Saw 3D [2D] (2010)

Posted on October 31, 2011 by badblokebob

aka Saw: The Final Chapter

Before gangs of youths knock on your door to rob you under threat of violence, as is traditional on Halloween, why not enjoy my thoughts on a now-dead ’00s Halloween staple: the Saw movie.

I say “enjoy” — it’s almost as bad as those greedy kids…

What’s this, the first Saw movie, now in 3D?

No.

So it must be the third Saw movie then, in 3D?

No, not that either.

It’s the seventh, in fact. But it is in 3D, hence the only-slightly-confusing Saw 3D moniker. I guess Saw 7 plus the tagline “see Saw 7 in 3D!” wasn’t considered clear enough.

And to top the stupidity off, I didn’t watch it in 3D, but the 2D prints are still called Saw 3D. What?

I was going to say that’s not even the most stupid thing about the film, but the rest of it isn’t so much stupid as disappointing. The problem is that there are some good ideas, but few are executed as well as they could be or paid off appropriately. The setting for the opening trap — it’s played out very publicly in a shop window — is a marvellous twist on the format. Is this an escalation? Are we going to see Jigsaw playing to the crowd all the time? No. It’s a one off. It doesn’t even have any bearing on the rest of the plot — it simply occurs and is never even mentioned again. That’s appalling.

Likewise, the support group for Jigsaw survivors: nice idea, but they don’t find anywhere to go with it. At least the notion of a fake Jigsaw survivor making a mint out of selling his fake story is an idea that has legs. Not long legs really, but they at least get a decent amount out of it — that is, it’s a set up for the Game of the Film. As ideas for The Final Film go, it’s a perfect match — a bit meta and all that jazz. Accompanying this is, of course, the arc plot that has stretched across the series. As the final film it’s time to wrap that up… Sadly, it isn’t particularly satisfactory. With so many characters killed off in the preceding films we’re not left with anyone to really care about — certainly not the new gang of coppers we’re introduced to. Actually, to say we’re “introduced to” them is a kindness — they just turn up and begin to lead that part of the plot.

That said, the final five minutes are pretty good — just when I was thinking Cary Elwes’ cameo earlier had been underwhelming and pointless, there’s a final reveal to pay it off, and also neatly tie together and round off the whole series. It’s easily the best bit of the film.

It might seem daft to say this about a Saw film, but it’s a bit too gory for my liking. I know that comes with the territory in a film like this, but I think others in the series have managed the level better. This is up with Saw 3 in the stakes of needless torture-porn-level blood ‘n’ guts. The near-pointless car trap is the worst offender, as much as anything because it’s almost entirely ancillary to the plot — it’s a trap for the sake of a trap, and it’s a nasty one.

The film’s extended version (no idea if it’s included on the UK release I watched) only adds 12 seconds, and that’s all gore. Most of that occurs in extensions of literally a few frames. Earlier extended entries added both plot and gore, so that’s… pathetic, really. (According to the BBFC, the PAL-speed DVD versions run 23 seconds longer than the theatrical version. My info on the 12 seconds comes from my usual source.)

Aiming to live up to its title, the whole affair has clearly been designed with 3D in mind. That means a few moments of things flying at the camera, but they’re surprisingly rare. OK, so people explode or are pulled apart a lot more regularly than they were in previous films, and bits of them swing in the direction of the camera, but that’s in keeping with the style of the series and doesn’t jar massively — if you didn’t know it was shot for 3D, you wouldn’t notice most of it.

Other bits, though, you really would. One trap sees three spikes headed for a woman’s eyes and mouth, so naturally we’re treated to some POV shots. This probably worked great in 3D, but in 2D they literally fall flat. Better is a trap that sees two men having to negotiate planks of wood on the second storey of a building that doesn’t have a floor. It works fine in 2D, but I imagine 3D added some lovely depth to the layered drop to the floor below. Never mind the odd things flying at the camera, this was the only time I really wished I was watching in 3D.

Some people lay into 3D for having stuff poke out at the audience for barely any reason. I have no problem with this in a movie like Saw — it’s all part of the fun. It gets tiresome if that’s all it’s doing, or if it happens too often, but once or twice it’s a good laugh; part of the gimmick of a thoroughly gimmicky format. In 2D, of course, that all falls dead. Luckily, as I said, not too much is randomly flung at the screen.

The worst side effect of 3D, however, is that the colour looks ridiculous in 2D. I’m glad they’ve shot it with 3D properly in mind — everyone knows the glasses make 3D films darker, but not every filmmaker seems to be compensating appropriately (see, for example, the criticism of The Last Airbender’s post-converted 3D), so it’s nice to see someone that is. But they haven’t un-compensated (as it were) for 2D. Much of the film just looks weirdly… not bright, exactly, but too light. It’s fine, just a bit unusual. But then some of the blood is a bit of a funny colour and, by the end, has turned a garish shade of pink. Oh dear. It continues to amaze me that no one’s come up with a simple grading solution to make colours look the same in regular 2D and glasses-effected 3D. It can’t be that hard, surely?

Saw 3D has a big pile of good ideas, but all of them are underused. The film just feels boring, somehow; workmanlike, maybe. It lacks the inspiration of earlier Saw films, despite on paper having some of the very best ideas of the entire series. It feels silly to say it about the seventh film in a yearly churned-out franchise, but Saw 3D is a disappointment; a lacklustre end to a variable franchise that started really rather well. Shame.

I watched all seven Saw films within the past two years, donchaknow.

Saw 3D featured on my list of The Five Worst Films I Saw in 2011, which can be read in full here.

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).

The Day of the Locust (1975)

Posted on September 18, 2011 by badblokebob

2011 #38
John Schlesinger | 137 mins | TV | 18 / R

Adapted from the novel by Nathanael West, The Day of the Locust is a slightly scrappy film about the seedy underside of Hollywood’s golden age. The plot is neither here nor there in many respects — the film is about the grotesques who are attracted to Hollywood, and that being exactly what it feeds on. The bizarre, surreal ending definitely makes more sense if you’re already thinking about the film in this way.

The magnificent riot at the end is a tour de force of cinema that single-handedly almost justifies that whole theme — it’s what happens when their frustrations at dreams not being realised overflows. It could be argued it makes an easy juxtaposition — of fans baying for stars at a premiere with a revenge-fuelled mob baying for blood — but it’s still a just one. It’s capped off by the way one turns into the other, and how that turns into a kind of apocalypse. I don’t know how it’s meant to be read, but I choose to take it that way

(Spoilers in this paragraph.) If the riot is a literal apocalypse, then the next scene becomes an afterlife-set coda. It’s very brightly lit and white, like a Heaven, and Faye is still there — still in Hollywood, exactly where she’d dream of being — while Tod is gone. She’s looking for him, back at the Bernadoo where she was kinda happy, and she wants him after all — but he’s not there; he doesn’t want her. It’s a tenuous reading for a film that seems to be a real-world drama, maybe… but not a wholly unsupported one — it’s a flat-out unusual scene.

Also brilliantly staged is the collapse of a Waterloo battle set. Appropriate as it’s one of the novel’s most memorable moments.

Despite having top billing, Donald Sutherland’s part is a beefed-up supporting role. Except he’s so good in it that he fairly steals the film. And despite fourth billing, William Atherton is ostensibly the main character. I don’t know if the film takes lengthy asides from him because they cast a fourth-billed-level actor, or if they cast a fourth-billed-level actor because the film takes lengthy asides from him, but either way these long-feeling stretches away from the only character we’re really encouraged to identify with dilute the film’s drive. Primarily for this reason, it could do with being shorter. Interestingly, the novel is a mere 163 pages (in my edition), meaning the film is close to translating it at a rate of a page per minute, which is rather extraordinary — very few adaptations do so little condensing.

(You probably recognise William Atherton from slimy supporting roles in Ghostbusters and the first two Die Hards. Believe it or not, his Ghostbusters character is available as an action figure. That is madness.)

The Day of the Locust may be a mess, or it may be a flawed masterpiece. It may very well be both. For much of it’s running time it pootled along at 3 stars, pushing down toward 2 the more diluted it began to feel. But seeing the completion of Donald Sutherland’s performance in the final scenes, plus the way those scenes seem to draw together the whole film, revealing and fulfilling themes I hadn’t even noticed developing until that point, in a spectacular orgy of apocalyptic violence… well, the stars suddenly ratchet back up.

~~The Day of the Locust is on Sky Movies Indie tonight at 9:30pm, and at various other times throughout the week.~~

Nirvana (1997)

Posted on August 29, 2011 by badblokebob

2011 #75
Gabriele Salvatores | 89 mins | TV | R

The Radio Times film section may be steadily going down the drain, but when anyone describes something as “one of the best science-fiction films ever made” it’s worth paying attention. “Yet few people outside Italy have seen it,” they add. Indeed, despite screening at Cannes (albeit out of competition), this Italian movie has never been classified by the BBFC, so I presume it’s never been released here (though this was its third showing on the BBC). It’s been released in America though… by Miramax. They did their usual foreign film job, chopping out 17 minutes, changing the music and adding an English dub. This is the version shown by the BBC (at the time of posting, also available on iPlayer) and reviewed here.

Most sci-fi we see is of the American variety — partly due to the fact most of any cinema and the vast majority of imported TV we get is from there, partly due to that being where the money is for special effects and what have you — and that tends to mean tonnes of CGI, a fast pace and action sequences up to the eyeballs. Nirvana is more stereotypically European, however: it’s clearly a Deep and Meaningful film, though unlike many examples of Thoughtful cinema it at least has a slightly thriller-ish plot and a hefty dose of cyberpunk styling for us plebs to pick up on.

Sometime in the future (I read 2005 in one review, but best to ignore that now), Christopher Lambert is a computer game designer working on a new title for Christmas. Somehow a virus invades his system, in the process making his lead character, Solo, fully sentient. Unable to escape the game, Solo wishes to be deleted, but Lambert can’t because the final software is owned by some giant corporation and will be released in just three days… so he has just three days to get into their computer system and delete the file, before Solo is condemned to never-ending life stuck in the game.

The most obvious point of reference for Nirvana is Blade Runner, which I’d wager was a hefty inspiration. Writer/director Salvatores introduces themes of what it means to be human and a lead character one might like to decide isn’t after all, and sets it in a perma-night, dystopian, multi-cultural future. It doesn’t quite have Ridley Scott’s consistency of vision, though: while he just rendered an Asian-American future L.A., Salvatores takes globalisation to the max, running us through locations named after Marrakech and Bombay City, which may or may not be part of the same sprawling metropolis, and which all exhibit appropriately specific cultural stylings. These aren’t just pretty backgrounds, but in some ways reflect the film’s use of video games — in which you can, of course, constantly re-spawn your character — as a metaphor for reincarnation.

In aid of this, while Lambert is collecting the plot pieces needed to attack that corporation — at the same time as following a subplot about a missing girlfriend — we get to witness Solo’s experiences inside the game, frequently dying and re-living the same story with a group of characters who aren’t aware in the way he is. To be blunt, the in-game stuff is a bit odd. It doesn’t really go anywhere, and builds to a lacklustre climax — indeed, the word climax is a bit strong. But perhaps this is part of the point: as the only character in the game capable of independent thought, Solo is stuck in a loop of story and fellow characters who just re-enact what they were programmed to re-enact. Literally, he can’t go anywhere.

This part of the film calls to mind eXistenZ, David Cronenberg’s film about a virtual reality game that blurs the line between reality and the game. It’s rather a surface similarity though — Lambert barely spends any time in his game, interacting with Solo merely though a series of screens on his journeys (and, one presumes, a series of microphones too). Cronenberg’s film was made a couple of years after this, so commending it for not doing the same thing would obviously be a bit rich. It is to be commended for not descending into a needlessly twist-strewn third act though, which I had thought was coming — there’s plenty of bits along the way that could be used to build a ‘surprise’ or two. There’s some ambiguity in the ending, but not too blatantly (unlike later versions of Blade Runner, for instance), and Emmanuelle Seigner’s ex-girlfriend character is never quite used in the way I expected.

For all its intellectualising, Nirvana can still be a fun film, and not just because Lambert’s accent is always set to provoke a giggle. That sounds horribly xenophobic written down, but it’s all Highlander’s fault: there’s no reason he shouldn’t sound European here (and he has dubbed himself), but the memory of that accent supposedly being Scottish does linger. (And, just so we’re clear, I love Highlander.) But no, there are proper dashes of humour, scattered here and there to provide some subtle texture. And there are action sequences too, and dated ’90s music (presumably thanks to Miramax), and even some boobies. To be honest, though, if you just want humour, action, dated music and boobies, there are dozens of films that will serve you better. At least they stop it becoming too dry, and give you a chance to let what’s going on sink in, helping prevent total confusion every time the film threatens to become incomprehensible (maybe it’s just me, but it took a little while to work out what Lambert was actually getting up to in the main plot).

I’d quite like to see the original version. Who knows what changes Miramax have wrought with their fiddling (that woman on the poster certainly isn’t in this version, at least), and I imagine subtitles could be easier to follow than this dubbed version, in which everyone’s covered by either the original actors straining with English (based on the accents) or the typically bad voice actors employed for such dubs. The Italian DVD is reportedly English-friendly and very good quality, so perhaps I’ll get hold of that (expect another review if/when I do… well, eventually).

Apparently Nirvana “has achieved something of a cult status, especially in Europe”, and I think I can see why: there’s a few themes that might be worth a ponder, and enough splashes of style and action to keep one’s attention… most of the time. It might not be as stylistically delineated as either of the films it brought to mind, but then Blade Runner is perhaps the pinnacle of screen SF and eXistenZ… well, now I really want to see that again. I don’t know if this is “one of the best science-fiction films ever made” — especially not in this Americanised version — but it certainly has a few things going for it.

~~Nirvana is available to UK viewers on the BBC iPlayer until 3AM on Saturday 3rd September (i.e. Friday night).~~

Source Code (2011)

Posted on August 15, 2011 by badblokebob

2011 #73
Duncan Jones | 93 mins | Blu-ray | 12 / PG-13

The second directorial outing from BAFTA-winning Brit Duncan Jones (after Moon) is another sci-fi mystery, this time set in the present day. A terrorist blows up a commuter train entering Chicago; a new device called the ‘source code’ allows US helicopter pilot Colter Stevens to re-live the final eight minutes of one of the train’s passengers, in the hope of finding out who did it. But this isn’t time travel — he can’t affect the outcome — only hope to find the bomber and bring them to justice.

Naturally there’s more to it than that; you may have even read what in other review’s plot summaries, but I’m trying to keep it vague-ish here. Does Source Code benefit from being spoiler-free? No more than any other mystery-based film… which is to say “yes”, I suppose.

Having not seen Moon (still — bad me) I can’t compare, which is a shame because the heralding of Jones as a key new voice in film and/or SF film suggests that’s one of the best ways to approach his work. He’s clearly a good director, constructing a credible mid-scale thriller here (the same could be said about the work of screenwriter Ben Ripley, or the performances of any and all members of the cast) with a few flashier elements that stand out (in a good way), but I presume his previous effort showed more promise, because Source Code is hardly groundbreaking. It’s certainly a solid, dual-pronged, science-fiction mystery — dual-pronged because not only is Stevens working to find the bomber, but also fighting amnesia to discover what the source code is and how he wound up there — but not an especially deep or complex work. There’s nothing wrong with something being little more than an exciting, engrossing thriller, it’s just not revelatory.

Anyway, it’s in the latter of those two prongs that the film’s heart lies. Running under an hour and a half once you lose the credits, the bomber is uncovered about an hour in, which leaves the last 20 minutes or so to deal with what else Stevens has uncovered. The efficiency of storytelling is to the credit of both Jones and Ripley: rather than emphasise the Groundhog Day element of the plot, for instance by having Stevens making endless trips into the eight minutes and gradually uncover slivers of information, he finds the bomb on his second trip and makes significant headway with each recurring one. All sorts of parts of that could have been stretched out, easily pushing the film to two hours or beyond, but rather than padding we’re left with something that’s quite taut. For a thriller, that’s definitely a good thing.

The other side of the plot is not only where the heart is, but also where the real twists and mysteries lie — I guessed the bomber the first time I saw the character; even if you don’t, it ultimately matters little. Vital to the finale are the subplots like Stevens’ relationship with his father and his growing affection for the passenger his alter ego was travelling with — but who he can’t save, of course, because the source code isn’t time travel.

Spoilers follow in the rest of this review (bar the final paragraph), because I have to discuss the ending — because it’s where the film sadly begins to fall down for me. You see, the logic of the source code holds up most of the way through, and I can understand Stevens’ motivation for wanting to save the people in what is, really, little more than a simulation — he’s accepted he can’t really save them, but he wants to have the satisfaction of feeling he has before he dies. Nice enough. I can even accept the Spielbergian sentiment this ending arguably generates — that freeze-frame track down the train with all the laughing people, for instance. What doesn’t quite make sense is what follows.

The source code definitely isn’t time travel — Stevens saved Christina on an earlier pass, after which Goodwin confirmed she was dead, so he clearly isn’t changing the single timeline — so the next best theory is that he’s created parallel worlds, and it was in one of those he saved the day. Did he create a new parallel world every time he entered the source code, or only the last time? I’m not sure that’s relevant. This is, though: at the end, he seems to remain in Sean’s body. So if he’s in a parallel world, he’s just stolen another man’s life? And Stevens — at least, the Stevens of that reality — is still lying, mutilated, half dead, in some government research facility? Hardly a cheery resolution.

And I wouldn’t mind — it doesn’t have to be cheery — if it weren’t for the fact that none of this is alluded to. It’s just presented as wonderful. Stevens lives! With the girl he’s come to love (in an afternoon)! And Goodwin feels good because she saved the world! But how can we truly feel triumphant, which the film leads us to, if he’s just stolen a man’s life and the alternate him is still, to put it politely, screwed? Maybe this is somehow Jones’ aim — if you don’t think it over too much, you go away with a satisfying thriller that had a happy ending; if you do think about it, you realise this joyous result is going to fall apart around the time the end credits stop rolling. I think presuming the latter may be allowing a little too much though.

Still, problems aside, Source Code remains an exciting, taut, puzzling sci-fi thriller. On a train — there’s a whole long line of movies and connections to be explored there. Many reviews have noted the Hitchcock connection and I’m sure that’s an interesting route to look down, so maybe there is a bit more to Source Code after all… but even if there isn’t, it’s a fun ride.

Source Code is released on DVD and Blu-ray in the UK today.

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.

Salt: Director’s Cut (2010)

Posted on June 24, 2011 by badblokebob

including a comparison to the Theatrical and Extended versions.

2011 #53
Phillip Noyce | 104 mins | Blu-ray | 15 / PG-13

Angelina Jolie takes on a role originally earmarked for Tom Cruise in this Bourne-ish spy thriller from screenwriter Kurt Wimmer (Law Abiding Citizen, the Total Recall remake; writer/director of Equilibrium, Ultraviolet) and director Phillip Noyce (Patriot Games, Clear and Present Danger, The Saint, The Bone Collector).

I list all of those previous projects because it might give you some idea of the calibre involved here — i.e. solid, but perhaps not exceptional. That’s more or less what Salt represents. It offers a handful of moderately exciting action sequences — a multi-vehicle highway escape is the best — and a plot with an engaging mystery eked out through good twists and developments.

Said plot sees Jolie as Evelyn Salt, a US spy accused of being a Russian sleeper who will assassinate a high-profile Russian at a high-profile US funeral in a few days. (In truth, I forget who the Russian is and who the funeral is for. I think they’re the President and Vice-President, respectively. Really, such things are immaterial.) Naturally, she goes on the run… to prove her name, presumably, or is it because she is indeed out to complete said mission?

This is Salt’s mystery, and this is one of its strong points. The plot developments are well-paced throughout, developing and shifting our expectations rather than stretching it all for a glut of final act reveals. In this regard it goes places you might not expect from a mainstream Hollywood thriller. For starters, you expect the funeral-set assassination to eventually be the film’s climax, no doubt revealing our heroine isn’t a Russian spy as she unmasks the real killer. But that occurs at the halfway point, spinning the film off in new directions. To say more would spoil one of the film’s strongest elements: that, as I said, it has twists and follows storylines you wouldn’t expect in a Hollywood summer blockbuster.

But now I am going to digress into spoiler territory, because on Blu-ray Salt comes in a choice of three cuts. Excessive? Yes. One version is basically a glorified way of showcasing a deleted scene. But, actually, these are more interesting than most extended cuts — not merely slight extensions, there are genuine impactful changes to be found here. And that’s what I’m going to natter about now, complete with spoilers. Just so you know. (The final paragraph, incidentally, is spoiler-free.)

The three cuts, then, are: Theatrical (100 minutes — this was trimmed for the UK to make 12A, but is apparently uncut on disc); Director’s Cut (the one I viewed, this is 4 minutes 5 seconds longer); and an Extended Cut (1 minute 5 seconds longer than the Theatrical). The latter is based on the Director’s Cut and I’ll come to it in a minute. The differences between the Theatrical and Director’s cuts are numerous, but mainly amount to some extra character beats (including more flashbacks to Salt’s childhood) and violence — more blood; seeing people get hit rather than just seeing Salt firing; the President is killed rather than just knocked out; plus a very different death for Salt’s husband (again, more on this in a moment). Plus there’s a voiceover ending too, which in my opinion sets up the sequel even more than the Theatrical version does, with a blatant cliffhanger and suggested plot direction. My regular comparison site Movie-Censorship.com disagrees, but… they’re wrong. So there.

As I mentioned above, the Extended Cut seems to have started with the Director’s Cut, then stripped out all references to the death of Orlov (Salt’s spymaster villain, killed around halfway through in both the Theatrical and Director’s versions) in order to include an alternate ending in which Salt travels to Russia to kill him. Additionally, the President doesn’t die in the Extended Cut, presumably to help provide a more conclusive ending — the Extended Cut is the only one that doesn’t suggest a sequel.

One of the key differences — tonally, at least — is the murder of Salt’s husband, which occurs in a very different way in the alternate cuts. In the theatrical version, she walks around a corner and he’s instantly shot. She has to control her emotions so as not to give herself away. In the other versions, however, she’s presented with him in a chamber and given a choice to save him — except trying to save him would give her away, so she’s forced to watch, blank-faced, as he slowly drowns. Salt sacrifices him for the greater good; he dies seeing her cold emotionless face. Ouch. By comparison, the theatrical cut’s blunt gunshot is much softer.

The extended version plays on this nicely with its alternate ending: Salt grieves for her husband during her post-climax interview with Chiwetel Ejiofor’s investigator, even though he reassures her she did it for the greater good (just in case you didn’t understand that when it happened). Then she escapes and toddles off to Russia to kill Orlov. Fundamentally I’m not a fan of this alternate ending — I like that she takes her revenge on the boat-load of people when she does — but it does have one fairly major plus point, I think: she kills Orlov by tying him to a stone and pushing him into the river; she watches him drown, just as he made her watch her husband drown — Noyce’s choice of camera angles emphasises this comparison — but whereas before tears formed, now she is genuinely stony faced. It’s a fitting form of revenge; more fitting, really, than just stabbing him with a broken bottle, as she does in the two other cuts. And this is the real advantage of the DVD era: if the filmmakers considered another option, now we can see it, and in cases like this choose our preference. Though it seems clear, by its inclusion in both the theatrical and director’s cuts, that Noyce preferred the instant-revenge option.

In conclusion, Salt isn’t really the kind of film that massively deserves multiple versions — it’s a divertingly fun action-thriller, not much more, but for that I think it merits a watch by fans of the genre. Of all the versions my preference is for the Director’s Cut — it packs a better punch than the tamed-down Theatrical, and while it loses the nice revenge parallel of the Extended’s alternate ending, I think it’s overall the most coherent experience.

Salt begins on Sky Movies Premiere tonight at 8pm, and continues daily until Thursday 7th July. I expect it’ll be the theatrical cut though.

If you’re interested in a full catalogue of differences between the versions, Movie-Censorship.com have three (unusually imperfect, sadly) comparisons to offer: between the Theatrical and Extended, Theatrical and Director’s Cut, and Extended and Director’s Cut.

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