Young Guns (1988)

Posted on November 12, 2011 by badblokebob

Way back in March, the ever-excellent Colin at Ride the High Country covered a series of films about Billy the Kid, including this late-’80s effort. To quote from the comments section: “I would have been in that target demographic too when I first saw it… around 20 years old or so… I wonder how it would play now to an audience of a similar age.” Well, as someone who watched it when closer to 20 than 30, I shall step up to the task.

Considering this is ‘the Brat Pack Western’, one might well expect a modernised, sanitised West; something like Wild Wild West or Jonah Hex; something rated PG-13. Instead the film seems to have begun life as a serious attempt at a Billy the Kid biography, right down to bloody violence that earns it an R in the US and even an 18 over here. This intention seems to survive — bar a music-video-styled opening, a couple of lines of dialogue, and the wailing ’80s guitar score — but how successful it was is another matter.

I don’t know about historical accuracy in this case, not knowing much more about Billy the Kid than I’ve gleaned from… well, this film, and Colin’s series. Playing loose with facts can work in a film’s favour — as many a filmmaker has noted in the past, they’re making entertainment not documentary — but it can be galling to one who knows the truth. In the way it presents events, this one feels accurate — things like characters appearing only to die immediately; the kind of thing that doesn’t sit well narratively but might be the truth. If it isn’t accurate, this is all the more dangerous: there’s a difference between changing facts so something works as a film narrative and presenting the wrong thing as the truth. Though if someone was planning to use Young Guns to research the real-life facts of these events, more fool them in the first place. Wikipedia says (without citation) that “historian Dr. Paul Hutton has called Young Guns the most historically accurate of all prior Billy the Kid films”. We’ll leave it at that for now.

As a film in itself, then, the narrative is a bit scrappy. Our heroes wander around killing some people, racing about the country sometimes for no discernible reason and with chunks apparently missing. For instance, they head to Mexico just for the challenge of it — we’re told it’s a hard road, laden with bounty hunters out to get them — but the film cuts from their decision to make this journey to their arrival with a rapturous welcome. Eh? I have no idea if this stuff was shot and cut for time, or if someone needed to have a long hard look at the screenplay. Or even a quick glance.

The finale is also implausible. One assumes the characters who survive must have survived in reality and the others must’ve died, but the way it’s played here it doesn’t make a great deal of sense. How did they defeat those overwhelming odds? How did they pull off that escape? It might pass muster with The Hero Is Invulnerable movie logic, but not as a claim to depicting real-life events. And that’s without mentioning the overuse of dated slow-motion that descends upon its eventual climax.

As for the Brat Pack themselves, Emilio Estevez’s version of Billy the Kid seems to descend during the film from above-himself hot-head out for revenge to giggling loon. This isn’t really character development, more as if halfway through Estevez realised how much fun it was to laugh and so kept doing it. Charlie Sheen gets the honour of (spoilers!) being killed off halfway through. As one of the most recognisable members of the ‘Brat Pack’, here playing the leader of the gang, it works as an effective surprise.

Kiefer Sutherland has the best part though. He’s given the only subplot that approaches anything meaningful and also almost all the best lines (not that there are many). The remainder go to Jack Palance, who isn’t around enough to create a great villain but makes a commendably good hash of it in his brief time. Equally brief is Terence Stamp’s part. I have to say I’m no fan of Stamp — everywhere I’ve seen him he seems awkwardly flat, often phoning it in — but here he’s not bad. This may be because his role’s quite small and relatively subdued as it is. Patrick Wayne appears as Pat Garrett for a knowing cameo; the kind of small role which any viewer can tell Means Something, but if you don’t know what he means there’s no explanation proffered (until the final scene, anyway, when Sutherland narrates a “what happened next” for the surviving characters).

Young Guns is not a particularly likeable film, managing to miss both its potential target audiences: it’s not serious-minded enough for Western enthusiasts, let down by the Brat Pack cast and (it seems) historical accuracy; but it’s surely not fun or modernised enough to appeal to a younger (or younger-minded) crowd. Though clearly it did well enough as it spawned a sequel two years later. I didn’t hate it, I just didn’t particularly like it.

~~Young Guns is on Channel 5 tomorrow, Sunday 13th November, at 11:15pm.~~
Young Guns is on 5USA tonight, Tuesday 30th December 2014, at 9pm. It’s sequel, Young Guns II: Blaze of Glory, follows at 11pm.

After four years and three months doing 100 Films, this became the first new film I’ve seen which has a title beginning with the letter Y — the last unaccounted-for letter. Hurrah!

Batman: Year One (2011)

Posted on October 17, 2011 by badblokebob

DC Comics’ latest direct-to-DVD animated movie is an adaptation of Frank Miller and David Mazzucchelli’s seminal 1987 Batman story, acclaimed as one of the greatest graphic novels of all time, and one of those that is often credited with helping the comic book medium grow up in the late ’80s.

The story concerns two men arriving in a sprawling metropolis that has become a rundown hive of criminal activity and police corruption. One a police officer, who sets out to be an honest force in a corrupt organisation; the other a billionaire who has trained himself to become a vigilante; both setting out to solve the city’s crime problem in their own way. They are, of course, Lieutenant James Gordon and Bruce Wayne, and the fact we know where this is going is incidental.

The film tells, quite literally, the story of Batman’s first year fighting crime — there are on-screen dates and everything. I say “quite literally”, but that’s not really true: Batman doesn’t turn up until a few months in. The plot description I’ve written above is actually a pretty decent variation of how the film pitches itself. Of course we know where it’s going, but it tries to make the emergence of the Batman concept more natural by treating it as if we don’t know. Because in the real world, dressing up in a cape and pretending you’re a bat is far from the first idea that springs to mind if you want to fight crime.

As with the comic, this is a very down-to-Earth version of the Batman story. It’s even less sci-fi-y than Chris Nolan’s much-praised realistic films, in fact. There’s no Batmobile, no Batcave, no Bat signal, only a few gadgets (and those that are used are fully plausible), no cartoonish super-villains… This Gotham is a city where crime comes from gangsters, drug dealers, muggers and a thoroughly corrupt police force, and that’s what Batman sets out to fight. As in the Nolan films, the costumed foes will come later, a response to the Bat himself. It’s not afraid to take its time telling this story either. Especially at the start, the pace is very measured — there’s no rush to action or to Batman, but instead a slow build of character and drama. Some may see this as a flaw — those after a Batman Action Movie, largely — but it sets the tone for what is a more character-driven tale.

Top billing for the film goes to Breaking Bad’s Bryan Cranston, the voice of Jim Gordon. That might seem odd, but when you watch the film it becomes natural: there’s not just surprisingly little of Batman, there’s surprisingly little Bruce Wayne. It may concern the origin of Batman, but this is played as Gordon’s story; he’s the one who must face police corruption, a troubled marriage, personal threats, and hunt for the new vigilante stalking Gotham’s streets. Meanwhile, Bruce’s decision to adopt the Batman guise, plus his initial struggles to do it professionally, are conveyed in a couple of brief — albeit effective — scenes scattered throughout the film.

Cranston, given easily the fullest character, gives the best performance too. Star of The O.C. and Southland, Ben McKenzie, was chosen to portray a 25-year-old Bruce Wayne in part due to his own youth. He’s fine when delivering dialogue, but his voiceover narration is oddly flat. Other ‘star’ name casting, like Battlestar Galactica’s Katee Sackoff or TV genre stalwart Eliza Dushku, only appear in small roles. Dushku makes for a surprisingly fitting Selina Kyle/Catwoman, considering the character design looks nothing like her. It’s a shame her story is such an aside — it would’ve been better to see some more of her and bring her up against Batman properly. Sackoff’s character, on the other hand, is just barely in it.

It’s been a good few years since I read the original comic, but it seems to me this was a pretty faithful adaptation — one of the reasons it’s shorter than the average DCU animated movie, in fact, is because they didn’t want to artificially draw out the story. This faithfulness certainly has its pros, but also cons. To put them succinctly, watching Year One can help you appreciate the work Christopher Nolan & company did expanding and rounding out the story when they more-or-less adapted it to make Batman Begins.

For those who’ve seen Begins but never read Year One, it’s not just the obvious “Bruce Wayne becomes Batman” plot that’s paralleled by Nolan’s work: there are numerous sequences, plot threads and themes that are taken almost verbatim from this telling of the story. These elements are integrated as one part of a different whole in that film, though — there’s nothing to do with Ra’s Al Ghul or the Scarecrow here. Indeed, you can tell Nolan cherry-picked most of Year One’s best scenes for his version, because they’re generally speaking the ones that shine here too. (It makes me want to watch Begins again to see just how much of this made it in there.)

The other con of being so faithful is that, unfortunately, some of what kind of works on the page doesn’t necessarily in a standalone film. The birth of Catwoman is a subplot that doesn’t really go anywhere, for instance. It has potential to, but it’s never adequately developed and certainly isn’t resolved. The comic gets away with this a bit because you’re aware her later development and adventures were already told, or will be told later, but in a standalone film it could do with rounding off. Despite the obvious fact that the whole point of the story is to setup Batman for future tales, Year One does manage an ending. Obviously it’s not completely resolved — as with any superhero film — but it rounds out much of what it set in motion… mainly, again, on Gordon’s side of the story.

As a film in itself, the animation is beautifully fluid, in particular creating some excellent fight sequences. Of course there are times when the limited budget of a direct-to-DVD feature shows through — the streets are always very empty during car chases; occasionally we see static shots where there should be some movement, especially during dialogue — but all told there’s nothing to really criticise and much to like. Christopher Drake’s music also occasionally shines through. I confess to missing the work of Hans Zimmer and James Newton Howard, which is Batman’s musical soundscape for me now, but Drake sensibly doesn’t try to ape their style and instead makes his own work.

Unfortunately Batman: Year One has arrived at the party a bit too late to be the definitive screen telling of Batman’s origin — by taking the best bits of Miller & Mazzucchelli’s tale and expanding it with some work of their own, Chris Nolan & friends take that title. But as a film in its own right, Year One is largely successful. Children (or childish fans) seeking animated Batman thrills may be disappointed by its slower pace and focus on character, because this is solid adult-focused entertainment.

Batman: Year One is released on DVD and Blu-ray in the US tomorrow, Tuesday 18th October, and on HMV-exclusive DVD in the UK on Friday 21st October.

A Study in Terror (1965)

Posted on October 4, 2011 by badblokebob

2011 #66
James Hill | 91 mins | TV | 1.85:1 | UK / English | 15

“Sherlock Holmes vs. Jack the Ripper” would be the easiest way to describe this pulpy ’60s effort. It’s far from the only example of this sub-sub-genre: Murder by Decree did it 14 years later, and goodness knows how many novels and short stories have attempted it. But I’ve not seen or read any of those, so I’m afraid I can’t compare.

Judged in its own right, then, it’s a decent Holmes movie, with an atmospheric rendering of Victorian London and a passably intriguing plot. However, the relatively light basis in the true story of Jack the Ripper may grate with some who approach it from that angle: there’s a Holmesian plot grafted onto a smattering of Ripper facts, as opposed to using Holmes to deduce one of the posited real solutions. As entertainment, though, that doesn’t hold it back.

That said, I didn’t feel it all quite made sense — someone sends Holmes a clue at the start of the story, with no explanation as to what it’s got to do with anything, and though by the end it’s explained who sent it, I was none the wiser what they’d been intending. And I watched the revelation scene twice too. Still, at least the important bit — who the murderer is ‘n’ all that — is quite neat.

Also watch out for Judi Dench in a small early role, and Barbara Windsor getting killed. Marvel, with hindsight, at which one’s got the bigger role and is higher billed.

The House on 92nd Street (1945)

Posted on September 28, 2011 by badblokebob

2011 #76
Henry Hathaway | 84 mins | TV | 4:3 | USA / English | U

Here’s an unusual one from the pantheon of film noir. These days we’d probably call it a docu-drama, though thankfully there are no talking heads, but there is a factual voiceover narration. The story, we’re told, comes from the FBI’s files and is based on a real case — IMDb tells me the original title was Now It Can Be Told and it’s “loosely based on the case of Duquesne Spy Ring headed by Frederick Joubert Duquesne and the work of real life double agent William G. Sebold.” So there you go.

The story we actually see centres on Bill Dietrich, an American student of Germanic descent who’s approached by someone with an offer to train in Germany. This being set in a period when Hitler was on the rise, Bill toddles off to the FBI, who inform him that he’s being recruited to be a Germany spy… and so they encourage him to go and become a double agent. On his return to America, he infiltrates a group who are stealing weapons secrets and things progress from there. And they’re based in a house on New York’s 92nd Street, hence the title.

What this all really allows for is a film of two halves, though thankfully it’s not obviously divided up that way. On the one hand we have a double-agent spy thriller, which has a noir-ish tinge but isn’t the most representative film of the genre; on the other, a fairly factual look at the contemporary workings of the FBI. Many of the smaller parts were played by real FBI agents and a lot of time is put into showing how they really work and investigate a case. At the time I imagine this was a fascinating procedural; now, we’re all a bit more familiar with how such things go, but it still works as an historical document.

The tone is very reverent toward the Bureau, but as it was made while the US was still at war with Japan (it was released a week after their surrender; we’ll come back to that in a moment) that’s understandable. I don’t think it goes too far — they’re certainly shown to be faultless good guys, but at the same time they’re not superheroes. Plus none of this really gets in the way of the more straightforwardly thriller-ish side of the story, which has suitable amounts of tension and an all-action climax, plus a decent twist/reveal for who The Man Behind It All is.

Two final things, then: first, another bit of trivia from IMDb that I found interesting and so will quote more-or-less in full:

The movie deals with the theft by German spies of the fictional “Process 97,” a secret formula which, the narrator tells us, “was crucial to the development of the atomic bomb.” The movie was released on September 10, 1945, only a month after the atomic bombs had been dropped on Japan, and barely a week after Japan’s formal surrender. While making the film, the actors and director Henry Hathaway did not know that the atomic bomb existed, or that it would be incorporated as a story element in the movie. (None of the actors in the film mentions the atomic bomb.) However, co-director/producer Louis De Rochemont and narrator Reed Hadley were both involved in producing government films on the development of the atomic bomb. After the bomb was dropped on Hiroshima, Hadley and screenwriter John Monks Jr. hastily wrote some additional voice-over narration linking “Process 97” to the atomic bomb, and Rochemont inserted it into the picture in time for the film’s quick release.

Well there you go, eh? Don’t get much more timely than that.

Secondly, from Wikipedia: “Although praised when released in 1945, the film when released on DVD in 2005 received mostly mixed reviews. Christopher Null writes, “today it comes across as a bit goody-goody, pandering to the FBI, pedantic, and not noirish at all.”” I think I’ve addressed most of these points already, but it’s the last one that gets me. Essentially he seems to be moaning that “they didn’t make a good enough film noir!” Might be because no one ever knew they were making a film noir, eh? How can you expect something to conform to a set of rules that were only defined after the fact? Hathaway and co didn’t fail at making a noir, they just made a film that doesn’t fit the later-defined template as well as the films used to define said template. I know, four words from some other online critic hardly merit a whole paragraph, but it does bug me when people write daft things like that.

Anyway, back to the point: The House on 92nd Street is not the best example of film noir one could find, certainly, but it is an entertaining and informative documentary-ish spy-thriller.

The House on 92nd Street is on More4 tomorrow, Thursday 29th September, at 10:30am (and, naturally, on More4 +1 one hour later).

Law Abiding Citizen: Director’s Cut (2009)

Posted on June 30, 2011 by badblokebob

2011 #63
2009 | F. Gary Gray | 118 mins | Blu-ray | 18

Law Abiding Citizen is a revenge movie with a (slight) difference: wronged man Gerard Butler isn’t just going after the two criminals who invaded his home and murdered his wife and daughter — he’s going after the legal system that let one of the men walk free.

As I say, the film begins in the home of Butler’s character, an apparently quiet family man of unclear occupation (you won’t notice this first time round — why would they clarify his occupation? what would it matter? — but it does become significant later) with a wife and a young daughter. Two men break in to rob them. One is uncertain, wants to be done and gone; the other is more aggressive — he ties them up, he attempts to rape the wife, and, ultimately (and off screen) murders the wife and daughter and leaves Butler for dead.

Months later, attorney Jamie Foxx strikes a deal: one of the attackers will get a reduced sentence for informing on the other, guaranteeing him the death penalty. Butler objects but Foxx is having none of it — the deal will be done. And then we learn that it’s the objector who’ll be getting the death penalty, while the actual murderer gets the reduced sentence. Foxx goes home, to his pregnant wife, fairly sure he did the right thing.

Ten years later… Foxx’s kid is now a similar age to Butler’s when she died. He still does the same job, by the same rules. He attends the execution of the aforementioned criminal, but something goes wrong — instead of going to sleep with a lethal injection, the attacker suffers an agonising and horrific death. Someone must have swapped the chemicals. The prosecutors’ thoughts leap to the other criminal, but I’m sure we’ve all guessed who’s really behind this. And so Butler’s sprawling revenge mission begins…

Normally I don’t spend three paragraphs outlining the plot of a movie — heck, normally I don’t grant it one (plot descriptions are easy to come by these days) — but I think the setup for Law Abiding Citizen is what makes it more interesting than your regular revenge movie. Despite it looking like a simplistic action movie, we’re actually presented with a situation where there are no clear-cut heroes and villains. Butler is wronged, he wants the killers of his family to suffer — normally, this vigilante is the hero. But did the accomplice deserve such agony? And what of the legal system he sets his sights on next, murdering lawyers and judges and the like. He’s a terrorist, normally the villain. Similar goes for Foxx — he’s the attorney, the good guy, he locks up criminals… but he’s part of a corrupt system that let a guilty man go more or less free with no thought for the truth or just punishment. So he’s not exactly a clean-cut hero either.

On the issue of who the film thinks is good and who it thinks is bad, Empire’s review asserts that “Death Wish vigilantism goes too far when you no longer grasp who you are supposed to be rooting for.” But isn’t that part of the point? Oh, wait, she’s headed me off on this one: “One might argue for the defence that this is meant to be provocatively subversive, with the ‘good guys’ becoming indistinguishable from the bad. The jury doesn’t buy it.” Well, I buy it. Both the lead characters are supposedly the good guys, but both do bad things to one degree or another. The film challenges us about who to side with. Sure, some viewers will come down hard one way… but some viewers will come down hard the other. Plenty of the rest will be left somewhere in between, sympathising with the wronged man but abhorring the extremes to which he goes. And what of Foxx at the end, who on the one hand has learnt his lesson (or says he has), but on the other resorts to the same kind of violent tactics employed by his opponent. Is he in the right now? Well, I suppose he did approve of the death penalty all along. Tsk, Americans.

There is action and violence in the film, and I’m sure that appeals to some viewers, but it’s not wholly central and not distracting from the other offerings: both the debatable morals mentioned above, and the mystery of how Butler is affecting his campaign of vengeance from within a maximum-security prison. This is where his previously-unmentioned prior occupation becomes relevant, but I won’t go that deep into the plot here. Some find the final act, where this is ultimately revealed and explained, to be a ludicrous step too far. It is a little far-fetched, granted, but it’s not so outside the rules the film sets up for itself that I find it unacceptable.

As for the violence, it can be a little extreme, but mostly it isn’t. One sequence threatens to be the definition of torture porn, but other than a verbal description we’re spared the majority of the gory details. The Director’s Cut runs about 10 minutes longer than the theatrical, and yes includes a smidgen more gore (though a graphic shot of a disembodied, mutilated head might be considered more than a smidgen), but seems to be largely made up of short character scenes and insignificant extensions to a variety of sequences. The film was cut to get an R in the US after being awarded an NC-17; this is officially released unrated, but I think we know what that means. (Both are 18 in the UK.)

Law Abiding Citizen seems to be far more popular with audiences than critics: on Rotten Tomatoes the critic score is a measly 25%, but the reader score is 77%; on IMDb it ranks 7.2; and on LOVEFiLM it has a solid four stars (and they allow half-stars). I must be more of a viewer than a critic, then, because I liked it. It is distasteful in a way, but, like its lead character, it has a point to make in a bold and attention-grabbing manner. Sure, you could make a more intelligent movie debating these points in a reasonable fashion, but you’re not going to interest the same audience — again, the same strategy employed by Butler’s character.

As an action-thriller that actually has something to think about wrapped up in it, I considered being a bit lenient in my score (much as I was to The Condemned). It’s let down by a few things though — its own far-fetchedness, especially toward the end, plus being generally overblown — so I’ve eventually gone on the lower end. Maybe I should start using half-stars after all…

Harry Brown (2009)

Posted on June 27, 2011 by badblokebob

2009 #13
Daniel Barber | 103 mins | Blu-ray | 18 / R

Michael Caine killing hoodies. How great does that sound? As a film premise, that’s awesome. If it doesn’t get you excited about seeing this movie, then what kind of film fan are you, eh?

A mentally mature one, probably. But hush, don’t spoil our fun — those of us who may occasionally hanker for a morally simple form of voyeuristic vigilante justice want to see Sir Michael shooting yobs who definitely Have It Coming. Harry Brown delivers this wonderfully.

Politically and morally, in a real-world sense, Harry’s actions are as questionable as those in any vigilante movie. And yet, for that, it’s hard to avoid the sense that he’s bloody well right. Even as someone against capital punishment, against unnecessarily arming the police, and so on, there’s still satisfaction in witnessing Harry carry out his revenge; justice. When police raids kick off a violent riot at the climax, there’s the thought that Harry was dealing with this more effectively; that cutting the yobs down in a swathe of machine-gun fire might be the best solution for the future of humanity. Which in some ways is quite a chilling way to feel. I’ll be buying the Daily Mail and watching Sky News next.

Barber’s film tries to dress itself up as plausible social drama, mind. Of course it’s more revenge fantasy wish-fulfilment, but perhaps the veneer of believability makes what happens even more satisfying. The bright side of that is the film manages to be a bit more than just a celebration of violence. It takes the moral question head on… sort of. “Where does it stop?” asks one character, once Harry’s dispatched with all but one of the main bastards who need dispatching. There’s a twist, which is neatly built up and I didn’t see coming so I won’t spoil, and it does make you briefly question, “where does it stop?” And that’s why vigilantism, or revenge in any way, is an ineffective solution in the real world. But this is a film and there comes a solution, so that’s OK. As with the rest, it is deserved, and it’s difficult not to think, “well, Harry was right, actually”.

Caine gives a stunning performance as the titular pensioner. The film bothers to invest you in the character: a man shattered by the death of his wife, the murder of his only friend, the past loss of a daughter, and buried experiences serving as a Marine in Northern Ireland. The evolution from quiet, downtrodden everyman to skilled vigilante is plausibly created — or, at least, plausibly enough. It’s to the credit of screenwriter Gary Young that he doesn’t dive to the vengeance action as soon as possible; to the credit of Barber that he’s not afraid to let the early scenes play out slowly, often with lots of silence, conveying the reality of the lonely pensioner. Whatever you may think of the revenge thriller it turns into, I think it’s hard to deny these early scenes have a realism and power. It is, of course, to the credit of Caine that he performs all this flawlessly. Oh yes, he’s (to quote another review) “the king of cool” when blowing away the scum that surround him, but before that he’s an affecting old gent, abandoned by the world.

Comparisons with Death Wish should probably be made, because yes, they do have much in common. Harry Brown is more skilled, though: Caine out-acts Charles Bronson at every turn, and Barber clearly is a director of not inconsiderable talent, something Michael Winner patently is not. The structure is the same, really — motivation from a brutal attack on the closest person to our lead character; spurred by his general feeling of useless ineffectiveness in the face of the modern, violent world; a long, steady slide downhill before our hero turns to vigilantism; his struggle to pull off the attacks — he’s no superman, they don’t go perfectly. But Harry Brown feels superior. Perhaps because it’s more vital to our times — this is a situation occurring in our country right now, not a somewhat abstract rape and murder. Not that those aren’t foul crimes, but Harry Brown has more of a relevant social conscious. The counter to that would be that a murder spree may be viscerally satisfying but isn’t a real-world solution, so this is just as useless at relevancy as Death Wish.

One might also argue that Harry Brown loses Death Wish’s strongest aspect: Bronson never gets the men who attacked his family, only able to exact vengeance on criminals he happens across; Caine, on the other hand, gets to attack those responsible… and a couple of others who are peripherally connected and at least as deserving of his bullets. It’s more narratively satisfying to get revenge on the actual perpetrators, but not always as realistic. While that is a strength in Death Wish, it doesn’t make Harry Brown a lesser film for not following the same path. This is a different story, despite the similarities — it’s set in a more confined area, with more specific problems, and the murder is the catalyst for Caine’s character to take action against the people who are perpetrating all the crime, not just the particular one that galvanises him.

This is the kind of movie that can polarise an audience. For one thing there’s lurid and extreme language and violence, and lots of it — this well earns its 18 — but it is, largely, justified by the context. Beyond that, there are a lot of political and moral implications raised by the film’s realist tone. Some will think it tackles these, others that it’s just a facile revenge movie; some will think it’s cool, others despicable; some will think it plausible, others anything but. Or maybe, rather like me, you’ll think it’s all of those things, however mutually exclusive they may seem.

Harry Brown is satisfying when you know it probably shouldn’t be, and because of that it’s also thought-provoking, and because of those things it’s five stars from me.

The Thief (1952)

Posted on June 15, 2011 by badblokebob

2011 #58
Russell Rouse | 87 mins | TV

Ray Milland stars as Dr. Allan Fields, a nuclear physicist working at the United States Atomic Energy Commission, who is photographing secret files and passing them to The Other Side, until something goes wrong and the authorities are on his tail. But that’s almost beside the point, because if The Thief is known for anything it’s for its dialogue — as the poster proclaims, “not a word is spoken…!”

At some points in cinema history that would go without saying, obviously, but this is 25 years after the first talkie, so it’s being Experimental. It’s not silent film styled either, unlike recent attempts to recreate that early era like La Antena or 2011 Cannes competitor (and Palm Dog winner*) The Artist. There’s a minimal use of text here too — certainly no intertitles, and only a couple of printed pages to help us follow the story. I’d argue most of those aren’t needed either. They all crop up fairly late on, by which point we’ve grown accustomed to interpreting what we’re seeing without the help of words, so it’s almost a shame Rouse resorts to them.

It’s credit to Rouse’s direction and performances, particularly by Ray Milland, that we can follow what we’re seeing without more text. That said, it is a fairly straightforward and archetypal story — while it demonstrates that you can tell a story without dialogue, it might leave one wondering about the possibilities for telling a wholly original or truly complex story that way. Obviously we can look back to the silent cinema for that kind of thing, but while that era could probably still teach many filmmakers something about visual storytelling, it’s hard to deny that the advent of synchronised sound adds a helluva lot to the ability of film — if it didn’t, it wouldn’t have taken over so fast and remained virtually 100% dominant for the last 80+ years.

But anyway. Milland conveys the necessary emotions through his face and actions alone. Rouse manipulates the plot to suit a little showcasing of his direction: mostly it’s a tale of espionage, meaning tense chase sequences that are often only underscored by music in regular films anyway, but the second half presents an aside in which an alluring Rita Gam — credited only as The Girl — seduces Miland as he hides out in a New York apartment. “Look,” Rouse seems to say, “we could do a romance too.”

It’s unusual that the hero is working for the other lot. Sure, there are plenty of murderers and assorted other crooks as heroes in film noir, but here we’re expected to identify with a Commie traitor? How very dare they! Perhaps this is why the villains are never explicitly named. But they’re definitely not American! Tsk tsk. More crucially, it’s a bit slow at times — it seems to take longer to explain things when stuck doing them through visuals alone. That said, it could probably have survived a speedier approach even doing what it does — perhaps, then, Rouse is playing for time: the film only runs 87 minutes in spite of its pace.

The Thief tells its story and relays the thoughts and feelings of its lead character effectively, even if that story is a bit simplistic and even if there are times when it’s clearly jumping through a hoop or two to make sure no dialogue is required. The lack of dialogue is certainly a gimmick, albeit one that — more often than not — works. It’s an interesting film, I’ll certainly give it that.

* I didn’t know they had a Palm Dog award until this. That’s… well, I think that’s awesome; as the Americans like to say, your mileage may vary.

Assault on Precinct 13 (2005)

Posted on May 23, 2011 by badblokebob

2011 #55
Jean-François Richet | 104 mins | DVD | 15 / R

John Carpenter’s rough-and-ready ’70s exploitation B-movie is remade as a slick ’00s action B-movie dressed up as an A-movie by director Jean-François Richet (who would go on to find far greater critical acclaim with his two-part French crime epic Mesrine).

James DeMonaco’s screenplay presents an essentially new story built on the premise of the original film. So we’re still in a police station on its last night before closing down, there’s still a group of prisoners who turn up to be left in the cells overnight, and there’s still a gang outside laying siege to the handful of people holed up within — but, other than that, all other details are replaced or re-arranged. Which is a good thing, really — who wants a virtually-identical remake? For that you can watch the original. Unfortunately, the new stuff isn’t necessarily as compelling as what it’s replaced.

For starters, there’s now a surfeit of character backstory, and yet for all that extra work I’d argue we probably care about these characters less than those in the original. The original’s quasi-horror element is also sadly lost, by turning the faceless demonic gang into an enemy that not only has a face (in the form of a leader) but also a proper motive and everything. In part this is just the difference between ’70s and ’00s moviemaking, especially when what was an exploitation B-movie becomes mainstream action fare, but it makes things more bland.

I don’t have hard timings to back this up, but I think the siege starts earlier and lasts longer here. It certainly felt that way, in part because the character of the father (whose act of revenge leads the gang to the precinct in the original) is gone. Of course, the film is about the titular assault on the titular station, so I think this refocussing is more than fair enough. It, naturally, emphasises the siege element of a film about a siege, something the original almost reneged on with its lengthy setup.

Generally, however, things could do with tightening up here. Even if the siege seems to start earlier, the beginning especially goes on too long. One might well argue it did in the original too, but this isn’t emulating that — an awful lot of what happens is new, as I said: many of the characters and situations from the original have no corollary in the remake. Besides, there are some scenes included in the DVD’s deleted scene package that I think have more of a place in the film than some of what’s left.

The prologue is an excellent case in point. It seems to serve a purpose in setting up Ethan Hawke’s backstory… but we’re told all we need to know about that in the body of the film. In fact, if the opening were lost, why Hawke’s character is the way he is might unfold as more of a mystery throughout the film, which would make it an awful lot more interesting. The only reason the prologue is necessary is if you want to begin your movie with an action sequence… so that’s why it there then. It’s also set in a sun-drenched summery atmosphere, totally at odds with the well-evoked wintery New Year that pervades post-titlecard. Consequently, looking back on the prologue, it feels even more out of place. I think it’s also designed to set a Gritty tone, with its rundown apartment and drugs deal and all that palaver; probably because the rest of the film is too far-fetched, if you were hoping viewers were going to be in mind of The Wire or something. For all kinds of reasons, then, it doesn’t work; it should’ve gone.

At least the changes allow the film to be moderately fresh. If only the basic concept is the same, that allows for all sorts of new twists and surprises. It’s a Hollywood blockbuster so you can still spot who’ll survive to the end — mostly — but a few twists and surprises are thrown in here and there. I don’t know how many of them the trailer decided to reveal, but going in relatively blind (always easier for a not-terribly-successful film once it’s become a few years old) may well be beneficial.

In terms of the representation of race on screen, this is a film that could certainly be seen as a step backwards. While the original had a black police officer in charge of a white criminal, here not only is the lead officer white — as are all but one of the dozens of other policemen — but all the criminals inside the precinct are black or (in one case) hispanic. Ouch. You could try to argue we’ve developed past the need to force anti-stereotyping in casting; or you could argue this is a mainstream studio remake that felt the need to fall back on the familiar. It might not be a noticeable point were it not for it being so markedly different to the original.

Assault on Precinct 13 Mk.II has the decency to only take the original’s concept and craft a modified narrative around that, at least giving it some kind of point. Judged on its own terms, though it wastes too much time on over-familiar character beats it emerges as a moderately entertaining, if bland, action-thriller.

See also my comparison of this and the 1976 original here.

Dog Day Afternoon (1975)

Posted on April 16, 2011 by badblokebob

2011 #43
Sidney Lumet | 120 mins | DVD | 15 / R

Director Sidney Lumet sadly passed away a week ago today. In tribute, I watched one of his many highly-regarded films…

On August 22nd 1972, John Wojtowicz and Salvatore Naturile attempted to rob a Brooklyn bank to raise money for Wojtowicz’s male wife to have a sex change operation. The ensuing hostage situation was watched live on TV by millions of New Yorkers. If you made it up people wouldn’t believe it — especially in the ’70s — which is why this film, closely based on those events, strives so hard for naturalism. And it succeeds, and then some.

There are multiple reasons it works so well, and I’m glad I for once got round to watching all the DVD extras because they reveal these factors very nicely. I’m going to use a liberal sprinkling of those facts as a way into my thoughts on the film, so if you’ve watched those features some of this may seem too familiar. Sorry.

Let’s start where all films do (well, should): the screenplay. Written by Frank Pierson, based on a magazine article about the true story, it was his screenplay that attracted both director Sidney Lumet and star Al Pacino to the project. It’s immaculately structured, from the excitement of the opening — a confused, amateurish bank robbery — through negotiations with police, emotional telephone conversations, and on to a nail-biting finale at JFK airport. The pace is well considered. It doesn’t rush through events but it never flags; the tension is maintained but important emotional scenes are never sped through. More on that in a moment. Importantly, the plot’s numerous reveals are well managed too — for instance, Sonny’s homosexuality and transgender partner are revealed quite far in, by which point we’ve already built a firm opinion of the characters. This was important for a ’70s audience (as Lumet suggests in his commentary), to try to circumvent built-in prejudices that would’ve adversely affected an audience’s reaction too soon. It still works now — it’s not a twist, per se, but it is likely to change one’s perspective on the film and its characters mid-flow, which is always interesting.

The dialogue is also spot-on, but that’s not all down to Pierson. While rehearsing, Lumet was so keen to capture a realistic tone that he allowed the actors to improvise the dialogue. This was working so well that he had it recorded, transcribed, and Pierson rewrote the dialogue based on the cast’s improvisation. (His scenes and their order remained intact, just the words were changed.) This, coupled with additional improvisation techniques used on set, lends a believable tone to the characters’ actions and words — they’re not speaking dialogue, they’re just speaking.

In terms of performance, this is a real showcase for Pacino. As Sonny — the movie’s version of John — the whole film rests on his shoulders, and he’s more than capable of bearing the weight. Some roles allow an actor to subtly be good throughout the film; others allow a few grandstanding set-pieces where they can Act; but Dog Day Afternoon gives Pacino both. The latter are, naturally, easier to recall: the way he works the crowd (“Attica!”), the pair of draining phone calls to his wives; but most of all, the will-writing scene. As the climax looms, Lumet allows the time for Sonny to dictate his will in full to one of the bank girls. Pacino is brilliant, understated but — in a combination of performance and writing (though, in this case, the text is taken from the real-life will) — revealing, cementing some of the conflicting forces that have pulled on Sonny throughout the film.

In trying to get a handle on the real Sonny when he was starting on the screenplay, Pierson talked to various people who knew him, but struggled to reconcile their conflicting accounts of the same man. The link he found was that Sonny was always trying to please people, and that’s what he used: in the film, he’s not just out for himself or his boyfriend, but also trying to placate and please his hostages, the police, the media, his partner, his mum, his other wife… Pierson and Pacino do indeed make him a different man to all of them, and this is one of the reasons Sonny is such a great character and a great performance: he’s genuinely three-dimensional. All of us behave differently, to some degree, when we’re with different people — we don’t necessarily realise it, because they’re all facets of the same us, but we do it — so to put that into a character is to make him real.

Pacino is propped up by a spotless supporting cast, all of whom get their moment(s) to shine and use them to excel. Of particular note is John Cazale as Sal, the other robber. It’s a largely quiet role, but he nonetheless conveys an awful lot with it. Lumet says that Cazale always seemed to have a great sadness in him, which you can always see come out in his performances, and he’s certainly right here. We learn very few facts about Sal during the film, but we still know him, you suspect, as well as anyone does.

Chris Sarandon is also superb (and Oscar nominated) as Leon, the gay wife who wants a sex change. Lumet was keen to avoid presenting a stereotypical homosexual type, throughout the film trying to avoid turning any of these unusual characters into freaks, and Sarandon pitches it right. He plays the truth of a conflicted, confused character; a man who is perhaps easily led but hard to please, I think. As with the rest of the cast, the little touches he brings — such as starting a sure-to-be-emotional phone call to a man currently in the middle of a tense hostage situation with “so how are you?” — sell the reality of the piece.

Capturing reality is clearly Lumet’s prime concern — it’s reiterated multiple times across all the special features — and I think he succeeds admirably. Some things we might not even notice — the film is lit with natural light outside, the bank’s real fluorescent lights inside, and the nighttime sequences by a genuine police van reflecting off the white front of the bank — while other things, like the complete lack of a musical score, are more readily apparent. I say that, but that’s not readily apparent: one may well notice, but it’s such a perfect decision that it never rears it’s head. Lumet argues that having an orchestra chime in to underline an exciting or emotional moment would have broken the realism of what we’re watching, and he was right — there’s not a single scene here that could be improved by music, but several that would have been damaged by it.

The way the film’s shot supports this too. This is from the ’70s remember, before the craze for faux-documentary and everything being handheld, so it still looks like a film, but it’s not one that’s been precision-staged. Indeed, quite the opposite. Everything is kept loose — sometimes actors block each other’s shots, or talk over each other, or the handling of a prop goes wrong, and so on — but Lumet leaved it all in, even plays it up at times, and makes it work to his advantage. Rather than being the obvious “we’re trying to make this look real” of today’s grainy shakycam stuff, this just feels real; the heart and truth of it come through, not the surface sheen of it being documentary footage. That’s more important.

There’s great editing by Dede Allen too, though most of the time it goes unnoticed: in keeping with the aim of letting the audience ‘forget’ this is a film, most of the cutting is simple and natural. Two examples leap to attention, however, and those are the two times (the only two times) guns are fired. Lumet and Allen recreate the confusion and violence of such an event with a smash of fast, sub-one-second cuts on both occasions. We see mindless fast cutting all the time now, but this incongruous example shows the effectiveness a fast montage can have when done by the right hands. The soundtrack also jumps with each cut, which is equally vital to the slightly disconcerting way it works — they’re not just smoothing over this series of flashing images, we’re being deliberately disorientated by them.

Remember earlier I mentioned Pierson’s pace? The editing plays a role in that too, naturally. After the film had been tightened for the final time, Lumet felt it had lost something, especially when it came to the will-dictating scene, which now felt slow. So with Allen he went back and added six or seven minutes of footage back in — as with his staging, making it a bit looser, more naturalistic, and in the process fixing the pacing issue and making the important will scene feel right again. Without being able to see that cut it’s hard to say just how necessary it was, but as the final result feels so right it seems his instinct was a good one.

Pierson’s screenplay won at the Oscars. The film was also nominated for Best Picture, Actor, Supporting Actor and Editing, but this was the year of One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest so that took most of the big awards. That’s another of those all-time classics I’ve not seen, so I can’t offer my personal take. What I will say is that it goes to show (as most of us I’m sure already know) that the Oscars are as much about the year you’re in as the film itself: Dog Day Afternoon is better than masses of films that have won the same awards before and since, but clearly it got an unlucky year.

I’ve written quite a lot here but, brilliantly, I’ve still only got a certain way beneath the surface — there’s plenty more in there. That’s always the mark of a good film. And there’s certainly more memorable anecdotes and interesting directorial techniques I learnt from the special features that I’ve left out. Lumet set out to make a believable film about an unbelievable situation, and I do believe he achieved that goal. These are normal human beings with normal emotions — not like you and I, perhaps; taken to an extreme, certainly — but in a very bizarre set of circumstances. It was important to Lumet that they didn’t come across as freaks and, with the help of Pacino and the rest of his cast, I think they’ve achieved that too.

The film treads a delicate line between drama, comedy and thriller, but doesn’t once tip too far in any direction. It’s got several genuine laughs, but none compromise its serious side or claim to reality — it’s tense and touching too. Anyone else making a film about an extraordinary situation, be it a true story or from the mind of a crazed writer, would do well to look at Lumet’s work here.

Dog Day Afternoon is on ITV tonight, 19th November 2014, at 2:30am.

See also my review of the documentary short about the making of Dog Day Afternoon, which is also on the DVD, Lumet: Film Maker.

The Girl Who Played with Fire (2009)

Posted on April 4, 2011 by badblokebob

aka Flickan som lekte med elden

2011 #39
Daniel Alfredson | 130 mins | Blu-ray | 15 / R

Creating any kind of sequel is hard — the endless array of failed attempts is testament to that — but I think creating a direct sequel to a successful crime thriller may be the hardest.

With action movies or superheroes or what have you, the same formula can be rehashed; it’s better if the concept or story is pushed forward, of course, but as most movies in those genres have the same plot regardless of the hero, it stands to reason the sequels can survive it too. With a straight drama you can continue the lives of the characters, throw some new, plausible (preferably), dramatic hurdle in their path and show how it affects their lives. But with a crime thriller…

Almost by definition a good portion of your cast are wiped out: if you didn’t kill them for the sake of a twist, they’re gone because they were tied to the first case. Drag every survivor back at your peril: their mystery’s been solved, and the chance of them all being involved in a new one is too improbable to consider. So you’re left with only the one or two or three investigators, and they need a brand new case to become embroiled in. And it’s got to be as good as the last one, but it can’t be the same because we’ve had that mystery solved. You could have a different solution, of course; you could change some of the details, naturally; but police dramas on TV vary their types of murders every week for a reason. So in your new tale, the new characters have to be just as interesting as the first batch, the new mystery has to be just as intriguing too, and it really ought to be a notably different crime being investigated.

Stieg Larsson’s Millennium trilogy has an advantage here: with Lisbeth Salander as a break-out character, you can take a certain degree of the drama tactic and just throw something new in her path. Plus there’s the only story thread left hanging from The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, the handful of hints at Lisbeth’s past, to feed off as well. On the other hand, there’s the problem of having sent Salander off to a new rich life at the end of the first book/film. Not only do you have to get her back, you have to re-team her with the investigative driving force of the first tale, journalist Mikael Blomkvist. Unlike a cop and his partner, say, these two have no shorthand way they would have to be reunited. There are other ways — the fact they had developed some kind of sex-based intimacy for starters — though for goodness knows what reason that’s ignored here in favour of some plot-engineered improbabilities of fate.

One solution to the sequel problem is to “make it personal”, and that’s exactly what we get in The Girl Who Played with Fire. A journalist and his girlfriend working for Mikael are murdered and Lisbeth is suspected of the crime. It’s somewhere around here that the coincidences begin to pile up. It makes perfect sense as a plot in itself, but in bringing Mikael and Lisbeth back together it doesn’t work — it’s not related to their previous encounter, so it’s entirely coincidental. Coincidence is a dangerous thing in fiction; it asks your audience to accept something that doesn’t fit our logic of how stories work. It happens all the time in real life of course, but in real life a flipped coin with a 50/50 chance of being heads or tails could turn up heads twenty times in a row, but a person asked to estimate twenty results of a flipped coin will never put more than two or three of one side in a row (unless they know to subvert it… look, this isn’t the point).

That said, if you want to be kind (and why not?), time has passed since they last met — it’s not as if Mikael ran into Lisbeth while pursuing his very next article. (We’ll overlook that the time passed is the nice round period of a year.)

What about the case itself, then? Sadly it’s not as engrossing or unique as the one in Dragon Tattoo. It seems based in sex trafficking, but that’s just window dressing: it’s never seriously looked into and, consequently, other dramas have tackled the issue with greater depth, sensitivity and insight. What Mikael and Lisbeth are actually looking into is a conspiracy of sorts around some murders. The way the trail is followed isn’t as clever as it was in Dragon Tattoo and, consequently, isn’t as interesting. The two protagonists go about their investigations independently. This is a long-held technique in novel writing — multiple strands allows the author to alternate which is followed from chapter to chapter, almost by itself providing momentum and the must-keep-reading factor as the reader has to race through the next chapter to rejoin the thread of the previous one (it’s not that simple or we’d all be churning them out… but look, I’m getting off the point again). The problem here is that Dragon Tattoo was largely at its best when the two were together, so keeping them apart is less satisfying. To top that off, they’re each finding out different things, which means as the audience we can feel a few steps ahead of the characters as we have the benefit of both sides of the case. That’s not always a bad thing, but it can be slightly disconcerting when you know the answers your hero is still searching for.

Despite Lisbeth being the focus of much of the attention laden on these books/films/remakes, she’s a less engaging character when by herself. Here she shuffles around silently, digging up files that she and we stare at to reveal information. There are only a few moments for her (and, consequently, Noomi Rapace) to show off what endeared her to viewers before — her confrontation with a pair of arson-bent bikers, for instance.

Revelations at the end of the second act give things a kick up the rear, both for the characters and the plot, but it still has an undue reliance on coincidence, varying degrees of improbability, and the middling conspiracy plotting. This felt underscored by a henchman who’s essentially a Bond villain. In fact, as a white-blond (half-)German who feels no pain, he’s a specific Bond henchman (see: Tomorrow Never Dies).

The ending isn’t close to being conclusive. The mysteries where this particular tale began are solved, but numerous questions thrown up along the way are only just beginning to be answered. Whereas Dragon Tattoo works perfectly as a standalone thriller, even though it hinted at elements of Lisbeth’s backstory, this builds on them and leaves plenty hanging. In this respect it seems to be very much Part Two of a series (I’d say “trilogy”, but considering Larsson had (depending on which report you believe) five to ten books planned, that seems inherently inaccurate).

It also feels less filmic than the first film. Is it poor direction? Is it just the opened-up 1.78:1 ratio? I’ve read that all three films were shot like this, as they were intended for Swedish TV, meaning Dragon Tattoo’s Blu-ray is cropped to 2.35:1. You hardly ever see 2.35:1 on TV (Red Riding is the only made-for-TV example I can think of; most channels even crop films) so it automatically lends a filmic aspect, and therefore might explain the discrepancy. Conversely, I’ve also read that Dragon Tattoo was produced as a cinema film then later the two sequels were shot to serve as episodes three to six of a TV miniseries (with Tattoo extended using deleted scenes to make the first two episodes). Perhaps that explains it.

That’s besides the point anyway, because it’s not the direction or cinematography that lets The Girl Who Played with Fire down in comparison to its predecessor. In summary: the case isn’t as unique or enthralling, and by splitting up the protagonists we don’t get the full benefit of either. It’s not a bad tale, it’s just not a patch on the first.

This time next week, The Girl Who Kicked the Hornets’ Nest. Hopefully.

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