BLADE RUNNER 2049 (US - 2017) Directed by Denis Villeneuve. Written by Hampton Fancher and Michael Green. Cast: Ryan Gosling, Harrison Ford, Jared Leto, Robin Wright, Dave Bautista, Ana de Armas, Sylvia Hoeks, Mackenzie Davis, Carla Juri, Lennie James, Barkhad Abdi, Edward James Olmos, Wood Harris, Hiam Abbass, David Dastmalchian, Tomas Lemarquis, Sean Young. (R, 164 mins) Ridley Scott's BLADE RUNNER, based on Philip K. Dick's 1968 novel Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?, is so highly and rightfully regarded as an influential sci-fi masterpiece to this day that it's easy to forget that it only did middling business in theaters in the summer of 1982 and the reviews weren't all that great. Over time, thanks to incessant cable and TV airings and the reconstruction of the "director's cut" in 1992 (assembled from the workprint and Scott's notes; he was busy working on 1492: CONQUEST OF PARADISE at the time and wasn't directly involved in it other than being consulted) and later with Scott's official "final cut" in 2007, the film's reputation and significance grew. The compromised theatrical version was a thorn in the side of both Scott and star Harrison Ford, who wasn't pleased about adding hard-boiled voiceover narration and made every effort to ensure that it sounded as if it was doing it at gunpoint. The director's cut removed the narration and added the much-debated unicorn scene, meant to ambiguously convey that perhaps Deckard (Ford), the titular blade runner, was himself a replicant just like those he was assigned to pursue and "retire." In the unlikely event you haven't seen BLADE RUNNER since it was in theaters and all you know is the now-obsolete theatrical version, then you're going to be completely baffled as to what's going in BLADE RUNNER 2049, which uses the director's cut as its springboard. With Scott onboard as executive producer, the original film's co-writer Hampton Fancher (his first credit since 1999's THE MINUS MAN) contributing to the script, and acclaimed filmmaker Denis Villeneuve (PRISONERS, SICARIO, ARRIVAL) at the helm, BLADE RUNNER 2049 established its bona fides before filming even began. Villeneuve promised to remain true to the beloved original and he more or less does. It in no way insults or diminishes the memory of the 1982 classic, and it throws in plenty of winking callbacks, but at the end of the day, it's still a 35-years-later sequel that doesn't succeed in justifying its existence.
Set 30 years after the first film, BLADE RUNNER 2049 opens in an even more dystopian California. Due to repeated replicant rebellions like the one led by Rutger Hauer's Roy Batty, the Tyrell Corporation went bankrupt. Replicant production began once more when what was left of Tyrell's operation was purchased by billionaire industrialist Niander Wallace (Jared Leto). Blade runner K (Ryan Gosling) arrives at the isolated desert farm of Sapper Morton (Dave Bautista), an old-school Nexus 8 replicant with an indeterminate lifespan. After a violent confrontation, K does his job and takes him out before reporting back to LAPD headquarters for a "baseline" debriefing required of replicants. Yes, that's right. BLADE RUNNER 2049 immediately answers the million dollar question: blade runners are replicants, and they're now integrated into society, even though they're regarded as second-class citizens, or "skinjobs" and "skinners." Investigation of Morton's property reveals a box of human skeletal remains near a tree. Examination of the remains indicate that it was a woman who died giving birth, and further analysis of the DNA shows proof that the skeleton is that of a replicant, thus blowing the doors off everything known about the bioengineered "skinjobs," who can apparently sexually reproduce, one last experiment pulled off by the Tyrell Corporation before it imploded. K's investigation into the whereabouts of the woman's child leads him to numerous places--very slowly--and also involves his hologram love interest Joi (Ana de Armas); a "memory designer" (Carla Juri) who knows about a specific real or imagined event that's been planted into K's memory; Wallace's ruthless enforcer Luv (Sylvia Hoeks as Milla Jovovich) who's also out to find the now-adult child; and even a visit to a retirement home with Gaff (Edward James Olmos), who's still passing the time and busies his hands by making tiny origami animals.
Eventually, K ends up in the radioactive ruins of Las Vegas, where Deckard has been in hiding for 30 years after running off with now-deceased replicant Rachael (Sean Young) at the end of the first film. To say anymore would involve too many spoilers, but let's begin with the positives: it's just as visually stunning as you'd expect, thanks in large part to the work of the great cinematographer Roger Deakins, the Susan Lucci of D.P.s who's been nominated for 13 Oscars and has yet to win. The world of BLADE RUNNER 2049 is just as vividly dystopian as its predecessor in its own ways, this time mixing its neon-drenched cityscapes with dusty wastelands and the almost Overlook Hotel-esque appearance of the abandoned casino resort Deckard calls home. Ford's appearance here is not unlike Charlton Heston's extended cameo in BENEATH THE PLANET OF THE APES: BLADE RUNNER 2049 runs an ass-numbing 164 minutes, and in one of the most delayed entrances this side of Marlon Brando in APOCALYPSE NOW, Ford's first appearance doesn't even happen until nearly two hours in. Atmospheric slow-burn is one thing, but the ponderous and relentlessly gabby BLADE RUNNER 2049 is oppressively overlong, with scenes going on much longer than necessary and too many instances of characters introduced making overly verbose expository proclamations from the shadows only to slowly emerge in the light (Leto only has two scenes, and he enters both of them in this fashion). Everyone in this movie is a slow talker, and it probably adds 30 minutes to the running time.
Knowing now that Deckard is a replicant doesn't change the events of the first film since the director's cut more or less said as much, but Ford still managed to create a compelling and complex character. Here, Deckard just looks befuddled and grouchy. In other words, he looks like Harrison Ford, reliving his Han Solo and Indiana Jones glory days in present-day nostalgia trips that don't quite measure up to the classics that came before (STAR WARS: THE FORCE AWAKENS was fun, but have you ever met an INDIANA JONES AND THE KINGDOM OF THE CRYSTAL SKULL fan?). K is a character that, on paper, plays to the strengths of Gosling's moody persona as seen in DRIVE and ONLY GOD FORGIVES, but Nicolas Winding Refn made those enigmatic Gosling characters a lot more interesting in those films than Villeneuve does here. K's love for Joi is an interesting concept that never really feels developed, but then, nor do any of the characters. BLADE RUNNER is a hypnotic experience that feels new and compelling and fresh with each revisit. It's timeless. But for all the talk of replicants finding their humanity in BLADE RUNNER 2049, there's nothing here even remotely as memorable or gut-wrenching as Rutger Hauer's "Tears in Rain" monologue before his final, resigned declaration of "Time to die." And while Vangelis' synth score is one of the 1982 film's most memorable components, the score here by Hans Zimmer is so aggressively, overbearingly bombastic that it almost qualifies as self-parody. Vangelis enhanced the mood and the vision and contributed to the hypnotic nature. Zimmer's score stampedes and bulldozes over everything to the point where it's an overwhelming, suffocating distraction that actually detracts from the effectiveness of numerous scenes. I gave BLADE RUNNER 2049 time, fidgeting through its laborious first hour and legitimately intrigued by a major plot reveal that finally seems to set things in motion, but it resumed dragging ass shortly thereafter and Zimmer's score got even more obnoxious, and no matter how captivating the visuals were, I finally had to accept the fact that it was well past two hours into this thing, its contrivances and developments were getting more half-baked and nonsensical (I'm still not sure what's going on with the replicant "revolution" that gets brought up near the end and is instantly dropped) and the point had passed where I ran out of excuses and had to admit to myself that I wasn't connecting with it at all. BLADE RUNNER was slow in a methodical way that was never boring. BLADE RUNNER 2049 is so concerned with replicating that feeling that it never finds its footing and never gets any momentum going. Maybe I'll look at it again in a year.
ARRIVAL (US - 2016) Directed by Denis Villeneuve. Written by Eric Heisserer. Cast: Amy Adams, Jeremy Renner, Forest Whitaker, Michael Stuhlbarg, Tzi Ma, Mark O'Brien, Russell Yuen. (PG-13, 116 mins) It's easy to see the trailers and the advertising for ARRIVAL and write it off as another alien invasion sci-fi movie, but it has bigger goals in mind and is ultimately about something else entirely. Having said that, the path it takes to get to where it's going borrows from a variety of sources. You'll easily spot ideas from other movies--CLOSE ENCOUNTERS OF THE THIRD KIND and CONTACT immediately spring to mind, and the imagery of spacecrafts hovering over cities invokes INDEPENDENCE DAY and DISTRICT 9 among others, while its somber mood and its focus on the deconstruction and composition of language and communication takes things into an alien invasion PONTYPOOL realm. Though it's all a primer for a surprise third-act revelation that packs a wallop and shows ARRIVAL's true intent, even that has distinct echoes of both a no-budget cult classic from a decade or so ago as well as a certain '90s sci-fi mindbender, albeit with less apocalyptic implications.
Twelve shell-like spacecrafts appear at various points around the world, with one of them in Montana. Linguistics professor Dr. Louise Banks (Amy Adams) is brought in by the US Army's Col. Weber (Forest Whitaker) as a consultant to attempt to establish communication with the visitors and decipher their language. Largely withdrawn from the world following her 12-year-old daughter's death from a rare form of cancer, Louise immerses herself in her work and still has military security clearance from some translation work she did for a counterterrorism operation a few years earlier. She's joined by theoritical physicist Ian Donnelly (Jeremy Renner) as they enter a gravity-free portal at the base of the "Shell" and very slowly open a line of communication from behind a giant glass divider in the ship with a pair of large, heptapod beings that they dub "Abbott & Costello." It's a slow process--too slow for Weber and irate CIA agent Halpern (Michael Stuhlbarg), whose main goal is to ascertain the threat level and who demonstrate little patience for the curiosity of linguistics, physics, and the wonder of scientific discovery, even though Abbott & Costello have done nothing aggressive. A growing sense of paranoia and too much of an Alex Jones-type right-wing TV pundit gets the better of a few renegade soldiers who try to blow up the shell while Louise and Ian are in it, their lives spared when Abbott & Costello use their gravitational powers to force them down the portal after unsuccessfully trying to warn them about the explosive device. They clearly mean no harm, but neither Louise nor Ian can convince Weber and Halpern of that, and the global operation goes south when paranoid Chinese military leader Gen. Shang (Tzi Ma) issues an ultimatum to the Shell over China, threatening to blow it up if they don't retreat. Various countries, working together, soon go off the grid and stop sharing information with one another as talks break down, humanity grows impatient and violent, and Louise is haunted by recurring dreams and visions of her dead daughter.
Quebecois INCENDIES director Denis Villeneuve, who crossed over into the mainstream with 2013's PRISONERS and 2015's SICARIO, isn't as commercial this time out, with one shot in particular a winking nod to his bizarre 2014 Cronenbergian indie ENEMY. With its chilly, cerebral tone, ARRIVAL occasionally has a Cronenberg feel to it, or at least looks a lot like what might've happened if an in-his-prime Atom Egoyan made an alien invasion movie. It's a film that's not particularly interested in accommodating those looking for action and special effects, but it's still accessible enough for the multiplex. Villeneuve and screenwriter Eric Heisserer (LIGHTS OUT), who adapted Ted Chiang's short story "Story of Your Life," don't seem to bother pretending to camouflage ARRIVAL's obvious influences, but it finds its own voice quite unexpectedly, and what initially appear to be plot holes, contrivances, and corner-cutting actually make sense once all is revealed. Whether that makes ARRIVAL legitimately clever or very smooth at pulling off some bullshit dei ex machina may be one of the many post-viewing discussion topics. Even with its unexpected late-film developments, ARRIVAL isn't quite the instant classic that many reviewers are making it out to be, but it manages to accomplish a lot more than most genre films that opt to travel down a road paved with the ideas of so many movies that preceded it.
SICARIO (US - 2015) Directed by Denis Villeneuve. Written by Taylor Sheridan. Cast: Emily Blunt, Benicio Del Toro, Josh Brolin, Victor Garber, Jon Bernthal, Jeffrey Donovan, Daniel Kaluuya, Raoul Trujillo, Julio Cesar Cedillo, Maximiliano Hernandez, Hank Rogerson, Bernardo P. Saracino, Edgar Arreola, Boots Southerland, Adam Taylor, Eb Lottimer. (R, 121 mins)
A dark and harrowing drug trafficking thriller that's still rather simplistic at its core, SICARIO is nonetheless a gripping and hard-hitting experience. In a horrifying opening sequence, an FBI raid on a Glendale, AZ house near the US/Mexico border results in the discovery of no drugs but 42 dead bodies hidden in the walls. Idealistic agent Kate Macer (Emily Blunt) is lauded for her work in the raid and offered a spot on a task force overseen by Matt Graver (Josh Brolin), the kind of character whose easy-going, smart-ass demeanor and dress casual look, complete with baggy khakis and flip-flops when everyone else is wearing suits, provides a nice-guy cover for a not-very-nice guy. A divorced loner with no children and nothing in her life other than her job, Macer is the perfect candidate, though it doesn't take her long to conclude that Graver is running some kind of off-the-books black-ops unit. That's confirmed once they're joined by Alejandro (Benicio Del Toro), a man of few words who comes from Colombia but "goes where he's needed." Alejandro's instincts and skills come into play at a traffic jam massacre at the border when the unit returns from an illegal run into Juarez to pick up Guillermo (Edgar Arreola), an associate of cartel boss Fausto Alarcon (Julio Cesar Cedillo). The more questions Macer asks, the more evasive Graver and Alejandro are, and she gets no answers from her own boss (Victor Garber). As Graver's operations put her at greater risk and the ruthless Alejandro seems to be addressing his own personal agenda, Macer is pulled into a moral and ethical quagmire that puts her career and her life at risk.
Directed by Denis Villeneuve, who's no stranger to moral and ethical quagmires with 2013's PRISONERS, and written by former SONS OF ANARCHY co-star Taylor Sheridan (he played Deputy Hale before being killed off in the third season premiere), SICARIO takes place in a world where everything is a gray area and the law is circumvented if it serves the greater good, which is why Macer's partner and seemingly only friend Reggie (Daniel Kaluuya), an Iraq War vet with a law degree, is purposefully kept at a distance by Graver. There's been some comparisons made between Macer and Jodie Foster's Clarice Starling from THE SILENCE OF THE LAMBS and it's a good analogy, especially in the way both films are seen through the POV of a strong, independent woman with something to prove in a male-dominated field that constantly underestimates her. It's also worth mentioning that both Foster and Blunt get their thunder stolen to a certain extent by the showier performance of a co-star with much less screen time, with Blunt's Anthony Hopkins being Del Toro as Alejandro, the mysterious angel of vengeance, a former cartel figure who lost his entire family and goes wherever his quest for revenge takes him. His allegiances are suspect and he won't hesitate to put a bullet in anyone who tries to stop him, but Graver is happy to have him along in an "enemy of my enemy is my friend" sort-of way. Del Toro keeps things pretty low-key throughout, never hamming but going for a less-is-more approach that makes Alejandro, the title character ("sicario" meaning "hitman"), utterly terrifying. While Macer is the central character, it's Alejandro who leaves the biggest impression, apparently on the filmmakers as well, as Blunt sits out most of the last 1/4 of the film as the focus shifts to Alejandro and his quest to find and execute Alarcon. It's a jarring move to make 90 minutes into a two-hour film, especially one that's been seen through Macer's eyes to that point, and it makes one wonder if that shift was in Sheridan's script or if it was a change that came about during the editing stage.
Boasting outstanding cinematography by the great Roger Deakins and with an effectively droning, tense score by Johann Johannsson, SICARIO works best in its crackling, edge-of-your-set set pieces like the opening sequence and the border shootout, and then later when a marvelously understated Del Toro takes center stage, his silent glare speaking volumes. Despite all the social, econimic, and legal issue lip service, SICARIO isn't as profound as some are making it out to be and is still largely a revenge saga, albeit a very well-made and intense one. It's a promising screenwriting debut for Sheridan, who directed a late-to-the-party SAW knockoff called VILE a few years back, right after he left SONS OF ANARCHY. VILE is one of the absolute worst horror movies you'll ever see and one couldn't blame Sheridan if he tried to distance himself from it now that SICARIO is earning worldwide accolades. Oh, wait...that's exactly what happened. In recent months, VILE has been removed from Sheridan's IMDb page by someone, and now is the lone credit on the page of a "Taylor Sheridan (IV)." Come on, Mr. Sheridan. You made a shitty movie before you were instrumental in the making of a very praised one. Just own it. Google "Taylor Sheridan Vile" and the ruse is exposed. You don't see James Cameron running away from PIRANHA II: THE SPAWNING, do you? Do you see George Clooney sticking his fingers in his ears and yelling "La-la-la can't hear you!" at the mention of RETURN OF THE KILLER TOMATOES? You really think you're gonna just pretend VILE never happened?
Loosely based on Jose Saramago's novel The Double, but not to be confused with the recent Jesse Eisenberg film THE DOUBLE, Denis Villeneuve's ENEMY is one of those frustrating cinematic puzzles where the set up and the placement of the initial pieces prove much more challenging and engaging than the actual solution. ENEMY excels in its early stages in its depiction of the ennui-drenched L'AVVENTURA, RED DESERT, and THE PASSENGER alienation of vintage Antonioni fused with the cold Cronenbergian chill of Toronto high-rises that recalls everything from SHIVERS to CRASH and even Fernando Mereilles' underappreciated BLINDNESS, itself an adaptation of another Saramago novel. There's also an overt DEAD RINGERS vibe that begins with quiet, withdrawn history professor Adam Bell (Jake Gyllenhaal) suffering through small talk with a colleague, who recommends a movie called WHERE THERE'S A WILL, THERE'S A WAY. Adam rents the movie and it's a run-of-the-mill romantic comedy, but something catches his attention: cast as "Bellhop #3" is one Daniel Saint Claire, who happens to look exactly like Adam. Adam researches the doppelganger's other roles, which are limited similar bit parts in two other forgettable films from a decade earlier, and eventually goes to the office of the agency representing Saint Claire and is mistaken for him, which gets him Saint Claire's phone number and address. Adam calls the actor, whose real name is Anthony Claire, and though Anthony is initially hesitant, they meet. Their features are identical and they even have the same scar. Adam freaks out and regrets meeting, but Anthony, who has a history of cheating on his now-pregnant wife Helen (Sarah Gadon), forces Adam to go along with a swap so he can spend some time with Adam's girlfriend Mary (Melanie Laurent).
There's such an eerie, unsettling, Hitchcockian, De Palma-esque by way of Antonioni and Cronenberg feel to the first hour of ENEMY (at times, you might think it's a horror film) that it's almost enraging when you realize it's gone to such intriguing and fascinating lengths to tell such an ultimately banal story. And I haven't even gotten into the ham-fisted symbolism of spiders and webs, which wasn't part of Saramago's novel. ENEMY is borderline brilliant for 2/3 of its running time, but the back end of the script by Javier Gullon (who also co-wrote the intriguing 2007 thriller KING OF THE HILL) has all the depth and insight of someone's first and quickly-discarded draft in an Intro to Creative Writing course. The film is very well-directed by Villeneuve, who also teamed with Gyllenhaal on last year's more commercial PRISONERS (ENEMY was shot first, but released after). Villeneuve is a director who brings out the best in the actor, who was riveting in PRISONERS in a performance that deserved more attention than it got. Gyllenhaal delivers two strong performances here, even as the film starts collapsing around him in the closing sequences as--you guessed it--the lines between real and fantasy become impossibly blurred, not to mention hopelessly hackneyed. Still worth seeing for that opening hour and the powerfully dread-filled slow build...at least until it starts sabotaging itself. (R, 91 mins)
ROB THE MOB (US - 2014)
There's a slight sense of TRUE ROMANCE redux in this somewhat fictionalized account of Tommy and Rosemarie Uva, a Queens couple trying to stay on the right path after jail stints for armed robbery. Struggling in their 9-5 jobs, they started robbing mob-owned bars and social clubs. In one of their jobs, they managed to obtain a list that thoroughly detailed the Gambino and Bonnano family hierarchy, and as they got increasingly cocky and overconfident, they used it to guarantee their safety which, of course, backfired and the couple were whacked on Christmas Eve 1992. In ROB THE MOB, directed by Raymond De Felitta and written by Jonathan Fernandez, Tommy (Michael Pitt) and Rosie (Nina Arianda) aren't married, for some reason (they're planning to get married on Christmas Day, so perhaps it was a dramatic decision), and some of the names are changed, but otherwise, it mostly sticks to the story. The none-too-bright Tommy has a lifelong grudge against the local gangsters, who strong-armed, shook down, and eventually killed his florist father, so once they get desperate and he starts toying with the idea of ripping them off, Rosie can't talk him out of it, and when the money starts rolling in, she's OK with it as well. During one robbery, they get "the list" from inside the wallet of aged and slightly feeble mobster Joey D (Burt Young), and all hell breaks loose in the family, run by the reclusive Big Al Fiorello (Andy Garcia), a composite of Bonnano boss Joseph Massino and underboss Sal Vitale.
ROB THE MOB does a good job of mixing lighthearted and serious moments, as Tommy's early, haplessly clumsy attempts at pulling a social club stick-up get a reaction from the mobsters that's not unlike Richard Pryor's famous "Mafia Club" bit. But as things get serious and the stakes get higher, the shift to drama is smooth and organic. De Felitta (who previously worked with Garcia on 2009's enjoyable CITY ISLAND) does a superb job with period detail and other than some CGI effects in the closing scene, the whole film has a vivid sense of time and place and feels like it could've been made 20 years ago. The film takes place during the trial of John Gotti, whose 1992 conviction was essentially the beginning of the end for the old-school glory days of the American Mafia, and it deftly ties in an elegiac feeling for that era, though only Big Al seems aware that things are about to change. Most of the goodfellas in ROB THE MOB have seen better days but there's a comfortable complacency that's set in for them. It's a period of Mafia history that isn't glorious and hasn't been covered much in popular culture and ROB THE MOB offers a unique perspective in the "working-stiff gangster" subgenre with films like DONNIE BRASCO (1997) and KILLING THEM SOFTLY (2012). Fine performances all around from Pitt, Garcia, and Ray Romano as NYC crime reporter "Jerry Cardozo," presumably based on Gotti biographer and Mafia historian Jerry Capeci, in addition to colorful supporting turns by familiar faces like Michael Rispoli, Griffin Dunne, Cathy Moriarty, Yul Vazquez, John Tormey, Joseph R. Gannascoli, and Frank Whaley (Aida Turturro is prominently-billed but her role was cut from the film). The standout however, is Tony-winning Broadway actress Arianda in what would be a star-making big-screen breakout had Millennium released ROB THE MOB on more than 30 screens. Arianda is a ball of fire throughout, in her interaction with Tommy ("You bought me flowers!"), chewing people out on the phone at her collection agency job, or overcome with visions of fame and talking way too much when Cardozo wants to interview her. She handles the "tough moll" role in classic fashion and has a very natural, streetwise 1970s presence (these small-time Queens would-be gangsters always seem a little behind the times) that sets her apart from a lot of young actresses today, who probably would've appeared mannered and playing dress-up. It's the kind of showy role that could've easily been turned into a caricature, but Arianda keeps it under control and nails it, and if this movie had gotten any exposure at all, there's a good chance she'd be getting some legitimate Oscar buzz. On the whole, ROB THE MOB wanders a bit and isn't as ambitious or as focused as it should be, but it's a solid little film, and Arianda's performance is a big reason why. (R, 104 mins)
WOLF CREEK 2 (Australia - 2014)
In the horror genre, nine years is an unusually lengthy wait for a sequel, and after that amount of time, you might wonder why writer/director Greg McLean took so long to get to the follow-up to 2005's WOLF CREEK. And after you watch the absurdly tardy WOLF CREEK 2, you'll wonder why he even bothered. When it was released, WOLF CREEK got the attention of hardcore horror fans with its mercilessly bleak vision and its instantly iconic performance by veteran Australian character actor John Jarratt as gregarious Outback serial killer Mick Taylor. As Mick, Jarratt came across as the terrifying doppelganger of Crocodile Dundee, and the grueling film wasn't for horror amateurs. Indeed, it didn't go over with mainstream audiences (earning a rare F from the ludicrous CinemaScore), and was lumped in with the then in-vogue torture porn craze (which, to be fair, it shared some aspects), but horror scenesters embraced it and McLean was hailed as a major new talent in the genre. He returned with 2008's surprisingly good killer crocodile flick ROGUE, buried by Dimension Films after the similar and inferior PRIMEVAL beat it to theaters and bombed. McLean's been off the radar since ROGUE, and the pointless WOLF CREEK 2 isn't likely to re-establish his career momentum.
Jarratt is back, and rather than play Mick in the sinister, unsettling way he did nearly a decade ago, McLean instead has him crank it up to 11 and beyond, turning the character into a relentless killing machine with his endlessly-quipping Freddy Krueger zingers and asides ("Welcome to Australia, cocksucker!"). WOLF CREEK 2 eschews the nightmarish qualities of WOLF CREEK to go for broad horror comedy augmented by over-the-top splatter effects. Shifts in tone in a sequel are nothing new: Sam Raimi did it with 1987's EVIL DEAD 2 and it's the same approach Tobe Hooper took for 1986's THE TEXAS CHAINSAW MASSACRE PART 2. It doesn't work here, nor does McLean's decision to attempt a "shifting of the protagonists" move from the PSYCHO playbook. The first hour is essentially one long chase as we spend a bunch of time with two likable German backpackers, Rutger (Philippe Klaus) and Katarina (Shannyn Ashlyn), only to have them exit as Mick's focus turns to British tourist Paul (Ryan Corr). Mick plays road and head games with Paul, eventually getting him back to his vast HOUSE OF 1000 CORPSES torture dungeon. It's hard to pinpoint exactly where WOLF CREEK 2 implodes beyond repair, but Mick plowing over kangaroos to the tune of "The Lion Sleeps Tonight" is as good a location as any. It doesn't really matter in the end, because this only exists to be THE JOHN JARRATT SHOW, with the actor's overbearing histrionics turning his second interpretation of Mick into an extended tribute to the career of Bill Moseley, whether he's screaming at the top of lungs, shouting Aussie jingles and limericks, or mowing down a friendly old couple to "The Blue Danube Waltz." Some nice cinematography and a tense opening sequence aside, the ill-advised and badly-executed WOLF CREEK 2 is just uninspired, stupid, and lazy. Here's to hoping McLean gets his mojo back before he has to shit out a WOLF CREEK 3 in desperation seven or eight years from now. (Unrated, 106 mins, also available on Netflix Instant)
Directed by Denis Villeneuve. Written by Aaron Guzikowski. Cast: Hugh Jackman, Jake Gyllenhaal, Viola Davis, Maria Bello, Terrence Howard, Melissa Leo, Paul Dano, Len Cariou, Wayne Duvall, David Dastmalchian, Dylan Minnette, Zoe Borde, Erin Gerasimovich, Kyla Drew Simmons. (R, 153 mins)
PRISONERS, the English-language debut of Quebecois director Denis Villeneuve (INCENDIES), is a riveting but frequently frustrating thriller that suffers from its own lofty ambitions. Scripted by Aaron Guzikowski (CONTRABAND), it works very well as a thriller, but doesn't seem content with just being a thriller. It wants to make big statements and grand proclamations, but doesn't really do anything with them. When it focuses on being a "movie," which is what it does most of the time, it's a superbly-crafted genre piece. When it focuses on being a "film," it often succumbs to heavy-handedness. Villeneuve is an excellent filmmaker, but he comes off as a bit of a snob. I get the feeling that he finds multiplex genre fare beneath him and tries to make this more "significant" than it needs to be, starting with its unwieldy and sometimes cumbersome 153-minute running time. It's never dull, but it probably could've been just as effective at a more streamlined 120 or so minutes. It's almost as if the film is long so it would be interpreted as "important."
The film opens with deeply-religious family man Keller Dover (Hugh Jackman) talking his teenage son Ralph (Dylan Minnette) through his first deer kill with a recitation of the Lord's Prayer. So, right away, we have religion and guns, and Dover also owns his own small carpentry business. That, along with his fortifying his basement into a survivalist compound, is essentially informing us that Keller is a guy who probably watches a lot of Fox News. Keller and his family--there's also wife Grace (Maria Bello) and young daughter Anna (Erin Gerasimovich)--spend Thanksgiving with their friends the Birches from down the street--Franklin (Terrence Howard), his wife Nancy (Viola Davis), teenage daughter Eliza (Zoe Borde) and young daughter Joy (Kyla Drew Simmons). As the day goes on, Anna and Joy walk down to the Dover house but never make it. Both disappear and Ralph remembers them playing near a parked RV that's now nowhere to be found. The police are called, and Detective Loki (Jake Gyllenhaal) and some officers find the RV at a truck stop, with mentally-challenged Alex Jones (Paul Dano) behind the wheel. Alex doesn't have the capacity to answer any questions and with no evidence on him or in the RV, the cops can only hold him for 48 hours. After Alex is released into the custody of his aunt Holly (Melissa Leo), Loki starts knocking on the doors of all the sex offenders in the area, trying to find any new potential leads, and inadvertently stumbling on to a second mystery involving a rotting corpse in the basement of a convicted pedophile priest (Len Cariou), as well as a local weirdo (David Dastmalchian) who's frequently observed buying little girl's clothing at a secondhand store. Meanwhile, an enraged Keller is convinced Alex knows where the girls are...so convinced, in fact, that he abducts Alex and holds him captive in a vacant, decrepit apartment building that was left to him by his late father, and proceeds to spend several days brutally and mercilessly beating and torturing him to get the information he wants.
For the most part, Jackman convincingly sells Keller's rage, but there are some scenes where he's a little too over-the-top, and Guzikowski's script makes the daring decision to spend a little time almost attempting to turn Keller into not the villain, but a villain, especially when his own actions start to impede Loki's investigation. But it's here where the problems start. It takes people way too long to comment on a high-profile kidnapping suspect going missing for days. And how long does Keller expect to get away with what he's doing when he parks his work truck with his name on the side of it near the abandoned building? And of course the recovering alcoholic Keller falls off the wagon (with the requisite brown paper bag) and of course Grace disappears into a haze of sleeping pills and anti-depressants as Bello spends most of the remainder of the film asleep in bed. The filmmakers don't spend much time at all addressing the grief of the Birch family, but then, they don't have a patriarch who's paranoid and close to foaming at the mouth even on his best days. It's by design that Howard's Franklin is supposed to be the voice of reason against Keller's all-consuming quest for Biblical vengeance, but the film sometimes forgets that two families are in pain here.
PRISONERS goes into some unexpectedly dark places for a mainstream, big-studio movie, but I found myself most intrigued by Gyllenhaal's Detective Loki and wished that we learned more about his backstory. Introduced eating Thanksgiving dinner alone at a Chinese buffet, Loki, with his intense blinking tic, zodiac tats on his knuckles, a Freemason ring and neck tat, and awkwardly-fitting shirts that are at least a size too small, is one of the strangest heroes to come down the pike in a while. He sometimes lets his inexperience show (he tails Keller at one point, but gets made when he ends up blocking traffic and people start laying on their horns), and he's also dangerously impulsive, has no qualms about telling his captain (Wayne Duvall) what he thinks ("Hey, Captain...why don't you do me a favor and go fuck yourself?"), and is a loner on the force who doesn't seem to interact very well with his colleagues. We don't learn much about Loki's obviously troubled past other than an offhand remark about spending time in a boys' home. That, and he seems to really personally dislike Cariou's pedophile priest, so interpret that how you will. Loki's an odd, fascinating character and we're intentionally kept at a distance with him, yet Gyllenhaal utilizes his skills as an actor to bring added dimensions to him (Gyllenhaal has said in interviews that the blinking tic was his own idea). It's an awards-caliber performance, and the actor's best since David Fincher's 2007 masterpiece ZODIAC.
PRISONERS doesn't disappoint as a thriller but it's flawed as something "more." Perhaps it's the kind of film that reveals more layers of itself with repeat viewings, but after one time through, a lot of the ambitions come off as pretensions, and character developments--with the exception of Loki--come to rely too heavily on the clichéd and predictable. Look at the film's handling of Alex: it's not enough to say he's weird and has the mental capacity of a ten-year-old. No, they have to dress him in the most comically-outdated clothing imaginable and give him the most aesthetically unappealing eyeglass frames in the history of cinema. He makes Napoleon Dynamite look like Justin Timberlake. Dano is fine in the role but the costume design department went a little overboard with his get-up, turning Alex into a cardboard cutout of a character before Dano can even do anything with it. Flaws and all, it's still a mostly very good film that should be seen, with Roger Deakins' expectedly excellent cinematography being another standout.
