If the title THE KILL TEAM sounds vaguely familiar, that's because it's also the name of an acclaimed 2014 documentary by filmmaker Dan Krauss, chronicling a war crimes case where Army Staff Sgt. Calvin Diggs and four soldiers in his platoon were charged with murdering Afghan civilians in Kandahar in 2009. This new film sporting the title THE KILL TEAM is a narrative dramatization of those same events, starring Alexander Skarsgard in the Diggs role (here renamed "Deeks"), and written and directed by...Dan Krauss?! It's a mystery why Krauss saw fit to revisit the same material in fictionalized form so soon after (this was shot in 2017), other than giving potentially meaty roles to Skarsgard and Nat Wolff (also one of a dozen credited producers), the latter playing "Andrew Briggman," a rechristened version of initial whistleblower SPC Adam Winfield. THE KILL TEAM gets off to a good enough start with a shocking opening sequence where the platoon's staff sergeant is killed by an IED, leading to Deeks' arrival. Deeks is stern and no-nonsense, and tells the men "Give me your loyalty, and I'll give every one of you a chance to be a warrior." But he treats them well, grills steaks for them made to order, and winkingly looks the other way when he catches some of them smoking hash. Such actions form a tentative bond and allow him to insidiously manipulate the men under his command, some of whom already regard the Afghan civilians as "goat fuckers" and don't need much of an encouraging push to go along with whatever Deeks orders or even suggests. Briggman is rattled enough by what he sees that he sends instant messages about the goings-on to his military vet dad (Rob Morrow), who contacts US Army CID. Of course, it gets back to Deeks that someone close to him is talking and it doesn't take long for the guys to figure out who it is.
Known as the Maywand District Murders, the case provided ample riveting and shocking material in a documentary form but struggles to justify its existence as a narrative feature film that feels plodding even under 90 minutes. Skarsgard is fine and Wolff continues to demonstrate the credibility he unexpectedly showed in 2019's equally unseen SEMPER FI, but unless you're a fan of either of the two stars (or a Rob Morrow completist), there's really no reason to watch this when Krauss did a much more effective job the first time out. A24 didn't seem to see a lot of HURT LOCKER-type potential for THE KILL TEAM--the kind of well-intentioned film that just dies instantly once it leaves the secure confines of the festival circuit--giving it no push whatsoever with a release on just 39 screens and VOD. (R, 87 mins)
DANGER CLOSE (Australia/UK/US - 2019)
Outside of 1979's THE ODD ANGRY SHOT, the experience of Australian soldiers in the Vietnam War has been generally unexplored in the movies. Far removed from the post-PLATOON explosion of the late '80s and at a time when the interest in Vietnam cinema has tapered off in favor of WWII or the various conflicts in the Middle East (like THE KILL TEAM above), DANGER CLOSE chronicles The Battle of Long Tan, which occurred on August 18, 1966, a day that has since been declared Vietnam Veterans Day in Australia. Its very setting of the Vietnam War almost gives it a throwback feel that's a bit dampened by some CGI and other obvious digital accompaniment, but director Kriv Stenders does an otherwise admirable job of shooting the battle sequences in a coherent fashion, avoiding the hyper-editing and the shaky-cam that a current Hollywood take on the same subject would've doubtlessly utilized. The Battle of Long Tan took place on a rubber plantation where Australian and New Zealand forces were outnumbered 108 to approximately 2000, and running out of ammo as they battled an onslaught of North Vietnamese and Viet Cong forces that surrounded them and kept coming from all sides.
Delta Company was led by Australian Maj. Harry Smith (Travis Fimmel of VIKINGS), a generally unlikable and arrogant hardass who frequently complains to his C.O. Brigadier Oliver David Jackson (Richard Roxburgh) that he needs a more worthy assignment than overseeing a group of mostly conscripts averaging 20 years of age. Of course, after fighting with these "kids" and seeing their courage and sacrifice, Smith has a change of heart and is proud of them. That's about the extent of the character building in DANGER CLOSE (COLLATERAL screenwriter Stuart Beattie was one of five script contributors), which juggles a lot of characters who eventually start to blur (Luke Bracey as Sgt. Bob Buick, Sean Lynch as Sgt. Paddy Todd, and Daniel Webber as Pvt. Paul Large get a little more screen time and development than the rest). A Nancy Sinatra/"These Boots are Made for Walkin'" needle-drop provides a little too on-the-nose FULL METAL JACKET reference, but while DANGER CLOSE doesn't break any new ground in Vietnam cinema, it's well-made, sufficiently harrowing in spots, and it marks a long overdue tribute to the brave Australian and Kiwi forces who fought at Long Tan. (R, 118 min)
Roger Avary's place in film history is secure thanks to the Oscar he shared with Quentin Tarantino for co-writing PULP FICTION, but the career paths of the former Video Archives co-workers went on decidedly different trajectories. While Tarantino became one of the most lauded and influential filmmakers of the modern era, Avary, whose own KILLING ZOE was released a few months before PULP FICTION, followed his Oscar win with the 1995 straight-to-video Rutger Hauer sci-fi/horror film MR. STITCH. He did some hired gun TV writing and script doctoring until his underappreciated and critically-panned 2002 film version of Bret Easton Ellis' THE RULES OF ATTRACTION, which has since acquired a well-deserved cult following. At the same time, Avary cobbled together an extensive amount of unused Kip Pardue footage from RULES' memorable "Victor's trip" sequence and assembled it into an adaptation of Ellis' semi-sequel GLITTERATI, but it remains unreleased to this day. Avary then settled into journeyman screenwriter mode, working on Christophe Gans' SILENT HILL and Robert Zemeckis' BEOWULF before his personal and professional life collapsed. Avary was behind the wheel in a 2008 drunk driving crash that killed his passenger. He pleaded guilty to gross vehicular manslaughter and other DUI-related charges and was sentenced to a year in a furlough program that allowed him to work during the day and return to jail at night. Those privileges were suspended when officials realized he was tweeting about jail conditions and he was ordered to serve out the remainder of his year in lockup, followed by five years probation.
Once released, he wrote a few episodes of the Canadian TV series XIII in 2012, but LUCKY DAY marks Avary's first feature film project in over a decade. He started writing it while incarcerated, and it's easy to see the influence of his jail time in the story of safecracker Red (Luke Bracey from the POINT BREAK remake that you forgot happened), just paroled after serving two years after a botched bonds heist. He wants to settle down with his artist wife Chloe (Nina Dobrev) and eight-year-old daughter Beatrice (Ella Ryan Quinn), but that's impossible with deranged, unstoppable French hit man Luc Chaltiel (Crispin Glover) leaving a trail of dead bodies in his wake in his quest for revenge against Red, who he blames for his brother's death in the job that got Red arrested. Other than the return of Roger Avary, the big selling point here is the over-the-top performance by Glover, who's using a ludicrous Inspector Clouseau accent as a ruthless assassin who only thinks he's French. It's amusing for a few minutes, but Glover sets a land-speed record for wearing out a welcome, and once that happens, all you're left with is the realization that Avary is just spinning his wheels on what amounts to nothing more than another belated Tarantino knockoff that feels two decades old right out of the gate, like something you'd stumble upon while browsing the new release shelves at Blockbuster in 1997.
He might be entitled to a bit of a pass considering his connection, but LUCKY DAY is mostly just garish and grotesque, with Clifton Collins Jr as Red's racist parole officer with an unexpected expertise in art, and David Hewlett as Chloe's sexually-harassing art gallery benefactor coming in close behind Glover in the running for the film's most grating performance (there's also brief appearances by Mark Dacascos, Tomer Sisley, Josie Ho, and a voice cameo by Eric Stoltz). Bracey is essentially a second-string Tom Hardy, and the film's only genuinely amusing moments are provided by Cle Bennett as Red's best friend Leroy, who's just changed his name to "Le Roi," and is having a hard time making it stick. Much of LUCKY DAY is devoted to Avary's self-indulgence, from a Bret Easton Ellis shout-out in the form of a door sign reading "This Is Not An Exit," to Red calling Chloe "Honey Bunny," and Dobrev looking and sounding a lot like Maria de Medeiros' Fabienne in PULP FICTION, almost as if Avary is taking this opportunity to let us know which elements of that classic are his contributions. A tribute to late producer Samuel Hadida, who died in November 2018, in the form of an end-of-credits stinger is a sincerely heartfelt gesture on Avary's part (Hadida co-produced KILLING ZOE, so they go back a long way), but LUCKY DAY is just...not good. (R, 99 mins)
FREAKS (US/Canada - 2019)
A low-budget indie sci-fi outing that plays like an origin story for Dafne Keen's Laura in LOGAN, FREAKS managed to get some good buzz at the 2018 Toronto Film Festival but it was another year before it finally landed a straight-to-VOD release. Some of the praise given to the film was for the way it revealed itself through the eyes of its confused seven-year-old heroine, only letting the audience see it from her POV and, for quite a while, leaving anyone watching just as hopelessly confused as she is. That set-up is reminiscent of BEASTS OF THE SOUTHERN WILD as well as the ill-fated Blumhouse production STEPHANIE, but the way FREAKS presents itself starts to feel less like clever exposition and more like an excuse to pull anything and everything out of its ass, to the point where the film itself resembles a nonsense story that an imaginative seven-year-old might concoct. Young Chloe (Lexi Kolker) lives in a mostly boarded-up house--in the middle of an otherwise nice neighborhood--with her disheveled, nervous father (Emile Hirsch, looking a lot like a haggard Jack Black). He doesn't let her go outside and there's a half-dozen dead bolts on the front door. He makes her practice the biography of a fake identity he's devised for her and has stacks of cash hidden throughout the house. At this point, FREAKS could be about anything--a post-apocalyptic wasteland, a WALKING DEAD scenario, or a Shyamalanian/TWILIGHT ZONE scenario where the dad is a paranoid nutjob and the outside world he's keeping her from is completely normal. But Chloe demonstrates telepathic abilities. She gets in people's heads and influences them, and her ability to control others is getting stronger. She can control the mind of a neighbor girl (Ava Telek) across the street and make her role-play, lying with her and innocently cuddling as the dead mom Chloe never met. And Chloe is strangely drawn to the incessant jingle of an ice cream truck that's constantly parked outside her house, manned by the mysterious "Mr. Snowcone" (Bruce Dern), who seems to know a lot about her and her father and their strange abilities.
If it sounds like I made that synopsis up as I went along, then yeah, that's what FREAKS is like. I haven't even mentioned the intermittent breaking news alerts on their TV about drone strikes in Seattle or the tenth anniversary of an attack that wiped out Dallas. Or a government agent (Grace Park) who's pursuing "Abnormals," or the more derisively-termed "Freaks," a race of apparent alien invaders who were rounded up a decade ago in a "Relocation Act" and shipped off to a massive internment camp called Madoc Mountain (cue ham-fisted Trump-era immigration allegory). Or that sometimes, Chloe's dead mother (Amanda Crew) appears in her closet, only the closet looks like a holding cell of some kind. Or that Chloe can manipulate time and that a few months for some might be several years for others. The writing/directing team of Adam Stein and Zach Lipovsky maybe deserve some props for somehow cobbling together every half-baked idea and passing thought they've ever had and cramming them into one movie, almost like they went into it assuming this was gonna be their only shot and said "Fuck it, we're going all-in." But FREAKS just doesn't work. Its mythology is confusing and utterly arbitrary and its characters' behavior and the extent of their abilities is dependent on whatever a particular scene needs them to do. The entire film feels like an endless barrage of dei ex machina the likes of which are rarely seen outside of late-period Stephen King novels (doesn't "Mr. Snowcone" sound like a King character?), so much so that there's never any suspense because whatever obstacles Chloe faces, the script will just make up some bullshit on the spot to move her to the next scene. Possibly the most inexplicably acclaimed sci-fi film since CHRONICLE, FREAKS is a mess, but the filmmakers do alright from a technical standpoint with an obviously small budget, and they get good performances out of Hirsch and Kolker. Dern looks completely bewildered, and it's probably not in character. Check out the tragically underseen CAPTIVE STATE instead. (R, 105 mins)
HACKSAW RIDGE (US/China - 2016) Directed by Mel Gibson. Written by Robert Schenkkan and Andrew Knight. Cast: Andrew Garfield, Sam Worthington, Vince Vaughn, Luke Bracey, Teresa Palmer, Hugo Weaving, Rachel Griffiths, Richard Roxburgh, Nathaniel Buzolic, Matt Nable, Firass Dirani, Luke Pegler, Ben Mingay, Nico Cortez, Goran D. Kleut, Milo Gibson, Robert Morgan. (R, 139 mins) Directing his first film since 2006's APOCALYPTO, Mel Gibson shapes this biographical account of WWII hero Desmond Doss (1919-2006) into an unflinching, graphically violent look at one man taking a personal stand amidst the horrors of war. Co-written by Robert Schenkkan, who scripted several episodes of the HBO mini-series THE PACIFIC, HACKSAW RIDGE is also filled with the kind of epic suffering endured by Gibson protagonists, whether it's BRAVEHEART's William Wallace or THE PASSION OF THE CHRIST's Jesus, right down to some crucifixion and baptismal imagery in the climax, almost depicted as a resurrection of sorts. The first conscientious objector to be awarded the Medal of Honor, Desmond (Andrew Garfield) grew up in the hills of Lynchburg, VA, the son of drunken, bitter WWI vet Thomas (Hugo Weaving), who's still shell-shocked by his experiences and wracked with survivor's guilt after he was the only one of his friends to return home alive. A family of Seventh-Day Adventists, Thomas has instilled in Desmond and the rest of the family--wife Bertha (Rachel Griffiths) and their other son Hal (Nathaniel Buzolic)--a deep belief in non-violence and the idea there is no circumstance in which even touching a gun is justified. Thomas is enraged when Hal enlists, and despite his protests, Desmond enlists as well, feeling a sense of duty but vowing to stick to his anti-gun beliefs by volunteering to be a medic ("Instead of taking lives, I'll be saving them," he tells his father). Promising to marry his nurse girlfriend Dorothy (Teresa Palmer) during his first furlough, Desmond joins the Army and all goes well until he refuses to handle a weapon.
Of course, he's immediately branded as a coward by everyone from bullying fellow recruit and all-around alpha-male Smitty (Luke Bracey) to drill sergeant Howell (a miscast Vince Vaughn), and Captain Glover (Sam Worthington). It also doesn't help that his religion's Sabbath is on Saturday, a day in which Desmond refuses to train. Glover orders a psych evaluation for an easy Section 8 discharge, but when Desmond is deemed of sound mind, Howell is instructed to make his life hell. Desmond is routinely singled out for non-existent infractions, for which Howell punishes the entire group with 20-mile hikes and having their weekend passes revoked. Desmond is beaten by his fellow recruits and refuses to back down. He's eventually court-martialed, and it's decided--with some input from a high-ranking General who fought with Thomas--that Desmond can serve his country as a medic and do so without the protection of a weapon if he so desires. After marrying Dorothy, Desmond is shipped off with the others to Okinawa to take the Maeda Escarpment (recreated on location in Australia, where the entire film was shot), known as "Hacksaw Ridge." Many men are killed in seemingly endless battles with Japanese soldiers, and after Glover orders a retreat, Desmond remains atop Hacksaw Ridge, dragging surviving soldiers to the cliff and rappelling them down one by one. Working himself to the point of mental and physical exhaustion after seemingly answering a call from God, his hands raw and bleeding profusely from rope burns, Desmond single-handedly saved the lives of 75 men at Hacksaw Ridge.
It takes a little over an hour before the story gets to Hacksaw Ridge, and the carnage starts with an extremely effective jump scare more suited to horror movie. Dumping untold gallons of blood and hurling around more innards than an Italian cannibal movie, Gibson doesn't shy away from making combat look as raw and realistic as possible (naturally, some conservatively-used CGI splatter takes you out of the moment, but it's mostly practical effects). Bullets rip through flesh and skulls in ways that put this on par with the opening of SAVING PRIVATE RYAN and the endless suffering of Jesus in THE PASSION OF THE CHRIST. While he'll always be a pariah to a certain degree, Gibson is clearly a complex and troubled man beset by frequently public demons. His efforts as a filmmaker have a shared vision, even his 1993 directing debut THE MAN WITHOUT A FACE, thus far Gibson's only directorial effort that didn't involve graphically gory feats of human endurance. Gibson's heroes are outsiders and rebels, either by choice or by fate. They are men who stick to their beliefs in the face of any and all adversity and are willing to endure whatever physical and psychological suffering to demonstrate that belief and prove their conviction. And when you see the frayed tensions in the Doss family and the things that led Desmond to take his stand, particularly in his relationship with his father, a man who loves his family but too often treats them horribly because he can't forgive himself for being the only one of his friends to come home from The Great War alive, one can't help but wonder how much of that applies to Desmond Doss and Mel Gibson. There's an argument that Gibson's complicated relationship with his own father, an on-the-record Holocaust denier who--and this is not to excuse Gibson's tabloid transgressions--undoubtedly planted the seeds for some of the beliefs that have led to so much turmoil in Gibson's life. On and off the battlefield--the graphic gore aside--it's easy to dismiss HACKSAW RIDGE as corny Americana and Garfield's performance as overly earnest. Of course, Desmond gets not one but two "I was wrong about you" mea culpas, one from Smitty and one from Glover, and Vaughn's Howell scaling the cliff and uttering "We're not in Kansas anymore" is a line that should've been axed at the first read-through. But it was a simpler era and a time of different values and Desmond Doss, who died in 2006 and is shown in an interview snippet at the very end, was a what-you-see-is-what-you-get kind of guy. To that end, HACKSAW RIDGE is a powerful film that both honors Desmond Doss and functions as another intensely personal look into the abyss for Mel Gibson.
Cpl. Desmond Doss receiving his Medal of Honor
from President Harry Truman in 1945
