight coppery photography and Ry Cooder's score are distinctively toned and make the film always worth watching and listening to. The action sequences are thunderous and cartoonish, with awesomely loud fusillades of gunfire filling the soundtrack while bodies tumble in slow motion through the air.
But the script is less successful. Bruce Willis is minimalist and cool as John Smith, a gunman trying to work both sides against each other in a prohibition-era Texan border town, but his hard-boiled narration is leaden and dull, and the tough guy dialogue feels rote and second-hand, without any sparkle or wit, so that he feels a bit like a strong star performance without a strong film around him, or even a strong character to play. In the past, Hill has dealt - well - with archetypes, but here he is dealing with sketches, and the difference is telling.
Other good actors - like Christopher Walken and David Patrick Kelly - enliven things as twitchy gangsters, but for all it's action and incident, Last Man Standing never really takes off. It's minor Hill, and while that means it's still worth a watch, it's frustrating seeing such a master in such a low gear.
Early in his career, Hill was great at balancing genre pictures on the line right between arty abstraction and pulp detail. When he tries the same thing here, he miscalculates somewhat, meaning that Last Man Standing is a one-note trudge through the story of "Red Harvest" (actually credited as a remake of Yojimbo). The arty abstraction doesn't feel arty or interesting, the way it did in his classics two decades prior (The Warriors or Southern Comfort, say).
Instead this just feels like purest pulp, with Hill struggling to infuse it with some sort of poetry. That works to some extent in his film-making. Lloyd Ahern's beautiful dust-and-sunlight coppery photography and Ry Cooder's score are distinctively toned and make the film always worth watching and listening to. The action sequences are thunderous and cartoonish, with awesomely loud fusillades of gunfire filling the soundtrack while bodies tumble in slow motion through the air.
But the script is less successful. Bruce Willis is minimalist and cool as John Smith, a gunman trying to work both sides against each other in a prohibition-era Texan border town, but his hard-boiled narration is leaden and dull, and the tough guy dialogue feels rote and second-hand, without any sparkle or wit, so that he feels a bit like a strong star performance without a strong film around him, or even a strong character to play. In the past, Hill has dealt - well - with archetypes, but here he is dealing with sketches, and the difference is telling.
Other good actors - like Christopher Walken and David Patrick Kelly - enliven things as twitchy gangsters, but for all it's action and incident, Last Man Standing never really takes off. It's minor Hill, and while that means it's still worth a watch, it's frustrating seeing such a master in such a low gear.
Thursday, 23 July 2015
THE BOOK OF ELI
(Hughes Brothers, 2010)
The first act of The Book of Eli is terrific and suggests that it will be an impressive film. The Hughes brothers find a series of eerie images to capture this world, thirty years on from the 'big flash", Denzel Washington lend his magnetism to the taciturn, efficiently murderous protagonist, and the society we encounter is just complex and different enough to be interesting.
A small settlement run by Gary Oldman (who holds power due to his knowledge of where there is water) becomes the focus and correspondingly, the film becomes less impressive. Our hero, an "outlander" who wanders the wasteland, comes to town, gets into a saloon fight - just like in a classic western - and attracts the attention of Oldman's character, who is set on finding a Bible, realising he can use it to control everyone, with or without water. Oldman sets his road gangs - Mad Max style marauders - on Denzel, and there follows an increasingly weary succession of fight scenes, chases, captures and escapes..
The first few scenes contain the best action scene in the film; Washington is ambushed by a band of hijackers, retreats into the shade offered by an overpass, still wearing his shades, and proceeds to cut his way through them in a single unbroken take, all seen in silhouette. This scene and the lengthy, violent fight in the saloon suggest that the Book of Eli is really a post-apocalyptic take on Zaitoichi (confirmed by a late twist), and when it arrives at the town, the film takes on a series of Western codes and conventions.
It has moments of wit - the value of wet-wipes as barter in a post-apocalyptic world, for instance - and is nicely shot in a dry, desaturated style by Don Burgess. Oldman is good value as the villain, but Mila Kunis has no character to play beyond a series of bullet-pointed cliches, and Denzel Washington could do this in his sleep. In fact there are moments here when, shades on, you can't be sure he isn't having a sneaky nap.
What the film does well are the tough guy beats in the lead up to the action scenes, but they are fleeting.
The first act of The Book of Eli is terrific and suggests that it will be an impressive film. The Hughes brothers find a series of eerie images to capture this world, thirty years on from the 'big flash", Denzel Washington lend his magnetism to the taciturn, efficiently murderous protagonist, and the society we encounter is just complex and different enough to be interesting.
A small settlement run by Gary Oldman (who holds power due to his knowledge of where there is water) becomes the focus and correspondingly, the film becomes less impressive. Our hero, an "outlander" who wanders the wasteland, comes to town, gets into a saloon fight - just like in a classic western - and attracts the attention of Oldman's character, who is set on finding a Bible, realising he can use it to control everyone, with or without water. Oldman sets his road gangs - Mad Max style marauders - on Denzel, and there follows an increasingly weary succession of fight scenes, chases, captures and escapes..
The first few scenes contain the best action scene in the film; Washington is ambushed by a band of hijackers, retreats into the shade offered by an overpass, still wearing his shades, and proceeds to cut his way through them in a single unbroken take, all seen in silhouette. This scene and the lengthy, violent fight in the saloon suggest that the Book of Eli is really a post-apocalyptic take on Zaitoichi (confirmed by a late twist), and when it arrives at the town, the film takes on a series of Western codes and conventions.
It has moments of wit - the value of wet-wipes as barter in a post-apocalyptic world, for instance - and is nicely shot in a dry, desaturated style by Don Burgess. Oldman is good value as the villain, but Mila Kunis has no character to play beyond a series of bullet-pointed cliches, and Denzel Washington could do this in his sleep. In fact there are moments here when, shades on, you can't be sure he isn't having a sneaky nap.
What the film does well are the tough guy beats in the lead up to the action scenes, but they are fleeting.
Friday, 5 December 2014
THE HOMESMAN
(Tommy-Lee Jones, 2014)
A modern Western that feels literary, in that it flirts with the baroque pulse of Blood Meridian or Butchers Crossing, The Homesman is something of an oddball wonder from writer-director-star Tommy-Lee Jones. It comes frustratingly close to greatness, however, before fudging that somewhat in the third act.
The beginning is startlingly bold: it sets out to look at something Westerns generally ignore - the brutality of life on the frontier for women. We meet Mary Bea Cuddy (Hilary Swank), a tough and capable spinster, working on her own neat Nebraska claim. When a gentleman neighbour comes for supper, she desperately proposes marriage, which he rejects on the grounds that she is plain and bossy.
We also meet three other women; each of them losing their grasp on sanity due to the harshness of their life on the plains. Jones has a way with a surreal, memorable image - here we see a woman walk naked from a house in the snow, nursing a baby on her breast, then casually toss the infant into an outhouse toilet. Each woman's condition is signalled with similarly cinematic economy. The story finds Cuddy volunteering to transport all three women back East to family, and she is joined by Jones' Briggs, a plain-speaking scoundrel with a mysterious past who she comes across left to hang from a tree in the middle of nowhere.
It then becomes a strange mix of elements - picaresque odyssey, darkly comic buddy film, savage western - held together by some beautiful imagery, and the fine chemistry between the leads. Swank is never too kind to Cuddy, who is always, and sometimes annoyingly, herself. Jones plays the kind of part he could play in his sleep, and he does it well.
His direction is better; beautifully textured and patiently paced, The Homesman feels quite unlike anything else, some of its baffling twists defying logic and prediction, but each working on its own terms.
A modern Western that feels literary, in that it flirts with the baroque pulse of Blood Meridian or Butchers Crossing, The Homesman is something of an oddball wonder from writer-director-star Tommy-Lee Jones. It comes frustratingly close to greatness, however, before fudging that somewhat in the third act.
The beginning is startlingly bold: it sets out to look at something Westerns generally ignore - the brutality of life on the frontier for women. We meet Mary Bea Cuddy (Hilary Swank), a tough and capable spinster, working on her own neat Nebraska claim. When a gentleman neighbour comes for supper, she desperately proposes marriage, which he rejects on the grounds that she is plain and bossy.
We also meet three other women; each of them losing their grasp on sanity due to the harshness of their life on the plains. Jones has a way with a surreal, memorable image - here we see a woman walk naked from a house in the snow, nursing a baby on her breast, then casually toss the infant into an outhouse toilet. Each woman's condition is signalled with similarly cinematic economy. The story finds Cuddy volunteering to transport all three women back East to family, and she is joined by Jones' Briggs, a plain-speaking scoundrel with a mysterious past who she comes across left to hang from a tree in the middle of nowhere.
It then becomes a strange mix of elements - picaresque odyssey, darkly comic buddy film, savage western - held together by some beautiful imagery, and the fine chemistry between the leads. Swank is never too kind to Cuddy, who is always, and sometimes annoyingly, herself. Jones plays the kind of part he could play in his sleep, and he does it well.
His direction is better; beautifully textured and patiently paced, The Homesman feels quite unlike anything else, some of its baffling twists defying logic and prediction, but each working on its own terms.
Thursday, 22 August 2013
RED HILL
(Patrick Hughes, 2010)
Young city Cop Shane Cooper (Ryan Kwanten) and his wife relocate for personal reasons to the Outback town of Red Hill. On his first day on the job, he forgets his gun, antagonises his new boss, the Inspector Old Bill (Steve Bisley), who virtually rules the town, and finds himself in the middle of an emergency when feared ex-tracker Jimmy Conway escapes prison and heads straight for town, seemingly bent on some sort of vengeance.
Explicitly evoking the mood and narrative tropes familiar from a host of classic westerns, Hughes emphasises these similarities through the use of a Western-style soundtrack and some wonderful landscape cinematography. The Outback here is wild, brutal and beautiful, people isolated against its expanse and beneath its immense skies. When night comes, it comes as a black void above the huddled little town. The first act is paced like a Western - slowly and patiently establishing the setting and characters, allowing the tension to build during seemingly innocuous scenes until it bursts to life with Jimmy's arrival. Even then, it takes its time, preferring to generate suspense than indulge in spectacular action scenes. Hughes understands what works in genre filmmaking, meaning that there is a really effective mix here of Western iconography, thriller suspense and short, brutal modern action sequences. The characters may largely obey the considerations of a formula just as slavishly as the storyline, but for the most part, that approach works extremely well, and the tension holds throughout the second and third acts despite the regularity of the action scenes and the plot revelations and reversals breaking it up.
It may be extremely predictable, but it is generally very well done, with strong performances and beautifully effective direction from Hughes.
A modest, likably intense little b-movie then, with more impact than many bigger budget films in the same genre.
Young city Cop Shane Cooper (Ryan Kwanten) and his wife relocate for personal reasons to the Outback town of Red Hill. On his first day on the job, he forgets his gun, antagonises his new boss, the Inspector Old Bill (Steve Bisley), who virtually rules the town, and finds himself in the middle of an emergency when feared ex-tracker Jimmy Conway escapes prison and heads straight for town, seemingly bent on some sort of vengeance.
Explicitly evoking the mood and narrative tropes familiar from a host of classic westerns, Hughes emphasises these similarities through the use of a Western-style soundtrack and some wonderful landscape cinematography. The Outback here is wild, brutal and beautiful, people isolated against its expanse and beneath its immense skies. When night comes, it comes as a black void above the huddled little town. The first act is paced like a Western - slowly and patiently establishing the setting and characters, allowing the tension to build during seemingly innocuous scenes until it bursts to life with Jimmy's arrival. Even then, it takes its time, preferring to generate suspense than indulge in spectacular action scenes. Hughes understands what works in genre filmmaking, meaning that there is a really effective mix here of Western iconography, thriller suspense and short, brutal modern action sequences. The characters may largely obey the considerations of a formula just as slavishly as the storyline, but for the most part, that approach works extremely well, and the tension holds throughout the second and third acts despite the regularity of the action scenes and the plot revelations and reversals breaking it up.
It may be extremely predictable, but it is generally very well done, with strong performances and beautifully effective direction from Hughes.
A modest, likably intense little b-movie then, with more impact than many bigger budget films in the same genre.
Thursday, 8 August 2013
THE LONE RANGER
(Gore Verbinski, 2013)
An insanely ambitious, barking mad western adventure epic, it feels somehow miraculous that The Lone Ranger exists at all. It's commercial underperformance only underlines this - what studio would be mad enough to spend (a reputed) $200 million on a film in a genre which is always a box office gamble based upon a character who has largely faded from the pop culture memory?
But exist it does, and, though it is probably an hour longer than it has any right to be, it might actually be the most roundly entertaining of this summer's blockbuster movies.
It takes the theme park approach to the Western genre, bringing the audience on a tour through stock situations. So we have a bank robbery, a train holdup, cavalry versus indians, an ambush in a mountain pass, heroes buried up to their necks in the sand, the travelling construction of a raildoad by Chinese workers, an explosion in a silver mine, a whorehouse...
The story serves as an origin: John Reed (Armie Hammer, likeable throughout) travels back to his childhood home in the West after years studying law on the East coast. There the murder of his brother, legendary lawman Dan Reed (James Badge Dale) opens up a complex conspiracy involving the railroad, silver deposits, the exploitation of the Comanche and a vicious psychotic cannibal killer Butch (William Fichtner). Reed winds up believed dead and wearing a mask alongside the possibly insane Comanche Tonto (Johnny Depp).
The plot is unnecessarily convoluted, with too many characters and too many pointless episodes (Helena Bonham Carter as a Madame is entirely superfluous as is Barry Pepper and his Cavalry detachment) but that adds to the epic, frenzied feel. An issue is the way it all has to rise to an action crescendo every fifteen minutes or so. Luckily Verbinski has honed his abilities in that department over three Pirates of the Caribbean movies and some of the action set-pieces here are absolutely inspired, most obviously the climactic twin-train sequence, which nods to Buster Keaton in its mix of slapstick and complex action choreography.
That is only one of dozens of references, mostly to classic Westerns, with obvious homages to Sergio Leone and John Ford amongst them. This reflects one of the film's greatest strengths; in this season of big dumb movies with no ideas, it actually has a theme. It is about how history is written by the victors, no matter what the truth may be ("Print the legend") and also to some extent about the power of myth. The way it integrates this within it's packed narrative - the whole thing narrated by an aged Tonto (in what looks like a Little Big Man reference) to a young boy at a San Francisco fair in 1933 - is often problematic, but its ambition and the extent to which it succeeds is admirable.
Also likeable is its comedy; subtler and wittier than the Pirates films, it uses Depp's superb deadpan in contrast to the insanity often surrounding him, and scores some laughs through ironic takes on classic or corny old tropes.
It looks absolutely beautiful; cinematographer Bojan Bazelli and Verbinski stage and shoot some scenes which appear generically familiar with wit, invention and imagination, and of course that familiarity fades as the true sense of delirious fun here is revealed. It rollicks along, its humour and action balanced by some interesting darker elements, it's occasionally dull script enlivened by the direction, design and strong cast.
An insanely ambitious, barking mad western adventure epic, it feels somehow miraculous that The Lone Ranger exists at all. It's commercial underperformance only underlines this - what studio would be mad enough to spend (a reputed) $200 million on a film in a genre which is always a box office gamble based upon a character who has largely faded from the pop culture memory?
But exist it does, and, though it is probably an hour longer than it has any right to be, it might actually be the most roundly entertaining of this summer's blockbuster movies.
It takes the theme park approach to the Western genre, bringing the audience on a tour through stock situations. So we have a bank robbery, a train holdup, cavalry versus indians, an ambush in a mountain pass, heroes buried up to their necks in the sand, the travelling construction of a raildoad by Chinese workers, an explosion in a silver mine, a whorehouse...
The story serves as an origin: John Reed (Armie Hammer, likeable throughout) travels back to his childhood home in the West after years studying law on the East coast. There the murder of his brother, legendary lawman Dan Reed (James Badge Dale) opens up a complex conspiracy involving the railroad, silver deposits, the exploitation of the Comanche and a vicious psychotic cannibal killer Butch (William Fichtner). Reed winds up believed dead and wearing a mask alongside the possibly insane Comanche Tonto (Johnny Depp).
The plot is unnecessarily convoluted, with too many characters and too many pointless episodes (Helena Bonham Carter as a Madame is entirely superfluous as is Barry Pepper and his Cavalry detachment) but that adds to the epic, frenzied feel. An issue is the way it all has to rise to an action crescendo every fifteen minutes or so. Luckily Verbinski has honed his abilities in that department over three Pirates of the Caribbean movies and some of the action set-pieces here are absolutely inspired, most obviously the climactic twin-train sequence, which nods to Buster Keaton in its mix of slapstick and complex action choreography.
That is only one of dozens of references, mostly to classic Westerns, with obvious homages to Sergio Leone and John Ford amongst them. This reflects one of the film's greatest strengths; in this season of big dumb movies with no ideas, it actually has a theme. It is about how history is written by the victors, no matter what the truth may be ("Print the legend") and also to some extent about the power of myth. The way it integrates this within it's packed narrative - the whole thing narrated by an aged Tonto (in what looks like a Little Big Man reference) to a young boy at a San Francisco fair in 1933 - is often problematic, but its ambition and the extent to which it succeeds is admirable.
Also likeable is its comedy; subtler and wittier than the Pirates films, it uses Depp's superb deadpan in contrast to the insanity often surrounding him, and scores some laughs through ironic takes on classic or corny old tropes.
It looks absolutely beautiful; cinematographer Bojan Bazelli and Verbinski stage and shoot some scenes which appear generically familiar with wit, invention and imagination, and of course that familiarity fades as the true sense of delirious fun here is revealed. It rollicks along, its humour and action balanced by some interesting darker elements, it's occasionally dull script enlivened by the direction, design and strong cast.
Friday, 1 February 2013
THE LAST STAND
(Kim Ji Woon, 2013)
Its always a bit of a problem when your leading man can't act. And Arnold Schwarzenegger can't. Never could. Not only that; he's not even remotely convincing as any sort of normal human being. There is a shot of him walking down the street like some normal joe in True Lies which is just hilarious because his persona is so exaggeratedly superhuman, so effortlessly larger-than-life; when he wants to break out of that, he'll always struggle, even after years away from movies.
And that is the case with Kim Ji-woon's The Last Stand, an old-fashioned modern Western with a High Noon-esque concept at its heart: theres a very bad guy coming, and the sheriff of a small Texan town is damn sure gonna stop him. Schwarzenegger portrays that Sheriff, and for all the attempts to play his ageing, wrinkled cragginess in a wryly reflective Eastwood manner, he doesn't have the range or presence to sell even this character. From the moment he shows up, you wait for the shooting to start. Because that is what he's good at. And so it proves here.
Clever directors - including James Cameron, Walter Hill, John Milius and John McTiernan - have made use of Schwarzenegger's odd appeal in films, casting him as taciturn killers and stoic warriors, but here he has to emote on a few occasions, and each time it is truly painful to watch the gears crank under the surface of his face while he tries unsuccessfully to evoke pain or regret or angst. His voice is another problem - that voice like an ocean liner scraping against a coral reef, his accent as robotic and emotionless as ever - and it renders every line identical in tone and feeling. Whereas in the action scenes he sets his jaw and narrows his eyes and makes those familiar guttural noises of fury and agony and all seems right in this particular corner of the cinematic world.
This film is an odd choice for Kim Ji-woon's first Hollywood production. Yes, it showcases his ability to orchestrate big action sequences, but the script is all about efficiency and has none of the dark grace notes of his best Korean work (A Bittersweet Life, say). The characters here are reliably one-noted and cliched and there are far too many of them, with Schwarzenegger backed by a superfluous and inexhaustible host of deputies and townspeople, including such stock figures as "the young deputy who wants more action away from his smalltown home but is unprepared for it when it comes" (Zach Gilford), the "town eccentric there purely for comic relief" (Johnny Knoxville) and the "quirkily demented, unpredictably violent bad guy" (Peter Stormare). Most of the dialogue is awful, the performances at a corresponding level but a couple of good action sequences just about make it worthwhile.
The first of those is a nocturnal firefight between the lawmen and some militia gunmen, interrupted by Schwarzenegger showing up and killing a bunch of bad guys with a shotgun and a jeep, the second a visceral car chase through a cornfield which is nicely, vividly textured and the third is a fistfight on a bridge which is half WWE, half The Big Country. Those three suggest that The Last Stand relies on traditional action beats for its appeal, and that is undoubtedly true. A decent cast is wasted, the gags are weak throughout, and the attempts at actual drama are inept.
This is, frankly, a film for undemanding action fans and nobody else.
Its always a bit of a problem when your leading man can't act. And Arnold Schwarzenegger can't. Never could. Not only that; he's not even remotely convincing as any sort of normal human being. There is a shot of him walking down the street like some normal joe in True Lies which is just hilarious because his persona is so exaggeratedly superhuman, so effortlessly larger-than-life; when he wants to break out of that, he'll always struggle, even after years away from movies.
And that is the case with Kim Ji-woon's The Last Stand, an old-fashioned modern Western with a High Noon-esque concept at its heart: theres a very bad guy coming, and the sheriff of a small Texan town is damn sure gonna stop him. Schwarzenegger portrays that Sheriff, and for all the attempts to play his ageing, wrinkled cragginess in a wryly reflective Eastwood manner, he doesn't have the range or presence to sell even this character. From the moment he shows up, you wait for the shooting to start. Because that is what he's good at. And so it proves here.
Clever directors - including James Cameron, Walter Hill, John Milius and John McTiernan - have made use of Schwarzenegger's odd appeal in films, casting him as taciturn killers and stoic warriors, but here he has to emote on a few occasions, and each time it is truly painful to watch the gears crank under the surface of his face while he tries unsuccessfully to evoke pain or regret or angst. His voice is another problem - that voice like an ocean liner scraping against a coral reef, his accent as robotic and emotionless as ever - and it renders every line identical in tone and feeling. Whereas in the action scenes he sets his jaw and narrows his eyes and makes those familiar guttural noises of fury and agony and all seems right in this particular corner of the cinematic world.
This film is an odd choice for Kim Ji-woon's first Hollywood production. Yes, it showcases his ability to orchestrate big action sequences, but the script is all about efficiency and has none of the dark grace notes of his best Korean work (A Bittersweet Life, say). The characters here are reliably one-noted and cliched and there are far too many of them, with Schwarzenegger backed by a superfluous and inexhaustible host of deputies and townspeople, including such stock figures as "the young deputy who wants more action away from his smalltown home but is unprepared for it when it comes" (Zach Gilford), the "town eccentric there purely for comic relief" (Johnny Knoxville) and the "quirkily demented, unpredictably violent bad guy" (Peter Stormare). Most of the dialogue is awful, the performances at a corresponding level but a couple of good action sequences just about make it worthwhile.
The first of those is a nocturnal firefight between the lawmen and some militia gunmen, interrupted by Schwarzenegger showing up and killing a bunch of bad guys with a shotgun and a jeep, the second a visceral car chase through a cornfield which is nicely, vividly textured and the third is a fistfight on a bridge which is half WWE, half The Big Country. Those three suggest that The Last Stand relies on traditional action beats for its appeal, and that is undoubtedly true. A decent cast is wasted, the gags are weak throughout, and the attempts at actual drama are inept.
This is, frankly, a film for undemanding action fans and nobody else.
Monday, 21 January 2013
DJANGO UNCHAINED
(Quentin Tarantino, 2012)
Django Unchained seems, at least superficially, to be Quentin Tarantino's most conventional film. The Tarantino of the dazzling early work, all chronological shuffling, extended dialogue scenes and unusual frame compositions, has slowly faded away over the years and movies since. Here he crafts a somewhat predictable revenge Western, with all the familiar genre beats, shootouts and showdowns demanded by the genre.
And yet it is never quite so simple with Tarantino. For this is quite possibly the Tarantino film most loaded with meaning and subtext, its action-blockbuster status smuggling a ferociously angry assault on slavery and the way cinema has treated it into the world's multiplexes almost without warning.
Beyond that, he takes the stuff of cult cinema - Django Unchained is stuffed with references to Spaghetti Westerns which delighted this particular fan of that sub-genre - and somehow turns it into mainstream gold, combining them with allusions to the relatively few films made about slavery, a bit of Peckinpah, and twisting it all around his own distinctive story-telling sensibility.
The story is simple. Bounty Hunter King Schultz (Christoph Waltz, plainly born to speak Tarantino dialogue) needs the help of slave Django (Jamie Foxx) in order to track down three outlaw brothers. He frees the slave and after they have collected the bounty they team up for a winter of wandering, hunting and killing. During this period, King teaches Django his trade and agrees to help him find and free his wife Brunhilda (Kerry Washington) who is now the property of Calvin Candie (Leonardo DiCaprio), who lives a life of debauchery surrounded by a large court of cutthroats and sycophants on his immense plantation "Candieland" in Kentucky, enjoying Mandingo fights, having runaway slaves torn apart by dogs, and watched over all the while by his chief house servant Stephen (Samuel L Jackson, superb in the first real part he has had in far too long). When Django and King arrive at Candieland, they have a foolproof plan to emerge alive with Brunhilda. But Stephen misses nothing, and he has his own plans.
While undoubtedly around 40 minutes too long, Django Unchained is bloody, rambunctious entertainment throughout. If Tarantino needs to work with an editor or producer unafraid to tell him that certain sequences need to be cut, his writing and gift for crafting a brilliant scene are as matchless as ever.
He retains his extraordinary ability to create tension and then stretch a sequence beyond breaking point through simple conversation and orchestration of the visual elements and this is one genre that organically creates opportunities for him to do just that. Even the scenes that feel a little redundant - a debate between members of a hooded posse on the eyeholes in their hoods is the most glaring example - are frequently inspired; mixing comedy and tension in that effortless Tarantino manner.
If the film has a real weakness, it is an odd one. The hero and heroine both feel somewhat underwritten. Django himself has little personality beyond a truculent desire for revenge and his love for Brunhilda, and we spend so little time with her that she never comes into focus as anything other than an ideal. Indeed, this film has fewer strong female parts than any of Tarantino's other films, which can only partly be explained by the (traditionally intensely male) genre. The other male parts are more impressive - with Schultz and Stephen representing particularly nuanced characterisations.
The soundtrack is a fabulous collection of Spaghetti Western themes by the likes of Morricone, Bacalov and Ortolani, mixed with a few nicely-deployed hip hop tracks, and Robert Richardson, generally a bit of a one-trick pony (his tic is to massively overlight characters from above) makes it all look handsome in a gritty, aged, woodily textured way. Tarantino throws in a few early crash zooms precisely like the ones common in spaghettis, ensures that every gunshot injury gets a ludicrously bloody squib, and generally looks after the details even when the grand narrative drifts a little.
Despite its flaws then, Tarantino knows what he is doing, and he delivers laughs, a handful of terrific action sequences, and a strong love story, all of it based around a clear-eyed view of the horrors of slavery. Like most of his movies, Django Unchained works, and then some.
Django Unchained seems, at least superficially, to be Quentin Tarantino's most conventional film. The Tarantino of the dazzling early work, all chronological shuffling, extended dialogue scenes and unusual frame compositions, has slowly faded away over the years and movies since. Here he crafts a somewhat predictable revenge Western, with all the familiar genre beats, shootouts and showdowns demanded by the genre.
And yet it is never quite so simple with Tarantino. For this is quite possibly the Tarantino film most loaded with meaning and subtext, its action-blockbuster status smuggling a ferociously angry assault on slavery and the way cinema has treated it into the world's multiplexes almost without warning.
Beyond that, he takes the stuff of cult cinema - Django Unchained is stuffed with references to Spaghetti Westerns which delighted this particular fan of that sub-genre - and somehow turns it into mainstream gold, combining them with allusions to the relatively few films made about slavery, a bit of Peckinpah, and twisting it all around his own distinctive story-telling sensibility.
The story is simple. Bounty Hunter King Schultz (Christoph Waltz, plainly born to speak Tarantino dialogue) needs the help of slave Django (Jamie Foxx) in order to track down three outlaw brothers. He frees the slave and after they have collected the bounty they team up for a winter of wandering, hunting and killing. During this period, King teaches Django his trade and agrees to help him find and free his wife Brunhilda (Kerry Washington) who is now the property of Calvin Candie (Leonardo DiCaprio), who lives a life of debauchery surrounded by a large court of cutthroats and sycophants on his immense plantation "Candieland" in Kentucky, enjoying Mandingo fights, having runaway slaves torn apart by dogs, and watched over all the while by his chief house servant Stephen (Samuel L Jackson, superb in the first real part he has had in far too long). When Django and King arrive at Candieland, they have a foolproof plan to emerge alive with Brunhilda. But Stephen misses nothing, and he has his own plans.
While undoubtedly around 40 minutes too long, Django Unchained is bloody, rambunctious entertainment throughout. If Tarantino needs to work with an editor or producer unafraid to tell him that certain sequences need to be cut, his writing and gift for crafting a brilliant scene are as matchless as ever.
He retains his extraordinary ability to create tension and then stretch a sequence beyond breaking point through simple conversation and orchestration of the visual elements and this is one genre that organically creates opportunities for him to do just that. Even the scenes that feel a little redundant - a debate between members of a hooded posse on the eyeholes in their hoods is the most glaring example - are frequently inspired; mixing comedy and tension in that effortless Tarantino manner.
If the film has a real weakness, it is an odd one. The hero and heroine both feel somewhat underwritten. Django himself has little personality beyond a truculent desire for revenge and his love for Brunhilda, and we spend so little time with her that she never comes into focus as anything other than an ideal. Indeed, this film has fewer strong female parts than any of Tarantino's other films, which can only partly be explained by the (traditionally intensely male) genre. The other male parts are more impressive - with Schultz and Stephen representing particularly nuanced characterisations.
The soundtrack is a fabulous collection of Spaghetti Western themes by the likes of Morricone, Bacalov and Ortolani, mixed with a few nicely-deployed hip hop tracks, and Robert Richardson, generally a bit of a one-trick pony (his tic is to massively overlight characters from above) makes it all look handsome in a gritty, aged, woodily textured way. Tarantino throws in a few early crash zooms precisely like the ones common in spaghettis, ensures that every gunshot injury gets a ludicrously bloody squib, and generally looks after the details even when the grand narrative drifts a little.
Despite its flaws then, Tarantino knows what he is doing, and he delivers laughs, a handful of terrific action sequences, and a strong love story, all of it based around a clear-eyed view of the horrors of slavery. Like most of his movies, Django Unchained works, and then some.
Thursday, 3 January 2013
FACCIA A FACCIA
aka FACE TO FACE
(Sergio Sollima, 1967)
Sollima is arguably the most interesting of the major Spaghetti Western directors; mainly due to the contradictions and dissonances in his work. Faccia a Faccia is a great case in point. Here is a spaghetti western - a sub-genre famed for its shocking violence - which, for most of its running time, actively shuns action and bloodletting. Sollima cuts right into the middle of one gunfight, just after the shot has been fired (the shot sounds almost as if it was timed to signal the cut), cuts away from another to focus on the faces of two spectators, and doesn't show anything (save the aftermath) of the epic battle which most films would be keen to use as the climax.
Sollima was, in other words, a director with quite peculiar instincts. Which may be what makes his work so fascinating. When he does film violence here, he makes sure that it counts. The biggest action scene is a gunfight that erupts after a bank robbery goes wrong, and Sollima ensures that the deaths in that fight are earned and have some emotional weight. He seems far more interested in the planning and build-up to the robbery. That he captures in one amazing sequence as Brad Dexter (Gian Maria Volonté) describes his plan to the gang in voiceover, and we see them arrive and take position in town, one by one - all in a single take. Indeed, the most impressive aspect of Sollima's style is the subtle dynamism and effectiveness of his blocking in tandem with the few, minor camera moves he executes. Another great scene sees the Bandit Beauregard Bennet (Tomas Milian) watch as six gunmen arrive to kill him. He is sitting on a porch and the camera pans around from behind him as the men arrive in pairs from three separate directions. There is an appealing grace and musicality to moments like this which is the real joy in Sollima's work.
The other element that makes his work seem so distinctive is his interest in politics - this is very much a political Western. Not quite in the way that the "Zapata Western" films written by the great Franco Solinas are, but Sollima ensures that his characters, Dexter in particular, have obvious political stances.
The plot is basically a slow identity-switch. History Professor Dexter moves to Texas to aid his tubercular lungs, where he encounters bandit Beauregard. They form an uneasy alliance, become friends, and slowly effect the way one another think. In time, Dexter becomes the leader of the gang and displays marked fascist inclinations - his orders must be obeyed unquestioningly, and he expects decisive, strong men to follow him. Meanwhile Beauregard begins to see moral dimensions to his actions, and his hesitation to kill a child is what bungles a crucial bank robbery. All the while the two are being pursued by the undercover Pinkerton Siringo (William Berger), setting the stage for a quintessentially Spaghetti three-way desert showdown.
Sollima is a more old-fashioned director than his revered Italian peers Leone, Corbucci and Damiani. His pacing is more deliberate, and more classical than is common in much of this sub-gnre (he has spoken of the influence of Samurai film on his approach). But he makes fantastic use of some stunning Spanish locations and he draws good performances from his leads. While Berger is a touch wooden, Milian is all method sneer as Beauregard, doing his best in a role that is perhaps a touch underwritten (there is no establishing scene showing us quite how despicable he is as an outlaw - we only hear about it - robbing his journey of some of its potential emotional power). Volonté, meanwhile, moves from a quiet, slightly fragile figure to the more familiarly fearsome performer by the end of the film, raping, murdering and torturing with abandon. His face loses its sickly pallor, he begins to strut, and becomes a magnetic presence.
The final element which makes Faccia a Faccia quite unmissable is Ennio Morricone's strident score, from an era when he was churning out several masterpieces a year. Like the film, his work here doesn't quite reach that status, but it is still typically brilliant.
(Sergio Sollima, 1967)
Sollima is arguably the most interesting of the major Spaghetti Western directors; mainly due to the contradictions and dissonances in his work. Faccia a Faccia is a great case in point. Here is a spaghetti western - a sub-genre famed for its shocking violence - which, for most of its running time, actively shuns action and bloodletting. Sollima cuts right into the middle of one gunfight, just after the shot has been fired (the shot sounds almost as if it was timed to signal the cut), cuts away from another to focus on the faces of two spectators, and doesn't show anything (save the aftermath) of the epic battle which most films would be keen to use as the climax.
Sollima was, in other words, a director with quite peculiar instincts. Which may be what makes his work so fascinating. When he does film violence here, he makes sure that it counts. The biggest action scene is a gunfight that erupts after a bank robbery goes wrong, and Sollima ensures that the deaths in that fight are earned and have some emotional weight. He seems far more interested in the planning and build-up to the robbery. That he captures in one amazing sequence as Brad Dexter (Gian Maria Volonté) describes his plan to the gang in voiceover, and we see them arrive and take position in town, one by one - all in a single take. Indeed, the most impressive aspect of Sollima's style is the subtle dynamism and effectiveness of his blocking in tandem with the few, minor camera moves he executes. Another great scene sees the Bandit Beauregard Bennet (Tomas Milian) watch as six gunmen arrive to kill him. He is sitting on a porch and the camera pans around from behind him as the men arrive in pairs from three separate directions. There is an appealing grace and musicality to moments like this which is the real joy in Sollima's work.
The other element that makes his work seem so distinctive is his interest in politics - this is very much a political Western. Not quite in the way that the "Zapata Western" films written by the great Franco Solinas are, but Sollima ensures that his characters, Dexter in particular, have obvious political stances.
The plot is basically a slow identity-switch. History Professor Dexter moves to Texas to aid his tubercular lungs, where he encounters bandit Beauregard. They form an uneasy alliance, become friends, and slowly effect the way one another think. In time, Dexter becomes the leader of the gang and displays marked fascist inclinations - his orders must be obeyed unquestioningly, and he expects decisive, strong men to follow him. Meanwhile Beauregard begins to see moral dimensions to his actions, and his hesitation to kill a child is what bungles a crucial bank robbery. All the while the two are being pursued by the undercover Pinkerton Siringo (William Berger), setting the stage for a quintessentially Spaghetti three-way desert showdown.
Sollima is a more old-fashioned director than his revered Italian peers Leone, Corbucci and Damiani. His pacing is more deliberate, and more classical than is common in much of this sub-gnre (he has spoken of the influence of Samurai film on his approach). But he makes fantastic use of some stunning Spanish locations and he draws good performances from his leads. While Berger is a touch wooden, Milian is all method sneer as Beauregard, doing his best in a role that is perhaps a touch underwritten (there is no establishing scene showing us quite how despicable he is as an outlaw - we only hear about it - robbing his journey of some of its potential emotional power). Volonté, meanwhile, moves from a quiet, slightly fragile figure to the more familiarly fearsome performer by the end of the film, raping, murdering and torturing with abandon. His face loses its sickly pallor, he begins to strut, and becomes a magnetic presence.
The final element which makes Faccia a Faccia quite unmissable is Ennio Morricone's strident score, from an era when he was churning out several masterpieces a year. Like the film, his work here doesn't quite reach that status, but it is still typically brilliant.
Friday, 7 December 2012
THE ASSASSINATION OF JESSE JAMES BY THE COWARD ROBERT FORD
(Andrew Dominik, 2007)
Can this beautiful piece of poetry really be only Andrew Dominik's second film? It's made with such confidence, such assurance, as to appear the work of some old master, returning to the Western one last time. But then, Dominik's debut, Chopper, was nothing if not assured. And there are other similarities between the two films - both studies of fame and its effect, both centred on complex, disturbed men all too aware of their own myths. Here Dominik recalls the great revisionist Westerns of the 20 year period from the late 60s through the early 80s - the likes of Pat Garrett & Billy the Kid, McCabe & Mrs Miller, Heavens Gate and Walter Hill's superb take on the Jesse James legend, The Long Riders. His film has the solemnity and seriousness common to those films, the relaxed yet deliberate pacing, the slightly askew characterisation. It is also great enough to stand in their company without suffering by comparison. Yet it also seemed greatly informed by the work of Terrence Malick in its patience and attention to the natural world, in its subtly persuasive focus on psychology.
Based closely on Ron Hansen's fantastic novel - and taking its narration and much of its dialogue verbatim from the book - and exquisitely photographed by Roger Deakins, Dominik has still somehow managed to make a Western with something original to say. For this is at heart the story of an obsessive fan, with more in common with todays world of stalkers and media saturation than the genre iconography may at first suggest. Perhaps the most incisive passages occur after the titular event has passed and we are shown the fate of Bob Ford, as famous in his time as Jesse James ever was, and struggling to deal with it, just as Jesse did. The still-life montages of landscapes and empty rooms, and the daguerrotype-style shots of Jesse in town and nature provide visual poetry to match the lyricism of Hansen's narration, and Pitt and Affleck both do career-best work, the latter in particular an absolute revelation. The delicate score by Nick Cave and Warren Ellis and the fine cast of young actors as Jesse's ragtag last gang (Sam Rockwell, Jeremy Renner, Garett Dillahunt, David Schneider) only make it all more expertly calibrated.
The films most interesting quality is its ambiguity - about its characters, most particularly. Pitt's Jesse is self-loathing, unpredictable, paranoid and lucidly aware of the narrowing odds he is facing; nursing a death wish, yet also charming, charismatic and attractive. He chooses Ford to be his killer, grooms him, and in so doing ensures that Ford is the one who has his character assassinated. The event makes Ford famous, yes, but also destroys his life. Ford gains our sympathy despite his creepiness, the ability he has to set people's teeth on edge merely by talking. This ambivalence in the authorial view of the central figures spreads through the narrative until the entire film is hung with it and the certainty of the title seems possibly ironic. The odd, fractured love story at the heart of this film gives it a black little heart which is beautifully and surgically exposed over the course of the precise, superbly textured narrative.
As slow as molasses, maybe, but in this sort of Western, thats a good thing, and Dominick adds his name to the roll-call of directors who have made great Jesse James films alongside the likes of Nicholas Ray, Sam Fuller, Phil Kauffman and Walter Hill.
Can this beautiful piece of poetry really be only Andrew Dominik's second film? It's made with such confidence, such assurance, as to appear the work of some old master, returning to the Western one last time. But then, Dominik's debut, Chopper, was nothing if not assured. And there are other similarities between the two films - both studies of fame and its effect, both centred on complex, disturbed men all too aware of their own myths. Here Dominik recalls the great revisionist Westerns of the 20 year period from the late 60s through the early 80s - the likes of Pat Garrett & Billy the Kid, McCabe & Mrs Miller, Heavens Gate and Walter Hill's superb take on the Jesse James legend, The Long Riders. His film has the solemnity and seriousness common to those films, the relaxed yet deliberate pacing, the slightly askew characterisation. It is also great enough to stand in their company without suffering by comparison. Yet it also seemed greatly informed by the work of Terrence Malick in its patience and attention to the natural world, in its subtly persuasive focus on psychology.
Based closely on Ron Hansen's fantastic novel - and taking its narration and much of its dialogue verbatim from the book - and exquisitely photographed by Roger Deakins, Dominik has still somehow managed to make a Western with something original to say. For this is at heart the story of an obsessive fan, with more in common with todays world of stalkers and media saturation than the genre iconography may at first suggest. Perhaps the most incisive passages occur after the titular event has passed and we are shown the fate of Bob Ford, as famous in his time as Jesse James ever was, and struggling to deal with it, just as Jesse did. The still-life montages of landscapes and empty rooms, and the daguerrotype-style shots of Jesse in town and nature provide visual poetry to match the lyricism of Hansen's narration, and Pitt and Affleck both do career-best work, the latter in particular an absolute revelation. The delicate score by Nick Cave and Warren Ellis and the fine cast of young actors as Jesse's ragtag last gang (Sam Rockwell, Jeremy Renner, Garett Dillahunt, David Schneider) only make it all more expertly calibrated.
The films most interesting quality is its ambiguity - about its characters, most particularly. Pitt's Jesse is self-loathing, unpredictable, paranoid and lucidly aware of the narrowing odds he is facing; nursing a death wish, yet also charming, charismatic and attractive. He chooses Ford to be his killer, grooms him, and in so doing ensures that Ford is the one who has his character assassinated. The event makes Ford famous, yes, but also destroys his life. Ford gains our sympathy despite his creepiness, the ability he has to set people's teeth on edge merely by talking. This ambivalence in the authorial view of the central figures spreads through the narrative until the entire film is hung with it and the certainty of the title seems possibly ironic. The odd, fractured love story at the heart of this film gives it a black little heart which is beautifully and surgically exposed over the course of the precise, superbly textured narrative.
As slow as molasses, maybe, but in this sort of Western, thats a good thing, and Dominick adds his name to the roll-call of directors who have made great Jesse James films alongside the likes of Nicholas Ray, Sam Fuller, Phil Kauffman and Walter Hill.
Tuesday, 24 April 2012
BLACKTHORN
(Mateo Gil, 2011)
It seems that at some point in the 1990s or 2000s we entered an era when the revisionist Western was assimilated comfortably by the genre. We all know, now, that the reassuring certainties of the films from the genres golden age - up through the 1950s, say - are bunk. The Westerns of the 1960s and 1970s made by Italian Directors and Americans like Sam Peckinpah and Clint Eastwood told us so, and their influence has been pervasive. But in recent years that influence seems to have acquired a slightly different character; its there in the production design, in the costumes and casting, in the music and photography, the attention to the physical realities of life on the American frontier. But it's not there in the narrative, in the stories these modern westerns tell. The stories seem almost to have devolved back a few decades; they are largely much simpler and less ambitious thematically.
Blackthorn is a fine example. It seems like it should be revisionist, telling a story of an ageing Butch Cassidy (Sam Shepherd), still alive and in Bolivia, and his encounter with a young Spaniard (Eduardo Noriega) on the run after stealing from a mine. It flirts with a few themes - ageing, exile, loneliness, the need for and contrast between friendship and family - but embraces none with any depth. Instead it settles for being a decent and old-fashioned Western with some poetry in it's ageing bones, but without any tension or real narrative interest.
Shepherd is effortlessly convincing and his soulful work gives it more feeling than it really deserves (flashbacks to more youthful South American incidents with the Sundance Kid are slightly distracting) - he should have been playing leads in Westerns since the 1970s. Noriega is handsomely efficient and Stephen Rea steals a few scenes as a Pinkerton lost in Bolivia, but the films glory is it's visual beauty.
Capturing the stark, extraordinary contrasts of the Bolivian landscape, Gil presents some truly sublime shots and sequences here. He is best known as Alejandro Amenabar's co-writer, and his skill as a director seems solid. Perhaps next time he should recruit Amenabar to be his co-writer, for with a better script he might be capable of something special.
It seems that at some point in the 1990s or 2000s we entered an era when the revisionist Western was assimilated comfortably by the genre. We all know, now, that the reassuring certainties of the films from the genres golden age - up through the 1950s, say - are bunk. The Westerns of the 1960s and 1970s made by Italian Directors and Americans like Sam Peckinpah and Clint Eastwood told us so, and their influence has been pervasive. But in recent years that influence seems to have acquired a slightly different character; its there in the production design, in the costumes and casting, in the music and photography, the attention to the physical realities of life on the American frontier. But it's not there in the narrative, in the stories these modern westerns tell. The stories seem almost to have devolved back a few decades; they are largely much simpler and less ambitious thematically.
Blackthorn is a fine example. It seems like it should be revisionist, telling a story of an ageing Butch Cassidy (Sam Shepherd), still alive and in Bolivia, and his encounter with a young Spaniard (Eduardo Noriega) on the run after stealing from a mine. It flirts with a few themes - ageing, exile, loneliness, the need for and contrast between friendship and family - but embraces none with any depth. Instead it settles for being a decent and old-fashioned Western with some poetry in it's ageing bones, but without any tension or real narrative interest.
Shepherd is effortlessly convincing and his soulful work gives it more feeling than it really deserves (flashbacks to more youthful South American incidents with the Sundance Kid are slightly distracting) - he should have been playing leads in Westerns since the 1970s. Noriega is handsomely efficient and Stephen Rea steals a few scenes as a Pinkerton lost in Bolivia, but the films glory is it's visual beauty.
Capturing the stark, extraordinary contrasts of the Bolivian landscape, Gil presents some truly sublime shots and sequences here. He is best known as Alejandro Amenabar's co-writer, and his skill as a director seems solid. Perhaps next time he should recruit Amenabar to be his co-writer, for with a better script he might be capable of something special.
Tuesday, 27 March 2012
JONAH HEX
(Jimmy Hayward, 2010)
Jonah Hex is a pretty simple character, so simple that it seems hard to believe any film could mess up his appeal so comprehensively. An ex-Confederate Soldier with a long, tragic history turned deadly, surly Bounty Hunter, he is more-or-less a generic Western hero type. He speaks little, kills often, but is bound by a personal code of honour to do the right thing and protect the innocent.
The place for such a character is in a stark, taut, visceral action Western, which is how the majority of the various comic book series in which he has featured have used him.
Jimmy Hayward's Jonah Hex is no such thing. Instead it seems set upon being a comic-influenced modern Western, shot like a music video, massively influenced by video games, determined to cram in as much of Hex's lore as possible into around 70 minutes (this feels like a film which was cut to bits in the editing room). The first five minutes fly through Hex's Civil War story in an unbearably shallow manner, mixing actual comic book art with brief snippets of scenes, all of it obviously meant to be held together by a Josh Brolin voiceover. Then it's onto the plot proper, with John Malkovich's insane Confederate General determined to destroy the USA by blowing up Washington with a Super-Weapon. Malkovich plays it at his usual high camp pitch, while Michael Fassbinder wanders around, utterly wasted as an Irish psychopath, giggling like a villain from the 60s Batman tv show.
Brolin is ok as Hex - it's a part that doesn't require much once his make-up is in place - and Megan Fox registers only as a strange sort of special effect, her celebrated body fetishized in a Western prostitute outfit, so insubstatial and pointless is her character; but they're all mired in an awful film, which is tonally berserk, incoherent for most of its running time, aggressively ugly and utterly boring. Its attempts to do "different" things with Hex are ill-thought: here he can speak to the dead, for some ridiculous reason, and carries twin Gatling guns strapped to his horse. This is like a Western having a seizure. It forgets all of the great things about the genre and replaces them with the worst aspects of modern blockbusters; explosions, murky action scenes, bad cgi. It makes the similarly disastrous steam punk Western Wild Wild West seem like a classical masterpiece. It makes me hope Hollywood never gets it's hands on another comic book Western character.
Jonah Hex is a pretty simple character, so simple that it seems hard to believe any film could mess up his appeal so comprehensively. An ex-Confederate Soldier with a long, tragic history turned deadly, surly Bounty Hunter, he is more-or-less a generic Western hero type. He speaks little, kills often, but is bound by a personal code of honour to do the right thing and protect the innocent.
The place for such a character is in a stark, taut, visceral action Western, which is how the majority of the various comic book series in which he has featured have used him.
Jimmy Hayward's Jonah Hex is no such thing. Instead it seems set upon being a comic-influenced modern Western, shot like a music video, massively influenced by video games, determined to cram in as much of Hex's lore as possible into around 70 minutes (this feels like a film which was cut to bits in the editing room). The first five minutes fly through Hex's Civil War story in an unbearably shallow manner, mixing actual comic book art with brief snippets of scenes, all of it obviously meant to be held together by a Josh Brolin voiceover. Then it's onto the plot proper, with John Malkovich's insane Confederate General determined to destroy the USA by blowing up Washington with a Super-Weapon. Malkovich plays it at his usual high camp pitch, while Michael Fassbinder wanders around, utterly wasted as an Irish psychopath, giggling like a villain from the 60s Batman tv show.
Brolin is ok as Hex - it's a part that doesn't require much once his make-up is in place - and Megan Fox registers only as a strange sort of special effect, her celebrated body fetishized in a Western prostitute outfit, so insubstatial and pointless is her character; but they're all mired in an awful film, which is tonally berserk, incoherent for most of its running time, aggressively ugly and utterly boring. Its attempts to do "different" things with Hex are ill-thought: here he can speak to the dead, for some ridiculous reason, and carries twin Gatling guns strapped to his horse. This is like a Western having a seizure. It forgets all of the great things about the genre and replaces them with the worst aspects of modern blockbusters; explosions, murky action scenes, bad cgi. It makes the similarly disastrous steam punk Western Wild Wild West seem like a classical masterpiece. It makes me hope Hollywood never gets it's hands on another comic book Western character.
Thursday, 22 March 2012
HOMBRE
(Martin Ritt, 1967)
Elmore Leonard's Western work all seems ideal for adaptation to cinema. His stories are generally based on strong, simple ideas, his heroes attractive, capable, manly, his heroines strong, independent women, his villains loathsome but interestingly complicated.
Hombre contains as striking and effective a plot mechanism as the one which drives the twice-filmed 3:10 To Yuma; a White man abducted as a boy and mainly raised among Apache finds himself shunned by his fellow travellers on a long stagecoach journey through the wilderness. But when outlaws show up, the others turn to him, the only capable warrior, for help, and he must decide whether to lead them through the desert to survival or leave them to die.
Directed by Robert Aldrich, say, Hombre might stand as one of the great Westerns. The story is exciting and gripping, the characters strong and recognisable. But Ritt is not a director all that comfortable with genre material. His background in theatre and television means that he is great with actors - and the performances here are all memorable for their strength - but also means that this film plods along almost politely, where Leonard's plots usually crackle with forward momentum and a delight in the unavoidable violence which must, inevitably, come.
Still, Hombre is a fine western, full of good things. Paul Newman, who had established a close working relationship with Ritt over five previous films, makes his hero an inscrutable survivor, his eyes lit with a private amusement at the pettiness of lying White men. When pushed, like all Leonard's heroes, he is a deadly killer, he just needs persuading to take that step, his stoicism hiding seething anger at the injustices heaped upon the Apache.
He is well matched with Richard Boone's charismatic, intimidating villain, also somewhat amused by his lot, and Diane Cilento's no-nonsense widow, all cynicism, quiet smoulder and guarded concern for others, afraid of nobody and always ready with a sharp-tongued opinion.
For the most part, Hombre actually plays like a television or stage play, much of it devoted to characters talking in the confines of a Stagecoach or an abandoned cabin, so the quality of the cast is vital to it's success.
But Ritt helps himself with his handsomely classical direction - he handles the final confrontation and shootout with real, perhaps surprising aplomb - and the cinematography by the legendary James Wong Howe is terrific, with a real feel for the rugged landscape and it's dangerous possibilities.
This is a Western made after the first arrival and success of the Italian Spaghetti Films, and that has affected the look and feel on display here. Gone is the clean, cheery brightness of many Westerns of the 1950s and early 60s. Instead we get a burnished palette of browns and drained yellows. The nocturnal scenes are dark, no jarring, surreal "day for night" shooting here, and the characters sweat and fray and get dirty and dusty and tired during their ordeal.
And there is a single, ugly splash of blood when one particularly unpleasant villain is shot which seems very much a moment from the 1960s; Ritt keen to tell us that in his west, violence was an scary, serious thing. His film, for all it's strengths, could perhaps have used just a touch less seriousness and a little more of Elmore Leonard's humour and verve.
Elmore Leonard's Western work all seems ideal for adaptation to cinema. His stories are generally based on strong, simple ideas, his heroes attractive, capable, manly, his heroines strong, independent women, his villains loathsome but interestingly complicated.
Hombre contains as striking and effective a plot mechanism as the one which drives the twice-filmed 3:10 To Yuma; a White man abducted as a boy and mainly raised among Apache finds himself shunned by his fellow travellers on a long stagecoach journey through the wilderness. But when outlaws show up, the others turn to him, the only capable warrior, for help, and he must decide whether to lead them through the desert to survival or leave them to die.
Directed by Robert Aldrich, say, Hombre might stand as one of the great Westerns. The story is exciting and gripping, the characters strong and recognisable. But Ritt is not a director all that comfortable with genre material. His background in theatre and television means that he is great with actors - and the performances here are all memorable for their strength - but also means that this film plods along almost politely, where Leonard's plots usually crackle with forward momentum and a delight in the unavoidable violence which must, inevitably, come.
Still, Hombre is a fine western, full of good things. Paul Newman, who had established a close working relationship with Ritt over five previous films, makes his hero an inscrutable survivor, his eyes lit with a private amusement at the pettiness of lying White men. When pushed, like all Leonard's heroes, he is a deadly killer, he just needs persuading to take that step, his stoicism hiding seething anger at the injustices heaped upon the Apache.
He is well matched with Richard Boone's charismatic, intimidating villain, also somewhat amused by his lot, and Diane Cilento's no-nonsense widow, all cynicism, quiet smoulder and guarded concern for others, afraid of nobody and always ready with a sharp-tongued opinion.
For the most part, Hombre actually plays like a television or stage play, much of it devoted to characters talking in the confines of a Stagecoach or an abandoned cabin, so the quality of the cast is vital to it's success.
But Ritt helps himself with his handsomely classical direction - he handles the final confrontation and shootout with real, perhaps surprising aplomb - and the cinematography by the legendary James Wong Howe is terrific, with a real feel for the rugged landscape and it's dangerous possibilities.
This is a Western made after the first arrival and success of the Italian Spaghetti Films, and that has affected the look and feel on display here. Gone is the clean, cheery brightness of many Westerns of the 1950s and early 60s. Instead we get a burnished palette of browns and drained yellows. The nocturnal scenes are dark, no jarring, surreal "day for night" shooting here, and the characters sweat and fray and get dirty and dusty and tired during their ordeal.
And there is a single, ugly splash of blood when one particularly unpleasant villain is shot which seems very much a moment from the 1960s; Ritt keen to tell us that in his west, violence was an scary, serious thing. His film, for all it's strengths, could perhaps have used just a touch less seriousness and a little more of Elmore Leonard's humour and verve.
Sunday, 4 March 2012
RIDE LONESOME
(Budd Boetticher, 1959)
The "Ranown" cycle of films made between 1956 and 1960 by screenwriter Burt Kennedy, Director Budd Boetticher and star Randolph Scott play like elemental, classically generic Westerns. They have beautifully simple storys, typical of the genre, which are delivered through tight plotting. And yet somehow Kennedy's scripts and Boetticher's matchless direction ensure that they feel relaxed and effortless; there is a confidence in these films which adds to their appeal.
Ride Lonesome was the first of the Ranown films shot in CinemaScope and Boetticher takes to the format instantly, as seen in the beautifully economical opening sequence. The credits play out over a rocky desert landscape, then the camera turns as we see a rider approach below, his tiny figure emphasising the implacable immensity of the land, which will prove to be as much a character in the drama as he is. He dismounts and approaches a rock slope. The camera pivots to the right where a man sits camped beside his horse. The rider is Randolph Scott's bounty hunter Ben Brigade, the man atop the slope his quarry, a young murderer. Their ensuing confrontation is the motor which drives the rest of the plot, and it is all captured in three or four shots, with the dialogue clipped and witty. Boetticher's widescreen compositions are terrific throughout the film, using the landscape with a grace and power which recalls Anthony Mann, but always retaining his own unique sense of taut visual economy. He never uses two shots where one will do, and deploys an array of astutely judged camera movements, never ostentatiously, most of which add to the easy flow of his storytelling.
The story follows Brigade as he seeks to bring his fugitive back to town to face justice and becomes entangled with various other characters along the way, all the while being hunted by Brigade's outlaw brother (Lee Van Cleef) and a tribe of hostile Indians. Kennedy writes his characters as rich, vivid types with interesting shades and the cast bring them to life with brusque, easy charm. The protagonist and antagonist in the Ranown films frequently have friendly relationships; their conflict based upon a matter of principal or entwined destinies rather than any real emnity, and that is the case here. Scott is a minimalist lead; holding back, never too emotional, and the film is similarly laid back, coolly observing its characters as they circle and size each other up.
That doesn't mean there is no action; Boetticher films the action sequences with as much style and muscularity as everything else, and they are accordingly gripping and beautiful.
The Ranown films are the foundation of Boetticher's exalted reputation among cineastes, and Ride Lonesome is a great example of why; beautifully made and full of stylish, timeless storytelling, it is pure pleasure from start to finish.
The "Ranown" cycle of films made between 1956 and 1960 by screenwriter Burt Kennedy, Director Budd Boetticher and star Randolph Scott play like elemental, classically generic Westerns. They have beautifully simple storys, typical of the genre, which are delivered through tight plotting. And yet somehow Kennedy's scripts and Boetticher's matchless direction ensure that they feel relaxed and effortless; there is a confidence in these films which adds to their appeal.
Ride Lonesome was the first of the Ranown films shot in CinemaScope and Boetticher takes to the format instantly, as seen in the beautifully economical opening sequence. The credits play out over a rocky desert landscape, then the camera turns as we see a rider approach below, his tiny figure emphasising the implacable immensity of the land, which will prove to be as much a character in the drama as he is. He dismounts and approaches a rock slope. The camera pivots to the right where a man sits camped beside his horse. The rider is Randolph Scott's bounty hunter Ben Brigade, the man atop the slope his quarry, a young murderer. Their ensuing confrontation is the motor which drives the rest of the plot, and it is all captured in three or four shots, with the dialogue clipped and witty. Boetticher's widescreen compositions are terrific throughout the film, using the landscape with a grace and power which recalls Anthony Mann, but always retaining his own unique sense of taut visual economy. He never uses two shots where one will do, and deploys an array of astutely judged camera movements, never ostentatiously, most of which add to the easy flow of his storytelling.
The story follows Brigade as he seeks to bring his fugitive back to town to face justice and becomes entangled with various other characters along the way, all the while being hunted by Brigade's outlaw brother (Lee Van Cleef) and a tribe of hostile Indians. Kennedy writes his characters as rich, vivid types with interesting shades and the cast bring them to life with brusque, easy charm. The protagonist and antagonist in the Ranown films frequently have friendly relationships; their conflict based upon a matter of principal or entwined destinies rather than any real emnity, and that is the case here. Scott is a minimalist lead; holding back, never too emotional, and the film is similarly laid back, coolly observing its characters as they circle and size each other up.
That doesn't mean there is no action; Boetticher films the action sequences with as much style and muscularity as everything else, and they are accordingly gripping and beautiful.
The Ranown films are the foundation of Boetticher's exalted reputation among cineastes, and Ride Lonesome is a great example of why; beautifully made and full of stylish, timeless storytelling, it is pure pleasure from start to finish.
Monday, 5 September 2011
COWBOYS & ALIENS
(Jon Favreau, 2011)
This would be a far better experience if you went in blind, unaware of the premise or even of the title, which does sum up the content in three words in a blunt manner which made some audiences who saw the trailer laugh out loud. For it begins as a Western, and the first fifteen to twenty minutes are like a handsome, well-cast, classically shot, slightly overfamiliar modern take on that great old genre, laying out a cast of genre archetypes and their relationships with moderate style and some soildly old-fashioned storytelling.
Then, some spaceships show up and this is suddenly a mash-up of Western and sci-fi.
The sci-fi content is minimal and rudimentary; there is a big spaceship full of aliens, they fly little spaceships and kidnap humans, they look like frogs with muscular, hulking bodies, and they have blasters which render the six-shooters and rifles the men carry largely ineffective.
The narrative takes the form of a pursuit - a group of men seeking to rescue their abducted loved ones - and that allows for a quick tour of some other Western cliches as they encounter a group of bandits and a tribe of Indians on their journey, together with one nicely Herzogian surreal image, that of a massive Mississippi wheel barge lying upside down on the desert floor.
It's all a little overlong, but the pacing and style feels appropriately leisurely for the Western side of this story, and if the final battle is slightly over egged and predictable in its every dramatic beat, Favreau gratifyingly maintains the classical approach throughout, never descending to the manic cutting and chaotic continuity of so much modern blockbuster cinema.
His cast are never really stretched by the material. Daniel Craig does his blunt instrument tough guy thing - and does it well - while Harrison Ford gives yet another rendition of the grumpy old man persona he has fallen into over the last decade or so. The others, a grizzled ensemble including Sam Rockwell, Keith Carradine and Clancy Brown, are good value in the smaller parts.
There is a slightly pedestrian quality to Cowboys & Aliens which means it doesn linger long in the mind. But it is handsome, occasionally thrilling and always watchable, which is more than could have been expected from any film with such a title.
This would be a far better experience if you went in blind, unaware of the premise or even of the title, which does sum up the content in three words in a blunt manner which made some audiences who saw the trailer laugh out loud. For it begins as a Western, and the first fifteen to twenty minutes are like a handsome, well-cast, classically shot, slightly overfamiliar modern take on that great old genre, laying out a cast of genre archetypes and their relationships with moderate style and some soildly old-fashioned storytelling.
Then, some spaceships show up and this is suddenly a mash-up of Western and sci-fi.
The sci-fi content is minimal and rudimentary; there is a big spaceship full of aliens, they fly little spaceships and kidnap humans, they look like frogs with muscular, hulking bodies, and they have blasters which render the six-shooters and rifles the men carry largely ineffective.
The narrative takes the form of a pursuit - a group of men seeking to rescue their abducted loved ones - and that allows for a quick tour of some other Western cliches as they encounter a group of bandits and a tribe of Indians on their journey, together with one nicely Herzogian surreal image, that of a massive Mississippi wheel barge lying upside down on the desert floor.
It's all a little overlong, but the pacing and style feels appropriately leisurely for the Western side of this story, and if the final battle is slightly over egged and predictable in its every dramatic beat, Favreau gratifyingly maintains the classical approach throughout, never descending to the manic cutting and chaotic continuity of so much modern blockbuster cinema.
His cast are never really stretched by the material. Daniel Craig does his blunt instrument tough guy thing - and does it well - while Harrison Ford gives yet another rendition of the grumpy old man persona he has fallen into over the last decade or so. The others, a grizzled ensemble including Sam Rockwell, Keith Carradine and Clancy Brown, are good value in the smaller parts.
There is a slightly pedestrian quality to Cowboys & Aliens which means it doesn linger long in the mind. But it is handsome, occasionally thrilling and always watchable, which is more than could have been expected from any film with such a title.
Thursday, 21 April 2011
MEEKS CUTOFF
(Kelly Reichert, 2010)
Deliberate and confident in its pacing, Reichert's film is a Western like they used to make them in the 1970s; not just revisionist but challenging the genre's most basic assumptions and markers. Following three families who have broken off from a Wagon Train in the Great Plains of Oregon, led by a grizzled, almost self-consciously mythic Scout named Steven Meek, it's rhythms are suggestive more of art cinema than the Western. Slow pans and extremely gradual dissolves establish the visual scheme of the film, and Reichert repeatedly captures figures isolated against vast landscapes and immense skies as they plod relentlessly across the country.
The characters are indicated through observation, their various dynamics sketched beautifully in the films first act as their situation worsens and they are stretched and tested as people. They are lost and beginning to doubt their guides ability to lead them competently, and tensions grow between the couples, especially when they capture a lone Indian and Meek wants to kill him.
The Indian is an unknowable, implacable presence in their midst and a big element of the mysterious quality that makes the film such a fascinating and occasionally demanding watch. The excellent cast - in which Michelle Williams and Bruce Greenwood are the standouts - combat that difficulty, as does Reichert's sure hand with her regular collaborator Jonathan Raymond's excellent script, always ensuring that the problem at the heart of the plot is foregrounded and expressed through the interplay of her vividly drawn characters.
The feminist angle is obvious but never overstated. This is a film that wants to show what it was like to be a woman on the frontier; not a whore or a female gunslinger, but a married woman in search of a future with her husband and family. The part Williams' character plays in the story is a subtle criticism of how the genre usually ignores the female perspective entirely, and yet the film integrates that into its ensemble portrayal of these pioneers and a sustained study in landscape cinematography.
Deliberate and confident in its pacing, Reichert's film is a Western like they used to make them in the 1970s; not just revisionist but challenging the genre's most basic assumptions and markers. Following three families who have broken off from a Wagon Train in the Great Plains of Oregon, led by a grizzled, almost self-consciously mythic Scout named Steven Meek, it's rhythms are suggestive more of art cinema than the Western. Slow pans and extremely gradual dissolves establish the visual scheme of the film, and Reichert repeatedly captures figures isolated against vast landscapes and immense skies as they plod relentlessly across the country.
The characters are indicated through observation, their various dynamics sketched beautifully in the films first act as their situation worsens and they are stretched and tested as people. They are lost and beginning to doubt their guides ability to lead them competently, and tensions grow between the couples, especially when they capture a lone Indian and Meek wants to kill him.
The Indian is an unknowable, implacable presence in their midst and a big element of the mysterious quality that makes the film such a fascinating and occasionally demanding watch. The excellent cast - in which Michelle Williams and Bruce Greenwood are the standouts - combat that difficulty, as does Reichert's sure hand with her regular collaborator Jonathan Raymond's excellent script, always ensuring that the problem at the heart of the plot is foregrounded and expressed through the interplay of her vividly drawn characters.
The feminist angle is obvious but never overstated. This is a film that wants to show what it was like to be a woman on the frontier; not a whore or a female gunslinger, but a married woman in search of a future with her husband and family. The part Williams' character plays in the story is a subtle criticism of how the genre usually ignores the female perspective entirely, and yet the film integrates that into its ensemble portrayal of these pioneers and a sustained study in landscape cinematography.
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