POLAR (Germany/US - 2019) Directed by Jonas Akerlund. Written by Jayson Rothwell. Cast: Mads Mikkelsen, Vanessa Hudgens, Katheryn Winnick, Matt Lucas, Richard Dreyfuss, Johnny Knoxville, Ruby O. Fee, Fei Ren, Anthony Grant, Josh Cruddas, Robert Maillet, Julian Richings, Lovina Yavari, Ayisha Issa, Anastasia Marinina, Pedro Miguel Arce, Ken Hall. (Unrated, 118 mins) Based on Victor Santos' Dark Horse graphic novel Polar: Came in From the Cold, the Netflix Original POLAR is garish, grotesque, highly-stylized, and absurdly over-the-top, which is pretty much the methodology of veteran music video director and occasional filmmaker Jonas Akerlund. Best known for his work with a variety of artists including Roxette, Madonna, Prodigy (he directed the video for their controversial hit "Smack My Bitch Up"), U2, Maroon 5, Beyonce, the Rolling Stones, Rammstein, Metallica, and Taylor Swift among many others, Akerlund has sporadically dabbled in film going back to 2003's meth addiction black comedy SPUN. POLAR is the first of two movies he has coming out in early 2019--the long-delayed Norwegian black metal saga LORDS OF CHAOS is due out in February but was shot back in 2016. Akerlund's approach to POLAR is to throw everything at the wall and see what sticks. Some of it does, but it generally feels like an even more cartoonish JOHN WICK fused with elements of PUNISHER: WAR ZONE, and John Waters. It's the kind of film where nearly every scene ends with someone getting their brains blown out. It's the kind of film where a guy gets shot in the balls with a nail gun and then takes a drill to the head. It's the kind of film where the corpulent, cackling villain has a skin condition that requires repeated shots of him being slathered with thick, gooey lotion. It's the kind of film where a farting 500 lb guy is tortured and then shot to pieces, with wet, chunky bits of flesh and fat splattering all over the room and everyone in it, accompanied, for some reason, by the 1983 Kenny Rogers/Dolly Parton hit "Islands in the Stream."
When just-retired assassin Michael Green (Johnny Knoxville) is killed by a team of hired guns in Chile, his about-to-retire colleague Duncan Vizla, aka "The Black Kaiser" (Mads Mikkelsen), is assigned by his handler Vivian (Katheryn Winnick) to find and eliminate the culprits. Vizla isn't interested--he's tired of the life and he just wants out. But he works for Damocles, a DC-based black ops outfit run by the nefarious Mr. Blut (Matt Lucas), and they have a rather ruthless clause in their contract: all assassins are forced into retirement at age 50, and if they die--either in the line of duty or by another unfortunate "accident"--and are without a next of kin, their pensions (Vizla has managed to save up $8 million) are reabsorbed by the Damocles Corporation. Mr. Blut drives up his profits by having his retiring assassins whacked, and when Vivian sends Vizla to Belarus to kill the guys who offed Green, he discovers that Green's killers worked for Blut and it's all a set-up to take him out. Of course, he manages to escape and tries to go off the grid in his secret hideaway, a cabin in the middle of nowhere in Montana. But Blut and his crew of killers relentlessly pursue him, eventually finding him and kidnapping the one friend he's made--emotionally troubled, withdrawn neighbor Camille (Vanessa Hudgens)--which inevitably turns Vizla into a one-man wrecking crew of vengeance.
Do any new hires at Damocles read their contract? Blut has these young assassins going after Vizla, but don't they know that if they stick around long enough, they'll be killed when they turn 50? Logic really isn't the priority here, but for a while, POLAR is reasonably entertaining in a trashy way. The gore and nonstop violent mayhem are almost comical in their excess (the scene where Vizla wipes out an entire army of Blut henchman with a pair of laser gloves linked to a pair of hidden machine guns is pretty impressive), and there's some gratuitous nudity and sex (including Mikkelsen ambushed and running around in the buff in a blizzard after an extremely vigorous seduction by a sultry assassin sent to kill him). There's also plenty of oddball humor, like Vizla having a piece of pie with an avuncular doctor (Ken Hall) who just gave him a rectal exam, or Camille talking Vizla into speaking to local schoolkids about his many travels around the world, which leads to him demonstrating ways to sever someone's arteries and asking the kids "Have any of you ever seen a dead body that's been in the sun for three weeks?" and passing a picture around.
But after a while, POLAR takes an ugly turn and stops being mindless fun. Vizla is found and taken in by Blut's goons, who then kidnap Camille and get her hooked on heroin like Gene Hackman in FRENCH CONNECTION II, while Blut spends four days torturing a shackled Vizla, slicing, dicing, snipping off pieces of flesh, gouging out his eye, etc. Mikkelsen is appropriately badass as the situation demands, Winnick has a definite femme fatale flair as the duplicitous Vivian, and Richard Dreyfuss drops by for an amusing cameo as Porter, an aging Damocles retiree who successfully managed to get away and now spends his days disheveled and shitfaced in a Detroit karaoke bar. Hudgens, looking a lot like a young Meg Tilly here, does what she can with a rather thinly-drawn character who, of course, has a dark secret that she's hiding, and Lucas, who previously worked with Akerlund in the barely-released 2013 dud SMALL APARTMENTS, dials it up to 11 as the world's least convincing megalomaniacal black ops mastermind, whether he's haplessly shouting "Guards!" when there aren't any around or standing helplessly as Vizla storms his compound and his security team says peace out and just leaves him on his own. But Akerlund also doesn't know when enough is enough. Watching Lucas squirt lotion and slather it all over himself isn't funny once, let alone ten times, and Akerlund spends entirely too much time with the obnoxious antics of the grating team of assassins sent to kill Vizla. At just under two hours, POLAR is bloated and overlong, and its go-for-broke attitude eventually grows exhausting. Akerlund even has the balls to re-stage the OLDBOY hallway scene, already several years past its sell-by date when REPO MEN did it nearly ten years ago, this time utilizing the editing skills of the dubious Doobie White, last seen hyper-cutting the most recent RESIDENT EVIL outing into headache-inducing incoherence.
Written and directed by Scott Walker. Cast: Nicolas Cage, John Cusack, Vanessa Hudgens, Radha Mitchell, Curtis "50 Cent" Jackson, Dean Norris, Kevin Dunn, Olga Valentina, Michael McGrady, Jodi Lyn O'Keefe, Kurt Fuller, Brad William Henke, Katherine LaNasa, Ryan O'Nan, Matt Gerald, Gia Mantegna, Robert Forgit. (R, 105 mins)
Considering that the nearly $30 million-budgeted THE FROZEN GROUND has been banished to VOD Oblivion by Lionsgate, is only playing in a few theaters across the US, arrives in August 2013 sporting a 2011 copyright date, opens with the logos (among several others) for Emmett/Furla Films and Cheetah Vision, counts co-stars Curtis "50 Cent" Jackson and Olga Valentina (one other acting credit: Fiddy's FREELANCERS) as two of 29 credited producers, and is headlined by Nicolas Cage and John Cusack, both of whom are a long way from CON AIR and not exactly riding a wave of recent box office success (though Cusack appears as Richard Nixon in LEE DANIELS' THE BUTLER), it comes as a pleasant surprise that the film is a quite engrossing serial killer thriller/police procedural. While it's nowhere near the level of ZODIAC, it's unexpectedly well-done for a film that has so many things working against it. I could be wrong, but this may mark the first time the words "pleasant surprise," "quite engrossing," and "50 Cent" have appeared in the same review.
Based on a true story, THE FROZEN GROUND is set in Anchorage, AK in 1983. Young prostitute Cindy Paulson (Vanessa Hudgens) is found raped, beaten, bloodied, and handcuffed after escaping from the mystery man who abducted and planned to kill her. While the local cops decide to blame the victim, Alaska state trooper Sgt. Jack Halcombe (Cage) is investigating the murder of a young woman found badly decomposed and partially eaten by animals in the frozen wilderness. Sensing a link between the discovered body, several other missing women--mostly prostitutes--and Cindy, Halcombe starts looking into Anchorage records and becomes fixated on bakery owner and all-around likable guy Bob Hansen (Cusack) as a suspect. Hansen fits the profile, has had several run-ins with the law in his younger days, and 12 years earlier, abducted and threatened a woman but only served a minimal jail sentence. Halcombe's hunch is right: Hansen is a serial killer of at least 17 victims over the years, and he's got another prostitute (Gia Mantegna) chained up in his basement while paying a brutal bouncer (Brad William Henke) to track down Cathy's pimp Clate (Fiddy, in a startling bit of against-type casting) and find out where she is.
Making his feature debut, New Zealand writer/director Scott Walker does a commendable job getting restrained performances from Cage and Cusack, both of whom have displayed tendencies of taking things way over the top, though he does allow them to do some major jawing late in the film. THE FROZEN GROUND suffers from some jumpy camera movements that are not exactly as irritating as "action scene shaky-cam" but Walker doesn't even keep the camera still during shots where people are just talking. It's hardly the worst example of its type, but it does occasionally prove bothersome. Walker also can't avoid cop movie clichés: Halcombe expressing reluctance to get involved in this complex case because he's "outta here in two weeks;" the spineless D.A. (Kurt Fuller) hemming and hawing about getting a search warrant for Hansen; Halcombe getting a pre-climax pep talk from his initially fed-up but suddenly supportive wife (Radha Mitchell); Halcombe's theories being dismissed by department brass. There's a TV cop show quality to THE FROZEN GROUND (albeit with an abundance of F-bombs), which is probably why it will play better at home than in the theater, but as far as these things go, it's not bad. Cusack is very good, and Cage, for the first time in a long time, shows up as "Serious Nicolas Cage" instead of the wide-eyed, in-on-the-joke self-parody he's become. Ten years ago, this probably would've been the top movie at the box office. Theatrical audiences seem to have turned their backs on former sure things Cage and Cusack. It's only a matter of time before they're both doing police procedurals on CBS.
Written and directed by Harmony Korine. Cast: James Franco, Selena Gomez, Vanessa Hudgens, Ashley Benson, Rachel Korine, Gucci Mane, Sidney Sewell, Thurman Sewell. (R, 94 mins)
After writing the script for Larry Clark's controversial KIDS (1995), Harmony Korine became an indie icon of sorts with his own directing efforts, ranging from the repugnant (GUMMO, TRASH HUMPERS) to the merely unwatchable (JULIEN DONKEY-BOY). While Korine has his defenders, I've never made it all the way through any of the films he's directed. The surprise with SPRING BREAKERS is not only that it's a Korine film in multiplexes nationwide, or that it has name actors, including the subversive casting of Disney good girls doing very bad things, but that it shows that Korine can indeed make a real movie once he decided to quit dicking around. It's by far his most commercial film yet, though still not for all tastes and certain to alienate most mainstream audiences, but it's filled with such dazzling visuals and garish colors (Korine is working with cinematographer Benoit Debie, who's shot films by Gaspar Noe, Fabrice du Welz, and Dario Argento), propelled by some memorably quotable dialogue, some very Steven Soderbergh-inspired editing, and a propulsive, constant score by Cliff Martinez (another Soderbergh fixture) and Skrillex, that it's an exhilirating, adrenalized, and very cinematic experience, miles ahead of anything Korine's done in the past or even seemed capable of doing. At 40, it's possible that Korine has finally grown up. SPRING BREAKERS is unexpectedly inspired, frequently brilliant, and one of the year's best films.
For a while, Korine fashions the film as a hard-R MTV Spring Break special, with copious amount of alcohol, drugs, partying, and the requisite jiggle and gratuitous nudity. But slowly, a style emerges and the plot kicks in as we follow four college students and their desperate attempt to get to Florida for spring break: wild girls Candy (Vanessa Hudgens of HIGH SCHOOL MUSICAL), Brit (Ashley Benson of PRETTY LITTLE LIARS), and Cotty (Rachel Korine of...uh, her marriage to Harmony Korine), and their more conservative, devoutly Christian friend and not-very-subtly-named Faith (Selena Gomez of THE WIZARDS OF WAVERLY PLACE). With only $300 in spending money between the four of them, Candy, Brit, and Cotty decide to rob an all-night diner called the Chicken Shack, using squirt guns and sledgehammers (an extremely impressive continuous tracking shot where Korine and Debie keep the camera in the car with Cotty, who drives slowly in front of the restaurant as we see masked Candy and Brit's mayhem through the Chicken Shack's windows and then make their escape out of the side exit). Faith doesn't approve of their methods, but wants to go to Florida, so off they go where it's a non-stop party until they get arrested in a raid at the motel.
It's here where the film really takes off, with the introduction of James Franco as Alien, a drug-dealer and aspiring rapper who bails them out of jail and comes off like a walking cliche: he's got a teardrop tat, neck tats, cornrows, wears a gold grill, he's decked out in assorted bling, has a pit bull, a house full of guns, a grand piano on his back patio, and gets an epic "Lookit my shit!" monologue that must be heard to be believed ("I got shorts!" and "I got SCARFACE on repeat! Constant y'all!" "See these guns? See these Franklins! Lookit my shit!"). Uncomfortable among Alien and his gangsta friends, Faith catches the first bus home but the other three become partners in crime with Alien and get involved in his turf war with former friend and now rival Archie (Gucci Mane). Alien calls this area his home and doesn't have much use for the throng of spring breakers ("every spring, the scum comes"), but he finds kindred spirits in Candy, Brit, and Cotty after a bizarre KILLER JOE-esque scene where Candy and Brit make Alien fellate two loaded guns at once.
SPRING BREAKERS is a surreal, hypnotic fever dream that may not exist in any kind of reality (it doesn't seem plausible that Faith, despite her willingness to drink and get high, would hang out with the other three), and even in their criminal exploits, the girls are constantly saying "It's just like a dream" or "It's just like a video game." While the plot itself likely isn't meant to be taken seriously--though there could be an argument made about Korine's misanthropic world view and the girls being coddled, overprivileged, and spoiled, with no idea of the world they're entering--the film is so well-crafted and compelling just on a visual level, with no shortage of audacious "Why the hell not?" set pieces like Franco's haunting piano rendition of Britney Spears' "Everytime," Franco's instant-classic monologue, and, well, everytime Franco's on screen really. It's easy to mock Franco when he does his "James Franco" things, but it's a performance like the one he turns in as Alien that justifies the hype he was getting as far back as his days on FREAKS AND GEEKS. Perhaps recognizing that there was only so far he could take the "Disney girls gone wild" element (Gomez doesn't strip, but the other three do nudity, and Hudgens and Benson have a swimming-pool threesome with Franco), Korine essentially lets Franco take center stage, and it was probably a smart move. In short, nothing Korine has done before has indicated what he accomplishes with SPRING BREAKERS, managing to deftly balance style, swagger, downbeat drama, dark comedy, social critique, and revenge thriller all in 90 minutes. From the visuals to the music cues (Ellie Goulding's "Lights" is the perfect closing credits tune for this), SPRING BREAKERS demonstrates a startling maturity of Korine from self-indulgent enfant terrible to a genuinely gifted filmmaker. The year's still young, but this is my favorite 2013 film so far.
