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Reviews
Harry Brown (2009)
Hard stuff.
Michael Caine is easy to love. He carries a British working class charisma that cannot be measured in Oscar wins or Hollywood dollars, but instead through how his East London accent and easy integrity convinces us in an instant that he is indeed the underdog and we should support him. Harry Brown is a wonderful forum to demonstrate this unique skill.
Harry Brown is set on an London estate where the teenage locals run the place not so much with an iron fist but a large collection of guns and a really unreasonable attitude. In the opening minutes we watch the senseless shooting of a young mother and two hoodies on a scooter are the culprits; but they get slammed into a thousand bloody pieces by a white van which makes us happy because for once we get to witness a bit of justice. Yes, indeed, this film plays to our prejudices. So much so, that afterwards I wanted a new estate built where only these little bastards live and if they happen to kill each other off in a hail of bullets, drugs and STDs then fine. I pay taxes and work and would like to not flinch every time I hear a car tire screech or a raised voice at the end of my road.
Harry is a retired Northern Ireland protecting marine. His killing ways were put to rest a long time ago, a decision made when he met his recently dead wife. However, Harry is now back on killing form after his mate Lennie was murdered by the local chief hoodie and his pals. Cocky and abusive when in a police cell they know that the law in this country is powerless; but thankfully they are the cancer and Harry is the cure. A bit familiar I know. Still, this is a powerful social comment on how the law of this land is run by politicians and how being tolerant has gotten us terrified. The director may have placed the odd character here and there with a background of being sexually abused but he obviously wants us to stand up and don a baseball bat or crowbar or something and take to the streets with furious anger for those who would poison and destroy his brothers.
Cinematically, this film is as tense as they come and as realistic as you like. Take Harry and his unrealistic situation out of the equation and you are left with a documentary on tenement living. It is brutal and merciless and without remorse. It is about those who are forgotten and yet feared; they are care for nothing and will fight for nothing other than their own needs... and they live on your street.
'Buy a gun and get even'. This wasn't the tagline for Harry Brown, but it should have been.
There Will Be Blood (2007)
A sinister allegory.
With an opening score that could have been used for any of the really scary bits in Kubrick's The Shining, this film is in many ways just as terrifying. Although not written as a horror film, the terrible things that we humans do for power and gain are on display for all to see in this allegorical tale of how capitalism spread across America like some kind of slick plague.
Daniel Day-Lewis plays Daniel Plainview, an oil prospector in the early twentieth century who has a very plain view indeed of how the world should be. He sees America as one big lake of oil and himself as a very elite fisherman. He will stop at nothing to get what he wants, which is essentially to gain until there is nothing left to gain. He is greed personified with a voice so unearthly that you may believe that he is some kind of capitalist deity. He is human, however, and a father. His fathering skills are focused entirely on training his son to be like him; that is until his son is deafened in a freak accident. Then the world is not so simple. Then he can only do what he does best: put out of sight and mind that which stands in his way between getting and not getting.
Plainview's nemesis and counterpoint in this film is at the centre of the community that he is trying to rape of its black and precious natural resource, a small town preacher Eli Sunday (played by the excellent Paul Dano). Sunday is the mouthpiece for the town and the only one ready to ask Plainview difficult questions. He is the white purity to Plainview's black soul and these two very big characters come to extraordinary blows metaphorically and physically. Plainview baptises Sunday after being asked for the payment he agreed to drill the land with a gigantic fat-cat-slap-around-session where he rubs Sunday's face in the soil that, interestingly, they are both in some way slaves to. This is reciprocated when Plainview seeks redemption through an actual baptism in Sunday's church (for purely selfish reasons) and is slapped around whilst having water poured on his head in the name of Jesus. Through this conflict we see two very powerful symbols of religion and capitalism at a crisis point and it is very much about who is going to blink first. Will Plainview see the light or will Sunday see just how shiny oil can be? I loved this film. The actors are tremendous and play their parts as if this is the last film to ever be made on this subject. Thomas Anderson's direction is masterful - he may only make a film every decade, as it seems does Day-Lewis, but by Jove does he make it count. It is a rare thing that you can stop a film practically anywhere and have a picture worth framing on your screen. Although, the most memorable aspect of this movie for me, again, was the soundtrack. It is just so eery. Something terrible is coming and you know it in the first two seconds of the film; it sets you on edge like few other films can. Marvellous.
American Psycho (2000)
Barry Norman knows nothing.
Barry Norman once said that playing Patrick Bateman, a rich twenty-seven year old Wall Street nutjob, could very well have been 'suicide' for Christian Bale. Ha! What did he know? American Psycho is a dissection of the modern executive man syndrome, but set in the eighties with Gordan Gecko haircuts, Charlie Sheen all-night benders, sharp suits, bags of drugs and enough sexism to give Germaine Greer a stroke. It is Wall Street but without the building tension of a plot. Instead, all we are left with is a character piece that expresses itself through Bateman's narrations on how he is not really here, that he feels nothing but 'disgust' and 'greed' and how he knows not why his nightime murder sprees are becoming more violent and horrific.
Throughout this film we are, as is Bateman, clueless as to why he feels the need to slay beautiful women and fellow yuppies; why he sweats through his Valentino couture suits when a colleague produces a more tasteful business card than his own (Batemen later butchers the said colleague with an axe to the face); and why he feels the need to put a nail gun to the head of his unsuspecting secretary whilst having a quiet drink at his quite expensive apartment. As it progresses we get the sense that this film is not going to peak in a 'Seven' type ending, but that instead it is a wandering exploration of how enough money leads to illusions of grandeur and the belief that you can do just about anything you want; that it is a conceptual piece and the nada-plot and subsequent uber-violence are products of that concept. We are left with an idea and the realisation that Bateman probably isn't there at all, that he is just one of a million like him that can't see past the end of their thousand dollar Mont Blanc fountain pen and ten grand oyster movement Rolex submariner.
This film launched Bale's career in a way that many other films could not. It was daring, controversial and ultimately a gamble. It's a shame that other actors do not take this kind of risk... and that Bale went on to make Terminator Salvation. That's another review though. Still, if Barry Norman thought that this film could have gone one way or the other: how did it go the one way? Well, aside from the stuff already mentioned, the film is a broad mixture of amazing set pieces, costumes that make tailors salivate and very black humour. Bateman ends up with an almost catch phrase line 'I've got to return some videotapes' which he repeats several times in the film instead of, say, strangling his homosexual colleague in the toilets of an expensive boys' club, or as a parting line in a brutal public break up with his fiancé.
The thing that struck me about this film is that despite the story's focus on violence toward women, it was in fact directed by a woman, Mary Harron. Perhaps this is where the film works. If it had been directed by a man the focus may have been solely anti-woman, rather than the humour, the style of the time and the concept of this finished product.
Up (2009)
Touching and very very funny.
Pixar grows braver with every film. In Wall-e we were enthralled and enchanted by an animated trash-removal-bot for nearly an hour before a single word, other than his own name or the name of the film's Biblically inflected love interest, Eve, was said. In Up we are on similar ground as we watch Carl Frederickson grow from a young nervous boy fixated on becoming like his air blimping world exploring hero, Charles Muntz, to a balloon selling man married to his childhood sweetheart and exploring compadre, Ellie. They meet as children and plan to travel the world.
We continue through their lives via a wonderfully bittersweet montage of love and disappointment as Ellie and Carl learn that they cannot pursue their dreams of exploring South America, or have children. Get your hankies ready for that one. We watch as Carl, voiced by Edward Asner, becomes bitter, grows old, shuts himself away from the world and tries to out-stubborn the corporation that wants to demolish his beloved house and build, for God's sake, a m-i-n-i mall.
Carl has always been a man for plans, so he plans an escape: attach several thousand balloons to the roof of the house and float away to Paradise Falls; park on the canyon's edge and live out his days knowing that he did for Ellie in death what he could not do for her in life. A great plan
if it wasn't for the twelve year old scout, Russell, who stowed away with him and is determined to 'assist an old person' in order to complete his badge sash and get his own father to notice him. This is where the adventure begins: talking dogs, hilarious slapstick sequences, a maniacal bad guy (explorer Muntz, voiced by a rich and gritty toned Christopher Plummer) and one very strange rare bird that said bad guy wants from Carl and Russell all total up to a fantastic way to spend an afternoon. Even with lots of kids around you.
This is a film about how walls, no matter how old and bitter, can be broken down if you are prepared to accept the past. It is a film about putting memories in a safe and warm place that you can visit when you want; knowing you don't have to live in them. It is a touching fantasy that, quite frankly, I think at some point we've all had: fly away and live somewhere beautiful with someone you love. Marvellous.
United 93 (2006)
An exercise in endurance.
The fourth plane to be hijacked on September 11th 2001 did not hit its target because of the immense bravery of a determined few: its passengers – ordinary people who were not ready to die without a fight. Not heroes in white vests or cool leather jackets, but real people. Thankfully, 'United 93' keeps it that way. The characters seem as real as you and I, fretting and stressing that to stop the four terrorists from blowing up the plane or crashing it they are going to have to murder them with their bare hands.
The camera work in this film is so claustrophobic that we feel as if we are in the thick of the decision making. We are forced to sit in the air-conditioned near silence and consider if we would have what it takes to survive this or whether we would sit and wait for the end, cursing our own inaction. We peek around chairs and listen as our fellow passengers make phone calls to loved ones, knowing all of our goodbyes may be the last we ever share with a child or a wife or husband. We are trapped in this film and its inevitable end. It is utterly excruciating.
Interestingly, not only are forced to endure the aforementioned process of accepting death or fighting it off tooth and nail, but we are also, at the conclusion, stuck up against the fanatics who are crashing the plane, watching closely as they waver not a millimetre in their determinism. They cry 'Allah' as if someone had given them a script from God; they say it as if it was always going to be said with no chance of escaping this nose diving fate. This makes us more determined to stop them; an affectation that pays the highest testimony to the brilliant direction of Paul Greengrass.
See this film, but don't expect to ever want to endure it again.
Layer Cake (2004)
Slick.
Daniel Craig's nameless anti-hero is a highly successful drug dealer who's just about ready to retire. He's a businessman who thinks more like Gordon Gecko than Tony Montana. However, before he gets out for good, his boss, Jimmy (Kenneth Cranham), has one more thing for him to do: find a missing drug lord's daughter and broker a deal for five million Ecstasy pills that have been robbed from a very unpleasant group of Slovakian war criminals... and live to tell the tale. Easy.
Matthew Vaughn has brought together a great ensemble of actors for this film who make us laugh, wince and seethe at their antics. The characters are well balanced, with some great contrasts. Craig is suave and cool whilst Ben Whishaw (boyfriend of Craig's new squeeze) is ultra gangly and Michael Gambon's uber-drug lord is grand and sophisticated, whilst Kenneth Cranham's lesser drug lord is crass and blunt. An especially good performance is put in by Jamie Foreman (Nil By Mouth) as 'The Duke'; a wannabe gangster who you'll want to slap really hard in the face. Oh, and Sienna Miller's in it too. She acts well, but being the love interest only gives her a small part in one very disappointing part of the film, which we could have done without.
The whole set-up is stylish and nicely filmed. Even second rate clubs are given a sheen and even though we are in London's drug underworld, the place seems really quite glitzy. Not that the film glorifies drug dealing, but there is a feeling that if done correctly and with the right amount of planning one can avoid being hacked up by rivals and instead ride off into the sunset. Get a plan and stick to it - that's Craig's motto; and this being the enjoyable ride that it is, we are inclined to believe him.
Ocean's Twelve (2004)
Too far from the original (!?!) remake.
'If you steal fifty million dollars, they will find you.' (Alan Rickman as Hans Gruber, Die Hard) This adage certainly rings true in this sequel. Terry Benedict has been informed that Danny Ocean and his compadres were the ones who ripped him off and now he wants his money back. Therefore, the Ocean gang needs a lot of money and fast, but cannot work in the states as Benedict has made it impossible for them. So it's off to Europe to perform acts of death defying thievery, whilst trying to avoid Catherine Zeta Jones' super cop, an old flame from Rusty's (Pitt's) past.
On their first heist in Amsterdam they find out that who ratted on them was the 'Night Fox', a super slick thief with a legend complex. He issues them with a challenge that could write off their debt in full or land them in some kind of Uma Thurman Kill Bill II buried alive sequence. Interesting? Well, yes. Slow? Sort of. Entertaining? Mostly. Unnecessary scenes of character development? Plenty.
Soderbergh, who did not direct the first film, has given his actors licence to 'evolve' their parts, which for this franchise is probably not the best idea. What worked so well in the last film was the lack of character development, complemented by the slickness of the mission impossible style heist. Ocean's Eleven looked like the cover of Vogue magazine or an advert for Gucci and the characters' lack of depth helped polish the film to a high and glossy shine. Ocean's Twelve wants to move past this through idiosyncrasies and little character ticks and deepen the glossy and superficial cover picture. This may have worked because the chemistry within the Ocean gang is comfortable and entertaining. Unfortunately, it does not as Catherine Zeta Jones' super cop upsets this delicate balance. She fits into this film like a big square peg in a tight Ocean's 11 sided hole and her chemistry with Pitt is non-existent.
The star of this film for me is Vincent Cassel. His Night Fox is arrogant, cavalier and makes being rich look like tremendous fun. He is the yang to the Americans' ying; he is immoral where they are moral (?!); his Night Fox is the darker side to professional thievery whereas the Americans are the acceptable face of stealing over a hundred million in someone else's cash simply because they make it look so cool. Cassel also plays the part with a natural swagger and depth that contrasts heavily with the newly found 'depth' of the American actors. Normally contrast is a good thing as it makes things complicated and layered, but from this franchise we want superficial, gloss and polish. So, for me, this is where the film does not work.
All of this together and we end with simply this: the age old adage 'integrity comes from being true to yourself' is something that this franchise should have thought more carefully about.
Surveillance (2008)
Nepotism, maybe but
I have read a few reviews for this film and many of them rag on Jennifer Lynch for having her father as the executive producer and the way she uses many of his visualisations to create key effects and tensions. Fair enough, nepotism isn't the most direct and honest way to make your mark in the world of
well, anything. However, I would say that David Lynch's shadow, the one that Jennifer has been living in, is monstrous. How many of us could get away from that, realistically? Jennifer Lynch not only directed this tense and brutal thriller-come-horror set in the Sante Fe desert where a series of horribly blunt murders have been happening, but she co-wrote it with Kent Harper, one of the stars. And as stories go, it keeps you guessing right until the most crucial point. So, as escaping galactically big shadows goes this is not a bad stab.
Surveillance definitely has something to say about the power of signs in our lives and whom we can and should not trust. This won't make sense until you see the film as a whole, but through the twist at the end Lynch effectively explores how we live and die by the meanings that certain objects and symbols carry: we trust those we should not because they wear a tie or a badge or have very white teeth. We are blind to truth when we assume.
In the Santa Fe desert masked killers are on the loose and Bill Pullman and Julie Ormond are uber-professional looking FBI agents sent in to question the survivors of a roadside ordeal where only three people, one cop (Kent Harper, co-writer), one adult female and one little girl live to tell the tale of the masked lunatics and their sadistic pleasures. Pullman's investigatory technique is to watch, through CCTV cameras, and interrupt his partner's questioning of the little girl and the Sheriff's questioning of the surviving cop whenever he wants clarification on something. He watches for discrepancies in tense conversations where truths are told only in halves and as they tell their versions of the events that led to the roadside ordeal through a series of flashbacks we see what really happened. Through Lynch's contradictory visuals we see through the lies and half truths; making our own minds up about who is guilty. Ostensibly, we are Pullman's judging eyes. This is immensely intriguing and involves us in the film very effectively.
As the film continues, we are treated to a really very good performance by Pullman. Surprisingly, Bill has range! Whereas before I could not stand the man, I now feel a sense of sadness: a good actor has been offered a lot of bad parts and took them because it was work. At last, he has a role to get his teeth into! Ormond is also fantastic as the stoic FBI agent in front of the staties and the sensitive yet professional woman in front of the little girl. In fact, each actor in this film delivers a fine performance.
Still, the centre of this film is the guessing, not the characters, and, if I'm honest, at ninety-eight minutes long I felt this film was too short. Beefed up to two hours, there would certainly be time to add in a little more character development here and there. Still, what Lynch loses in character development she gains in a compelling, tense and brutal thriller-come-horror film with a gargantuan twist that I enjoyed immensely.
Quantum of Solace (2008)
Plot less and too short, but I like it.
Quantum of Solace begins at the end of Casino Royale (Craig is still driving an Aston Martin despite it having been trashed in CR!?) and Bond is out for answers
or revenge, or both. He is going to chase down Mr White and those Quantum bad guys and beat the truth out of them, even if it means jetting from Italy to London to Haiti to Bolivia to Austria to Chile and to Panama (not in that order). Even if it means killing everyone that he meets in a suspicious camera-and-editing style homage to the Bourne trilogy. Even if it means bedding the female officer ordered to bring him back because he's gone 'rogue' and further defying M's orders. EVEN if it means getting involved in foot, car, boat, plane and bike chases (Marc Forster (dir.) wanted a bit of everything, apparently, just not a real plot).
The Bondy baddie is fabulous. He is Mr Green (Matthieu Almaric) – a government toppling, cruel-tongued sissy boy who couldn't fight his way out of an open door. The Bondy girlies are gorgeous (he only beds one, the aforementioned female agent, Gemma Arterton). The more significant of the two, Camile, played by Olga Kurylenko, is a Bolivian spy also out for revenge. She wants to kill the General that Mr Green is making the deal of the century with for a natural resource that will make the Quantum organisation rich beyond imagination. Camile wants the General because he killed her family and Bond wants Green so that he can find out why Vesper betrayed him. Two messed up characters, two acts of revenge and we get to see a lot of sh*t blown up by people in beautiful clothes in exotic locations. Great stuff.
Many have criticised this film for being plot less and too short. However, I say that what this film does well is realise a longer vision. The plot and character development were both done in Casino Royale so this film is all about revenge and endgame, no matter what lengths Bond has to go to. Probably, Broccoli and co. should have filmed CR and QoS back-to-back and released them within weeks of each other, but considering the current crisis they are facing, this point seems quite redundant.
Casino Royale (2006)
It's about bloody time
Anyone who saw Die Another Day will probably agree that Brocolli and co., with the help of Madonna and 'too sexy for the screen' Halle Berry, nearly flogged the Bond horse to death through a strong cocktail of crap stunts, smarm, crap effects and yet more smarm. Since then, the horse not only died, but it has been left to fester. Thankfully, Daniel Craig is the breath of fresh air that the franchise has been looking for and the smell of rotting cheese can now blow away and leave us with the sophisitcated scent of sex and death.
Casino Royale is an intelligently written and directed movie that begins at the beginning. Much like Nolan's Batman Begins, Bond begins again. And, much like the new Batman, Bond is no longer ageless and timeless: he has a history and is, in this film and at this stage of his life, unborn; he is but a fledgling 00 agent, one who is still to cut his teeth.
Craig's Bond is chiselled and, unlike his predecessors, actually looks like he could kill a man with his bare hands. He wears a suit very well, but only when necessary, unlike Roger Moore who would wear one in the bath. Craig's Bond challenges the long-standing Bond genre as it is he who walks out of the sea in barely a swimsuit and it is the female audience members who swoon. He delivers lines like: (in response to being asked 'shaken or stirred?') 'Do I look like I give a damn?' with just the right amount of frost to make us want to look below the surface of a historically sterile character and find his heart and a soul, which is far more interesting than watching an over-the-hill Brosnan surf across a glacier of erupting ice or battle the power of the sun.
Casino Royale begins with the bodging of a fairly routine capture and question mission, a quite stunning footchase through a Madagaskern building site where Bond pursues the mega-dexterous Sebastien Foucan (a world champion street runner) and a subsequent kicking of the backside by M, played again by the wonderful Judi Dench. Bond is to 'stick his head in the sand' while she considers his future. So he does, and goes to the Bahamas on a holiday
and to follow a lead salvaged from the said botched chase and capture. From here it's off to Miami, Montenegro, Venice, Lake Como and then, surely, back to Blighty for cocktails. However, it's not that simple. Along the way he meets Vesper, his first and only love. By competing in a one hundred and fifty million dollar poker game against the bad guy, Le Chiffre (Mads Mikkleson) he melts Vesper's somewhat austere exterior and opens his cold heart, letting her past the 'fast smile and expensive watch' persona that we know and may have become a bit bored with. Bond is human, and in love, but he is to be betrayed by her; for what reason is an intriguing plot-twist and a direct link to the next: Quantum of Solace.
There is action, drama, love, revenge, gambling, drinking, expensive clothes, hotels, watches, locations and beautiful people – enough variety to keep even those totally sick of the Bond franchise entertained. There is also a torture scene where Bond's, ahem, 'pocket aces' are assaulted in a way that would make even a eunuch remember and empathise.
Despite a serious ball ache, the horse is alive and well and out for revenge.
Inglourious Basterds (2009)
Personally, I love Tarentino.
It's hard not to like Tarentino, isn't it? The aplomb and charsima with which he conveys brain-exploding sequences of tension mixed with violence, or violence mixed with tension, with just enough humour to make us laugh nervously is stylised and unique. In many ways, he has become his own genre. Surely this, at some point, must or will go to his head? Inglorious Basterds sees the big Q getting a bit carried away with... well, just about everything. Some scenes run on for far longer than they should and the soundtrack races far past his usual post of 'quirky' and 'hip' and keeps rolling to 'just plain strange'. In one of the film's many tragedies the chosen song is quite clearly in no way affiliated with the genre of the film or the tone of the scene. This seems to matter little to Tarentino – it's as if he thinks we are happy to take a bit of 80s rock ballad with our World War II Flying Fist of Judaism revenge film because, after all, he is Quentin Tarentino.
This is a revenge fantasy war film set in the Second World War where a dirty dozen-type-platoon, led by Brad Pitt's Aldo Raine, is dropped into occupied France to brutalise and terrify the Nazis, and eventually to assassinate a number of high-ranking SS officers, including Hitler, in a cinema. Before this, however, the Basterds will 'collect one hundred Nazi scalps' to petrify the hell out of any Nazi soldier daft enough to believe that Hell is not where they are headed anyway.
It is not hard to feel an intense support for Pitt's boys, and this feeling is heightened all the more after having met Christoph Waltz's Col. Landa, the Jew hunter, in the first scene of the film. In a charismatic smile and a stare of cold efficiency, Waltz captures the polished leather and lapels of the administrative Nazi; his sense of self-authority oozes from every pore of his being. He is so fantastically overbearing in his authority that I have never in my life watched a man eat a strudel and feel as tense as I did in one key scene from this film. This is the man that the Basterds must avoid... Ha! Of course, they meet, of course the tension and violence Quentin-meter shoots back up into the red and we remember why we love Mr T so much.
Due to the ultra-graphic nature of the final slaughter scenes, some have called this film 'Kosher porn'. I disagree. Many of us gentiles will watch the cleansing of the Nazis with a similar 'well, they deserved it' smile. This, I think, is the most interesting thing about this film. It makes us ask the question: what, really, does this say about us? Overall, Inglorious Basterds is beautifully shot, majestically edited, painfully funny and violent at the same time and it makes us question the nature of justice. Is it a nice neat courtroom and a well-carpentered gallows, or is the fiery bullet-soaked hell of a burning room where criminals slowly melt into the floor and metal of red-backed theatre house chairs? With the right soundtrack, it could be anything Quentin wants it to be.
French Connection II (1975)
Big Boots To Fill.
Well, it's safe to say that, obviously, this is not as good as the first film. It misses plenty of the grime, grit and rust of the 1971 classic. However, there are good things to be had and some engaging moments to be drawn into.
'Popeye' Doyle is in Marseilles to track down his Moby Dick, Charnier, and he wants revenge for the collar he didn't make back in New York. We are not told how Charnier got away but just that Doyle's obsessive and violent behaviour led to the death of a policeman (Doyle shot him!) and that the Marseilles cops don't want much to do with him because of it. For this, it seems, he is sidelined and left out of the French connection(!) between his own department and the hunt for Charnier.
Actually, unbeknownst to Doyle, it is he who is the bait for the great whale. This leads to the most interesting thing about the film: Doyle is caught by his whale and made to take heroine. Over a period of three weeks he is subjected to regular fixes and then dumped in front of Marseilles' police station. Ironically, this brings Doyle closer to the Marseilles police as they support him as he goes through withdrawal. This, Hackman does with great fervour and energy. For the first time ever, I saw a character played by Hackman cry! Seriously, has anyone else ever seen him do this in another film? I cannot think of one. His performance inspires sympathy on a number of levels; mostly, I feel, because the great rage that once drove Popeye seems to have been eaten out of him by the skag and all that remains is a shrivelled up crying mess - the hero with an insatiable appetite for justice that we remember from the first film has been beaten out of him.
Unfortunately, this is probably the best thing about the film. It is, otherwise, a pretty standard action thriller with some seriously heavy laurels to rest upon. Hackman wasn't sure about making a sequel four years after as he thought that it was too late to make a success out of it. Maybe he should have trusted his gut the way he did when performing the cold turkey scenes. We would be without a fine performance, but we'd also have lived with it.
Dinner Rush (2000)
Dessert is a dish best written patiently.
Imagine sitting in one of New York's up and coming Italian restaurants, sipping an espresso with some cracking jazz music playing, and watching a pretty damned interesting story unfold. At the main table sits Louis Cropa (Danny Aiello) with his personal assistant. Louis owns the joint and is being intimidated by Black and Blue, two highly contrasting gangsters (despite their names) who want a piece of this highly lucrative business, which is only making this much money in the first place because of Udo, Louis' son, played by Edoardo Ballerini, a super-talented fame hungry chef who is waiting to be given ownership by his father. Not only this, but the souschef chef, Duncan (Louis' favourite chef) is a gambler who owes Black and Blue money, lots of it. AND there's a strange guy at the bar who is watching all of this unfold.
We float around the restauraunt and share in each of the main characters' plights and observing some spectacular looking food being made by tense and lightening fast cooks. We watch through medium shots as if we are at a number of tables around the place, talking with the waitresses and laughing with the bartender as he plays some fun general knowledge games with punters. In fact, the waitresses' night is just as interesting as the main protagonists'. They get hassle galore from pretentious customers who treat them as second class citizens, one customer actually says 'Doesn't it bother you when they (waitresses) tell you their names?' in full earshot of a waitresses name that now escapes me. Nice. Still, it makes for compelling viewing. And of course, amidst and around all of this we still have Louis and Udo, Black and Blue and Duncan getting through the night in various ways. It is this toing and froing between the main plot and the waitresses' subplot that keeps this film vibrant and interesting. We don't mind being pulled away from the main action as it unfolds and are happy to be patient in waiting for the finale.
The end, where a man is shot in the basement toilets makes and nearly breaks the film. It is gratifying and yet badly planned. Considering that it is a professional hit, you would think that they would wait until the mark had left the place and then kill them in an alleyway or something. This does not kill the film by any stretch, but it does leave the end up in the air in more than one way. Still, don't let that stop you from finding out who dies and how and what for; it's a dessert worth waiting for.
Not bad for 21 days' filming!
The French Connection (1971)
Sublimly gritty.
The most obviously beautiful thing about this film is that it captures the grime of 70s New York city so well. The picture is filmed through some kind of more-real-than-real tint-and-grain camera lense that chills the very room you sit in; wafts of car fumes, frozen street vomit and burnt onions stream up your nostrils and stay there as the ominous and discordant soundtrack (sometimes more akin to a horror movie) attacks your sense of comfort.
We are in New York, 1971, and two tough-as-you-like narcotics cops, Hackman and Scheider, both modelled on real policemen whose story the film is based on, are about to stumble on something big. Popeye and Cloudy (Hackman and Scheider) like to work hard and party hard, which is where the film really begins: they spot a high roller rolling a bit too high and decide to tail him
all the way back to his paper shop. Little do they know, there is a much bigger catch than this paper-roller and it becomes one big game of NYCat and Le Petit Mouse as they get closer to the French connection.
We are taken through freezing cold days and nights of watching the bad guys with Popeye and Cloudy where the French baddies do little more than eat lunch and walk to and from expensive hotels. Yet, this is thrilling - to the last blistered foot and sauteed potato. And then, of course, there's the legendary car chase. What can be said about this that hasn't already been said, other than it was filmed entirely out of sequence and edited to Santana's 'Black Magic Woman'? A masterpiece of editing! The sheer fluidity and break-neckedness of the scene easily rivals Ronin, a much younger film with more technology and road permission, and Bullit, a slightly glossier and aged movie (by three years).
The book 'The French Connection' is a superb piece of journalistic literary non-fiction that depicts Popeye as a red-haired Irishman with a vicious temper and an unwavering dedication to his job – Hackman's performance reflects this beaufifully. The sheer doggedness of Hackman's Popeye makes compelling viewing. His grit and determination complements and reflects the setting of the film sublimely. Scheider is also great; he provides an excellent counterpoint to Hackman's scruffy, brutish, ask questions later persona.
Watch this film with an old, old, old glass of whiskey and some burnt onions in a hot dog bun.
No Country for Old Men (2007)
Terrifying.
No Country for Old Men is a terrifying insight into how the freedom to bounce around the USA, like a bad penny, can leave trails of destruction unimaginable to even the sturdiest of law enforcers.
The Cohen brothers use the wild and endless landscapes of America's south as the canvas for the calmest imaginable psychotic, Shagor, (Javier Bardem), the ageing and tired Sheriff Bell (Tommy Lee Jones) and country boy Llewelyn Moss' money triangle.
The trail begins and grows after Moss finds and runs away with two million in cash. Shagor is employed to track it down and Bell is chasing all concerned after cleaning up the finale of a drug deal gone bad. Bell realises that Moss needs protecting from his own greed as Shagor is a man familiar with taking the freedom to roam as synonymous with the freedom to kill.
The film is a work of art: silence and tension fill the gaps between the noise and death. It is also a metaphor for the reality of western freedom. A storm is brewing; money and freedom are its heart and men are the ones stirring up the wind and rain.
The Matrix Revolutions (2003)
And then the roof caved in
How can a series of films that began in such good faith, underpinned by some staggeringly heavy philosophical theory (Jean Baudrillard's Simulacrum) and heart-stopping ground-breaking visuals (the 'bullet time' visual effects) end with this: the final instalment of the Matrix trilogy? After watching Matrix Revolutions I went back to the first film and realised that with some time, distance and a little bit of 'God, wow, I loved the bit when
' we easily forget about the first film's wooden acting and its glittering bag of Hollywood prerequisites: a totally needless love interest, one man saving the whole world against all the odds, some unbelievably cheesy lines and a moment of 'happy ending'-ness that nearly ruined the whole gig SPOILER (Reeves is kissed back to life... *sighs* for God's sake). It is these things that repeat and outweigh all of the many positives of the third film.
We begin at the end-point of Matrix Reloaded: Neo the electronic knight is incapacitated; a new threat is descending on a weakened and somewhat demoralised rebel fleet and the new bad guy, the Architect, knows how this will all end as he has seen it. Ostensibly, we are watching a mix of The Empire Strikes Back and Return of the Jedi. Betwixt all the action is a large and dense bag of philosophy and mysticism that inspires the mind and evokes conversation akin to those 'under the influence of choice' moments where we talk about what is real and what is perception. Unfortunately, we just can't see it in this film for all the running up walls and such.
The Architect, it turns out, is the antithesis of the Oracle, the former being the mathematical foundation of the matrix and the latter reading tea bags and frying our noodles with puzzling quotes like: Would you still have knocked over the vase if I hadn't mentioned it? They are pretty much the Ying and Yang of the matrix and are battling for peace
the irony. Neo is the Oracle's main man and Agent Smith was the Architect's. Smith has now gone AWOL, has unplugged himself and is out for Neo, infecting other programs and making them into carbon copies of himself in order to build an army.
For me, there is too much time spent outside the matrix and in the real world where an unwinnable war between man and machine takes place in all its Independence Day glory. Cheesy quotes like: Your move. Give them hell. Damn, that woman can drive. and Goddamit are in abundance and the goddamed love story between Neo and Trinity blocks up the holes where the good stuff threatens to shine through. The rebel fleet never made sense anyway (when you recall Morpheus' tone and words to Neo in the first film), but by this point I was far past caring about being convinced; I just wanted out.
How to conclude? Overall, watch the first film again, ignore the cheese as best you can and then forget the next two films ever happened. Read Jean Baudrillard's Simulacra and Simulation and fry your noodle, because the Matrix: Reloaded and Revolutions will fail to do this for you on all counts.
I Am Legend (2007)
Boyle 1. Lawrence 0.
Now, being British may be used in the future as a way to deride this review by claiming its author is bias. But, when the politics of the United Kingdom are taken into account i.e. the English and Scottish disliking each other immensely, I am sure this will considered and the objectivity of this review will be placed, without a scratch upon it, back into the pages of 'down the middle' journalism. I am English and Danny Boyle is Scottish, yet I will not let that influence my thinking.
Still, it is a time to be bold - he who dares wins and all that. And I believe I am being bold when I say:
I am Legend is not as good as 28 Days Later!
And, furthermore, I am absolutely beguiled in how I am Legend didn't learn from or even seem to acknowledge the stylistic and atmospheric achievements of 28 Days Later and made New York look like a legion of Hollywood designers came in and made the place over. London has never looked so empty and abandoned (and down right chilling) as it did in Boyle's crack at the Armageddon whip. It looked real. New York looked like it had been redesigned.
I am Legend is as good as 28 Weeks Later since it has an as highly implausible plot and unbelievable ending. One is infinitely more Hollywood than the other, although 28 Weeks Later has its moments - a helicopter decapitating hordes of Zombies. Ahem. Right. I am Legend is tense and somewhat imaginative, yet the baddies look quite false in comparison to the real baddies of 28DL and 28WL, who were not CGI'd. What is it with directors and CGI? Are humans not good enough anymore? Do we have to be replaced by something virtual every damned time? George Lucas seems to think so and Lawrence has apparently jumped on that flaming and sinking bandwagon.
Anyway, technically speaking, the camera work and vision of Francis Lawrence (Constantine being another visual treat of his) feels like any second it could pierce the bubble of what directors are allowed to do because it'll appeal to the mainstream audience and into what he might do in order to make it a more consistent and intelligent looking film. Putting aside the huge problems with the story and script, he would at least of been able to claim that with the sound muted it looked like some seriously good stuff. This may sound snobby and like a dismissal of the mainstream audience, but when the film finished in my local Odeon, laughter could be heard from all corners of the theatre; not because Smith ended it with a Fresh Prince like pose and an exclamation that he was indeed the Man, but because throughout the film the sound was not muted and it not only didn't look that great, but it sounded pretty bad too. Although, saying that, Lawrence did dare to use a body-mounted camera to depict Smith's panic at being chased through a building and onto the street, but it was only once and didn't seem to fit in anywhere. In contrast, Boyle used a whole host of shots, in 28DL, ranging from the jittery first person zombie dash to the super sharp and slightly shaky long view when Murphy was being chased through the broken and grey streets of London. Boyle was consistent and even with the sound off 28DL looks terrifying.
Smith does an adequate to good job of portraying a man on the brink of losing his grip. He clings to his old life through trying to build a new one as well as following a strong routine. Smith shows us a range of emotions, but in an emotional rather than an intelligent way. He uses the same physical gestures and tones of voice that he has in all of his other films. Angry? Time to shout and point in someone's face. There, that'll do it. This is not the work of a master, yet it is the work of someone who knows how to cry just a little bit. In contrast to this, Cillian Murphy, as directed by the wonderful Danny Boyle captures a man lost in a new world that he had no idea existed (being in a coma for 28 days; hence the title). He adapts as humans do, through tears and demanding to have just enough information to formulate an understanding of what he now has to do. He takes to killing well and shows us how close we are to being rage fuelled loons through realistic reactions and not shouting unless someone is quite far away and they can't hear him otherwise.
The crux of the matter for I am Legend is simply, to sum up, that it didn't look believable which didn't help the thin plot and awful ending. Awful because after an hour and forty minutes the audience, me included, lost all traces of what seemed reasonable and felt that our intelligence was being insulted terribly. At least with 28DL you could walk away thinking that the last bad tasting twenty minutes of total gore could easily be swallowed if washed down by the first hour and forty of splendour and intelligent film-making. Film making that was quite daring and experimental and still managed to do well.