On Blu-ray/DVD: KILLERS ANONYMOUS (2019) and ASTRONAUT (2019)

KILLERS ANONYMOUS
(UK/US - 2019)

Gary Oldman really should have better things to do after his DARKEST HOUR Oscar triumph than dropping in for Bruce Willis duty on a straight-to-VOD Lionsgate/Grindstone clunker like KILLERS ANONYMOUS. So should Jessica Alba, who has even less to do here than Oldman, yet both are prominently displayed on the cut-and-paste poster art for this utterly dreadful dark comedy that squanders them and an interesting premise and crosses its fingers hoping that frantically piling on one nonsensical twist after another in the final act will gaslight you into thinking you're watching a more clever movie than you are (and just take a moment and look at that poster--it looks like the graphic design team had a 5:00 pm deadline and started working on it at 4:57). KILLERS ANONYMOUS opens with a prologue where Oldman's unnamed character (a mystery man known only as "The Man") is summoned from Los Angeles to London by underling Jade (Alba) to assess a botched assassination attempt on a popular US senator (Sam Hazeldine) who's a rising star with presidential aspirations. Jade is killed during the opening credits (and that's it for Alba, who couldn't have worked on this for more than a day) by Krystal (co-writer Elizabeth Morris), who heads straight to a meeting of Killers Anonymous, a support group for assassins dealing with job-related stress and burnout. It's a potentially amusing idea, but once everyone arrives--there's also group leader Jo (MyAnna Buring); player Leandro (Michael Socha); mild-mannered Calvin (Tim McInnerny); sensitive Ben (Elliot James Langridge); 'fookin' 'ell, mate!" LOCK STOCK knockoff rage case Markus (top-billed Tommy Flanagan); and new member Alice (EMPIRE's Rhyon Nicole Brown), a mysterious American who's hesitant to say much--the film stops dead in its tracks as director/co-writer Martin Owen (LET'S BE EVIL) gives each of the characters their own long monologue about who they are and what brought them to KA.

This goes on for about an hour, intermittently broken up by frequent bitching about quiet Alice by resident loudmouths Markus and Krystal, and while it might be a nice acting class exercise for the cast, it doesn't make for a very engaging film. Owen occasionally cuts away to Morgan (Isabelle Allen), a teenage runaway who's hiding in a crawlspace and eavesdropping on everything, and to a grimacing Oldman, whose enigmatic "The Man" is positioned on a nearby rooftop listening in on the bugged session while on the phone counseling a troubled killer (Suki Waterhouse) back in L.A. Not unlike a deadening mash-up of early Guy Ritchie, SMOKIN' ACES, and THE ICEMAN COMETH, the pointless and self-indulgent KILLERS ANONYMOUS is an absolute endurance test that doesn't have a single clever or even remotely amusing moment in its 96 excruciating minutes, which is pretty tough to accomplish considering the offbeat black comedy potential of a support group for assassins. Your first inclination would be to think that this must be some unreleasable dud that was shot four or five years ago and is only now being dusted off because of Oldman's DARKEST HOUR awards run. Nope...production began in July 2018, a good three months after the Oscars. Gary Oldman showed up on the set of KILLERS ANONYMOUS a newly-anointed Academy Award-winner. Did he lose a bet? Was his family being held hostage? Was he choking in a restaurant and Owen was there to successfully administer the Heimlich, making Oldman feel obligated to do him a solid in return? What is Gary Oldman doing in this movie?  What is Jessica Alba doing in this movie? Hell, I don't even know what Tommy Flanagan is doing in this movie. (R, 96 mins)


ASTRONAUT
(Canada - 2019)

It's hard to watch ASTRONAUT and not think that it might exist in some alternate post-CLOSE ENCOUNTERS OF THE THIRD KIND where an elderly Roy Neary is still watching the skies. That's because Richard Dreyfuss stars in this slight but sincere Canadian drama from debuting writer/director Shelagh McLeod. Dreyfuss is Angus Stewart, a 75-year-old retired civil engineer, astronomy enthusiast, and recent widower who's been forced to sell his home and move in with his daughter Molly (Krista Bridges), son-in-law Jim (Lyriq Bent), and adoring young grandson Barney (Richie Lawrence) after recurring TIAs and a diagnosis of atrial fibrillation and angina. Though Barney loves having him around and learning about space, his presence causes tension between between Molly and Jim, so he reluctantly agrees to move into a nursing home after Molly finds him in the midst of another mini-stroke. Though he befriends other residents--including a flamboyant Art Hindle and Graham Greene as a partially paralyzed stroke survivor--the irascible Angus quickly grows bored with the rigidity of the facility's director (Mimi Kuzyk), and at Barney's suggestion, enters himself in an online lottery created by Elon Musk-like multi-billionaire Marcus Brown (Colm Feore), where the winner gets a seat on Brown's ultimate dream project: the first commercial space flight. The age cut-off is 65, so Angus simply shaves off a decade and divulges nothing about his worsening health situation. And of course, he makes the cut.

A film aimed at senior audiences who might balk at all the R-rated talk and geriatric threesomes in Clint Eastwood's THE MULE, ASTRONAUT is corny, maudlin and shamelessly manipulative. But Dreyfuss admirably resists his innately hammy impulses and turns in a heartfelt performance as a man who knows the end is near and just wants one shot at his lifelong dream. There's certainly a strong argument to be made that everything that unfolds is just a fantasy of dying man, and an attempt at suspense in the third act where Angus' expertise in engineering helps avert a potential disaster for Brown is a little too hokey, but this is really all about Dreyfuss. He shows a genuine camaraderie with young Lawrence and his scenes with Bridges have a realism to them that will resonate with anyone who's lost a parent and knows the other doesn't have much time left. ASTRONAUT loses its way a little in the home stretch, but it's the kind of film that probably would've been a minor sleeper hit of the STRAIGHT STORY sort in the late '90s. And it gives Dreyfuss--last seen embarrassing himself by playing a deranged criminal mountain man like the love child of Walter Brennan and Strother Martin in the dismal Gina Carano actioner DAUGHTER OF THE WOLF--a worthy late-career dramatic lead. Call it MR. HOLLAND GOES TO SPACE. (Unrated, 97 mins)

In Theaters: PAPILLON (2018)

PAPILLON
(US - 2018)

Directed by Michael Noer. Written by Aaron Guzikowski. Cast: Charlie Hunnam, Rami Malek, Eve Hewson, Yorick van Wageningen, Roland Moller, Tommy Flanagan, Michael Socha, Joel Basman, Christopher Fairbank, Slavko Sobin, Antonio de la Cruz. (R, 133 mins)

Based on the 1969 memoir of Devil's Island escapee Henri Charriere, the 1973 hit PAPILLON provided the legendary Steve McQueen with one of his most indelible characters, even if the film wasn't exactly faithful to Charriere, nicknamed "Papillon" because of the butterfly tattoo on his chest. A remake was completely unnecessary but we've got one anyway, and while it's based more on the 1973 film's script by Dalton Trumbo and Lorenzo Semple Jr., it still takes its own, different liberties. The results are better than expected, due in large part to its straightforward approach to its action sequences (who would've thought camera stability and visual coherence would be considered "old school?"), and guys throwing punches that actually sound like real punches hitting flesh. It's also R-rated versus the 1973's PG (it was originally R, but got a PG on appeal, and it does get away with a lot for a PG), allowing acclaimed Danish filmmaker Michael Noer (R, NORTHWEST), making his American debut, much more room for graphic violence and brutality, including a knife fight in a shower that clearly shows Noer is a fan of EASTERN PROMISES. The central story remains the same, opening in 1931 Paris with safecracker Papillon (Charlie Hunnam) keeping a few diamonds from a recent job for himself and being framed by his employer (Christopher Fairbank) for the murder of a pimp and sentenced to a brutal penal colony in French Guiana. Once there, he forms an alliance with wealthy counterfeiter Louis Dega (Rami Malek in Dustin Hoffman's 1973 role), offering protection in exchange for bankrolling an attempted escape. Time and again, Papillon runs afoul of Warden Barrot (Yorick van Wageningen), earning two-year and five-year stints in solitary. Eventually, Papillon plans his most ambitious escape attempt yet, using the last of Dega's money--usually stored in his rectum--to secure a boat from a local trader (Hunnam's SONS OF ANARCHY co-star Tommy Flanagan) as he and Dega form an unholy alliance with brutish Celier (Roland Moller) and young Maturette (Joel Basman).

Shot two years ago and tied up in part due to the apparently-defunct production company Red Granite's legal problems tied to racketeering and an ongoing Malaysian government scandal (Red Granite had to pay a $60 million settlement to the US Justice Department and the company's name is no longer in the credits or the advertising), PAPILLON '18 hits all the same bullet points as PAPILLON '73 with some changes of varying significance--a changed name here, a different circumstance there. But Noer and screenwriter Aaron Guzikowski (PRISONERS) include enough unique touches to allow their version to stand on its own. It's also an unexpected development that, unlike almost all prison wardens in popular culture, von Wageningen's Barrot is stern and unsympathetic without crossing the line into sadism, even almost begrudgingly respecting Papillon's resolve for emerging from years in silent solitary confinement with his mind intact. Hunnam and Malik are very good, but they're obviously not McQueen and Hoffman, and they'd probably be the first to agree with that point. No one in this film sounds French but then, neither did the stars of PAPILLON '73.

One minor stumble of PAPILLON '18 is that some of the vernacular in its early scenes doesn't really sound very "1931 Paris," especially when characters start dropping tough guy GOODFELLASisms like "Fuck that piece of shit!" and "Cut his fuckin' balls off!" (there's even another variant later as Flanagan's character yells "Pay me or fuck you!"). There's a nightmare sequence as Papillon comes close to breaking in solitary that looks like an outtake from Alejandro Jodorowky's SANTA SANGRE, and when he's eventually condemned for life to Devil's Island, his arrival has surreal, otherworldly feel of AGUIRRE and HEART OF GLASS-era Werner Herzog (or, possibly, the "Village of the Crazies" sequence in GYMKATA). Such arthouse flourishes aren't something usually seen in a generally mainstream summer release, and the location work in Serbia and Malta, the very physically committed performances of Hunnam and the other actors, and the reliance on as much practical shooting as possible on painstakingly constructed recreations of the penal colony give the film a real-world tangibility that's lost a lot these days as more films utilize CGI and greenscreen for even the simplest shots (Hunnam seems drawn to this sort of thing, between this and James Gray's THE LOST CITY OF Z). Regardless of its superfluous nature, PAPILLON '18's work ethic is admirable. It obviously doesn't supplant it predecessor, but it's fine film in its own right, and better and more compelling than it has any business being.