Some More Movie Reviews

Some movie reviews, just because it's been a while since I've done them. Hopefully these will be less sweary that some previous reviews have been (you know, time used to be when I wouldn't dare use a naughty word, but then some time in my early twenties something went 'pop' in my head).

Chocolate



A Thai martial arts flick and contender for one of the worst films I've ever seen (I'm sure I've seen worse, I just can't think where). Let's just consider the plot synopsis:

An autistic girl who can quickly learn martial arts mostly just from watching others must fight to get back money owed to her wrong-side-of-the-tracks mother, as it's needed for the mother's cancer treatment.

Now, if you're thinking "Well, I don't know, that sounds pretty awesome!", well, I'd agree with you. How could you fail to deliver with a pitch like that? I mean it has everything: the protagonist's struggle to find a place in a world they can't understand, the mother forced to accept that she can no longer protect and care for her offspring, guilt, tragedy, pathos, and kung fu! (Probably mostly Muay Thai, but really (and I say this on the grounds that my Wing Chun teacher probably ain't reading my blog) it's all pretty much the same stuff, people kicking each other in the head) Well the people who made this movie have somehow managed to snatch failure from the very jaws of success.

How did they do this?

Simple, they threw out all the emotional stuff, and just decided to make the move about fighting. Lots of fighting. Endless, endless fighting. Interminable fighting. Fighting without end. The problem is, if you don't care about the combatants, then fighting very quickly gets boring. If you care about the characters, then watching them bicker at the breakfast table can be mesmerising. If, however, you blasted through the character's emotional development to get to the fighting, then we can't really relate to them, we don't really care about them, and thus watching them fight is like watching someone else playing a video game.

And the fights aren't particularly differentiated. There's only so many ways you can kick someone in the head. It often feels a lot like we're watching the same fight over and over and over. And over. AND OVER. And then some.

There's a scene where the protag, who has been watching Bruce Lee movies, suddenly starts aping Bruce, making all the weird noises. Now I have to admit that I was thinking "Well, this is might be pretty accurate, given that she's autistic, I don't know for sure but I understand that people with the condition are very good mimics", but alas it didn't work. It came over as ridiculous. And that scene sums the whole movie up, it's a great idea, but it needs a little subtlety and scaffolding to make it work, and the film-makers decided they didn't have time for all that, let's just cut straight to fighting.

I was also very uncomfortable about some of the characterisations. There's a 'Lady boy' gang in the movie, but they're all cast as villainous characters. I felt that if you're going to have transsexual characters in a movie then fine, and if some are villainous, then fine, but there should be one positive one in there to show that you're not linking transsexuals and villainy. Perhaps I'm oversensitive, but it made me squirmy.

But that's a minor detail compared to the crushing ennui of the endless fights. Worst of all, a character who has just been savagely beaten by the protag will often get back up after having had a brief lay-down to catch their breath, resulting in multiple "What, this guy again?!!" moments. So not only are there endless mooks, but they recharge back to full fighting ability after fifteen seconds of downtime. By the end of this movie I was screaming "Stay the f*ck DOWN! Please, just stay down!" at the screen and telling the protag "Pick up one of the fallen guns and start shooting the m********k**s in the head, then they won't keep coming back!" This is a movie where, when one of the villains falls to their certain death (surely they can't be tough enough to come back from that?! Oh, thank god, they're not) you cheer not because it's the delivery of righteous justice upon the wicked, but simply because that's one down and you're a little closer to the end.

This movie is not a good advert for Thai cinema. I'm sure there are other movies out there that are, but this one ain't it.


Monsters



I really liked this movie, though I still can't say why. It's "Before Sunrise" crossed with "Apocalypse Now" crossed with... I don't know, something else, something with giant alien squids. "Before Sunrise" and "Apocalypse Now" are two of my fave films, but I wouldn't have expected their hybrid offspring to be this fit.

Basically Mexico has been invaded by building-sized alien animals that look a bit like a cross between an octopus and a spider, and an American photographer is entrusted with safely escorting a rich tourist girl back to the USA through the 'infected zone'. Meantime the Americans are randomly bombing everywhere to try and deal with the threat (once I might have said this was insulting stereotyping, but now we know it to be truth-in-celluloid). That's about it, plot wise, the film is just us watching their relationship grow as they wander through Mexico meeting people and seeing wonders. There's really very little else I can say about it, it's really a very simple thing but it was mesmerising to watch.

The aliens are wisely kept just off screen most of the time, but when they do make their final appearance they really work. This isn't a monster movie, I'm not even sure what kindof movie it is, it's almost its own genre.

Only a couple of criticisms spring to mind. One is that the girl was just a little too vulnerable and girly. I know this is probably just how we tourists are when we've wandered from the safe roads, but I just didn't see how she was in a war-zone to start with. How had her rich daddy let his beloved little girl run off to such a place? It's a bit like finding a toddler wandering about in the middle of a riot.

The other issue I had was that we frequently see downed American aircraft littering the streets and jungles of Mexico. How are the octopuses bringing down F22's? Do they have some form of biological anti-aircraft capability? They can't just reach into the sky and pluck them down, surely? I would have accepted almost any plausible, hand-wavey explanation for this, I just wanted something to hang my hat on, but nothing was ever forthcoming, and thus this question bugged me all the way through the film.

But those are small churlish complaints about what was, overall, a very good movie.

Source Code



Duncan Jones' second directorial outing, and one that confirms that 'Moon' wasn't just luck.

A man awakens on a train, but doesn't know how he got there, who the people around him are, or who the person they think he is, is. He quickly discovers that he's in some kind of simulation, that there's a bomb on the train and he has to find it, but it's clear from the outset that things aren't quite as simple as all that (I'm trying to avoid too many spoilers here).

This is a tight movie with only two or three sets that it uses over and over again (in this regard not so different from 'Moon'). When he's not on the train the protag is in some kind of 'capsule' where his only connection to the outside is through a female military officer at the end of a video-link (who has, I have to say it, distractingly hot lips. I don't know why I had to say that, but I had to get it off my chest).

It's a workmanlike offering, clever ideas, well acted, very well paced. It's not earth-shaking, it's not going to make you think anything you didn't think before, but it's a satisfying and enjoyable watch.

There's really not to much I can say about 'Source Code', or 'Monsters'. They're great films to watch, but they aren't particularly deep, but they're not 'lacking' depth because they're not supposed to have depth. They're supposed to be fun movies with some nice ideas, and in this they succeed.

The American



I'd heard mixed things about this movie, but it may be the one I liked most of all recent viewings. George Clooney is a man who makes weapons (and sometimes uses them too) for some... organization that does... something (presumably killing people). His past is catching up with him, and he goes to small Italian hill-town to hide out, but he must complete one last job-

Yes, stop me if you think you've heard this one before.

It's riddled with cliche, but that's kindof the point. It's one big homage to 1960's European crime/spy thrillers. Despite being American and playing an American character Clooney looks like a contemporary of Alain Delon or Marcello Mastroianni as he wanders the town and countryside, or drives across countries, or sits brooding in cafes. He's a figure from a Europe that probably never existed outside of those 60's thrillers in which all the spies really knew how to dress, and how to look good driving a Saab or Citroen through the Italian countryside, and Europe was beautiful, mysterious, modern and hip, and most of all perfectly lit. There's a look to those old movies that this film captures exquisitely. Some reviews complain about the way that this film is so preposterously beautiful. The town is beautiful, the countryside is beautiful, the women are beautiful, and Clooney himself is beautiful, there's something about the way he looks that means you can set him in a room and it's instantly an iconic image. The film does look like a Patek Phillipe advert, but that's a good look.

Another thing that people have complained about is the pacing, this is a movie in which nothing happens for a long time, no car chases, no explosions. Instead there's just a steadily mounting atmosphere of dread as a kind of invisible box closes around Clooney's character.

This movie contains cliches because it re-runs an old story, and finally does things *right*. I've seen movies like this, where the brooding gangster, spy or assassin is confronted by the worthlessness of his own existence, and realises he has lost in some Faustian gamble. As he drives around in his flash car through beautiful places, bonking beautiful women and eating in the best restaurants, we are led to believe that his life is lonely and unsatisfying. Few, if any, movies pull this ridiculous claim off. "The American" does. Early on it punches you in the face with the fact that the protag is in hell, a very well-appointed and designer hell, yes, but hell nonetheless. At no point did I doubt that Clooney's character was suffering and paying the price for the bargain he had made. The film does somewhat beat us over the head with this point, having one character actually tell Clooney that he's living in hell, but it does it artfully and I think it gets away with it. In some ways it's a critique of modern consumer culture, as here is a character who has money, can go to exotic places, can live La Dolce Vita, except that he can never stay in one place for any length of time, can trust no-one, sees threats in every shadow or strange comment. Thus, the good life is always in view but just out of reach. He hasn't the time, or the trust, to stop and enjoy it, and no-one at all to enjoy it with. He's a modern Tantalus, and for this he has sold his soul. What's the point of having an omega watch when there's no-one to be impressed?

There's a few things in this movie that would normally annoy me a little. There's a lot of gratuitous female flesh and sex scenes. I'm always uncomfortable sitting in cinemas with mixed audiences when the director decides he'd better put some naked girls in the script 'for the lads' (although on the other hand, where else am I going to get an eyeful? But the point is that these films are made for general audiences, it's the same issue I have with covers of SF mags). Also sex scenes are usually cases of "Let's stop the plot and bonk", but what's the point of watching someone else do it? I don't watch film of other people eating, it's not fun to watch someone else play a video-game, so why do filmmakers think we want to watch other people (pretend to) have sex?

However, in this movie these elements somehow work. The naked women (mostly local prostitutes) are... kindof illusionary pleasures that the protag can have for a while, but which must then fade away. I felt the sex scene was telling us something about the protag, but I must admit I didn't know what, but I felt that it was there, I just couldn't grasp it.

Clooney puts in a fantastic performance here. Normally when an actor has a 'schtick', something they do well, they just keep doing it. Jason Statham keeps doing the Jason Statham thing, Sean Connery was always Sean Connery. Clooney's schtick, from what I've seen, has been that smiling rogue character, a touch of Han Solo and a touch of Thomas Crown. In this film Clooney completely throws that away, rarely ever smiling, and often coming across as somewhat unpleasant. He does facial expressions fantastically, and in many scenes you can read his mind (or his character's mind) straight off his face, and boy does his face have a lot to say.

Respect is also due to Thekla Reuten, who plays the (of course) beautiful assassin that Clooney is making the gun for. She doesn't get much screentime, but for the time she gets she really lights up the screen, or maybe she darkens it. She's astoundingly creepy as a woman who at first seems ingenue and vulnerable, and then turns it around on both the viewer and the protag. When first we meet her we (and George, judging from his face) get the impression that she might be a young woman trying to right some wrongs or be a one-woman-army-of-revenge. We've seen George in movies like this, and probably he's going to have to step in and help her out, like a modern-day 'True Grit', right? But the second time we meet her she quickly takes control of the situation, setting George on the back foot and making him realise that he's either misread things, or been deliberately misled. George, paranoid at the best of times given his past, is increasingly spooked as the woman shows all the signs of being a highly trained killer. She's told him there's only one 'target', but asked for a rapid-fire weapon with lots of rounds, some of them explosive. When we thought she didn't know what she was doing, we might just smile and shake our heads, now that it's evident that she very much knows what she's doing, we have to ask "Why would you need all that for one target?"

As she tests the weapon George's face becomes more and more perplexed about what she wants the gun for, what is she going to do? Admittedly, given that he's made a living of handing guns to random people it's a bit late for him to start asking questions now, but somehow Clooney and Reuten make the scene convincing despite that. One feels that Reuten is preparing to commit some manner of atrocity beyond anything else that Clooney has been involved in before.

Cinema has given us a number of beautiful lady assassins, some more convincing as others, but Reuten's stands out. I found her very convincing, whether it was the ice-blue eyes or the clipped way she spoke, or the polished-diamond perfection of how she dressed, or just the way George's face changed when she was around, you bought her as a deadly, almost inhuman thing. She fits the film perfectly, like a component in the gun George is making. She's another beautiful thing that you wouldn't want to be around, a glamorous, dressy woman that you'd cross the street to avoid. Thus she epitomises the way that Clooney's life has given him all the things he wants, but tainted them with evil so that they are no longer desirable. When, in for me the defining moment of the film, she unexpectedly starts making romantic advances to Clooney you can see he doesn't like it, and it's completely believable because Reuten's character is so... well... creepy. You wouldn't want this scary bitch coming onto you either, no matter how well she dresses and how beautiful she looks.

It seems to me that she is as trapped as Clooney, and her advances are an attempt to reach out to another of her kind who might be able to accept and connect with her. Although, after their fake picnic excursion to test the gun, her voice is mocking when she tells Clooney she had a wonderful time, one suspects that she goes home to her luxuriously swish apartment and cries herself to sleep (well, no, she wouldn't do that, but she'd sit silently suffering, reading books until the phone rang with her next 'job'). So maybe spending time with another human being testing a gun to be used in a murder really is the highpoint of her day. That's how low these beautiful people have sunk.

One thing that I liked, that again other people have sneered at, is that every time we meet Reuten's assassin, her hair looks different. Different color, different style. One reason I liked it was that it's about the only infusion of humor in an otherwise dark movie, and I enjoyed predicting what her hair would look like in her next scene. I wondered too what her motive was: Was she seeking a style that would attract Clooney? Or was she a lonely person who pretends to be someone else every day? Was it another symbol of empty consumerism, wherein you can make yourself over any way you like, but there's no-one to tell you your hair looks good?

Clooney, of course, eventually tries to escape his deal with the devil, and of course that's not possible. This movie runs on roads that are worn by the tracks of other traffic, but it goes through the motions better than some of the source material. "The American" is strongly similar to Jean-Pierre Melville's "Le Samourai", but in some ways it actually hits the mark better. Alain Delon's hitman was somehow glamorous, someone you could fantasise about being, and thus the whole deal-with-the-devil thing wasn't quite so believable with him. Clooney's character is someone you wouldn't want to be under any circumstances, possibly the first time that I've seen glamorous damnation convincingly done on screen. In managing to portray that, this film aims high and succeeds where a lot of other movies have failed.

This is a film that it seems to me has been very misunderstood by critics who can't see past its surface features. It has style, and thus people think it's all style and no substance. It has cliches, and thus people think it's simply derivative. But this is a film that finally says convincingly some of the things that it's ancestors were trying to say, but didn't quite manage to. It's a homage to those 60's thrillers, but it also closes the book on them by finally doing things just right.