Review – Killer Elite

Killer Elite (Gary McKendry, 2011): Of all the possible complaints to be lodged against a film starring Jason Statham, “too convoluted” would seem to be at the bottom of the list. Nevertheless, this commendably 70’s thriller suffers from an overly tangled narrative. To lift a line from Joe Bob Briggs, there’s too much plot getting in the way of the story.  Based on a non-fiction book (and bearing no relation to Sam Peckinpah’s 1975 Burt Young vs. Ninjas opus of the same name), the film follows Statham’s retired master assassin called back into action to save the life of his abducted mentor (a bedraggled Robert DeNiro).  Charged with wiping out the murderers of the sons of a Middle Eastern dictator, Statham’s actions soon put him at odds against a shadow company of retired SAS specialists, led by a pornstashioed Clive Owen. The good stuff from the trailer is parceled out rather stingily. Statham, as always, makes for a compelling blunt instrument, but  director/co-writer Gary McKendry’s film has rather too much on its plate, zipping between locales and plot threads when it should be busy zeroing in on the main conflict. Sometimes a punch is just a punch. (originally published at the Salt Lake City Weekly)

Review – Brighton Rock

Brighton Rock (Rowan Joffe, 2010): A hydrochloric religious satire disguised as a cracking gang thriller, Graham Greene’s 1938 novel Brighton Rock is best remembered for its main character, a 17-year-old arrested-development sociopath named Pinkie, who was terrifyingly brought to life by Richard Attenborough in 1947’s film version.  Cannily updating the action to the 60’s Quadrophenia-era of mod cons, writer/director Rowan Joffe’s adaptation hits many of the proper notes, even if it can’t quite nail the odd moments of grace that made the earlier versions sing so stingingly. Set around a gone-to-seed English vacation resort, the film follows the attempts of a small-time gang leader (Sam Riley) to cover up the murder of a cohort. After discovering that a mousy waitress (Andrea Riseborough) may have evidence of the crime, he devotes his psychopathic energies to finding out what she knows, eventually turning to marriage in an attempt to keep her from future testimony. Things zoom to an endpoint with the interference of a local pub institution (Helen Mirren) with her own ties to the victim. Making his directorial debut, Joffe displays a promising knack for the arresting image, as well as an energetic take on the infrequent chase scenes. (Based on what’s seen here, the Brighton town council should really consider designating a separate transit lane for guys in suits waving razors.) Throw in some small-yet-vivid appearances from the likes of John Hurt and Andy Serkis, and the makings for an above-average crime movie are all there. There are some unfortunate stumbling blocks, however, most notably with the central character, whose deviant behavior never quite rings true. As seen in the earlier Joy Division biopic Control, Riley is a fine actor, yet here seems a bit too self-consciously method to fully capture Pinkie’s skittery Id thought processes. When your character’s emotions can change in a freaky heartbeat, thinking it through may be the wrong approach. (originally published at Amazon.com)

9/14/11- Don’t Go In the Woods

Red State (Kevin Smith, 2011): Kevin giveth, Kevin (majorly) taketh away: Potentially terrific lengthy Michael Parks monologue annihilated by barn-broad reaction shots, possibly ballsy ending squibbed out via a coda featuring some of the worst writing of the filmmaker’s career, and so on and so forth. Credit is due for toning down the dueling monologues and enlisting the services of Parks and John Goodman,  but Smith’s still his own worst enemy. The last line of the movie says it all, really.

Tucker & Dale Vs. Evil (Eli Craig, 2010): Amiability far outweighs the invention here, but cast and crew keep their one joke humming for at least 80% of the running time. Lord, I do love me a good woodchipper gag. (Viewed for Amazon.com, review coming soon)

9/12/11 – Low Blows and Mod Cons

Warrior (Gavin O’C0nnor, 2011): Cathartic, in the literal sense, with an ending that’s close to dead-solid perfect. Pretty superb, especially when you factor in all of the ways that it could have flown off of the rails. Joel Edgerton the quiet stand-out (I’ve always been a sucker for regular guys underplaying amid flashier elements: i.e. Kevin Bacon in Mystic River), Tom Hardy hulked-out terrifying as a man who appears to have just swallowed a coat hanger, Nolte fantastic (duh), although much of the impact from his character’s rather thin backstory comes from the actor’s own history. Neat things: Edgerton’s wholly convincing friendship with his trainer; the use of an audiobook to denote the length of a car trip.

Brighton Rock (Rowan Joffe, 2010): Neat idea to update the setting of Graham Greene’s classic to the Quadrophenia era. In theory, anyway. When John Hurt and Helen Mirren can’t spark things up, hoo boy. (Viewed for Amazon.com, review forthcoming)

The Icky Shuffle: Contagion Movies

And what turned out to be a fairly productive week closes out with a tie-in piece to Contagion over at Amazon’s blog. Check it out, why don’t you? (They could use the traffic.)

Reviews – Columbiana, Scream of the Banshee, Monogamy

Columbiana (Olivier Megaton, 2011): As a producer, Luc Besson (The Transporter series, Taken, District B-13) has made extremely profitable B-movie hay out of a fairly strict formula incorporating whisper-thin femme fatales, parkour, Gaultier, and guns. Colombiana, another Besson collaboration with director Olivier Megaton (Transporter 3), doesn’t exactly blaze new trails, but the combination of Zoe Saldana’s fierce performance and a dash of oddball surrealism sure makes the running time zoom by. Purportedly beginning as a sequel to The Professional, the story follows a beautiful South American assassin bent on rubbing out the murderers of her parents. Unfortunately, the closer she gets to her drug lord prey, the more her own loved ones (including Michael Vartan and an amusingly hambone Cliff Curtis) are put at risk. Things go boom, frequently. Director Megaton handles the action with the rapid-cut, blue-filtered zing common to the Besson factory, but things receive a definite boost via the efforts of Saldana, whose performance combines the intensely physical with an appealing soulfulness. Whether slithering through air ducts in a skin-tight cat suit or using a toothbrush as an impromptu weapon, she somehow manages to maintain an air of beyond-the-call gravitas. Also of note are the scenes of the heroine plying her lethal trade, some of which bear the funky logic-defying influence of Mario Bava’s great fugue-state caper movie Danger: Diabolik. Ultimately, although the story elements and secondary character motivations rarely hang together, Colombiana‘s distinguishing marks help place the film somewhere above the level of guilty pleasure. When pitted against the likes of a mobster with a glass-paneled shark tank for a dance floor, reality can take a seat, frankly. (originally published at Amazon.com)

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Scream of the Banshee (Steven C. Miller, 2011): Consider this an argument against good housekeeping: while poking around in their college’s cluttered basement, an anthropologist (Lauren Holly) and her students unearth an extremely cranky head in a box, which proceeds to wreak some serious mythological havoc. Blood, eye-related violence, and a rather gnarly bit of business involving a lip piercing follow. As with many of the films produced for the SyFy Channel, this brisk horror film’s ambitions are curtailed by a severe budgetary stumbling block, most notably during some medieval flashback scenes that appear to be shot in someone’s backyard with balsa wood swords. On the positive side, while many films in this vein go for winking self-parody, director Steven Miller here plays things admirably straight, generating a decent sense of atmosphere and a few genuine scares. (The genial commentary track by Miller and composer Ryan Dodson detailing the numerous production problems makes what does show up on the screen seem fairly heroic.) While not exactly a case of a diamond in the rough, Scream of the Bansheestands as a promising genre effort, boosted by some nicely blecchy effects (the previously mentioned severed head is a nasty piece of work, especially when it starts hollering), and a too-brief appearance by horror legend Lance Henriksen, who appears to be enjoying himself mightily as a Southern-accented monster specialist. (originally published at Amazon.com) 

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Monogamy (Dana Adam Shapiro, 2011): A voyeuristic, extremely earnest look at The Way We Are Now, Monogamy is an insightful take on modern relationships that occasionally succumbs to pretension. Director-cowriter Dana Adam Shapiro’s film follows a frustrated wedding photographer (Chris Messina) who runs a side business where people pay to be covertly spied on, catching them unawares during their daily routines. After recording an extremely private moment with a mysterious blond woman, the photographer becomes quickly obsessed with her, endangering his already precarious relationship with his fiancée (a very good Rashida Jones). Shapiro, who previously codirected the exceptional documentary Murderball, proves to be exceptional at transferring over the nonfiction feel, creating a living, breathing Brooklyn chock full of interesting bit players. Unfortunately, the filmmaker proves less successful when dealing with his main story, with a protagonist whose whiny self-absorption makes him increasingly hard to sympathize with. (Those with hipster aversions should be aware that Pabst Blue Ribbon does make an appearance.) That said, the idea of technology on couples is certainly a provocative one, which should have most viewers wincing in recognition at various points. (The DVD supplements include a fascinating snippet of interviews from the filmmaker’s book on the same subject, due out in 2012.) Characterization stumbles aside, Shapiro’s insights make for a frustrating, rewarding film that works best when it’s between plot points and just observing how people interact. (originally published at Amazon.com)

 

 

 

 

 

 

Review – Contagion

Comfort food of a very peculiar sort, the all-star disaster movie cycle of the 70’s derived no small amount of guiltless fun from an iron clad formula: Large-scale bloodless apocalypse at the end of the first reel, followed by a series of over-the-hill, easily recognizable actors biting it in increasingly baroque fashion. (Personal favorite: Henry Fonda shooting himself up with giant killer bee venom–in the name of science!- in The Swarm.) Majestic Tonka-quality effects aside, what registers most strongly about these movies today is the heavy dose of pre-reality show schadenfreude: No matter how bad your life may be, viewer, know that Robert Wagner and Charo have it worse. Times have changed, of course, with widespread carnage no longer on the theoretical level for most audiences, a fact that Hollywood movies seeking to ape the genre have often struggled to absorb. (Case in point: 2006’s woeful Poseidon, which attempted to marry retro spectacle with mounds of realistic corpses, resulting in a mess that worked on exactly zero levels.) Simple escapism ain’t what it used to be.

Contagion, Steven Soderbergh’s remarkably clinical, quietly terrifying virus thriller, pulls a polar 180 from those earlier films, utilizing its easily recognizable cast to heighten the grim reality of its scenario, rather than distance itself from it. Intelligent, measured, and firmly fact-based, it plays on our fears without ever tipping over into exploitation. While the skill of the film is really something to behold, it’s a valid question as to whether general audiences will want to shell out big bucks to have their worst case scenarios verified, if not heightened.  In IMAX, yet.

The script by Scott Z. Burns (The Informant!) lays out the premise with a minimum of padding, setting up a world whose population is being swiftly decimated by a constantly mutating bat-pig virus. As a multi-national assortment of scientists attempt to suss out both a cure and the disease’s origin, the narrative splits to follow a series of barely connected characters, including a grieving survivor (Matt Damon), an immunologist exploring the believed starting point in Hong Kong (Marion Cottilard), a team of government workers struggling to contain the outbreak (Laurence Fishburn, Kate Winslet, Jennifer Ehle), and a muckraking blogger (an uglied-up Jude Law) exploiting the situation for hits.

Pacing has always been one of Soderbergh’s strong suits (think The Limey’s masterful backwards tracking towards future vengeance) , and Contagion’s early sections depicting the spread of the infection serve as something of a master class in propulsive storytelling. Without ever showboating, the film’s sure-handed rhythms give the viewer ample opportunities to check out every inch of the frame for possible vector points, fueled by a pounding, John Carpenterish 80’s score. (Between this and the trip-hoppy Tangerine Dream flair of the upcoming Drive, composer Cliff Martinez is having a banner year.) While the second half throttles back on the intensity somewhat, the cerebral tone persists.

The serious-minded vibe behind the camera extends to the cast, as well. For such a smart actor, Damon excels at playing a regular shlub, while Winslet and Fishburne both quietly key into the panic lurking just beneath their federally-mandated protocols. (The film could have used more Bryan Cranston as the military man in charge of quarantine, but what movie couldn’t?) Best in show honors, however, go to Ehle, a fairly unknown actress who underplays beautifully as a research scientist whose eggheadedness masks a deep humanism. If the film has a hero, she’s it.

Contagion’s insistence on playing things straight, however admirable, may very well have an off-putting effect for viewers: at the preview screening, nervous titters abounded for the first third of the film, until the severity of the situation sunk in. Soderbergh and Co’s anti-sensational storytelling never lets up for a second, from the first frames through the freakily simple coda which shows the disturbing ease at which fictional scenarios like these could become fact. Rather than the joyful catharsis of tap dancing on the end of the world that figures into most disaster movies, the tag line from the director’s earlier Traffic very much applies here: nobody (including the audience) gets away clean. You may want to Purell those Raisinettes.  (originally published at the Salt Lake City Weekly)