Flightplan (2005)

Posted on June 26, 2013 by badblokebob

In the interests of completing my ever-growing backlog, I decided to post ‘drabble reviews’ of some films. One day I may update with something longer, but at least there’s something here for posterity.

For those unfamiliar with the concept, a drabble is a complete piece of writing exactly 100 words long.

2013 #36
Robert Schwentke | 94 mins | TV | 2.35:1 | USA / English | 12 / PG-13

Notorious (to me) for unjustly beating Serenity to #1 at the US box office (a slight we Brits can proudly say went unrepeated), this plane-based uncredited remake of The Lady Vanishes is the kind of film that’s a 12 for no real reason. It contains “moderate violence and suspense”. Wow.

Flying home after her husband’s sudden death, Jodie Foster’s kid goes missing, but no one remembers seeing her. Is Foster mad, or is it a great big plot conceit? You guess. Things progress adequately, it’s only an hour-and-a-half, and then we can all move on to something better. Like Serenity.

Not only is this exactly 100 words, but each half is exactly 50. I know, I’m incredible.

The Bourne Legacy (2012)

Posted on June 7, 2013 by badblokebob

As Jason Bourne flits around London and New York making trouble for what’s left of Treadstone, a group of shady men go about safeguarding their own secretive activities. When Bourne exposes Treadstone, a series of convoluted join-the-dots links means it could bring them down too, so they set about destroying their risky initiatives, including killing a bunch of medically-enhanced operatives. What they didn’t count on was one surviving…

That basic setup covers roughly the first 30-40 minutes of The Bourne Legacy. Normally I’d hate to describe so much of a film, but it’s not my fault that co-writer, director and Bourne series veteran Tony Gilroy takes that long to get his story up and running. And it’s another 20 minutes before the real meat-and-potatoes of the tale begins.

And it feels it, too. About 52 minutes in I paused it and went to the kitchen. Not for any particular reason; I just needed a break. There, I saw a slug crawling into my dog’s water bowl, drinking the water or something, I don’t know. I’d never seen that before. I ended up watching that slug slowly edge around the bowl for 15 minutes or more rather than go back to the film. It’s that engrossing.

Gilroy has written or co-written every Bourne film to date, so you’d think he knows his way around the franchise — and he does, but perhaps too well. Each Bourne sequel has basically relied on the same formula: “the conspiracy was bigger than you thought, and now the next level up want Bourne dead”. That was fine in Supremacy — indeed, it took characters left dangling from Identity and wrapped up their roles. For my money, Ultimatum felt like it re-hashed this storyline, bringing in new characters to force a new level of backstory and hierarchy. (Clearly most viewers didn’t mind, as it’s widely regarded as the best Bourne film.)

And Legacy recycles this idea for a third time. Now, Treadstone and Blackbriar are just two of many such programmes run by the CIA and/or some shadowy higher organisation I’m not sure is real. On the bright side, they’re not after Bourne, but new escapee Aaron Cross. Not that it makes a huge amount of difference.

If such a repetitious story wasn’t bad enough, Gilroy spends a ludicrous amount of time setting it up. The beginning of Legacy overlaps with the end of Ultimatum, showing us in dully intricate detail what the numerous new CIA characters were doing during that time. And intercut with that we have our new hero wandering by himself across Alaska. For half an hour. This isn’t an art film meditation on isolation, it’s an action thriller — get a bloody move on!

What did Gilroy lose between Ultimatum and this? Well, co-creators. He co-wrote Identity and Ultimatum, and had two different directors across the first three films. Here he’s responsible for the story, co-writing (with his younger brother), and directing. He undoubtedly has some degree of talent, but maybe the other voices were essential to honing it. The other thing a fresh perspective could bring is fresh ideas. If Gilroy has rehashed the same basic plot three times now, surely they need someone with a new story to offer?

Perhaps also, after four films, he’s too close. Clearly that has advantages for remembering the intricacies of the timeline and continuity, especially with the trilogy’s increasingly complex web of conspiracies and conspirators; but maybe Gilroy has become too deeply embroiled in that. After all, he thinks it’s OK to spend the first half hour of the film connecting up the dots between the previous story and his new plot — who really wants that? That’s for geeky fans to do later.

And yet, for all that, the timeline doesn’t quite make sense. If we assume Identity is set in 2002, because that’s when it was released, then Supremacy is two years later, in 2004. Ultimatum is six weeks after that, so late 2004 or early 2005, and Legacy is immediately after that (as I said, the start overlaps). So, it’s set seven years ago? But a character finds a moderately key plot point on YouTube as if it’s the most natural thing in the world… but the very first YouTube video wasn’t uploaded until April 2005. I guess the films operate on a sliding timeline now, much like long-running superhero comics or the Bond films. That or The Bourne Identity is really a sci-fi film set in the Future Year of 2009. Considering the ‘science’ brought to bear in Legacy, perhaps that is the idea.

This is also the first Bourne film that leaves its storyline truly open. The other sequels had threads to pick up on, obviously, but if the series had stopped after either Identity or Supremacy, you’d have still had a complete tale (or Ultimatum, of course). It’s ironic, because this is also the first time I’ve been left with no desire to see a follow-up. The ending reminded me a bit of Saw IV, actually. For those who don’t know their Saw films, that takes place concurrently to Saw III, following different characters and a different storyline. At the end, the two films come together, adding a few seconds more story to what we saw at the end of IV, and ready to move on with unified purpose (well, sort of) in Saw V. Legacy feels like it concludes the same way: we’ve been introduced to new bad guys and a new hero, and the events that ended Ultimatum have been given a few seconds more development with a new twist; so now all is ready to rejoin where we left Bourne himself and continue afresh. Except Matt Damon seems to have ruled out that idea already. And, like I said, do we really want more of these characters and their increasingly ludicrous levels of conspiracy?

Legacy isn’t all bad. When it finally moves up to second gear (after a whole hour) there’s the occasional good action sequence. The requisite Bourne car chase is replaced by a bike chase, but I’d happily argue it’s at least the equal of any of the series’ other road chases — the only part of the film that can stand up to its predecessors, because the other fights and foot chases don’t have the same edge. Indeed, a rooftop/alleyway chase in Manila is just a rehash of Ultimatum’s Tangier sequence, but not as exciting. And through all that, the story remains resolutely uninvolving.

And don’t get me started on the cast. Jeremy Renner is fine as an action man but doesn’t deliver any other significant likeable qualities here (and I don’t think that’s his fault). Rachel Weisz is normally brilliant, but here is reduced to a snivelling plot piece. They’ve made her character a Clever Scientist, which is presumably supposed to make her a Strong Female Character too, but that’s not how it’s played at all. Edward Norton is wasted staring at monitors; Albert Finney is literally wasted, his one meaningful moment relegated to the Blu-ray’s deleted scenes section; Zeljko Ivanek gets a pivotal character but is underdeveloped and so his talents are wasted; and some actors from previous Bourne movies appear to be credited merely for use of their photos, until they turn up for ten-second cameos near the end that you’d rather weren’t there because it means someone is planning on a Bourne 5.

After the muted reception Legacy got on release I was expecting it to be mediocre — or perhaps, if I was lucky, underrated — but I thought it was mostly just boring, worse than I’d heard, and not even close to any of the previous Bourne films. They’re exceptional examples of the action-thriller, of course, but this isn’t even good as a routine genre entry, because it’s quite spectacularly dull. I do believe they could have continued this series without the character of Jason Bourne — there’s potential in some of the ideas here. But this version just doesn’t work, as a compelling film or worthy successor.

The Bourne Legacy is on Sky Movies Premiere at 4pm and 8pm every day for the next week.

It featured on my list of The Five Worst Films I Saw in 2013, which can be read in full here.

The Lost Weekend (1945)

Posted on May 27, 2013 by badblokebob

Directed by the inestimable Billy Wilder, winner of the Grand Prix (forerunner to the Palme d’Or) at the first Cannes, winner of the Best Picture Oscar in 1946, and also Best Actor, Director, and Screenplay, it’s a wonder that The Lost Weekend isn’t better known. I don’t think I’d even heard of it until Masters of Cinema announced their Blu-ray release back in January 2012, and comments I’ve seen around the internet express a similar experience of prior unawareness. Thank goodness for MoC, then, because this isn’t a film that deserves to be forgotten.

Adapted from the novel by Charles R. Jackson, the entire film takes place across one particularly eventful weekend (well, that plus flashbacks), in which should-be-recovering alcoholic Don Birnam (Ray Milland) tries desperately to fall back off the wagon.

The plot may smack of a worthy social drama (perhaps why it’s been forgotten), but most every sequence is loaded with more tension than a thriller. This is Wilder’s skill as both co-writer and director: he gets us on Birnam’s side early on, so that we follow him through the almost-self-induced hell that follows; and he keeps us on the edge of our seat, as desperate for it to work out as Birnam himself is. But, right from the very first scene, hardly a one of his plans does work out; all of them thwarted at the last possible moment, when victory seems assured. The film isn’t preachy, but if it does teach us a lesson then this is how it does it.

Wilder’s direction is excellent throughout, with innumerable striking compositions, perfectly paced scenes, and the aforementioned tension ratcheted up to maximum. There are other very good directors who would’ve made a hash of a film like this — made one that screams “meaningful movie about An Issue” — but the way Wilder handles affairs means it’s more than that. It explores its issue, it exposes us to the facets of it so that we might learn something, but it does so under the auspices of a drama about a man we come to care about. It’s not an “alcohol is bad” sermon, it’s a “can this man survive it?” thriller.

Equally, the flashback structure could scupper the film, but instead it raises it, with two of the best sequences coming here. There’s the exceptional La Traviata scene — it’s very obviously a bit of Good Direction, but while you could call it showy, it works — and the scene where Wick tries to cover for his brother to his new girl, which lends weight and backstory to the opening scene where he seems ready to (and, indeed, does) callously abandon him.

Milland is astounding. The film rides on him and he really carries it. It’s easy to play a comic drunk, but Milland doesn’t sink to that. Indeed he doesn’t do one type of drunk at all, swaying back and forth across various levels of inebriation as required. I often find films of this era contain performances we assess as great, but if you put them in a film today no one would buy it; they’d find it stagey and fake. Milland’s transcends that — it fits the era, but I wouldn’t be surprised to find it would play just as potently today. I think it’s fair to say that Milland is not widely known today, but with every film of his I become more convinced that history has been unkind.

Also worthy of praise is Frank Faylen as Bim. In his featurette on the MoC release, Alex Cox says he’s the second best character in the film, and he’s probably right. Cox notes that at least one review at the time really laid in to Bim, painting him as an evil sadist. Today, I don’t think we have that perspective at all. Bim tells Birnam the truth, painting his illness like it really is. Whereas his other friends and relations all try to do their best for him, but wind up enabling his addiction to continue, Bim’s experience and detachedness means he can be blunt and truthful. Birnam may not realise the good it’s done him, but good it does ultimately do.

There’s also able support from Howard Da Silva as barman Nat and Doris Dowling as Gloria (is she a whore of some kind? Just an escort? A bar-crawler? Did I miss something?), whose slang is oddly infectious. No offence to Jane Wyman, but her lovelorn-but-strong girlfriend character only seems to really come alive in the closing minutes, when she considers abandoning Birnam to his fate.

The Oscar-nominated score by Miklós Rózsa at first seems highly unusual, a warbling horror movie score, but it quickly comes to fit very well, and not just the nightmarish daydream sequence near the film’s climax. The movie was also nominated for John F. Seitz’s cinematography and Doane Harrison’s editing. They lost to The Picture of Dorian Gray and National Velvet respectively, neither of which I’ve seen, but they must have something special to outclass the work on show here.

I think the same can be said of the whole film. Issue-focused movies from the past are often badly dated, even if we can still admire the filmmaking techniques involved. That’s not their fault — it’s the cultural climate of the time, or the shifts in understanding that have come since. I’ll admit I know next to nothing about alcoholism so can’t comment definitively on the film’s enduring accuracy, but from what I do know of other conditions of addiction and mental health, this feels as if it’s still thoroughly relevant.

Even if you don’t care about The Issue, there’s an engrossing, thrilling drama for everyone to enjoy. If The Lost Weekend is indeed forgotten, then it merits widespread rediscovery.

That concludes my reviews from 2012.

The Last Boy Scout (1991)

Posted on May 24, 2013 by badblokebob

2013 #39
Tony Scott | 101 mins | TV | 16:9 | USA / English | 18 / R

Bruce Willis stars as a down-on-his-luck PI who stumbles into a sport/politics conspiracy in this early-’90s action-thriller from screenwriter Shane Black (Lethal Weapon, Kiss Kiss Bang Bang, Iron Man 3) and director Tony Scott (you know what Tony Scott’s directed). I think it’s seen as a fairly minor work in all of the primary participants’ CVs (and Halle Berry’s, who has a small supporting role), but is such ignored status deserved? Well…

The movie has two big points in its favour. The first is Black’s screenplay, packed with his usual sparky dialogue and flair for plot developments that you might not expect. He has a real way for working in familiar genres with a unique voice and Last Boy Scout is no exception. It’s considerably better than Lethal Weapon, which I really didn’t take to, if not quite as good as Kiss Kiss Bang Bang, which I adored.

Second is the wonderful noir feel that permeates through much of the film. This is thanks in part to Black — a private dick we first meet sleeping in his car who gets caught up in a conspiracy much bigger than him? What’s not noir about that? — but also to Scott and cinematographer Ward Russell. Technically this is neo-noir, but it makes you want to call it “neon-noir” — pitch black frames punctuated by glowing coloured lights. On the whole, it looks gorgeous.

It’s this noir edge that appeals most about the film for me. The occasional action theatrics are fine, but there’s nothing innovative or exciting enough in that field that hasn’t been done better or more memorably elsewhere. It’s the story and tone that work most to the movie’s benefit. It’s a shame, then, that the third act ditches much of that mood in favour of a race-against-time OTT-action finale. In my opinion, it pushes things too far, and nearly dragged down my rating an entire star.

But that, too, would be taking it too far. The Last Boy Scout isn’t the best film starring Bruce Willis, or the best film written by Shane Black, or the best film directed by Tony Scott; but the fingerprints of all three are unmistakably plastered right across it, and it’s a long way from being anyone’s worst work.

The Fast and the Furious: Tokyo Drift (2006)

Posted on May 22, 2013 by badblokebob

2013 #45
Justin Lin | 100 mins | TV | 16:9 * | USA & Germany / English | 12 / PG-13

2001’s car racing actioner The Fast and the Furious seemed, to me, to meet with a mixed reception; the kind of thing where some critics disliked it and some enjoyed it for what it was, and audiences were more the latter but only passingly so. It must’ve done well though, because in 2003 we were treated to a sequel.

For 2 Fast 2 Furious the studio backed the wrong horse, signing up the first film’s uninteresting hero, Paul Walker, and leaving its more entertaining villain, Vin Diesel, to his skyrocketing action star career. The main talking point seemed to be the title, out of which the piss was relentlessly taken… and has been ever since.

Come 2006, there seemed to be some kind of last-ditch attempt at saving what someone thought was a good idea. The third film in the series ditches a number for a subtitle; ditches the US settings for Japan; and ditches every character from the earlier films in favour of a fresh start. What remains is the tone and the content. The plot is the usual mix of street racing and gangster posturing, though at least the “woohoo hot chicks!” and rap culture business has been toned down from last time.

The plot, such as it is, sees a rebellious US high school student (target audience cypher, check!) sent away to his father in Japan instead of going to prison (I’m sure there’s some logic there…) and ordered never to go near a car again. Which he promptly does, of course. Racing is different in Japan, though: rather than drag-style muscle with the odd inconvenient corner, here it’s all about drifting — sliding round corners with style. Goaded into a race, said high school student (I can’t remember his name. Who could?) loses miserably. And then he sets out to learn how to drift and there’s some stuff with a girl who’s with the bad guy and there’s some gangster-types and you know the drill, I’m sure.

If I sound dismissive, it’s slightly affected: Tokyo Drift is surprisingly decent. Surprisingly decent for a Fast and Furious film, that is. In my review of 2F2F I described it as “junk food” — you know it’s bad for you, but sometimes it hits the spot. Tokyo Drift is the same kind of film, all fat and sugar and no substance, but kinda tasty at the right time. And at least it provides something different to the previous films. Not so much the new characters, who are predictably bland; or the plot, which is samey; but the move to Tokyo, which lends proceedings a different flavour and style, not least the emphasis on drifting — most/all of which was performed for real by stunt drivers, rather than the often computer-enhanced car action of the previous films.

Despite this looking like a desperate grab that would leave The Fast and the Furious series as a trilogy in technicalities only, somehow the franchise has since revitalised itself. More on that next time, but it does have a bearing here: as later films brought returning characters and on-going plots, so Tokyo Drift slipped away as an anomaly; an aside, perhaps even a mistake, that has no place in the series’ primary narrative. While that last point may or may not be true, as a film in itself, Tokyo Drift is as passingly entertaining as anything else the F&F series has yet offered me.

* The original aspect ratio is 2.35:1, but this was on ITV and they’re less respectful than Channel 4 or (sometimes) the Beeb. The cropping was rarely noticeable, however. ^

The Dark Knight Rises (2012)

Posted on May 14, 2013 by badblokebob

After The Dark Knight’s runaway success, this trilogy-closer would inevitably disappoint some. It is imperfect, featuring a story so grandly complex that even the extensive running time fails to give it breathing space, and an occasional leap or fudged point requires audience thinking (which too few are capable of, apparently); but it also has its share of greatness.

It’s undeniably notable for being An Ending — superheroes don’t get endings. There’ll be a reboot, naturally, but no matter: Nolan’s Batman ends.

Whatever the flaws, there’s a rewarding experience here, albeit more comic-book-y than the real-world crime-thriller aspirations of its beloved predecessor.

The Dark Knight Rises placed 6th on my list of The Ten Best Films I Saw For the First Time in 2012, which can be read in full here.

In the interests of completing my ever-growing backlog, I decided to post ‘drabble reviews’ of some films. In the future I may update with something longer, but if I don’t, at least here’s something for posterity.

For those unfamiliar with the concept, a drabble is a complete piece of writing exactly 100 words long.

I have much more I could have said about The Dark Knight Rises, but damn I’m fed up with still having films from 2012 on my to-do list! A fuller piece may well accompany a re-watch in the future. For now, there’s always my initial thoughts.

The Raven (2012)

Posted on March 18, 2013 by badblokebob

2013 #30
James McTeigue | 106 mins | TV | 2.35:1 | USA, Hungary & Spain / English | 15 / R

John Cusack stars as literary giant (figuratively) Edgar Allan Poe in this wannabe-Victorian-Se7en from the director of V for Vendetta.

Set in the days leading up to Poe’s death (a period in the author’s life which is apparently shrouded in mystery), the film sees a serial killer recreating horrendous scenes from Poe’s tales, leading the police to rope in the author in the hope he can help solve the case. A game develops between the killer and the writer, as they race against time to stop more deaths and all that palaver.

Dark and gruesome with the killer having a clear line to follow in his murders? Wannabe Se7en, see. Unfortunately, it doesn’t follow up on that notion too well. Screenwriters Hannah Shakespeare (helluva name to live up to) and Ben Livingston don’t seem to know what to do with Poe’s tales, so there’s no rhyme nor reason to the killings — they’re plucked at random, possibly from the killer’s most favouritest stories, possibly just the ones someone thought would be the most cinematic. And whereas Se7en’s gore is shocking because it’s used sparingly, is kind of plausible, and is set very much in the real world, here we get a kind of gothic horror feel, complete with copious CGI blood at points.

That said, I got the feeling that The Raven is sort of an R by default. (Note that it received a 15 over here, which is also the stomping ground of harder-edged PG-13s.) There’s gore and the odd swear word, but none of it is lingered on. Most of the obvious blood ‘n’ guts is constrained to one scene, and I believe I counted the PG-13’s requisite single use of the F-word. That they didn’t tone it all down just a smidge to match, and so go for the box office-friendly PG-13, is a surprise in these days.

Setting aside comparisons to Fincher’s masterpiece, I’ve read that one critic described The Raven as “Saw meets Sherlock Holmes”. Obviously I maintain that my allusion is better, but I can see where they’re coming from. However, apart from one murder inspired by The Pit and the Pendulum and someone being (temporarily) buried alive, it’s not that Saw-like; and it lacks the humour or action of Ritchie’s Holmes, or the deductive reasoning of any version. But, y’know, aside from that… Additionally, the climax is somewhat reminiscent of A Study in Pink. Might be coincidence, but on the other hand that episode did go out nearly two years before this was released…

I don’t know how historically accurate this tale is, but I imagine not very — I expect we’d know if Poe had been involved in a headline-making murder investigation that led to his death. But that’s fine — it’s the embodiment of the notion that a fiction film is an entertainment, not a history lesson. As for the author’s characterisation, I don’t know much about Poe, but can’t imagine Cusack is an accurate interpretation. He’s solid as this interpretation, though: a charming, roguish figure, living hand-to-mouth through his fondness for alcohol and dramatic wooing of a woman whose father hates him.

The rest of the cast are from Hollywood’s usual go-to for period tales: Brits; if not entirely then mostly so. (The film was shot in Hungary and Serbia, so I suppose our thesps have the additional advantage of being geographically favourable to Americans.) You know you’re getting a level of quality there, then, though for me Kevin R. McNally lets the side down (again). He’s only a supporting character and is fine most of the time, but there’s one bit when he’s talking to the lead detective and just rattles off his line… It’s not the world’s greatest speech, but you can hear there was meant to be more nuance and quiet in there.

That could be the fault of the director, of course. A first assistant director for the Wachowskis in the days of The Matrix trilogy, James McTeigue graduated to feature directing with the adaptation of V for Vendetta, which I think is a very good film. He followed it with Ninja Assassin, which by all accounts is dreadful (I have, by one way or another, wound up with the BD, so someday I’ll find out). I think The Raven suggests his first film may have been fluke, or was at least aided by his mentors (who were also writers and producers on V). The actual direction-y directing here is mostly fine, although on the whole the film is too dark; sometimes literally too dark to see what’s going on, and that’s not aided by occasionally clunky editing.

I’ve not even mentioned the inappropriately modern title sequence (doubly bad as it comes after a rather sombre ending), or that the neat use of a raven in the film’s logo on the poster remains the entire project’s strongest aspect.

Se7en is probably my favourite film ever made, but criticisms that it’s quite a standard detective mystery are not invalid. It’s enlivened by Andrew Kevin Walker’s writing (great dialogue, engrossing structure, etc), some top-drawer performances (Freeman, Pitt, a loopy-calm Spacey), and, probably most of all, David Fincher’s inestimable touch. In making such a comparison it’s easy to see that The Raven lacks any of these, which renders it a solid period mystery, but no more.

The Raven is on Sky Movies Premiere at various times this week.

Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy (2011)

Posted on March 5, 2013 by badblokebob

Shortly after I watched Tinker Tailor, it was announced that they (“they” in this instance being Working Title, I think) are planning a new film adaptation of Daphne du Maurier’s perennially popular novel Rebecca. This news was greeted (at least on the websites where I read it) with cries in the comments along the lines of, “you can’t remake Hitchcock!” Such is the power of an adaptation to overshadow its original work, at least in some quarters — here in the UK, I’d say the novel is at least as well known as the film, and has already been re-filmed at least twice for TV.

I mention this because Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy elicited a broadly similar reaction, thanks to the beloved 1979 BBC miniseries starring Sir Alec Guinness as quiet but fiercely clever spy George Smiley. How dare anyone re-make that? Well, perhaps because it’s 30 years old (enough time to afford a new perspective, potentially) and was originally a novel — and those are ‘re-made’ all the time. Just ask Pride and Prejudice, or Oliver Twist, or dozens of others.

Personally, I watched the Guinness version just a month or two before I saw the new film, and it unavoidably colours my reaction to it. In that situation, one can only enjoy the new adaptation to an extent, while memories of the previous one crowd in. Distance is required for anything more objective. So changes between TV and film leered out at me, such as a radically different opening mission, and a radically re-arranged structure in places, and a few performances that weren’t up to the same level, and a marginally less effective denouement.

Yet, for all that, the film is excellent. It may not match the TV series in places, in my subjective opinion, but in its own right it shines. Gary Oldman does the impossible and offers a Smiley that is neither an imitation of Guinness’ nor a deliberate counterpoint, but stands apart as an equally proficient rendering of the character. The rest of the cast are equally up to task, with the exception of Kathy Burke, who stands out like a sore thumb in my opinion.

The TV series took about seven hours to tell the same story that this achieves in just over two. Interestingly, without cutting anything major, the film version still feels leisurely paced. It’s also equally as complicated — it’s an intricate plot, and both adaptations assume the viewer will keep up with it. This seems to have caused some viewers problems, particularly in America (anecdotally, at least). It does demand one’s attention, but it is possible to follow. Equally, I had a leg-up from watching and understanding the TV version.

All that said, the four-way mystery about who the villain is never seems much of a mystery. On the one hand, I know the answer; but on the other, I guessed it on TV too. I won’t give anything more away, though the shortened running time means one of the four suspects gets even less screen time than their already-minimal role in the series, and consequently downgraded casting in both instances. It’s an unfortunate side effect of a big-name cast that it helps your audience second-guess plot developments, but it’s equally unavoidable.

Another noteworthy advantage of the film is that it’s gorgeously shot. The TV series actually has its own appeal in this area, with a realism that is quite pleasing. The film occasionally goes grander (look at the depiction of meeting rooms in The Circus for a major example — while the TV series goes for any old room in Whitehall, the film offers stonking soundproof ‘pods’), but it works in its own way.

I must confess, much like my recent drabble reviews, this TV-version-centric review of Tinker Tailor was not what I had in mind, because the film has many praises to sing in its own right. But, in fairness to the blog’s stated mission of seeing a film for the first time and then reviewing it, the Guinness iteration did factor large in my reaction to the film. Now distanced from the series, I look forward to watching Tinker Tailor again with a fairer eye. Yet for all my talk of negative comparisons, I was still mightily impressed — enough to rank it in my top five films I saw in 2012, and enough to give it full marks.

Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy placed 5th on my list of The Ten Best Films I Saw For the First Time in 2012, which can be read in full here.

The Falcon in Danger (1943)

Posted on February 28, 2013 by badblokebob

2012 #73
William Clemens | 67 mins | TV | 4:3 | USA / English | PG*

We’ve had the Saint in New York, in London, and in Palm Springs; soon we’ll have the Falcon in Mexico, in Hollywood, and in San Francisco; but here, he’s just in danger. He’s also in perhaps the best film either series has offered to date.

Ironically, the film begins with one of the worst plane crashes ever committed to celluloid. I’m not berating it for the special effects (they’re not incredible, but this is a ’40s B-movie — we’re not expecting much), but the way it’s shot and acted. The extras are appalling. Fortunately the film almost instantly picks up, offering a mystery worthy of Sherlock Holmes: said plane, noted as having several passengers when it left its previous location, is now completely empty of both passengers and crew. What the blazes?!

Fortunately, Tom Conway’s Falcon Mk.II is on hand to sort things out. It leads to a moderately intricate case of deception (of course — they didn’t really disappear), kidnap, ransom, theft, business intrigue, a suspicious antique dealership, a murderous guard dog, and a rollerskating rink (no, really). The humour is in shorter supply than in other entries — we’re mostly spared the bumbling cops, so it doesn’t suffer too badly for it. That said, the main ‘comedy’ comes from the Falcon’s latest fiancée, Amelita Ward as a Texan lass who’s distinctly annoying. Reviews abound that assert she completely ruins the film, but it’s not that bad. Though the Falcon clearly agrees with everyone else’s assessment and shrugs her off as often as he can, to our benefit.

For I think the first time, the “distressed girl distracts the Falcon” coda actually leads into the next film (or seems to). Ironically, though that cast includes both of …in Danger’s female leads in new roles, the Hysterical Girl who leads the Falcon to it isn’t in it. Ah, ’40s cinema.

While some may lament the slightly more serious tone, then, The Falcon in Danger surely stands out as one of the more engrossing mysteries the series has to offer. I can’t say I’d complain if the remaining seven films followed such a line.

* As with the vast majority of the Falcon series, The Falcon in Danger hasn’t been passed by the BBFC since its original release. Nonetheless, it’s available on DVD, rated PG. ^

The Falcon Strikes Back (1943)

Posted on February 28, 2013 by badblokebob

Directed by Edward Dmytryk (who, a couple of years later, would helm Farewell My Lovely/Murder, My Sweet, which was previously filmed as The Falcon Takes Over — connections, connections), the first film to feature solely Tom Conway as the Falcon is probably the series’ weakest effort to date.

The story trundles along for much of the film, at best a typical runaround, at worst an unengaging tale of stolen war bonds and memory loss. (I say “memory loss” — the Falcon was supposedly unconscious, meaning he didn’t have the memories in the first place to lose. But that’s beside the point.) I was getting a bit fed up with it, but the final act manages to introduce some atmosphere and incident, in the process explaining some of the earlier, apparently aimless, story choices.

With the Falcon series, the makers seem to be making a concerted effort with plots — whereas the Saint films were largely quite straightforward, often only having one possible character to reveal as the villain, the Falcon films are largely genuine whodunits. Strikes Back has a particularly knotty denouement. It doesn’t necessarily make them better — indeed, on the whole, the Saint films are more entertaining — but it gives them something.

Conway makes a solid replacement for George Sanders, because he’s effectively more of the same. Aside from an opening that implies the new New Yorker is uncomfortable with the city’s constant noise, there’s no reference to him being new in town last time round — indeed, the plot fairly hinges on the fact he previously put someone away in the area. His eye for the ladies remains the same, although Conway feels a bit slicker and less whipped. Neither carry the same charisma as Sanders’ Saint.

Jane Randolph is back as Marcia Brooks, but the women largely play a toned down part this time round, perhaps because there’s at least four of them. Goldie’s back, this time played by Cliff Edwards, who is certainly no Allen Jenkins. Whereas Jenkins made for an amiable sidekick, Edwards is actually quite irritating. (Though this is his last appearance for now, the character returns later in the series, played by Edward S. Brophy and Vince Barnett.) The policemen perform their usual shtick, which gets a little more desperate and less funny with each film. At least there’s only one round of the “because I’m the boss” gag this time. The Falcon’s ethnically-variable butler Jerry is still Asian, albeit recast with Richard Loo, and gets a more substantial supporting role, once again in one of the film’s better segments.

Strikes Back recovers towards the end for a decent final act, but it’s a relative slog to get to that point. All in, while not outright bad, I’d say it’s the least entertaining of the Falcon films thus far.

* As with the vast majority of the Falcon series, The Falcon Strikes Back hasn’t been passed by the BBFC since its original release. Nonetheless, it’s available on DVD, rated PG. ^

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