1917 (US/UK/Spain - 2019) Directed by Sam Mendes. Written by Sam Mendes and Krysty Wilson-Cairns. Cast: George MacKay, Dean-Charles Chapman, Benedict Cumberbatch, Colin Firth, Mark Strong, Andrew Scott, Richard Madden, Claire Duburcq, Adrian Scarborough, Daniel Mays, Pip Carter, Richard McCabe, Billy Postlethwaite, Robert Maaser. (R, 119 mins) A WWI epic inspired by a story that director/co-writer Sam Mendes was told by his Lance Corporal grandfather, 1917 is an impressive technical achievement that's so devoted to its--for lack of a better word--gimmick, that it's pulled off at the expense of telling the story in the most beneficial way. Drawing from older classics like ALL QUIET ON THE WESTERN FRONT and Stanley Kubrick's PATHS OF GLORY with the more visceral, you-are-there immediacy of SAVING PRIVATE RYAN and DUNKIRK, 1917 attempts to convey its entire run time as one continuous shot, a la Hitchcock's ROPE or Alejandro G. Inarritu's BIRDMAN. Of course, if you go into any exercise of this type knowing that, you start getting distracted by trying to spot where the usually seamless cuts are, and here, the spell is momentarily broken by a huge mid-film cut to black when a character is knocked unconscious. Mendes, who has the distinction of directing the both strongest (SKYFALL) and weakest (SPECTRE) of the Daniel Craig 007 outings, makes a valiant effort to go for those Kubrick long takes and uses the legendary auteur's old standby of natural light with the great cinematographer Roger Deakins, but once its plot is set in motion, it strangely lacks the emotion or the urgency that the situation requires, primarily because Mendes' overriding concern is the single-take illusion.
Set over one day and into the morning of the next, 1917 has Lance Corporals Schofield (George MacKay) and Blake (Dean-Charles Chapman) sent by Gen. Erinmore (Colin Firth) to hand-deliver a message to a battalion several miles away with orders to halt a planned attack on German forces. Aerial intel reveals that the Germans have set a trap or them, and the 1600 men under the command of Col. McKenzie (Benedict Cumberbatch)--including Blake's older brother (Richard Madden)--will most likely be wiped out. All lines of communication have been cut by the Germans, leaving no alternative but for Schofield and Blake to go on foot, crossing the abandoned German front and getting through the town of Ecoust and finding McKenzie's battalion. It's a simple set-up with an intricately choreographed execution, albeit with significant digital assistance. For a while, the technique dazzles, especially as Schofield and Blake make their way across a harrowing wasteland of mud, blood, dead soldiers and horse carcasses. A trek through the vacated German trenches leads to an explosion when a rat crosses a tripwire. A dogfight between two British planes and a German pilot ends up having serious consequences to the mission.
The more 1917 goes on, the more gimmicky it looks. Because there's hardly any time to learn about these characters, the emotional stakes aren't there, and all that's left is the single-take concept. That works to a point, but eventually, you may question why Mendes was so concerned with that as opposed to developing the narrative and fleshing out the characters beyond a one-dimensional level. When it's able to focus on the immediacy of the situation--the tripwire explosion, the German plane crashing after the dogfight, a sniper attack, a stunning trip through a bombed-out town engulfed in flames that looks like something out of APOCALYPSE NOW--1917 is firing on all cylinders and has moments of undeniable brilliance. But the pseudo-"real time," single take illusion also means there's a lot of walking and talking. And walking. And more walking. And the sense of urgency is never really properly conveyed--beyond "we need to get to Col. McKenzie"--because the time element is never made clear. If the movie runs two hours, then tell them "You have two hours." The cut-to-black when a character is knocked out cold seems to serve the dual purpose of maintaining the one-shot ruse while also allowing Mendes to explain away some of that real-time issue, in a sense negating the whole single-take idea in the process. In the end, it all boils down to this: yes, it's technically impressive and it's obvious that a lot of intricate planning went into it, but why? Why tell this story this way?
MacKay (CAPTAIN FANTASTIC) and Chapman (GAME OF THRONES) are fine, as good as they're permitted to be since they seem like little more than players in a WWI video game (the sequence where MacKay's Schofield gets caught in some DELIVERANCE-style rapids after going over huge waterfall that appears out of nowhere seems to belong in another movie, as does his shoddy-looking avatar that jumps in the water). Brief support is provided by continuous big-name cameos just like the WWII movies of the 1960s--in addition to Cumberbatch, Madden, and Firth, Mark Strong also appears, perhaps part of a package deal with Firth as they've seemingly appeared in more movies together than Abbott & Costello. Even with numerous standout moments and earnest performances by the leads, 1917 still doesn't even have the power of a 90-year-old relic like 1930's ALL QUIET ON THE WESTERN FRONT. And forget comparisons to PATHS OF GLORY, a film whose anti-war rage still has a seething resonance over 60 years later. I may sound like I didn't like 1917. It's a good movie, but it could've--and should've--been a much better one. Make no mistake, it's gonna clean up at the Oscars because it's a safe pick that everybody can get behind. But it'll be one of those Best Picture winners that just doesn't stick in the memory. When's the last time you heard anyone mention GREEN BOOK?
"Based on an absurd but true story," the barely-released STOCKHOLM (since retitled THE CAPTOR for its UK release) tries to take a Coen Bros. approach in chronicling the 1973 bank robbery that coined the term "Stockholm Syndrome," where hostages come to sympathize and side with their captors. Unfortunately, writer/director Robert Budreau quickly loses interest in that subject and instead goes full DIPSHIT DOG DAY AFTERNOON, focused almost exclusively on coaxing a gonzo performance out of Ethan Hawke, who previously starred in Budreau's acclaimed but little-seen 2016 Chet Baker biopic BORN TO BE BLUE. Hawke is "Lars Nystrom," a fictionalized American version of Jan-Erik Olsson, in reality a Swedish convict on a day-long furlough from prison who walked into a Stockholm branch of Kreditbanken on August 23, 1973, allowed the customers and most of the staff to leave, and kept two bank employees hostage until his demands for money, a Mustang, and the release of his imprisoned buddy Clark Olofsson (rechristened "Gunner Sorensson" here and played by Mark Strong) were met. The ordeal becomes a media circus and as time drags on, one of the hostages, Bianca (Noomi Rapace, also one of 20 credited producers) bonds with Lars, portrayed here as an incompetent goof who's in way over his head.
Considering the pop culture ubiquity of the term "Stockholm Syndrome," its origin would seem to be ripe for a riveting story, but Budreau drops the ball by diverting all of his attention to indulging Hawke and encouraging him to unleash his inner Nic Cage with reckless abandon. Sporting a wig, a stache, shades, a cowboy hat, skin-tight leather pants, a huge Steve McQueen man-crush, and jamming to Bob Dylan on his portable radio as he commandeers the bank, Hawke is obviously relishing the chance to bring this character to life. It's a performance that might've worked were it not at the expense of everything else--story, dramatic tension, characterization, substance--as Rapace, Strong, and Christopher Heyerdahl (who's terrific as the sardonic Stockholm police chief trying to contain the situation) are essentially left scrambling for crumbs after Hawke gorges himself on the scenery. Hawke has aged into one of our finest character actors, but he takes Lars from amusing to irritating in record time, and it's telling that the film's best and simultaneously most darkly hilarious and heartbreaking scene doesn't even directly involve him as Rapace's Bianca tries to explain to her nice but hapless husband (Thorbjorn Harr) how to properly fry fish for their two young children since she's being held hostage and is stuck at work. We have no understanding of why Bianca is so drawn to Lars, unless we're just supposed to infer from her frumpy fashion and her dorky, oversized 1973 eyewear that she's bored with her average husband and the off-the-chain Lars seems like a spark of excitement. But STOCKHOLM isn't interested in exploring those kinds of details. Anyone who's seen DOG DAY AFTERNOON ("Wyoming") can attest that there's a way to tell a serious true crime story with dark, absurdist humor. Budreau doesn't seem to know what he wants to do here other than let Hawke run wilder than Robin Williams on a talk show, which soon makes for a tedious hour and a half. (R, 92 mins)
ABDUCTION (China/US - 2019)
An incoherent mishmash of other, much better movies, the mostly Chinese-financed sci-fi thriller ABDUCTION is a waste of B-movie action star Scott Adkins. The hardest-working man in action movies, Adkins has been on a bit of a roll lately, especially with his outstanding AVENGEMENT from a couple months ago, but this is a huge step back and one of his worst films. Plus, he's really the second lead here despite his top billing. In a prologue, Quinn (Adkins) wakes up with a strange implant on his neck in a HOSTEL-type torture chamber where his young daughter is among many being held captive in cages. He brawls with the captors and gets thrown out of a window, when it's revealed he's in a castle and plummets to a body of water below. When he comes to the surface, he's in a water fountain in a park in present-day Ho Chi Minh City, stricken with amnesia and with an acute stutter that dissipates when he's slapped. Meanwhile, hired assassin Conner (Andy On, the star of 2002's BLACK MASK 2: CITY OF MASKS, which featured Adkins in an early role) pulls off One Last Job for Vietnamese crime boss Master Trahn (Qin Chuan) just before his wife Maya (Lili Ji) is abducted, Conner presumes, by Russian enemies of Trahn. Tranh assures him the Russians had nothing to do with it, and his dogged search for her leads him to Quinn, now in a psych ward being observed by Dr. Anna Pham (Truong Ngoc Ahn), who eventually discovers that her patient is a time traveler from 1985. Quinn, his memories jogged while under Dr. Pham's care, has told her that alien beings capable of traversing dimensions have enslaved humans as "drones" with spider-like implants on the backs of their necks, intent on harvesting a specific strand of DNA unique to certain people, such as his daughter and Conner's wife.
They're eventually pursued by a hooded alien visitor (Daniel Whyte) as much nonsensical fight scenes and terrible special effects ensue (the alien force manifesting itself into a giant CGI shitheap and declaring "You have such strong, beautiful chi!" isn't exactly a moment on par with Rutger Hauer's "Tears in Rain" BLADE RUNNER monologue in the annals of sci-fi cinema). The throwdowns, coordinated by the usually reliable Tim Mak (TRIPLE THREAT), are uninspired, the script by Syfy vet Mike MacLean (DINOCROC VS. SUPERGATOR, SHARKTOPUS, PIRANHACONDA) just cribs from Philip K. Dick, DARK CITY, THE MATRIX, and 12 MONKEYS with little understanding of any of them, and the direction by DTV vet Ernie Barbarash (who previously worked with Adkins in the not-bad 2011 JCVD vehicle ASSASSINATION GAMES) offers little in the way of style and excitement. Erstwhile '80s Cannon bad guy Aki Aleong puts in a brief appearance as Dr. Pham's mentor and is among 27 credited producers, along with Adkins and Roger Corman. Adkins has been making a convincing case for years now that he should be a big-screen action star, and if you haven't seen AVENGEMENT, it's one of the year's best films. It's commendable that he's such a tireless workhorse and stays so busy--this is his fourth film in 2019 so far, with another five (!) due out by the end of the year--but in the end, quality has to trump quantity, and drek like ABDUCTION is doing nothing to further the Adkins cause. (Unrated, 97 mins)
MISS SLOANE (France/US/UK - 2016) Directed by John Madden. Written by Jonathan Perera. Cast: Jessica Chastain, Mark Strong, Gugu Mbatha-Raw, Alison Pill, Michael Stuhlbarg, John Lithgow, Sam Waterston, Jake Lacy, Christine Baranski, David Wilson Barnes, Chuck Shamata, Dylan Baker, Ennis Esmer, Raoul Bhaneja, Douglas Smith, Meghann Fahy, Lucy Owen, Michael Cram, Joe Pingue. (R, 132 mins) A sort-of MICHAEL CLAYTON take on the gun control lobby, MISS SLOANE is fairly transparent end-of-the-year awards bait that works more often than it doesn't and serves as a reminder that movies for grown-ups used to not be such a rare commodity. The crammed story perhaps bites off more than it can chew yet still seems a little long running past the two-hour mark, and frequently seems like it could've been better served as an HBO or FX series. It also can't help but feel like Aaron Sorkin fan fiction, with debuting screenwriter Jonathan Perera slavishly devoted to the Sorkin style, from every line of dialogue sounding like an over-rehearsed proclamation to the presence of NEWSROOM co-stars Sam Waterston and Alison Pill to dubiously silly character names, though in fairness to Perera, neither "Rodolfo Schmidt" nor "Esme Manucharian" seem quite as improbable as Olivia Munn as THE NEWSROOM's chief financial reporter "Sloan Sabbith," though a point is made of Schmidt's middle name being "Vittorio." Though dealing with a topical subject matter, director John Madden (SHAKESPEARE IN LOVE, THE BEST EXOTIC MARIGOLD HOTEL) gives MISS SLOANE a '70s aesthetic in its matter-of-fact, Alan J. Pakula-esque presentation, right down to a clandestine meeting in a dimly-lit Washington, D.C. parking garage that's straight out of ALL THE PRESIDENT'S MEN.
Elizabeth Sloane (Jessica Chastain in icy and driven ZERO DARK THIRTY mode) is a top shark for a powerful D.C. lobbying firm run by George Dupont (Waterston). Dupont wants her to work with Bob Sandford (Chuck Shamata), a representative from an NRA-type organization looking to bring women aboard the pro-gun movement. Elizabeth derisively dismisses the idea, with everyone wrongfully assuming she lost a loved one in a mass shooting. Her rationale is simple: she has the skills and the power plays to sell anything on Capitol Hill, but pushing to make gun access easier is where she draws the line and grows a conscience. She quits Dupont's firm in protest and joins a smaller outfit owned by Rodolfo Schmidt (Mark Strong) that's backing a mandatory background check bill that Dupont and his new top gun Pat Connors (Michael Stuhlbarg) are working to help Sandford shut down. Elizabeth pulls out every trick in the book, putting the cause before all else, including outing colleague Esme Manucharian (Gugu Mbatha-Raw) as a survivor of a high school massacre 20 years ago, something Esme has kept buried from everyone except Schmidt. As Elizabeth's former colleagues--Dupont, Connors, and Jane Molloy (Pill)--plot her downfall with a forgotten incident in her past involving paying for a congressman's overseas trip as part of a lobby for palm oil tariffs (way too much time spent on that scintillating subject), Miss Sloane sets her own plan in motion that exemplifies her core philosophy: play your trump card right after they play theirs and make sure you surprise them.
Chastain commits to the character even as Perera's script has her go through all the predictable arcs. We learn little about Miss Sloane as a person other than she's a loner who doesn't relate to people, thinks only of her work, abuses prescription pills, and frequently enlists the services of male escorts when she needs a release or to "fantasize about the life I didn't want." When her usual appointment skips town, she meets his replacement Forde (Jake Lacy), and it's all business until he starts to sense real feelings in her, and she of course shuts down and sends him away, her illusion of emotionless isolation shattered. You see moments like this coming, and others like the desk-clearing fit of rage when her back's against the wall, the opposition is beating her, and she's questioning her entire career. Told mostly in a series of flashbacks as Elizabeth is testifying before a Congressional hearing overseen by a vindictive senator (John Lithgow) and not following her attorney's (David Wilson Barnes) advice and invoking the Fifth, MISS SLOANE sometimes suffers from its characters giving speeches in lieu of having actual, real-life conversations, but it does a mostly commendable job of replicating an "issues" movie from back in the day, fused with the least grating tendencies of its obvious inspiration in Aaron Sorkin. Madden and Perera succeed in making it less about taking sides on the gun issue and more about the characters while keeping the preachy, hectoring sanctimony (like, everything that ever came out of the mouth of Jeff Daniels' Will McAvoy on THE NEWSROOM) that's often Sorkin's Achilles heel, to a minimum.
THE BROTHERS GRIMSBY (US/UK - 2016) Directed by Louis Leterrier. Written by Sacha Baron Cohen, Phil Johnston and Peter Baynham. Cast: Sacha Baron Cohen, Mark Strong, Penelope Cruz, Isla Fisher, Rebel Wilson, Gabourey Sidibe, Ian McShane, Barkhad Abdi, Scott Adkins, Tamsin Egerton, Sam Hazeldine, Nick Boraine, Annabelle Wallis, Ricky Tomlinson, David Harewood, Yusuf Hafri. (R, 83 mins) With his mockumentaries BORAT (2006) and BRUNO (2009), Sacha Baron Cohen displayed a razor sharp wit in his holding up a funhouse mirror to America seen through the eyes of outsiders. He continued in a similar vein with the narrative comedy THE DICTATOR (2012). But with THE BROTHERS GRIMSBY, his latest scripting and starring effort, Baron Cohen pretty much abandons any kind of social/political commentary and goes straight for the grossout/raunch crowd, displaying a positively Sandlerian level of crude laziness with gags that play like he stole them from the dumpster outside the Farrelly Brothers' office. Baron Cohen is too smart to confuse any of this for bold transgression. The sole saving grace is the seething slow burn of veteran character actor Mark Strong, who manages to maintain his dignity to a point--that point being when Baron Cohen's script has him drenched in elephant cum. Twice. In what must set a new standard in damning with faint praise, the best thing one can say about THE BROTHERS GRIMSBY is that it's marginally better than DIRTY GRANDPA.
28 years after being left an orphan and separated from his beloved little brother, Nobby (Baron Cohen) is a soccer-obsessed father of 11 (with names like Skeletor, Tsunami, and Gangnam Style) and grandfather of one (Django Unchained), with his nympho wife Dawn (Rebel Wilson) and living in the depressing industrial five-nuclear-reactor town of Grimsby, the "twin city to Chernobyl." He gets word that his little brother will be at a London reception (yes, the establishing shot of London, with the London Eye ferris wheel and the Thames is accompanied by the caption "London, England") to honor young, wheelchair-bound AIDS activist Schlomo Khashidi (Yusuf Hafri), hosted by actress and humanitarian Rhonda George (Penelope Cruz). The long-lost little brother turns out to be Sebastian Graves (Strong), a lethal superspy working for a covert division of MI-6, there to take out international assassin Pavel Lukashenko (Scott Adkins). Nobby surprises Sebastian, who compromises the shot and ends up shooting young Schlomo, whose AIDS-tainted blood lands in the open-sore-filled mouth of celebrity attendee Daniel Radcliffe (played by an impersonator), while Lukashenko's remote controlled gun takes out the head of the World Health Organization. With the mayhem pinned on him and MI-6 deeming him a traitor, Sebastian is forced to go on the run with the hapless Nobby and follow the trail all the way to South Africa and ultimately to the FIFA finals in Chile to find Lukashenko and clear his name.
Along the way, it's endless toilet humor--literally in some cases. Nobby is forced to pretend to be Sebastian after the secret agent accidentally injects himself with heroin Nobby bought from a Cape Town dealer (Barkhad Abdi, obviously unable to parlay that CAPTAIN PHILLIPS Oscar nod into anything resembling a career bump). Nobby is sent to seduce the wife (Annabelle Wallis) of an arms dealer, but confuses her with hotel maid Banu (PRECIOUS' Gabourey Sidibe, in a humiliating role), who's wearing a similar dress, which leads to an extended shot of Baron Cohen with his face buried between Sidibe's ass cheeks, with an insert shot of what's supposed to be the Oscar-nominated actress' extremely unkempt crotch area. Sebastian is shot in the scrotum with a poisoned dart, forcing Nobby to suck the poison out of his brother's ballsack, Baron Cohen wrapping his mouth around Strong's stunt sack as Sebastian teabags Nobby ("You came on my face!" Nobby yells, with Sebastian replying "It was a tiny amount of pre-ejaculate at most. Grow up!"). Horny Dawn goes commando and pulls a BASIC INSTINCT on Nobby, opening her thighs and queefing in his face ("That wasn't me bum!" she says), and then ripping a loud fart ("That was me bum!"). At a health spa, Nobby falls face first into some wax and then lands on a guy's crotch, emerging with a curly goatee except for where the guy's dick entered his mouth. A weakened, AIDS-stricken "Daniel Radcliffe" is later shot at the FIFA finals, with his tainted blood going into the mouth of attendee Donald Trump. But the biggest set piece, and the one where Baron Cohen's career may very well end, has Nobby and Sebastian fleeing psychotic MI-6 mad dog Chilcott (Sam Hazeldine) and hiding inside the spacious confines of a female elephant's vagina. Just as Chilcott and his men leave, Nobby starts crawling out only to be stopped by an aroused male elephant who mounts the female, with Nobby and Sebastian sharing the vagina with a giant elephant cock. "You stroke him and I'll cradle the balls!" Nobby advises, as Sebastian is soon drenched in gallons of elephant jizz. When they try to exit, they're again thwarted by a second male elephant about to have his way with the female, followed by a line of elephants forming for what Nobby deems "an elephant bukkake fuck party." And then Sebastian is covered in elephant cum again, while Nobby is anally violated by another male elephant.
It's worth mentioning that Baron Cohen and co-writer Peter Baynham got Oscar nominations for writing BORAT, and that their other co-writer here (Phil Johnston), co-scripted WRECK-IT-RALPH and the current hit ZOOTOPIA. The director is former Luc Besson protege Louis Leterrier (TRANSPORTER 2, THE INCREDIBLE HULK), and the second-unit action duties were handled by JOHN WICK director Chad Stahelski. There is some genuine talent here and the end result is so utterly embarrassing that as the credits rolled, the exiting audience members (both of us) didn't even want to make eye contact. It's lazy, it's beyond juvenile, and it's simply not funny, whether it's the recurrent anal fixation, the pointless AIDS jokes, and consistently unfunny grossout humor at the expense of plus-sized women. "Shock" doesn't necessarily equal "funny," and Baron Cohen is a smart enough writer and performer to know the difference (the only sign of vintage Baron Cohen that shows is when Nobby discovers the rush of firing a weapon, concluding "I can see why people love guns! It completely distances you from the guilt of your actions!"). THE BROTHERS GRIMSBY is a draggy slog even at just 83 minutes, and the fact that there are seven credited editors is indicative of compromised product with which no one really knew what to do (half the shots and lines in the trailer aren't even in the finished movie, and the set-up is so rushed and truncated that it's never really explained how Nobby finds out Sebastian will be in London). Baron Cohen is all about poking people with sticks to get a response, but what exactly was the endgame here? Whatever went wrong, let's just hope that he got it out of his system and can go back to being the bold provocateur he's capable of being, because THE BROTHERS GRIMSBY would be damn near unwatchable were it not for the heroic efforts of Mark Strong.
KINGSMAN: THE SECRET SERVICE (US/UK - 2015) Directed by Matthew Vaughn. Written by Jane Goldman and Matthew Vaughn. Cast: Colin Firth, Samuel L. Jackson, Michael Caine, Mark Strong, Taron Egerton, Sofia Boutella, Sophie Cookson, Mark Hamill, Jack Davenport, Samantha Womack, Hanna Alstrom, Bjorn Floberg, Geoff Bell, Ralph Ineson, Richard Brake. (R, 129 mins)
Like 2010's KICK-ASS, director Matthew Vaughn's last adaptation of a Mark Millar comic book series, KINGSMAN: THE SECRET SERVICE (which Millar co-created with Dave Gibbons) takes unbridled joy in pushing the envelope and poking people with sticks. Without a little girl dropping countless F-and-C-bombs, KINGSMAN isn't going to attract quite the same level of controversy. Nevertheless, some are taking umbrage with the hilarious final shot, essentially a very hard-R riff on all of those quips and double entendres that would close out a James Bond movie as 007 wraps up the adventure and canoodles with the Bond girl while M or Q or Moneypenny listen or observe with their disapproving "Really, 007!" facial expressions. The entire film is an homage to the more lighthearted spy films of old, particularly Roger Moore's tenure as 007, while also functioning as a meta commentary on spy movies in general, with characters lamenting that today's genre items are much too serious and downbeat. That's an especially amusing aside, considering two of this film's stars--Colin Firth and Mark Strong--appeared in 2011's low-key and magnificently somber TINKER TAILOR SOLDIER SPY. The connection to spy films past extends to the presence of the legendary Michael Caine, who played British agent Harry Palmer in a series of five films from 1965 to 1996. Vaughn and regular co-writer Jane Goldman play these meta elements just enough that they remain amusing, wisely resisting the urge to make it too self-consciously cute. For the most part, KINGSMAN is bit on the longish side and, like so many of its present-day counterparts, suffers from some blasts of dubious CGI that's distracting in its cartoonish artifice, though I tend to be a little more lenient on that when it's a comic book adaptation. Overall, KINGSMEN is generally witty and wildly entertaining, deftly mixing thrilling action, big laughs, and shocking violence, aided by a fine cast of serious actors obviously enjoying themselves and having a good time.
Unemployed London troublemaker Eggsy Unwin (Taron Egerton) gets into a row at a pub and retaliates by taking the guy's car for a joyride. Arrested, Eggsy resorts to an emergency number on the back of a medal given to him 17 years earlier by Harry Hart (Firth), a co-worker of his late father, who died on the job. He was told to call that number if he ever needed anything, and 17 years later, he calls in that favor and is sprung from jail by Hart with all charges dropped. Hart tells Eggsy that he's a Kingsman--like his father--an agent in a top-secret government intelligence agency. Hart, codename Galahad, feels responsible for Eggsy, as Eggsy's father saved the lives of Galahad and other Kingsman agents by diving on top of an Iraqi suicide bomber, sacrificing himself for the greater good of the team. It so happens that there's a vacancy in the Kingsman agency--which Galahad would like filled by Eggsy-- after Lancelot (Jack Davenport) is killed by Gazelle (Sofia Boutella), a legless assassin with prosthetic, sharpened Oscar Pistorius-like running blades. Gazelle is the chief henchman to eccentric, billionaire internet mogul Richmond Valentine (Samuel L. Jackson), a philanthropist whose supposed concern with climate change is a cover for a far more nefarious master plan. Valentine orchestrates a global giveaway of SIM cards that provide free phone and internet service for everyone, for life. As evidenced during a trial run at a Kentucky church, whose congregation is filled with hatemongering racists, gun nuts, and homophobes, the internet signal received by those with Valentine's SIM cards causes its users to behave in uncontrollably violent, destructive fashion. The SIM card is a mind and impulse control/manipulation signal, and Valentine has been meeting with and occasionally kidnapping the world's more important dignitaries and luminaries--including prominent climate change expert Prof. Arnold (Mark Hamill in some in-joke casting, playing a character who was originally named "Mark Hamill" in the comic book)--and implanting a chip behind their ears to make them immune from the signal, thereby giving an overcrowded, global warming-damaged world a much-needed do-over, where the lesser, more gullible people of society remove themselves from the equation and the rich and privileged one-percenters reign supreme. As Eggsy and others are trained in the ways of the Kingsman by their mentor Merlin (Strong), Galahad conducts an investigation of Valentine at the behest of the agency's leader Arthur (Caine), one that will put the entire organization to a test in order to save the planet from the megalomaniacal madman.
As goofy as KINGSMAN is, its plot isn't any more ludicrous than something like MOONRAKER (some of the climax even takes place in space!). From the various Kingsman gadgets to Valentine's insane plot and his lethal right-hand (wo)man with some kind of gimmicky physical attribute to Jackson's loud and hammy performance, KINGSMAN frequently resembles a lighthearted 007 entry if Bond was paired up with a street-smart soccer hooligan for a sidekick. Egerton does a fine job as Eggsy, with his cocky exterior masking smarts and sensitivity on which Galahad is willing to stake his reputation. The relationship that forms between the two men--one who never knew his father and the other who blames himself for it--is portrayed very nicely by Egerton and Firth. But it's really Jackson, acting like a mash-up between Spike Lee, Mark Cuban, and Auric Goldfinger, who steals the show. KINGSMAN also offers a lot in the way of ballsy, subversive jabs, not only at the massacre of a bunch of brainless Kentucky yokels who gather at the very Westboro Baptist-esque church to spread their hate and intolerance, but in the corrupt politicians in Valentine's pocket--there's digs at the left and the right here--and the way they sell everyone out to save their own asses, not to mention what Sweden's Princess Tilde (Hanna Alstrom) is willing to do if the world is saved. KINGSMAN: THE SECRET SERVICE takes the PUNISHER: WAR ZONE approach to older spy movies, but is a bit like a more refined KICK-ASS. It's still got something to offend everyone, but does so in the classiest way possible. It's a film that sets out to entertain while occasionally making your jaw drop and wondering "Did it really go there?" Yes, it does, and that's exactly why it's such great fun, and it's Vaughn's best film since his directing debut with 2004's LAYER CAKE.
2011's IRONCLAD was a $25 million medieval epic set during the 13th century First Barons' War that had a SEVEN SAMURAI-type band of Knights Templar fighting to defend Rochester Castle from the forces of England's tyrannical King John, exacting revenge on the noblemen who forced him to sign the Magna Carta. It had a cast of solid pros--James Purefoy, Brian Cox, Kate Mara, Derek Jacobi, Charles Dance, and a scenery-chewing Paul Giamatti as the despicable King John--but nevertheless went straight to DVD in the US, where it developed a small cult following once it started streaming on Netflix. It's a nicely-done, blood-splattered adventure saga that suffers from too many scenes of Purefoy and Mara gazing longingly at one another, but as far as battle sequences and sword-induced carnage were concerned, IRONCLAD delivered. Proving that no film is too unknown to warrant a sequel, director/co-writer Jonathan English returns with IRONCLAD: BATTLE FOR BLOOD, which, unlike its predecessor, actually made it into a few US theaters. That seems odd, since it has almost no recognizable faces except for Michelle Fairley--best known as GAME OF THRONES' Catelyn Stark--and a few of her third-and-fourth-string THRONES co-stars looking for work since they've been killed off of the HBO series. More of a spinoff than a direct sequel, IRONCLAD: BATTLE FOR BLOOD takes place five years after the events of the first film and only has one minor character reappearing--Guy the Squire--and he's not even played by the same actor (Tom Austen replaces Aneurin Barnard). Guy the Squire is paid a visit by his cousin Hubert De Vesci (Tom Rhys Harries) when the De Vesci castle is attacked by a rogue band of Scottish rebels led by the ferocious Maddog (Predrag Bjelac). Maddog's son (Ljubomir Bulajic) is killed in the initial battle and Hubert's father, Lord Gilbert De Vesci (David Rintoul) loses an arm. Knowing Maddog's revenge attack is a matter of When and not If, Gilbert sends Hubert to secure the services of mercenary Guy who, as expected, is able to assemble the requisite ragtag group of mismatched warriors who band together before the climactic battle at an abandoned warehouse. Wait. Hold on. No. No, there's no abandoned warehouse. My apologies. I was confusing my cliches. Please excuse me.
English seems to have regressed since the first IRONCLAD. This new film looks cheap and clumsy, and it might not had English elected to shoot it in a competent or even remotely watchable fashion. Every scene is a dizzying, headache-inducing blur of the worst kind of shaky-cam. He goes so overboard with it--even in scenes where people are just talking or standing around--that you could be forgiven for assuming the DVD or Blu-ray was defective. There are very few moments in the film where the camera is held steady, and after a while, it starts to resemble medieval found footage. It's a stunningly numb-skulled decision by a director to fix what wasn't broken. Sure, IRONCLAD had some shaky-cam but it wasn't so much that it was a deal-breaker. Here, it's just overwhelming and does nothing to justify a project that already doesn't have much reason to exist. IRONCLAD has found a small cult following and while it's not an unsung classic or anything, it's certainly worth seeing once, if only for Cox's spirited performance and Giamatti's vein-popping histrionics. All you'll get from IRONCLAD: BATTLE FOR BLOOD is a migraine. (Unrated, 108 mins) ANNA (Spain/US - 2014)
Spanish director Jaume Collet-Serra (ORPHAN, UNKNOWN, NON-STOP) produced this lackluster mystery that melds psychic phenomena with the usual--and completely predictable--twists and turns. The premise sounds like the set-up for a high-concept CBS procedural: "memory detective" John Washington (Mark Strong) works for an organization called Mindscape (the film's original title), whose investigators are able to infiltrate the memories of their subjects and witness the things they've seen. Of course, Washington, like most rumpled cops with bleary eyes, perpetual three-day stubble, and a utility bill with a huge "Past Due" stamp visible on his cluttered coffee table in front of the couch where he passes out every night, has some baggage that's placed him on an extended leave of absence--in this case, a dead child and a wife who committed suicide--but he needs the money and tells his boss Sebastian (Brian Cox) that he wants back in the game. Sebastian gives him the easy gig of investigating Anna (AMERICAN HORROR STORY's Taissa Farmiga), a rich teenager with psychological issues and vague psychic abilities, who's gone on a hunger strike and is kept locked in a room under surveillance by her boozing mom (Saskia Reeves) and her sneering stepfather (Richard Dillane), who has a habit of sleeping with the help. Arriving at Anna's family home, the kind of sprawling, gothic, spiral-staircased mansion specifically designed to contain generations of secrets and lies, Washington's job is simply too find Anna's reasons for her self-harm and get her to eat. But as he spends more time with her and they get to know each other, he starts finding bits and pieces of a complex puzzle that he becomes obsessed with putting together. And someone should, because director Jorge Dorado and screenwriter Guy Holmes sure don't seem up to the task.
ANNA gets off to an intriguing start as a sort of supernatural MANHUNTER, and it's nice to see veteran character actor Strong, whose one-season-and-done AMC series LOW WINTER SUN failed to become the network's next BREAKING BAD, in a leading role, but this film is a disjointed, incoherent, badly-paced mess. It feels like vital scenes are missing, especially near the end, which is completely rushed and makes little sense. Further evidence to suggest haphazard editing: prominently-billed Noah Taylor doesn't appear until the very end, seated at a table talking with Strong, but is listed quite high in the "Cast in order of appearance" roll at the end. There's also a guy credited as "Mr. Taylor's body double," but there's nothing about their scene that would require a body double, indicating that an entire plot thread involving his character was left on the cutting room floor. It's hard to believe someone with the sharp skills of Washington, regardless of how burned-out he is, would be gullible enough to get tripped up in the situation that develops, and never seeing how he's been duped until it's too late. There's signs of a decent thriller lurking somewhere in here, but that's not what got dumped on just ten screens in the US. (R, 99 mins) THE DAY OF THE SIEGE: SEPTEMBER ELEVEN 1683 (Italy/Poland - 2012; US release 2014)
This chronicle of the Battle of Vienna is so concerned with scoring cheap political points that even its title is flagrantly misleading: the final battle took place on September 12, 1683, but why let well-documented historical facts get in the way of being able to crassly draw false parallels to a world-changing tragedy? Italian director Renzo Martinelli has been making films for several years now with the backing of the Northern League, the far-right political party that in many--but not all--ways is Italy's version of the Tea Party. THE DAY OF THE SIEGE: SEPTEMBER ELEVEN 1683 was co-produced by the Polish Film Institute and was originally conceived as a tribute to King Jan III Sobieski, whose army was largely credited with defeating the Ottoman Empire forces in their quest to establish Islam in the west. That premise was enough get famous but not-exactly-A-list Hollywood actors like F. Murray Abraham, Harvey Keitel, and Jim Caviezel onboard. Abraham and Keitel both starred in Martinelli's fervently anti-Islam (and completely terrible) THE STONE MERCHANT (2007) and Abraham starred with Rutger Hauer in the director's SWORD OF WAR (2009), which co-star Cecile Cassel publicly denounced once she realized that Martinelli was making a Northern League propaganda film disguised as a historical epic (the fact that then-Northern League leader Umberto Bossi was hanging around the set and had a cameo might've been the first tip-off). Apparently, the involvement of the Northern League and the politics inherent in the SIEGE script were enough to prompt Keitel to bail, and you know your agitprop might be skewing a little too far to the right when even outspoken Hollywood conservative Caviezel feels the need to distance himself and drops out of the project. Abraham stuck around, either out of a sense of professional obligation or, considering this is his third appearance in a Martinelli project, he either likes the guy, agrees with his views, both, or neither. Maybe a job's a job for Abraham, who seems to be working now more than ever on TV and in supporting roles in Hollywood movies, but he's had a rather lucrative and busy side career in Italy for nearly 30 years. Many of Abraham's Italian TV and film projects have never received US distribution, but his Italian credits very likely outnumber his Hollywood ones at this point. For years, prior to the post-JERRY MAGUIRE career self-immolation of Cuba Gooding, Jr., Abraham was the poster boy for the so-called "Oscar jinx" after his Best Actor win for 1984's AMADEUS failed to make him a movie star and instead made him a punchline, and that's not fair. Abraham is a great character actor, but he was never going to be a Hollywood A-lister. AMADEUS was that once-in-a-career, lightning-in-a-bottle gift that very few jobbing actors like Abraham get. Balancing Hollywood gigs with a secret Italian career was more common for aging actors of the 1960s and 1970s than it is today. Still, for a guy like Abraham (and Keitel, and the late Tony Musante and Ben Gazzara--both of whom made their final appearances in a 2013 miniseries for Italian TV--character actors who also have extensive European careers that American audiences know nothing about), the idea of a lead role in an Italian epic, even if it's mostly bankrolled by a party of the country's most vehement xenophobes, was probably hard to turn down.
In Turkey, Grand Vizier Kara Mustafa (Enrico Lo Verso, in what I assume was supposed to be Caviezel's role) is entrusted with expanding the Ottoman Empire and its practice of Islam into Europe. Revered monk Marco D'Aviano (Abraham) can't convince his flock that he's just a man, even though he's seen performing miracles on more than one occasion. D'Aviano tries to spread the word of God and Christianity as armies assemble to thwart Kara Mustafa after the monk sees a comet and insists it's a threat from Islam (a good second guess would be a shitty special effect worthy of an Al Bradley joint). D'Aviano barely secures the reluctant commitment of fey, cowardly King Leopold of Austria (Piotr Adamczyk), and even get a feisty duchess (Alicja Bachleda-Curus of ONDINE) to join the battle. They're eventually joined by the mighty forces of Jan III Sobieski (renowned filmmaker and occasional actor Jerzy Skolimowski, in what was likely Keitel's part), for the completely incoherent and ineptly-assembled final battle, filled with amateur-night CGI and greenscreen and cannonballs causing more explosions than all of Antonio Margheriti's films combined. It's all rather numbing and dull by the end, and quite distasteful not just in its dishonest invocation of 9/11 but also in the way that all of the Turkish characters are portrayed as swarthy and untrustworthy, especially the opportunistic Abu'l (Yorgo Voyagis), who allows his Christian girlfriend to be violated by animalistic "Allahu Akbar!"-chanting troops in order to appease his Islamic cohorts. And for a film that's ostensibly about Jan III Sobieski and his army's triumph, the Polish end of the story gets completely relegated to the sideline, with Skolimowski not even appearing until 80 minutes in to give the script enough space for Martinelli's Christian proselytizing and Islam-bashing. Abraham gets to sink his teeth into a few spiritual monologues (make a drinking game out of how many times he cries "I am but a simple monk!") and Bachleda-Curus gives her scenes enough of a spark that you wish she was in it more, but most of the actors are badly dubbed with inappropriate voices, especially Skolimowski, whose dubber's final declaration of "Damn you, Kara Mustafa!" doesn't even match his lip movements and is obviously not what he said on-set. Most disheartening of all is seeing the ageless Claire Bloom (Chaplin's LIMELIGHT, THE HAUNTING--yes, that Claire Bloom) squandered in a one-scene cameo as D'Aviano's mother. That's right: Claire Bloom as F. Murray Abraham's mom. Martinelli may fancy himself the Northern League's Ridley Scott, but with that kind of ridiculous casting, slipshod filmmaking, and bush-league visual effects, he's really just Italy's Uwe Boll. (R, 120 mins, also available on Netflix Instant)
DISCONNECT falls squarely into that post-CRASH "everything is connected" ensemble subgenre but stands out for being notably less pompous and sanctimonious than most. It certainly deserved better treatment than getting dumped on just 180 screens at its widest release. Directed by Henry-Alex Rubin (best known for the documentary MURDERBALL), the film offers the standard selection of disparate characters whose lives converge in unexpected and tragic ways: in the most compelling storyline, troublemaking teens Jason (UNDER THE DOME's Colin Ford) and Frye (Aviad Bernstein) set up a fake Facebook profile for a "Jessica," striking up an online relationship with lonely, artistic outcast Ben (Jonah Bobo), eventually coercing him into sending a nude selfie, which they forward to everyone at school; Jason's widower father Mike (Frank Grillo) is a freelance cyber-security investigator who's hired by Derek (Alexander Skarsgard) and Cindy (Paula Patton), a married couple struggling with the death of their infant son, after their finances have been drained by an identity theft traced to Schumacher (Michael Nyqvist), a grief chatroom friend of Cindy's who recently lost his wife to cancer; Ben's father Rich (Jason Bateman) is a lawyer who becomes obsessed with finding who's responsible for harassing his son; and Rich briefly figures into the film's least interesting plotline, when he's hired by a TV station to represent Nina (Andrea Riseborough), an ambitious reporter who gets in over her head when she does a profile on an internet sex worker (Max Thieriot), who's inadvertently being used to lure minors into the profession. All of the plot threads have an internet angle, and the idea that we're all too plugged in and--wait for it--disconnected is a notion that could've been hammered over our heads in the most unsubtle ways imaginable, but DISCONNECT does nice job of not screaming "MESSAGE!" and the performances, particularly Bateman's, are quite good. It wraps up a little too neat and tidy by the end, and it's a bit beyond fashionably late as far as this type of film goes, which is probably why it wasn't given much of a chance, but DISCONNECT is better than a lot of its ilk. (R, 116 mins)
BLOOD
(UK - 2013)
Veteran British TV producer/writer Bill Gallagher (LARK RISE TO CANDLEFORD) scripted this remake of his 2004 BBC series CONVICTION, taking a six-part story and a new cast and streamlining it down to 90 minutes. Not having seen CONVICTION, BLOOD works fine on its own except for one questionable plot gimmick. It obviously jettisons tons of character development but retains the core tenets of CONVICTION: two sibling detective partners, Joe (Paul Bettany) and Chrissie Fairburn (Stephen Graham) are part of a team investigating the brutal stabbing death of a 15-year-old girl. They immediately suspect local creep Jason Buleigh (Ben Crompton), who smirks his way through their questioning and all but admits his guilt but there isn't enough evidence to hold him. After a few too many drinks at his wedding anniversary party, Joe sends his wife home and he and Chrissie pack their drunk, Alzheimer's-addled ex-cop dad Lenny (Brian Cox) into the car and pick up Jason. While Lenny sleeps it off in the back seat, Joe makes Jason dig a hole on the shore while Chrissie watches. Tempers flare and Joe hits Jason in the head with the shovel, killing him. They bury the body and try to get on with their lives, hoping that everyone will think Jason just skipped town. But then perceptive, loner detective Robert Seymoore (Mark Strong) uncovers evidence that implicates two teenage boys in the girl's death, and they confess, fully exonerating Jason. Chrissie can't live with the guilt, while Joe does everything possible to keep their secret buried. Meanwhile, with occasional flashes of reliable memory amidst his dementia, Lenny remembers bits and pieces of the incident, during which he was drifting in and out of sleep, and can't figure out why he has Jason's bus pass--with his picture on it--which Jason dropped in the back seat of Joe's car. Noticing how strangely the brothers are acting, Seymoore slowly starts to put the whole story together.
Filmed in the gray, rainy areas of Wirral and Liverpool, BLOOD has a dreary, hopeless aura throughout. Gallagher and director Nick Murphy (THE AWAKENING) generate much suspense out of the brothers' situation, with Bettany getting more crazed-looking and desperate with each new scene, to the point where his Joe frequently looks like a monster. Graham, currently seen as Al Capone on BOARDWALK EMPIRE and sort-of the bulldoggish Bob Hoskins of his generation, is outstanding as Chrissie, so overcome with guilt that he can barely function and can't stop bursting into tears. Bettany and Graham don't really look like brothers at all, but they're both good enough--Graham, in particular--that you can overlook it rather quickly. BLOOD isn't necessarily a very creative film and you've seen its type many times before, but it's a well-acted and solidly-crafted suspense thriller that's weakened only by a needless plot device where Joe's guilt is represented by him imagining conversations with Jason. It's apparently exclusive to the remake and was perhaps Gallagher's way of condensing material to build the Joe character, but it's the only element of BLOOD that comes off as hokey. (Unrated, 92 mins)
HAMMER OF THE GODS (UK - 2013)
This Viking saga is appropriately brutal and bloody but isn't anywhere nearly as interesting as an average episode of similarly-styled cable TV series like GAME OF THRONES or VIKINGS. In 871 A.D., the dying King Bagsecg (James Cosmo, THRONES' Jeor Mormont) finds his Viking kingdom threatened by the Saxons. He sends his second son, the warrior Steinar (Charlie Bewley from the TWILIGHT series), in search of his banished eldest son Hakan (Elliot Cowan), so he can make his rightful claim to the throne and help rebuild the kingdom to its full glory. Steinar, accompanied by his motley crew of sidekicks, including Hagan (Clive Standen, who co-stars in VIKINGS), makes his way through Saxon lands in search of his brother, facing various obstacles and recruiting other warriors along the way, such as the gregarious Ivar (Ivan Kaye, also on VIKINGS). Eventually, Steinar is captured and brought to meet his estranged brother as the film becomes a Viking redux of APOCALYPSE NOW, with Hakan a now-insane despot, out there operating without any decent restraint, totally beyond the pale of any acceptable human conduct. All of this leads to a one-on-one, brotherly brawl with a bunch of biting and eye-gouging. Busy and awesomely-named British TV director Farren Blackburn (THE FADES, LUTHER, DOCTOR WHO) stages some OK action scenes and there's plentiful gore if that's what you're after, but the pace is slack and none of Steinar's adventures are all that interesting. The contemporary score is intrusive and the script by Matthew Read (no stranger to Viking fare, as he co-wrote Nicolas Winding Refn's brilliant VALHALLA RISING) is awful, filled with anachronistic verbiage like "crap," "cuntfuck," and "Go fuck yourself." The way the film ends makes it ultimately feel like a pilot for a TV series, and though I don't think it is, I wouldn't be surprised if that turned out to be the case. At any rate, HAMMER OF THE GODS, which grossed a whopping $641 during its two-screen US theatrical run, is boring, uninspired, and out of ideas long before it starts ripping off Joseph Conrad and Francis Ford Coppola, and your plans for watching it should be terminated with extreme prejudice. (R, 98 mins, also streaming on Netflix)
Written and directed by Eran Creevy. Cast: James McAvoy, Mark Strong, Andrea Riseborough, David Morrissey, Peter Mullan, Johnny Harris, Jason Flemyng, Ruth Sheen, Daniel Mays, Natasha Little, Daniel Kaluuya, Elyes Gabel. (Unrated, 96 mins)
It won't win any points for originality, but the lean, mean WELCOME TO THE PUNCH is a highly entertaining British cop thriller produced by Ridley Scott and directed by the promising Eran Creevy, who achieved some acclaim for his 2008 debut SHIFTY. Creevy, a music video vet who cut his teeth as a production assistant on films by Matthew Vaughn (LAYER CAKE) and Danny Boyle (MILLIONS), is unquestionably a style-over-substance guy, as his script is pretty by-the-numbers with plot turns that barely twist, let alone surprise. But while his script may lack the punch promised by the title, it's obvious that Creevy worships at the altar of Michael Mann--not just in the big HEAT influence on PUNCH, but also in its look and feel, with everything drenched in a cold, blue sheen that brings scenes from vintage Mann classics like THIEF and MANHUNTER to mind. Like THE SWEENEY from a few weeks back, WELCOME TO THE PUNCH doesn't exactly forge a new path in the British crime genre, but it's diverting, well-acted, looks terrific, and doesn't try to be anything more than what it is.
Plays-by-his-own rules London detective Max Lewinsky (James McAvoy) is obsessed with bringing down criminal kingpin Jacob Sternwood (the always-excellent Mark Strong). The two come face to face in an underground tunnel, but Sternwood gets away after shooting Lewinsky in the knee. Three years later, and a hobbling Lewinsky is now the kind of cop who wakes up with a hangover and has to drain the fluid from his knee several times a day, with a wiseass partner in fiery Sarah Hayes (Andrea Riseborough). Meanwhile, a young man (Elyes Gabel) with a gunshot wound to the stomach causes a disturbance on an airport runway and it turns out he's Sternwood's son Ruan, who's been involved in a botched heist. Sternwood has been in hiding in Iceland for three years, and with Ruan in the hospital, Lewinsky is convinced he'll try to come back to London to see him. With the reluctant approval of police commissioner Geiger (David Morrissey), Lewinsky and Hayes stake out the hospital, and sure enough, Sternwood returns, but it turns out that Ruan was a pawn in a complicated chain of events that involve rampant corruption and backroom dealing and may (wait for it) lead all the way to the top of the department. Once realizing they share a common enemy who's employed sociopathic ex-military man-turned-hired killer Warns (Johnny Harris), Lewinsky and Sternwood put aside their Sworn Enemy status, forming an uneasy alliance to work together to blow the lid off a secret that may extend all the way to the government...
...if they don't kill each other first!
Creevy stages a number of impressive sequences, starting with the exciting chase that opens the film. There's also a memorable shootout in an empty nightclub, illuminated only by a bunch of rotating, spinning spotlights (don't look for a reason why...it just looks cool), and, in one of the few scenes that exhibit some creative writing, a tense encounter between a now-allied Lewinsky and Sternwood, accompanied by his gangland cohort Roy (Peter Mullan), and Warns, when Warns walks into the home of his sweet but dodderingly oblivious nan (Ruth Sheen) to find the other three already there waiting for him, his nan completely unaware that she's got a gun pointed to the back of her head. Of course, all roads lead to a showdown at a shipping yard (the abandoned warehouse must've been locked up), and you'll see the big reveals coming long before they happen, but WELCOME TO THE PUNCH gets a lot from its lead actors, both of whom are excellent, and it's ultimately undemanding, check-your-brain-at-the-door fun that doesn't have any pretentious aspirations about being anything more than mainstream entertainment (plus it features one of the more crowd-pleasing shotgun-blasts-to-the-head you'll ever see). Being distributed by IFC Films and featuring a cast of Brits automatically relegates it to a limited release arthouse run, but this is the kind of escapist flick that should be opening nationwide.
DAY OF THE FALCON (France/Italy - 2011; 2013 US release)
It's nice to see a grand, majestic 1960s-style desert epic that looks like it could've been made in the wake of LAWRENCE OF ARABIA, but Jean-Jacques Annaud's DAY OF THE FALCON is a rather tedious affair despite some outstanding cinematography and location shooting in Tunisia and Qatar. The initially intriguing story gradually becomes laborious, drawn out, and overly contrived, and after a while, it just starts to feel like this thing is never going to end, especially when the hero gets shot in the head, chunks of skull flying in several directions, instantly presumed dead and carried to his immediate funeral service...and he somehow survives and is just fine in the next scene. In the Arabian desert land of Hobeika in the 1920s, Emir Nesib (Antonio Banderas) and Sultan Amar (Mark Strong) have been fighting over a vast area known as the Yellow Belt. As part of a peace agreement, both men agree that the land is to be left alone and is owned by neither, but Amar is forced to hand over his two young sons to be raised by Nesib. 15 years later, the boys have grown into the outgoing, arrogant Saleh (Akin Gazi) and the sensitive, bookish Auda (Tahar Rahim), who has loved his adoptive sister Leyla (Freida Pinto) since childhood. In the ensuing years, a Texas oil company has informed Nesib that the Yellow Belt is rich in oil, and the formerly financially-strapped Emir has become the richest man in the region, albeit a benevolent one who shares the wealth by building a hospital, a school, and a library for his people. Amar views this as a violation of their agreement to leave the land alone and, sticking to his convictions, even turns down a share of the profits. Saleh, still devoted to his father, rebels against Nesib and is killed by his men, prompting a never-ending shifting of alliances as the withdrawn Auda, who has been granted marriage to Leyla in exchange for his continued loyalty to Nesib, finds his voice and becomes a leader, determined to do what's best for his people--something neither Nesib (blinded by money and power) nor Amar (blinded by religion and revenge) are now capable of doing.
Scripted by Annaud and former Steven Spielberg associate Menno Meyjes (THE COLOR PURPLE, INDIANA JONES AND THE LAST CRUSADE), DAY OF THE FALCON gets off to a decent start but ultimately just meanders and spins its wheels before a climax that grows more hackneyed and cliched by the minute. And Rahim, so terrific in 2009's riveting A PROPHET, is just a bland bore here. The desert locations look beautiful, even with some CGI augmentation, and it's nice to see relentlessly busy supporting actor Strong in a starring role, but despite all the right ingredients, DAY OF THE FALCON just never catches fire. (R, 130 mins)
EASY MONEY (Sweden/Denmark/France/Germany - 2010; 2012 US release)
SNABBA CASH was Sweden's biggest box office hit in 2010 and has already led to 2012's SNABBA CASH II and a third installment due to be released there later this year. Martin Scorsese saw it and helped broker a US distribution deal (earning a cosmetic "Martin Scorsese Presents" credit in the process) with the Weinstein Company, who rechristened it with the English-translated title EASY MONEY and released it on seven screens last summer. Joel Kinnaman (the scene-stealing Det. Holder on the AMC series THE KILLING, and star of next year's ROBOCOP remake) stars as broke economics student JW, who struggles to get by with a meager income provided by driving a cab part-time and doing term papers for other students. JW has ingratiated himself into a clique of jet-set rich kids in his obsessive climb up the social ladder. It's this ambition to abandon his lower-class roots that drives him into a life of crime, though he tries to pretend that he's not an active participant and seems legitimately shocked when his decisions and actions have consequences. As JW works his way into the inner circle with his financial smarts, his life intersects in various ways with escaped convict Jorge (Matias Padin Varela) and Serbian mob enforcer Mrado (Dragomir Mrcic), as both use the otherwise naive JW for their own purposes, though JW is just as quick to sell either of them out if it means a higher social/economic standing to impress his comes-from-an-insanely-rich-family girlfriend (Lisa Henni). She genuinely loves him and looks the other way when his lies collapse (at various points, he claims his blue-collar father is a diplomat to both India and South Africa), though it's hard to see what she sees in a vacuous, superficial poseur like JW in the first place.
Based on a novel by Jens Lapidus, EASY MONEY attracted enough international attention prior to its belated US release that it got director Daniel Espinosa a major Hollywood break with the 2012 Denzel Washington thriller SAFE HOUSE, but it's ultimately a bit on the disappointing side. Though you eventually figure it out, the film doesn't do a very coherent job of introducing many of the characters and establishing who they are in relation to everyone else. Also, at over two hours, it's at least 20 minutes too long and really drags in spots, and despite some interesting character touches (tough guy Mrado is forced to take custody of his impossibly cute eight-year-old daughter and drag her on jobs with him when his junkie ex-wife gets arrested), there's really no surprises in how these characters progress through the film. Though it doesn't involve cops, a lot of the situations seem a bit like a retread of INFERNAL AFFAIRS and its remake THE DEPARTED, so maybe that's why Scorsese was so enamored of it, but there's very little in the way of innovation or surprises here. Solid performances by the three leads do a lot to carry EASY MONEY through its many ponderous stretches, and it's strange seeing and hearing the Swedish Kinnaman, who's so good at playing a fast-talking, street-smart American cop on THE KILLING, speaking in his native tongue. The overrated EASY MONEY has its moments, but I honestly can't imagine it needing two sequels. (R, 125 mins)
