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LeTiss
Reviews
Entrapment (1999)
Sean, you're better at supporting
Entrapment, by trying hard not to be a stereotypical summer blockbuster and developing a decent plot with well worked twists, actually comes off worse for it. It isn't quite sure whether it wants to be an action movie, a heist movie or a sneaky espionage-type movie. So it tries to be all of these. And it doesn't quite work.
Here is the tale. Sean Connery plays an ageing but still very successful art thief. Catherine Zeta Jones appears as the insurance investigator charged with capturing him. Is she all she appears to be, though? Is he?
Her plan is to present herself as a potential protege so as to be taken into his schemes. She is, of course, successful. She soon demonstrates a developed ability at thievery that should have set a few alarm bells ringing, or rather keep them silent.
Anyway, the suggestion is that she is a professional who has infiltrated the insurance company to use them as a legitimate cover to nick lots of nice bits and bobs. The on screen relationship between Sean and Cathy is a little more sensible then you usually get - he is, after all, old enough to be her grandfather.
But in the end it is that wily old Scottish National Party supporter who comes up short. He just isn't quite right in the role. It's not that he's too old or that she's too young. He just isn't right.
The Mummy (1999)
Not quite Indiana Jones and the Lost City in the Sand
The Mummy is a bit like how Indiana Jones might have looked if Hammer had made it with a big budget. Of course, it has rather more humour than Hammer would muster but it is an American summer blockbuster. What is surprising for a summer hit is that it is coherent and has a plot, albeit a simple one.
It is 4000BC and Egypt is mighty. A great pharaoh rules and beside him his concubine, whom none but the monarch may so much as touch. Ah! But envy, lust and greed conspire against the pharaoh and he discovers his beautiful concubine trying on the head priest for size. Oh but what's this? They love each other, they say. Tough, says the pharaoh. Oops, scratch one pharaoh. Then scratch one head priest and concubine at the hands of the vengeful bodyguards. But death is not enough for the head priest. He is cursed to be the living dead.
Still here, okay, jump forward to 1929, take one ex-foreign legionnaire just in from the desert with a treasure map showing the way to an ancient Egyptian necropolis, add one fresh faced, pretty English archaeologist and her roguish brother, and send them all off to find the loot.
Of course, other parties are interested in the booty and nobody knows that amongst the loot is the cursed tomb. Right next to the loot actually. So close in fact that it is mistaken for it and the silly lot open the head priest's sarcophagus. From here on in it is monsters, chases and, rather interestingly, plagues.
The gradual regeneration of the mummy from rotting corpse to general bad character at large is a triumph of computer work - no plodding baddie wrapped in rotting bandages here, you know. Brendan Fraser's character is a bit thin but he performs well enough. Rachel Weisz is very good but then her character has a bit more, er, character. Okay, the idea is preposterous and the people only semi believable, but it is fun and has a plot. That, in the summer, is very rare indeed.
The Truman Show (1998)
TV movie
Supposedly, this was the film Jim Carrey needed to make. That as may be but was he really the right man for the job. Carrey has carved a career as a rubber faced comic actor who acts at the top of his voice a lot, but the Truman Show demands he portray what at first seems a mid-life crisis but later develops into full paranoia, albeit justified.
Meet Truman Burbank. He is the future of television. His show beams around the world 24 hours a day. Everyone loves Truman. People collect Truman memorabilia and videos. He has theme bars named after him. But Truman Burbank does not know any of this. He lives in a world populated by principal actors and extras. Truman's life is a carefully orchestrated soap opera. Controlled that is until he becomes dissatisfied with life and wants to move away from the sleepy island he calls home. His repeated failure to get away arouses his suspicion that his life is not his own.
There are many faults in The Truman Show. For instance, onscreen the show's creator Christophe tells us the reason Truman is so popular with the audience is because his life is idyllic. Yet the character we meet is an insurance salesman living in fifties America. No offence intended to our American cousins, but it is never really explained why this irritatingly twee view of America should cross international cultural boundaries.
Another down side are the unsympathetic characters on display. This is surely due to the fact that everyone is playing a character who is playing a character. The only genuine person is Truman and he is played by Jim Carrey and, worse, has led a life so mind-numbingly normal as to be almost abnormal.
The good thing about The Truman Show is that the concept is very strong. Director Peter Weir brilliantly keeps up the Twilight Zone-style paranoia and the film is very well scripted. Despite being generally irritating, Carrey is not a disaster in the role and he does encourage you to sympathise with Truman.
Most of the philosophy spun regarding our TV watching generation comes across as a bit hackneyed, however the final scene of the movie sums up telly addicts the world over.
Elizabeth (1998)
A very good try
As soccer legend Eric Cantona's former colleagues might say this is a film of two halves. Despite an intimidating opening scene, the first half soon settles down to establishing who everyone is - the bad guys drip malevolence, while the good guys dance in gay meadows. It is not until the second half that the politics and intrigue really get going.
The film opens in England, circa 1550s. The country is divided, half of the population pledging allegiance to the childless catholic Queen Mary who is dying, while the other half attempt to place their protestant liege, Elizabeth, on the throne.
Mary dies before providing an heir so the monarchy automatically passes to Elizabeth. However, she inherits a rebellious court keen to see her removed and a catholic monarch installed. Fortunately for Elizabeth, there are not enough candidates for the job. While, the evil Duke of Norfolk plots to put himself and Mary, Queen of Scots on the English throne, Elizabeth's supporters rush around trying to find her a suitable international king.
The crux comes when she declares she is only interested in her English lover, Lord Robert Dudley. When her enemies learn of this, they try to drive a wedge between them. And from this premise the real intrigue flows.
In terms of characterisation, the film scores some hits and some misses. Some curious casting decisions undermine a few of the characters - working class mainstay Kathy Burke moves to the opposite end of the social spectrum to play Queen Mary, Brit comic Angus Deayton has an unnecessary cameo, while Eric Cantona seems an odd choice, although his performance seems adequate.
As to the main characters, Elizabeth (Cate Blanchett) is well charted from gamboling youth to ice-hard queen. The black loyalty of Sir Francis Wolsingham (Geoffrey Rush) is tested time and again and never found wanting, allowing him to grow from mistrusted bodyguard to Queen's adviser.
Unfortunately the Queen's enemies are so numerous it is difficult to focus on one. Michael Hirst, the writer, chooses the Duke of Norfolk as the chief villain but we never really learn why, or what his plans, beyond unseating Elizabeth, are. Christopher Ecclestone plays the Duke with the right amount of menace but we are never truly intimidated by his smouldering glare. Lord Robert (Joseph Fiennes) is an equally confused character. Is he guilty of the crimes he is accused of? Does he love the queen? Some of his behaviour suggests he does not, yet he constantly returns to her claiming he does. The uncertainty generated by Lord Robert is compounded by the fact that Joseph Fiennes does not belong in this film.
Beyond the characters, many of the films finest moments come in the form of the brightly coloured set pieces - when the court takes to the boat lake, the arrival of the french prince and the coronation. Some of the blacker scenes also serve very well - the aftermath of the battle, the plotting in the Vatican.
Despite the fine art direction, what we are eventually left with is a sumptuous, well made film let down by a slow start and a few undefined characters.
The Avengers (1998)
Sean, what are you doing?
It is possible that the producers of The Avengers sat director Jeremiah Chernik down and said: 'Jez, we don't care what it's about, just make it look good.' In which case, he gets a B minus for effort, if not for imagination.
In attempting to conquer content with style, Chernik had two choices - originality or iconography. Unfortunately the TV series was able to take on both, Chernik opts only for icons. And they are all here - red phone boxes, E-type Jaguars, Mrs Peel's boots, English gardens, bullet proof pinstripe suits and a megalomaniac seeking world domination by means so peculiar they wouldn't make a James Bond script. Essentially we are left with sets that look wonderful and feel as though they belong in the Avengers universe. It is not here that the film fails.
Ralph Fiennes seems uncomfortable and plays Steed far too uptight. Surprisingly, Uma Thurman as Mrs Peel copes quite well with the English accent. However, neither actor is helped by a poor script with badly fleshed out characters and a weak plot.
The story, by the way, sees former secret agent superbrain Sir August de Wynter (Sean Connery) forcing retail weather on the world governments. British agent John Steed recruits former weather boffin Dr Mrs Emma Peel to stop him. A few unexplained leaps of logic later our courageous two take turns at being captured, sparring with Sir August and battling various silent heavies. It is almost as if the film is missing twenty minutes and if you have seen the cinema trailer you will realise plenty of it did not make the final cut. Perhaps it should have.
The fault for this film being poor can be laid at the writer's feet, as the acting performances are as good as could be expected and the production design is actually first rate. The director should take some blame for failing to notice he had no story to work with.
As a summer blockbuster goes it meets all expectations, simply because we no longer expect them to be about anything.