Review – Safe (2012)

Director: Boaz Yakin

Starring: Jason Statham, Catherine Chan, Chris Sarandon

SafeThe only difference between Safe and every other Jason Statham movie is that it is the one with the little girl in it. That is not meant to be a knock on Statham, just a way of acknowledging that he is a guy who knows what he is good at so keeps doing it. Statham is, today, what so many of his Expendables co-stars were 20-30 years ago. He is one of the last in a dying breed of Hollywood tough guys. After starting out in Guy Ritchie’s Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels and Snatch, Statham has carved out a career for himself in short-titled action movies like The Transporter, Crank, Death Race and The Mechanic. In Safe we get more of the same.

This time around Statham plays Luke Wright, who upon spotting a little girl hiding from some big, scary looking dudes appoints himself her protector. What he doesn’t know is this little girl is a maths prodigy who knows the combination of numbers required to open a safe containing $30million. This piece of knowledge places her square in the middle of a fight between the Triads, the Russian mafia and a unit of corrupt New York cops (you can just imagine the light bulb moment when the producer tossing up whether to do Statham vs. the Triads, Statham vs. the Russian Mafia or Statham vs. corrupt cops thought, “Why not do all three?”). However, what none of them know is that Luke Wright is a highly trained, cage-fighting, ex-elite agent who specialises in taking out the garbage. Chaos, chases and butt-kicking ensues.

Statham is the best going around at what he does, but while what he does would have seen him headlining some of the year’s biggest blockbusters in the 1980s and 1990s, today it means catering to a niche market. You know what you’re getting with a Jason Statham movie, and Safe delivers just that, nothing more and nothing less. The teaming up of Statham with a little girl attempts to give the movie a heart and provides a comic touch without falling into the goofball territory that the ‘tough-guys and kids’ movies of The Rock, Vin Diesel and Hulk Hogan tend to find themselves in, but really Safe does nothing to distinguish itself from the rest.

Rating – ★★★

Review by Duncan McLean

Review – R.I.P.D. (2013)

Director: Robert Schwentke

Starring: Ryan Reynolds, Jeff Bridges, Kevin Bacon, Mary-Louise Parker, Stephanie Szostak, Marisa Miller, James Hong

RIPDR.I.P.D. is the ‘new’ movie from Universal which you can’t help but feel like you’ve seen before. While it is, like every second aspiring blockbuster these days, an adaptation of a graphic novel, most viewers will recognise it as some combination of Men in Black and Ghostbusters with a little bit of Ghost tossed in for romantic interest.

The R.I.P.D. is the Rest in Peace Department, a team of elite but deceased law enforcers from throughout history who are charged with tracking down ‘deados,’ individuals who have passed away but have somehow managed to avoid judgement and continue to live on Earth incognito. Nick is a young Boston Policeman who is killed in the line of duty only to be called up to the RIPD while seemingly on his way to a place he didn’t want to go. At R.I.P.D. he is partnered up with Wild West lawman, Marshall Roysephus Pulsipher, who will show him the ropes. But Nick has picked an unfortunate moment to start his new job, because the deados are planning something which could change the world forever.

The odd-couple pairing for a buddy cop movie doesn’t get more odd than a 21st century Boston cop and a 19th century Wild West Marshall, but the success of buddy cop comedies invariably comes down to chemistry and Reynolds and Bridges don’t seem to have it. Rather than playing the quick-talking, wise-cracking role Will Smith took opposite the stony-faced Tommy Lee Jones in Men in Black, Ryan Reynolds finds himself largely playing the straight man in this movie, with much of the (attempted) comedy coming from Bridges. The Academy Award winner – I feel it is appropriate to remind you at this point that Bridges does have an Oscar – appears to be enjoying himself playing for laughs as Roy, doing a hammier version of his Rooster Cogburn from True Grit with a drawl that is equally difficult to understand.

Familiarity isn’t necessarily a problem. One of the keys to the success of a blockbuster movie is striking the right balance of the familiar and the different. Audiences want to have a reasonable idea of what they’re getting themselves into. They want to recognise things – that is why people have favourite genres and favourite actors – and then they want to be surprised by the little ways in which this one is different. R.I.P.D. falls way too far on the familiar side of the ledger though. Everything from the premise and the characters to the storyline and the outcome feels generic and rehashed. While it can rustle up a few laughs and has its share of 3D CGI spectacle, it is largely pretty boring. You are always two steps ahead of this movie. You know what is going to happen because you’ve seen it all before.

Rating – ★★

Review by Duncan McLean

Review – Riddick (2013)

Director: David Twohy

Starring: Vin Diesel, Jordi Molla, Matt Nable, Katee Sackhoff, Dave Bautista

RiddickFor all the limitations Vin Diesel may possess as an actor, he definitely has a talent for getting sequels made. In the same year that saw the sixth instalment in the Fast & Furious franchise we also get Riddick, the third in the sci-fi thriller series that started back in 2000 with Pitch Black.

After an unpopular detour into the fantasy genre with 2004’s The Chronicles of Riddick, Riddick attempts a return to the simple formula which made Pitch Black a hit. Once again, the Furyan killing machine Richard B. Riddick is fighting for survival on an unknown hostile planet. In the films overly long opening passage, we watch a lone Riddick employing his survival skills in dangerous desert terrain. We see him fight off aggressive aliens, treat his own injuries, and adopt an alien dog as his companion. This dull opening passage is accompanied by awful narration. This narration is absent from the films later passages where things are actually happening, and seems clearly to be the director’s acknowledgement that what we are seeing is not sufficient to maintain our interest.

Eventually Riddick stumbles across an abandoned supply station and activates a distress beacon. The signal, identifying the wanted Riddick as its source, draws two groups of respondents. One is a group of bounty hunters after his head, the other is a military squad after information. At this point the film undergoes a change in point of view. Our primary focus now becomes these respondents. After being the central focus of the first section of the film, Riddick becomes an ever present yet unseen menace who torments – and in some cases slightly more than torments – these new arrivals, in his efforts to commandeer one of their ships to escape. It is this passage of the film, where Riddick is the hunter seen only in glimpses, that is most engaging.

But time is not on Riddick’s side. A storm is coming and bringing with it a plague of giant scorpion-like aliens. So Riddick and his would-be captors have no choice but to join forces. As the plague of aliens descend on the characters cooped up in the small supply station, Riddick becomes very derivative of Aliens. Note that I specified Aliens, James Cameron’s gun-heavy, subtlety free sequel, rather than Ridley Scott’s suspense fuelled masterpiece Alien. Transitioning from the middle passage in which the danger, Riddick, could be anywhere, to this finale where the danger, aliens, is everywhere takes all of the tension out of the film. Your only reason to engage is if you care about the characters, and unfortunately even this late into the film you have been given no reason to.

Riddick is a film almost devoid of any likeable characters. There is no one you can comfortably side with. It is an action movie without a hero. Riddick himself is so violent in both his actions and his manner, and seems to take such joy from that violence, that it would be overly generous to suggest that he even qualifies for the status of an antihero. Even the decision to give him a dog, usually a sure fire way of humanising a character, can only do so much.

Not one for those with delicate sensibilities, Riddick is graphically violent and at times is downright offensive, particularly in the way it treats its only female character of substance, the military officer Dahl (played by Battlestar Galactica’s Katee Sackhoff), who despite being one of the most capable soldiers there is constantly subject to sexual baiting from all sides. This seems to be a movie to appease the fans who felt let down nine years ago by The Chronicles of Riddick, but won’t hold much interest for anyone else.

Rating – ★☆

Review by Duncan McLean

Review – All is Lost (2013)

Director: J.C. Chandor

Starring: Robert Redford

All is LostIt was once said that all a film needs for drama is two people having a conversation. Writer/director J.C. Chandor (Margin Call) seeks to prove that one of those people is redundant in his second feature, All is Lost, the tale of an ageing man alone at sea.

Our man is on a solo voyage in the Indian Ocean when his yacht collides with a shipping container that has fallen off a cargo ship. With his communications and navigational equipment ruined and his vessel taking on water, the resourceful man finds himself fighting to survive and at the mercy of the ocean.

All is Lost is a minimalist film. There is no fat on it. The film starts at the moment that the Virginia Jean starts to take on water and it finishes at the moment that we discover his final fate. It is a film unburdened by context and backstory. We know very little about this character outside of his immediate circumstances. We don’t know why he is out there. We don’t know if he has a family or not. We don’t know if he is a good person or a bad person. We don’t even know his name. All we know is that he is a human being and he is fighting for his life. And you know what? That is enough. That is all we actually require to care about this man and become invested in his situation. In a time where every reality television contestant comes complete with a tragic backstory of a hurdle they’ve overcome, a relative with terminal illness or a child they’re hoping to inspire, all designed to manipulate the emotions of an audience and cynically tug at their heart strings, it is refreshing to see the way that Chandor trusts his audience. He trusts his audience to care without needing to over-emotionalise the situation.

As the film’s lone character – credited simply as ‘Our Man’ – Robert Redford is compelling to watch. With no other characters to talk to, he hardly speaks a word in the film. Chandor’s faith in the audience to work things out for themselves means he doesn’t resort to having the character talk to himself. Nor does he include a narration to explain what he is thinking and feeling. Instead it is up to Redford’s face and his actions to do the talking. Where a more insecure actor may have given into the temptation to overact, Redford maintains an incredible subtlety. Our man is stoic and unemotive, which makes those moments when his resolve does break all the more powerful. But despite this stoicism we can always see that his mind is working, that he has a plan. It is a masterful performance from a Hollywood legend which should see him in the mix come award season.

All is Lost screened out of competition at the Cannes Film Festival this year, with Redford receiving a standing ovation for his performance. It is the type of film that is more likely to make its presence felt at film festivals than at the box office. The nature of Chandor’s film means that it is a less commercially attractive prospect than last year’s lost at sea film – the equally brilliant Life of Pi – but it is a powerful piece of filmmaking which really sticks in your mind.

Rating – ★★★★☆

Review by Duncan McLean

Review – Elysium (2013)

Director: Neill Blomkamp

Starring: Matt Damon, Jodie Foster, Sharlto Copley, Alice Braga, Diego Luna, Wagner Moura, William Fichtner

ElysiumWriter/director Neill Blomkamp made the world sit up and take notice in 2009 with District 9, a powerful allegory for apartheid era South Africa and one of the most original science fiction films in recent memory. The success of that film – it took $210 million worldwide off a $30 million budget – has afforded him a larger canvas for his second film, Elysium.

The year is 2154 and Earth is in ruins. Those who can afford it have moved off-planet, taking residence on a man-made habitat in Earth’s orbit called Elysium, where they protect their standard of living by using what’s left of Earth’s resources and protecting their borders from undesirables. On Earth we meet Max, a career criminal trying to live straight. A work accident sees him exposed to a severe dose of radiation, the result of which is he only has five days left to live. His only chance at making it is to get to Elysium.

Despite being a genuine Hollywood movie this time around (the budget is estimated at $115 million) with an A-list cast, Elysium maintains a similar feel to District 9. Again, Blomkamp is engaging in socially conscious science fiction. While Elysium is not as specific and allegorical in its focus as District 9, the film seeks to engage with a number of prominent social issues including the gap between the haves and have-nots, illegal immigration and the seeking of asylum, and the necessity of universal healthcare. It is difficult to imagine that a more overtly socialist Hollywood blockbuster has ever been made.

The film looks amazing. While Blomkamp mainly gets praised for his narrative and broader aesthetic, he is an adept user of CGI. Naturally, as a big-budget sci-fi blockbuster, Elysium contains its share of spectacle, but it is the subtle, unobtrusive way that the film employs CGI which is most impressive. One of the most effective uses of CGI is in the simple way that in the scenes on Earth we can see the distant figure of Elysium hanging in the sky. It has a strange beauty and you can imagine how its constant presence could serve as a torturous reminder to Earth’s impoverished inhabitants of the good life that is just out of reach.

This time around the story is set in America but Blomkamp retains the international flavour which was such a point of difference in District 9. The rundown Los Angeles setting, actually shot in Mexico City, possesses a similar dustbowl aesthetic to the Johannesburg shantytowns of District 9, and stands in stark contrast to the lush greenness of life on Elysium. Both on Earth and Elysium we hear multiple languages spoken. Sharlto Coply, the star of District 9 who is back as the vicious agent Kruger, is even allowed to speak in his natural South African accent.

Blomkamp had a hard act to follow after the success of District 9. Not only was that film so clever and brilliantly executed, it also had the advantage of being a complete surprise. Elysium, as one of the year’s most anticipated blockbusters, has no such luxury. Blomkamp’s offering doesn’t exceed expectations, but it does enough to satisfy them and is definitely the most original and interesting of the big-budget event movies we’ve seen this year.

Rating – ★★★★

Review by Duncan McLean

Review – There Be Dragons (2011)

Director: Roland Joffé

Starring: Charlie Cox, Wes Bentley, Dougray Scott, Olga Kurylenko, Rodrigo Santoro

There Be DragonsOpus Dei, meaning “the work of God,” is a secretive and somewhat controversial Catholic order whose public image has not been helped by its portrayal in Dan Brown’s The Da Vinci Code. The confusingly titled There Be Dragons provides an alternate, positive portrayal largely through its focus on the early life of the order’s founder, Saint Josemaria Escriva. This sympathetic portrayal is unsurprising given two of the film’s producers are Opus Dei members.

British director Roland Joffé hasn’t been at his best since the mid-1980s when he made The Killing Fields and The Mission back to back, getting Oscar nominations for both. But he has always been willing to explore Christian and spiritual themes in his filmmaking, particularly against historical backdrops. This made There Be Dragons, which explores themes of forgiveness, conscience and the morality of war against the backdrop of the Spanish Civil War, a perfect match for him.

There Be Dragons parallels the stories of two childhood friends, one a saint and one a sinner, during the Spanish Civil War: Josemaria Escriva, a priest forced to flee Spain over the Pyrenees in order to escape persecution, and Manolo Torres, a spy who has infiltrated a group of fascist rebels. Of the two it is Manolo, a fictional character introduced by Joffé, who becomes the real protagonist despite being unlikeable. This is problematic as his character lacks clarity, you don’t know what motivates him, and therefore he is difficult to emotionally engage with. Escriva is also a very simplistic, two-dimensional character. He never seems to be conflicted about making what should be difficult decisions to do the right thing in the face of terrible situations, which reduces the emotional impact of the stance he takes.

There Be Dragons struggles to overcome a convoluted story which lacks context and clarity. The Spanish Civil War was a complicated conflict involving fascists, communists and anarchists, but There Be Dragons doesn’t give you enough insight into the ideology of the conflict. So unless you have the required prior knowledge, you don’t really understand where our central characters fit on the ideological spectrum. Similarly, unless you already have an understanding of Opus Dei, it is not until the epilogue that you are informed about the significance of Escriva. So while the picture has some quite impressive moments, particularly visually, the fact that you don’t gain any particular insight into either Opus Dei or the Spanish Civil War is disappointing.

Rating – ★☆

Review by Duncan McLean

Review – The Place Beyond the Pines (2012)

Director: Derek Cianfrance

Starring: Ryan Gosling, Bradley Cooper, Dane DeHaan, Emory Cohen, Eva Mendes, Ben Mendelsohn, Rose Byrne, Ray Liotta

Place Beyond the PinesIn 2010 Derek Cianfrance announced himself as a rising filmmaker to watch with the critical hit Blue Valentine, an intimate and emotional exploration of the beginning and the end of a marriage. His latest film, the sombre drama The Place Beyond the Pines – which takes its title from the Mohawk Indian name for Schenectady, the location of the films events – is a very ambitious project. The film is an epic, multi-generational morality tale of guilt, responsibility and consequence told in three distinct but interrelated sections.

The first section, and the most engaging of the three, concerns stunt motorcycle rider Luke played by Ryan Gosling. When Luke’s circus pulls into Schenectady, he discovers that he has an infant son in the town from his visit a year earlier. This discovery sparks a paternal instinct in him and, determined to provide for his child, he sets about robbing banks, with his skills on a motorbike provng handy for getting away. Gosling and Cianfrance worked together on Blue Valentine and they appear to bring out the best in each other, as Gosling is engrossing to watch in this role.

In the second section Luke is left behind and our focus turns to young policeman Avery Cross played by Bradley Cooper. A chance encounter with Luke thrusts Cross into the spotlight. An ambitious man, Cross finds himself on a path which will lead all the way to the office of District Attorney, along which his morals are constantly being tested. Bradley Cooper showed in Silver Linings Playbook that he does possess some acting chops and his performance as a conflicted and guilt-ridden man, while not as electric as Goslings, carries the middle section of the film.

Unfortunately Cianfrance’s film loses some momentum with its final section. Set fifteen years later, this section focuses on the sons of Luke and Avery, exploring the ways in which the influences of their fathers’ actions play out in their lives. The storyline becomes messier in this closing section. You feel a narrative shift as what had been an organic story seems to make way for what the filmmaker wants to tell us. With the focus in this closing episode being shared between the two young characters, AJ and Jason, as well as an older Avery in the process of running for District Attorney, it lacks the concentrated focus of the earlier sections.

The Place Beyond the Pines is beautifully shot by Sean Bobbitt and through these four male characters it offers an interesting exploration of masculinity, but ultimately this admirable film doesn’t quite achieve Cianfrance’s lofty ambitions. It appears to be a case of the filmmaker’s reach exceeding his grasp. Some of the lines and narrative connections the film draws just feel a bit too neat. Is the destiny of the two sons as inescapable as the film wants us to believe? Can what the film wants us to accept as fate at times be more appropriately attributed to coincidence? The attempt to engage with the age old concept of the sins of the father being visited upon the son means that what starts out seemingly as a realist story ends up becoming something more akin to classical tragedy.

Rating – ★★★☆

Review by Duncan McLean

Review – Act of Valor (2012)

Directors: Mouse McCoy, Scott Waugh

Starring: Nestor Serrano, Alex Veadov, Jason Cottle

Act of ValorAct of Valor is a propaganda film in disguise, and not much of a disguise at that. Originally intended as a recruitment film before developing into a more traditional war film, it was made with the participation of the US Navy SEALs and is dedicated to all those Navy SEALs that have died in active duty since 9/11 (and their names all appear on screen).

The story – a fictional tale based on “real life acts of valor” but at the same time seemingly taken straight from the big book of war movie clichés – follows an elite team of Navy SEALs whose covert mission to recover a kidnapped CIA agent becomes a mission to stop a terrorist attack on the USA.

The involvement of the military in the film is really Act of Valor’s defining feature. All of the marketing for the film emphasises the fact that the Navy SEAL characters in the film are played by real life Navy SEALs, as though that were a good thing. While this means they are very comfortable doing soldier things, other aspects like character development and dramatic tension are lacking as a result of some of the most wooden acting you’ll ever see.

The strength of this film, however, is the authenticity of its action sequences. The battle and procedural sequences are impressive in a non-Hollywood kind of way. The authenticity – or what appears to be authenticity to someone who wouldn’t really know what authentic military action looks like – is where the involvement of the Navy SEALs really brings something to the film. The film captures some quite impressive manoeuvres involving helicopters, boats, trucks and submarines. The action sequences do, however, feature a great deal of first-person camera angles making it look like a videogame, which has me thinking perhaps it was intended specifically to recruit Call of Duty gamers.

While this sense of authenticity guarantees that Act of Valor does have some redeeming features, the extreme hands-on-hearts American patriotism will likely be off-putting for most non-American viewers.

Rating – ★

Review by Duncan McLean

Review – Jesus Henry Christ (2012)

Director: Dennis Lee

Starring: Jason Spevack, Toni Collette, Michael Sheen, Samantha Weinstein

Jesus Henry ChristOver the last decade and a bit the quirky, dysfunctional family ‘dramedy’ has been a staple of the American Indie cinema. With the provocatively titled Jesus Henry Christ, writer and director Dennis Lee again ventures into this familiar territory.

The film revolves around four suitably oddball characters. Henry is a child genius who has the amazing ability to remember perfectly everything he has ever seen. He lives with his over-protective single mother, who he simply calls Patricia, whose cautiousness results from having lost her mother and elder siblings to a series of ridiculous accidents. Henry’s quest to discover the identity of his father brings them into contact with Dr. Slavkin O’Hara, the university professor who is potentially Henry’s sperm donor father, and his daughter Audrey, a stone-faced teenager suitably messed up after having been used as a real life subject in her father’s research on the social programming of gender.

Beneath this surface level of quirky characters and witty dialogue, at the heart of the film is a comparatively straight forward central theme: the importance to family to one’s sense of identity. All of these four central characters are suffering as a result of a missing connection to a father or mother or sibling.

Obviously shooting for a deadpan vibe somewhere between Little Miss Sunshine and the films of Wes Anderson, where Jesus Henry Christ falls short is that its relentless pursuit of quirkiness and wit doesn’t allow for any believability. If a film can’t get you to suspend your disbelief enough to accept what you are seeing as being on some level real you simply won’t care about the characters enough to truly empathise, and unfortunately that is what happens here.

Jesus Henry Christ just doesn’t quite hit the mark. It is quirky and oddball without every really being funny and it is thought provoking without ever being really moving.

Rating – ★★

Review by Duncan McLean

Review – The Big Wedding (2013)

Director: Justin Zackham

Starring: Robert De Niro, Diane Keaton, Susan Sarandon, Katherine Heigl, Amanda Seyfried, Topher Grace, Ben Barnes, Robin Williams

Big WeddingThere was a time when a film starring Robert De Niro, Diane Keaton, Susan Sarandon and Robin Williams would have raised a bit of interest. But with recent all-star comedies like Valentine’s Day and New Year’s Eve consistently underwhelming and proving to be considerably less than the sum of their parts, it is understandable that The Big Wedding is approached with a great deal of scepticism. While Justin Zackham’s remake of the 2006 French Film Mon frère se marie (My Brother is Getting Married) is more of a traditional farce than yet another multiple-plotline, Love Actually imitation, the scepticism is unfortunately warranted.

Long divorced couple Don and Ellie Griffin are forced to pretend to be happily married once again when their adopted son Alejandro announces that his ultra-conservative Catholic biological mother is unexpectedly flying in from Columbia for his wedding, and confesses that he never informed her of their separation for fear of offending her beliefs. Add in a step mother who is now forced to move out of her home to maintain the illusion, a sister who is experiencing relationship troubles of her own, a brother who finds himself rather attracted to Alejandro’s biological sister and a slightly racist soon-to-be mother-in-law who is unsure about the “beige babies” the union will result in and you have all the ingredients for an eventful wedding celebration.

If the combination of the scenario, the age of some of the principal cast, and the similarity in title to My Big Fat Greek Wedding lead you to expect a gentle comedy for the whole family you could be in for a bit of a shock. From the very first scene the filmmakers seem determined to try and tap into the recent success of more ‘adult’ comedies and as such The Big Wedding is surprisingly crude, having been slapped with an MA15+ rating for strong coarse language and sexual references. The result is part screwball comedy, part American Pie-style sex-romp except that rather than being sixteen our protagonists are in their sixties.

Crudeness aside, the screenplay is reasonably witty. There are some good comic moments and while none of the cast members really shine like we know they can, they each have their moments and no one is bad. Ultimately however, where you want a good farce to build to an absurd crescendo, this one seems to get overwhelmed as the layers of ridiculousness are piled on. A film like this needs a straight character in amongst all the chaos to act as the audience’s surrogate and point of view. In this case it is likely supposed to be the betrothed couple, played by Ben Barnes and Amanda Seyfried, but they aren’t featured prominently enough to perform the function, likely due to their incredible blandness.

Incredibly predictable but entertaining enough, this comedy about seniors behaving badly is the latest in a growing tradition of Hollywood remakes of French comedies that just seem to lose something once they’re Americanised.

Rating – ★★★

Review by Duncan McLean