Following the enormous success of The Hangover, the past few years have seen filmmakers trying to chase that same market, with a similar group of guys banding together for a somewhat drunken weekend, often surrounding a wedding or similar celebratory occasion.
It should come as no surprise that very few do it as well as The Hangover - Bridesmaids is a rare exception, bringing a fresh new take on the idea - and The Stag unfortunately stumbles into the same worn-out copy-cat genre we've seen emerging from the UK recently.
It certainly has its moments, and the script has some very funny lines of dialogue, particularly for one of the leading men, Andrew Scott - better known for his work on Sherlock - as Davin. But for the most part, it reproduces tired cliches and overused situations without bringing much of anything new to the big screen.
It's a shame, because Irish cinema has the potential to do so well. Many of the ingredients are here for commercial and critical success, especially with someone as talented as Scott part of the ensemble. Yet the direction and script too frequently pull the easy punches, without packing any serious weight behind them. Moments of great humour are juxtaposed with comedic moments that fall flat on their face, and the inconsistency never quite feels worth the effort.
After missing this in the cinema, I couldn't wait for its Blu-ray release, and am so glad to say that it was well worth the wait. The film is the best animated movie I've seen so far this year, filled with fun for all the family, regardless of age.
For the children, it's a non-stop adventure featuring characters they've come to know and love from other shows and films - Batman, Superman, Green Lantern, Wonder Woman, and even an appearance from Gandalf.
For the adults, there are plenty of jokes in there that might go over your children's heads, but will be a lot of fun for you. And it doesn't hurt whatsoever that the voice cast is fantastic, with Chris Pratt leading as everyman Emmet Brickowski (a great example of a little joke for the older audiences).
And of course it has the added bonus of hitting that nostalgic sweet spot; LEGO was something everyone grew up with at one time or another. It's been around for generations, and getting to see it finally have the feature film it deserves is a real treat. To say that co-directors Phil Lord and Chris Miller do it justice would be a huge understatement.
The two directors launched a new franchise when they helmed Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs, and then switched gears to live-action with 21 Jump Street. Both films are absolutely hilarious, so my expectations were high when it came to watching The Lego Movie, and they were completely exceeded. Lord and Miller, who also wrote the movie, bring a laugh-a-minute script that keeps everyone entertained from start to finish, young and old alike.
Replicating the stop-motion technique perfectly with their animation, the two have made one of the most memorable animated films to come out in recent years, and cannot wait to see what happens in three years' time when Warner Bros. brings out The Lego Movie 2. I'll definitely be making more of an effort to catch it whilst it's in cinemas.
Let's get this out of the way from the start: 'True Detective' is a good show. A very good show. But it isn't perfect.
I was excited to read some of the reviews of the series while it was being shown earlier this year, which built the series up as a revolutionary new viewing experience, anchored by fantastic performances from the two lead actors, Woody Harrelson and Matthew McConaughey. And whilst that's half-true (Harrelson and McConaughey are both excellent here), I was surprised to find when I watched it for myself on blu-ray that 'True Detective' is in fact a fairly conventional and traditional story - just one that's very, very well-told.
In a sense, it shouldn't really be compared to other TV shows so much as it should be compared to movies of the same genre. Because 'True Detective' is really more like one big eight-hour movie than it is an ongoing TV series: it has a clear three-act structure (with equally-significant segments taking place in 1995, 2002 and 2012), a well-defined beginning, middle and end, and is brought to us by a single writer and a single director, rather than the hodgepodge of talents that you normally find behind a TV series.
But whatever you compare it against, it holds up pretty well. From the start, there's a sense of real depth and intelligence to the writing of the two detectives, whether it's McConaughey's nihilistic and antisocial outlook as "Rust" - a one-time drug cop who's had a tough life for all sorts of reasons, as we soon discover - or Harrelson's self-deceiving "good ol' boy" Marty, who sees himself as the big family breadwinner and a good husband and father, even though he's anything but.
Through the eyes of these two mismatched partners, we gradually see the emergence of a sinister and cult-like murder mystery, which forms the backbone of the entire eight-episode series. But really, the show is as much about the two leads as it is about the murder, veering between certain scenes that really drive the plot forwards and others that are only tangentially related to the murder, casting more light on Rust and Marty's personal lives and motivations.
This is my first real criticism of the show: the pacing can be a bit erratic and uneven. After a few very slow-burning episodes at the start of the series that deal mostly with the characters, we get a frantic fourth episode that's heavy on action and intrigue, followed by an almost-as-exciting fifth, before things really slow down again in the sixth and seventh episodes for some more introspection before suddenly roaring to life again for a heart-pounding finale. That kind of variation in tone is a little more acceptable on a long-running series - where it can sometimes be interesting to change things up a little bit, and vary the tone - but when you're following one single, continuous and finite miniseries (especially if you're watching the whole thing through in quick succession on a blu-ray boxset), it can be a little frustrating.
My second problem is that the show really does a disservice to its female characters. Given that some of the most significant supporting characters are female (in particular, Marty's wife Maggie and their two daughters) and the show explicitly explores gender-related subjects including misogyny and sexual abuse, it's a real shame to see the women written so two-dimensionally. When Marty has affairs outside of his marriage, his mistresses are either sex-mad nymphomaniacs or bitchy harridans, depending on the needs of the story - and Maggie herself is ultimately short-changed by the series too, even though she does get one or two reasonably interesting moments towards the end.
Finally, I'd criticise the show for relying on such a conventional and derivative ending after so many episodes of complex buildup and intelligent, unpredictable plotting. The show's finale is a perfectly fine way to tie up the story, but it somehow doesn't feel like it fits the tone of the rest of the series at all, feeling more suited to a more conventional cop-buddy-movie than a dark and intellectually-complex series that's as much about the dark nature of humanity as it is about catching a killer.
But don't let these criticisms put you off too much: despite my complaints, this is still an excellent and refreshingly unpatronising thriller that never talks down to its audience, crediting viewers with enough intelligence to put a lot of plot points and character motivations together ourselves, and directed with real flair and fractured beauty by Cary Joji Fukunaga. On blu-ray, it looks utterly spectacular in places, rendering the sparsely-populated environs of coastal Louisiana as completely alien yet utterly beguiling in equal measure. And the make-up effects that are used to show the transformation of Marty and Rust over the 17-year period covered by the show are so brilliantly detailed and effective that they still hold up, even in high-definition.
With two such brilliant lead performances (McConaughey, in particular, is on a real high after similarly great turns in the likes of 'Mud' and 'Dallas Buyers Club'), a decent central mystery and some great writing and directing, 'True Detective' is well worth your time and attention. Just don't let the effusive critical praise get your expectations for the series too high - it's still just a TV show, after all.
Kurt Russell plays Wyatt Earp, Val Kilmer hams it up as Doc Holiday in an action packed western, packed with scene stealing supporting actors. Hats off to director George P Cosmatos - he makes it a date a the OK Corral - not to be missed.
All-Star rip-roaring Western
If you'd have told me ten years ago that one of the best dramas ever made would star Woody Harrelson and Matthew McConaughey, I would have laughed you out of town. But here in 2014, I have to admit that it's hard to think of two actors who could have made True Detective any more perfect.
Over the past ten years, both Harrelson and McConaughey have managed to escape from the typecasting that dominated their earlier careers - Harrelson as a comedy turn (after making his name in the sitcom "Cheers") and McConaughey as the staple heartthrob of countless lame romantic comedies - to become fine dramatic actors in their own right. And their pairing in True Detective is a masterstroke, creating that rare kind of chemistry that keeps you absolutely glued to the screen even when the core murder-mystery plot of this eight-part HBO series is moving relatively slowly.
True Detective makes use of a twenty-year flashback interval to show us Harrelson and McConaughey's characters - detectives Marty and Rust - at two very different times in their lives. The series' framing device involves the two detectives being interviewed separately in the present-day about a bizarre ritualistic murder that they worked on together in the mid-nineties. And as the story plays out, it gradually teases out details of their personalities that end up making the development of their own personal relationship even more interesting and compelling than seeing how the homicide case is resolved.
Not that the central mystery itself isn't worthy of your attention: from the very start, director Cary Joji Fukunaga ensures that the scenes depicting the crime are utterly disturbing and eerie, with supernatural and religious elements that end up becoming important themes for the series as a whole. Having every one of the show's eight episodes be directed by Fukunaga - and written by Nic Pizzolatto - lends the series a rare consistency of vision that you just don't get with longer-form shows that use many different directors and writers over the course of their lifespan. It's an innovative model that I hope to see adopted again, especially if it can produce results as impressive as this.
Because this series isn't just a murder-mystery, it isn't just a cop show, it isn't just a relationship drama and it isn't just a snapshot of the southern-US culture of Louisiana, circa 1995: it's all of those things, all at once. And unlike many who might try to take on such an ambitious mixture, Pizzolatto and Fukunaga cleverly manage to thematically connect each element of the show to all the others, with the characters' musings on subjects like family and religion tying into the social landscape of the Louisiana setting just as much as it reflects their own personal lives, and - gradually - starts to shed light on the motivations of the killer, too. The series also pulls off the difficult balancing act of not giving away too much information about the murder case in the present-day scenes (set long after the earlier investigation has played out), but just providing enough hints to tantalise you about where it's all heading.
But to come back to where I started this review, the best writing and direction in the world would be worth nothing if it weren't also for the superb acting ability of the show's two leads. And between Harrelson's nuanced, complex portrayal of a purported family man whose carefully-crafted image starts to unravel before our very eyes - and a ravaged-looking McConaughey's career-best performance as Marty's supremely damaged and haunted, yet also uncannily insightful and intelligent partner - you'll struggle to find a more brilliant pairing anywhere on TV today. Both Marty and Rust are about as far away from 'typical' Harrelson and McConaughey characters as you can get, and are all the more impressive for it.
True Detective is proper, grown-up television for people who are willing to invest time and effort in a show that repays that investment in spades. I've deliberately held off on addressing certain elements that arise in later episodes of the show as I wouldn't want to ruin your viewing experience, but for me the entire series plays out perfectly, offering up a satisfying and complete story and providing a perfect template for seasons to follow (True Detective is planned as an anthology show, with a completely different cast and storyline for each season).
One thing's for sure: True Detective season two is going to have a hell of a reputation to live up to.
Ravi Nijjar
If you start watching one new TV series this year, let it be True Detective.
HBO have done it yet again, adding an incredible new title to their long list of successes that already includes Game of Thrones, Boardwalk Empire, Girls, Curb Your Enthusiasm, Entourage, and the all-time classic The Sopranos.
That True Detective sits in such brilliant company should serve as a perfect indication of just how good this programme is. The eight-episode first season all but reinvents the wheel when it comes to the crime-drama genre, bringing us something utterly fresh and tantalising, unlike anything that's been on in years.
The series traces the course of two separate homicide investigations set apart by seventeen years, and the show's ability to create such an authentic background to the earlier investigation is beyond impressive. Such attention to detail is rarely seen on the small screen when it comes to more recent history, and they pull it off wonderfully.
Woody Harrelson and Matthew McConaughey are front and centre, starring as two of the detectives leading the investigations. The hunt for the killer reignites after almost two decades, and the tension remains on high throughout the entire season right up to its explosive conclusion.
Acclaimed director Cary Fukunaga (Jane Eyre, Sin Nombre) made his first foray into the world of television, and what a fantastic effort it is. Whereas most shows bring in different directors for each episode, Fukunaga was in the chair for all eight, and the result is a cohesive vision that feels like it all plays out in one long, incredible film. The eight-episode length really lets us get under the skins of Harrelson and McConaughey's characters so we feel like we know them as well as ourselves by the end.
The leading actors' performances are never anything less than stellar, putting in terrific work to bring these two detectives' lives to life on the small screen. Michelle Monaghan is excellent in the female lead as Harrelson's on-screen wife, with a delightful cast of supporting and recurring characters.
Ultimately, though, a show like this will always live and die with Harrelson and McConaughey's performances, and they make it soar. HBO has already commissioned a second season of the show, and like everyone else, I can't wait to see it all unfold again.
Remember that great road trip Americana feeling Sideways gave you? Or the great feeling you got at the end of The Descendants? Well be prepared for that again because Alexander Payne is back.
Nebraska is the story of an aging father and husband who decides to take a trip from his home to Nebraska after he has a 'prize' claiming to make him rich.
Bruce Dern plays Woody who chases his rich wildest dreams much to the dismay of his family including his wife played by June Squibb, his sons David and Ross, and much to the humour of some of his oldest friends.
Much of the film is based on Woody's relationship with David played by Will Forte, these two have great chemistry and the film much like the previously mentioned films above moves at such a great smooth pace with no lulls.
Please be warned this film was shot in black and white, not that it makes any difference this excellent movie. It might be worth checking out some of Payne's earlier work before seeing this, but once you have watched this you will surely be scouring the shops for them anyway. Defiantly the best film of 2013 this film deserves all the accolades and awards that have occurred and surely will follow. ENJOY!
Alexander Payne has done it again!
All of us were five years old once. As we've grown up, we've tended to grow more serious, and seek forms of entertainment that better reflect that seriousness. But occasionally, a filmmaker remembers that our inner child still exists somewhere, and delivers a movie that's pitched squarely at that part of us that never really matured.
Pacific Rim is just such a movie.
Set in a world in which gigantic, skyscraper-sized aliens have attacked the Earth (gaining entry through a mysterious undersea portal) and humans have hit back by constructing equally gigantic robots (each complete with a pair of human co-pilots), the film dispenses with all of this setup in a slick, montage-heavy prologue, dazzling us immediately with the sheer scale of the plot before clearing the way for an hour and a half of what we've all paid to see: huge robots punching even huger aliens.
It really is like a Saturday-morning cartoon come to life, only with multi-million-dollar special effects to bring the imagination of director Guillermo del Toro to life. Unlike other similar films, however - Michael Bay's Transformers movies spring to mind - Pacific Rim clearly has a sense of humour about itself, peppering the story with outrageously exaggerated characters and adding frequent touches of levity that remind you that the filmmakers are all in on the joke.
Something else that sets it apart from lesser effects-heavy films is that it has a cast you can really root for. Not that the characterisation is particularly subtle or the characters are particularly original: they're not. But the actors who play them (and there are some good ones here: Idris Elba, Charlie Hunnam and Ron Perlman among them) make them so likeable and distinctive that you're almost immediately on their side, even when some of them are clearly destined not to survive the movie.
At times it's almost as though the actors are competing with each other to see who can pull off the most outrageous cartoon-like personality. Between Burn Gorman's scenery-chewing role as genius scientist Dr. Hermann Gottlieb, Charlie Day as ultra-geek biologist Dr. Newton Geiszler, and Perlman as Hannibal Chau - a black-marketeer who deals in rare alien organs - it's a close-run thing, but I think Perlman pips them all with his gleefully larger-than-life gangster personality.
Only Elba and his co-star Rinko Kikuchi (playing a young robot pilot who lost her family in an early alien attack on Japan) seem to be treating the story with any sincerity or seriousness - and even then, it only helps to set the crazy antics of the rest of the cast in even sharper relief.
But why am I talking about the humans so much? The real appeal of this film is its numerous and extensive fight scenes between the aliens and the robots, and on this front it doesn't disappoint. While there's a certain amount of genuine drama to these scenes (the two human co-pilots of each robot are linked by a sort of mind-meld, giving them greater empathy for each other and insight into each other's feelings), a more powerful visceral thrill comes from the sheer joy of seeing these fantastical creations destroy cities as they battle each other. Intricately detailed CGI creations (in terms of the robots, the aliens, and the cityscapes themselves) help to sell the reality of film perfectly, striking just the right balance between realism and heightened, cartoonish hyper-reality.
And somehow, despite opening the movie with so much amazing action, the film manages to keep ramping things up and up from there, pulling off ever-more outrageous action sequences with each battle - until you're completely exhausted by the end of the film's climactic scenes.
This is a movie to enjoy with your brain turned off and a bucket of popcorn in your lap, tapping into that inner five-year-old that never really grew up. It might not be an intellectually-stimulating or even particularly thoughtful movie, but it's an utterly enjoyable one.
Ravi Nijjar
'Speak Easily' was Buster Keaton's 8th film made under his unhappy tenure at MGM studios, a period which saw him appearing in sub-standard films as a mere starring player rather than the autonomous writer/director that he'd been during his independent years. This particular film was the second in which the subtle, poised Keaton was assigned to star with the famously abrasive and loud-mouthed Jimmy Durante, an obvious mismatch of comic styles if there ever was one. From what I've read, Keaton was disdainful of the idea of being given what he called 'dialogue laughs', preferring to utilise his pantomime skills to entertain instead. MGM's solution to this was not to find scripts more suitable for Buster's silent comedy prowess, but instead to continue putting him in plot-heavy productions with no room for many physical comedy set-pieces and with all the 'dialogue laughs' simply given to Durante. 'Speak Easily' is sometimes said to be among the best of Keaton's talkies, but it's so far below the quality of 'Sherlock Jr.' and 'The General' that it's difficult to watch it without feeling the loss. Keaton was a comic genius, but like the Marx Brothers after him he was neutered by MGM and then by television. 'Speak Easily' catches him in the middle of that decline, and as a result it's sad stuff indeed. Best avoided.
Sometimes, it doesn't take a hugely long and detailed review to sum up a film. Because for Louis Leterrier's 2013 thriller 'Now You See Me', the problem is pretty simple: it's just not as clever as it thinks it is.
The movie revolves around a quartet of professional magicians - played by Jesse Eisenberg, Woody Harrelson, Isla Fisher and Dave Franco - who are recruited by a mysterious, unidentified benefactor to carry out a series of magic shows that also serve as elaborate heists. Mark Ruffalo plays the FBI agent who's brought in to investigate them, and Michael Caine plays a powerful businessman with links to the group, while Morgan Freeman portrays a sceptical filmmaker who is intent on exposing the group's secrets.
This excellent roster of actors was what drew me to the movie, and initially I found it all quite enjoyable: a slick and stylish heist-based thriller with a decent ensemble cast, plenty of twists and turns in the story, some inventive set-pieces and some good one-liners here and there. It's not hugely original, however, and it quickly started to become quite reminiscent of similarly-themed fare like Steven Soderbergh's 'Ocean's Eleven' or Christopher Nolan's 'The Prestige'. Indeed, more than anything else, it feels like 'Now You See Me' is desperate to emulate the intricate plotting and clockwork-like precision of Nolan's movies.
Unfortunately, it just doesn't quite have the brains to live up to it.
While the movie tries to dazzle you with its surface charm, it can't escape the numerous plot contrivances and logical problems that lurk within the story. It would spoil things too much to go into great detail about these, but suffice it to say that if you're building a story that relies on intricate plotting and smart, unexpected twists and turns, you'd better be 100% sure that it all stands up to scrutiny. Sadly, though, it doesn't - and these problems end up weakening the film, ultimately overwhelming its otherwise-enjoyable elements.
Furthermore, the flashy visual style and fast-cut editing techniques actually serve to put distance between the viewers and the characters - and this becomes a major problem when the film's final twist rolls around. Because a character-based twist is worth nothing if you haven't given your audience a chance to build a connection with the characters themselves, and 'Now You See Me' simply never gets close enough to any of its main players to give you a reason to care.
In some ways, this is a perfectly enjoyable way to spend a couple of hours: it's slick, imaginative, reasonably well-acted and often pretty funny. I just wish it had a bit more substance to back up the style, and didn't start to fall apart as soon as you started thinking about it for more than a few seconds.
'Now You See Me'? I'm starting to wish I hadn't.
This breathtaking melodrama is a quite remarkable achievement in American cinema. With its down-home reverence, stifled emotion and expressive minimalism, you'd be forgiven in mistaking this work for being more akin to say, Satyajit Ray and his observations of village life in the likes of Pather Panchali. Tender Mercies is a film about the admirable notion of redemption and self-improvement.
Robert Duvall in arguably his finest and certainly most understated performance plays Mac Sledge, a strung-out former country star who washes up in a remote Texas town. Tender Mercies begins the morning the burnt-out Mac wakes up at rock bottom, his life having become a series of disappointments. The next two hours cover the next year in Sledge's life. Yet, what's remarkable about the story is without going into flashback, in and between scenes, we come to know all about his past, everything of significance that happens to Sledge in that year and in the final scene, we get a clear vision of his future. So there we have it, a man's life, virtually from birth to death, is captured between the start and end of Horton Foote's Oscar-winning screenplay. Incidentally Foote also wrote the screenplay for the almost equally brilliant To Kill a Mockingbird. Tender Mercies is exquisitely plotted through some of the most difficult film terrain of all; a story in which the arc of the film takes place within the mind of the protagonist. Here Mac Sledge experiences a deep and irreversible revolution in his attitude toward life and himself. A filmmaker cannot exactly drive a camera lens through an actor's forehead and photograph his thoughts so what this writer and director team managed to do was lead me, the audience member to interpret the inner life from Mac's outer behaviour without loading the soundtrack with expositional narration or stuffing the mouths of characters with self-explanatory dialogue. Robert Duvall's performance and Horton Foot's script manage to make the mental things so perfectly physical in the simplest yet profoundest of ways. Hence even though redemption stories are ten to the dozen in Hollywood, this one feels heartbreakingly genuine.
Sledge begins the film drowning in the meaninglessness of his life. He appears to be committing slow suicide with alcohol because he no longer believes in anything - neither family, nor work, nor the world he lives in and not even in the hereafter. As the film progresses, there isn't one great overwhelming experience such as success or a great romance or religious inspiration that sweeps change in Mac. Instead what we get is a man weaving together a simple yet meaningful life from the many delicate threads of love, music, and spirit. It's a quiet transformation to try to find a life worth living. Every event is so carefully plotted and what appears as something difficult to achieve and perhaps even as something that could end up as portraiture becomes a film of quiet, relentless power that demands a level of belief, even faith in its characters, a feat few other films dare to suggest, let alone achieve. Here is a character who starts to believe that his reunion with God amongst other efforts, will lead to meaningful changes in his life. For all its simplicity, this is bold, heartfelt film has a story that is universally transferrable to all people for whom faith, love, family and humanity mean something regardless of whether one has these virtues or not. Tender Mercies is riveting, compassionate and touching. Here is a poignant film about the healing powers of love and about changing relationships.
So, to continue the opening of this film, Mac Sledge, an alcoholic, awakes from his drunken stupor in a room, in a rundown motel owned by Rosa Lee played by Tess Harper, a widow whose husband was killed in Vietnam. Without a dime to his name, Mac volunteers to stay on as a handyman and work off his bill. Rosa has a ten-year old son named Sonny who is curious about the wanderer with a guitar and a face that reveals he has seen much of what there is to see in the world. In fact Duvall's ageing face is a road map of dead ends and dry gulches. Although Sonny wants to accept Mac, clearly an outsider, he must first deal with the father he never knew. Sonny turns to Rosa for answers, who in turn wonders what her life would have been like if her husband had lived. Mac stops drinking and finds solace in the slow, isolated and simple existence at the combination gas station and motel. Without much fanfare, Mac and Rosa fall in love and marry, despite Mac having done nothing of any significance to deserve Rosa's care or redemption. This highlights real unconditional love. However it could be argued that by staying on to pay off his bill, when he could have scrammed that Mac has revealed a quality virtue to Rosa. We see no wedding scene or any courtship and this works because the characters are too unlike ordinary people for them to fit into what we've come to expect from clichéd movies depicting the smoochy details of a physical romance. That's the beauty of this film, only showing what you need to know and leaving us to imagine everything else that's off camera vividly. We learn that Mac was married twice, both desultory romances that defined his past. One of his ex wives is Dixie, a very famous Country and Western singer. He had a daughter by Dixie. He lost it all, his career, Dixie and their daughter. Ultimately as Mac sobers up he wants to see his eighteen-year-old daughter Sue Anne against Dixie's wishes who is still bitter with Mac. What follows is Mac's struggle to come to terms with his violent, abusive, selfish past, and old way of living which he tries to reject at every turn, and his attempts to further improve his life, find meaning and worth in his existence, to strengthen his relationship with Rosa Lee and Sonny, to rekindle his music career and to reaffirm his love for his long lost daughter Sue Anne, in the hope of reforming that relationship. Mac is finding a new life, Rosa Lee a new husband, and the boy a new father. It is a story of absent fathers but also of growing together and of hope. The three of them attempt to drive away the shadows of the past in order to become strong in the broken places of their lives. It is Rosa that keeps Mac going and therefore it is through her and the power of fidelity that he has a hope of finding redemption. Rosa is a character who never loses faith despite her own hardships and that is extremely rare to find in life and in films as well.
The country soundtrack to the film, a number of which are brilliantly played and sung by Duvall himself tell a great deal of the film's past and how the character's feel about their lives in the past and present. There is a very brave Christian theme in the film, which connects Mac 's spiritual reconciliation with the divine to the earthly reconciliation with his own child. Despite redemption being the right course of action, the film is even bolder by demonstrating that all relationships cannot be mended with this course of action and that chance and missed opportunities also play a major part in the fate of the characters. There is also a very powerful message about companionship and blood relationship and how the former isn't necessarily any less important than the latter but depends on the circumstance. In this instance, when a young boy asks Sonny if he likes Mac more than his biological father, Sonny says he does since he never knew the other man. There is little doubt that this is also a religious film but in its most positive sense. It uses the virtues of Christianity for the main characters to apply to their daily lives. The Bible clearly appeals to Christians to live out their lives in service to others and Mac does just that by mentoring a young country band who are his fans. He acts as a father figure to them. We also learn that turning to Christianity doesn't necessarily provide greater shelter from the world's tragedies. Everything in Mac's outlook on life doesn't change. He certainly can't trust happiness because it remains inexplicable. But he does start to trust the tender mercies that mysteriously encourage him from death to life.
Robert Duvall's restrained acting in this picture accommodates rage or innocence or any ironic shade in between. He seems to immerse himself into Mac Sledge so completely. Even his Texan gait is acted to perfection. But it's his eyes where most of the work is done. This is the same actor who shouted "I love the smell of napalm in the morning" whilst playing Lieutenant Kilgore in Apocalypse Now which puts his acting into perspective. Although his character has little to say, he's extremely interesting when he isn't speaking and you are drawn to watch his body language, listen to the notes in his voice, and you end up with that rare character quality where less is elaborated but you learn more. The scene that best sums up Mac's character is when he's asked by a shopkeeper about his past. "Hey, mister, were you really Mac Sledge?" He's friendly enough: "Yes, ma'm, I guess I was." He also didn't see it as important to tell Rosa Lee about his past profession. It was not important to him anymore and not to Rosa who loves him for who he is. That career was another lifetime. All the cast have a down-to-earth quality that sums up everything that's good about America.
The look of the film is entrancing, from a series of disconcertingly flat rural landscapes to the gorgeous photography of human faces - head on, eyes wide, nothing hidden. The cinematography by Russell Boyd has a simple beauty. In several lasting shots, the vast sky dwarfs Mac, Rosa Lee and Sonny, starkly symbolising their isolation, as well as the fragility of human existence.
Tender Mercy may not have a sharply dramatic storyline but it makes up for this with simple clarity of vision. We are left with a life-affirming treasure.
How do you define a TV show that can be funny one moment and deeply dramatic the next; that can make you both think deeply about morality and spirituality, and laugh at a silly bit of slapstick within a couple of minutes of each other; and which features a cast of A-list British talent who are apparently content to be slumming it in a silly little BBC2 programme?
"Sitcom" seems too simplistic a label for Rev, but it's really the only one that fits: after all, this is half-hour show with the primary goal of making us laugh, revolving around a likeable everyman character who is stuck in a rut and surrounded by a group of oddball supporting characters. But Rev is so much more than your average sitcom.
On the surface, it has all the ingredients you'd expect. The role of the long-suffering central character is filled by Adam Smallbone (Tom Hollander), an inner-city Church of England vicar whose meagre congregation is made up of weird and wonderful personalities like local drunk Colin (Steve Evets) and overbearing busybody Adoha (Ellen Thomas). At the same time as helping them cope with their various problems, he has to deal with his immediate superior, Archdeacon Robert (Simon McBurney), and cope with the incompetence and irritation of his underling Nigel (Miles Jupp) - while also giving his marriage to Alex (Olivia Colman) the attention it deserves.
And in some respects, all of these elements interact with each other in exactly the way you'd expect for a regular sitcom, with Adam's well-meaning schemes coming into conflict with the needs of his flock, or the requirements of his Archdeacon, or the expectations of his wife. There's a lot of gentle, warm humour - much of which comes from the performances, such as McBurney's supremely sneery and condescending manner, or Jupp's overly-officious and petty bickering, or Colman's incredibly loveable, frequently-drunk supportiveness (even when Adam doesn't really deserve it).
But it's in the show's ability to deal with subjects that go beyond your average sitcom fare that Rev gets really interesting. In its most recent (third) series alone, the show has dealt with subjects as prickly and political as gay marriage; the conflict between Christianity and Islam; the rehabilitation of paedophiles; marital infidelity; homelessness; and depression. And earlier series include running storylines in which Archdeacon Robert is forced to acknowledge that his career ambitions will be forever thwarted by the fact that he is gay, as well as genuine heartache over Alex and Adam's apparent inability to conceive a child.
All of this is woven into the comic fabric of the show in a way that feels perfectly natural, yet is still able to shock you - or at least make you stop to consider the subject matter on a serious level as well as a humorous one. In fact, it's within some of the funniest scenes that the show hides some of its most cutting and accurate observations about modern life, often dealing with subjects in a far more even-handed and thoughtful way than you'd see in even a 'straight', serious drama.
By the third series - which features a multi-episode story involving Adam having a crisis of faith as he's investigated by the church for a perceived wrongdoing - you'll be finding yourself compelled to watch episode after episode as much out of concern for the outcome of the story as out of a desire for laughs. That shows the kind of investment that you inevitably end up building in these well-rounded, likeable characters: an attachment that is rare to feel for any programme, let alone a mere sitcom.
Finally, it's worth mentioning that Rev is lucky enough to be blessed with guest-appearances from a host of fantastic British actors, who really elevate the episodes they appear in. Throughout the three series, we see appearances from Ralph Fiennes (more than once) as a local bishop; Richard E. Grant as a wealthy city banker who seeks help from Adam's church; Hugh Bonneville as a colleague and sometime rival of Adam's; and Liam Neeson in a fleeting and ambiguous role that's just too good to spoil here. Other comedy veterans such as Geoffrey Palmer and Dexter Fletcher fare equally well, spicing up the show with their well-conceived and interesting characters, even if it's just for an episode or two.
It all helps to reinforce the notion that Rev is a high-quality television show, and one that can attract top-level talent due to its clever and insightful writing, great acting, and general thoughtfulness in its musings on life, the church and everything.
Not bad for a silly little BBC2 sitcom.
This ferocious, visceral and intense powerhouse of a film is without doubt not only the best social melodrama out there but also one of the best films I've ever seen across all genres. Once were Warriors pulls no punches and is certainly not for the feint hearted. The tough, muscular characters are primed for fighting and they don't need a battlefield to take out their beefs. Their hostilities are played out in the bedroom, in front of their children, their friends or in packed bars. This is social realism with a savage kick, the likes of which I've never seen before or since. Yes, it's a violent film but the violence is not gratuitous or sensationalised. It comes with a purpose that is to say that this behaviour is absolutely unacceptable on any level. In order to repel people against violence you've often got to show it in graphic rather than a glorified form and this film does it better than any other work. That's not the sole motivation of the film. It paints a visually stunning whole style of life, showing both the good times and the bad. We are left with a brutally effective family drama.
Once Were Warriors tells the story of an urban Maori New Zealander family, the Hekes, and their problems with poverty, alcoholism and domestic violence, mostly brought on by family patriarch Jake, played by the incredible Tamuera Morrison, a belligerent yet charismatic man with a hair-trigger temper whose unpredictability is his most frightening weapon. The family's ties to their own history appear to be destroyed and this theme plays strong in the background of their struggles. The film's male characters are drawn together in boozed-up solidarity, as if grasping for the collective identity that vanished with their Maori tribal life. Left floundering in an inhospitable urban world, the Hekes have lost touch with their tribal past to become part of a rootless global subculture; second-class citizens, even strangers in their own land and you feel that much of it is of their own making.
This emotionally raw masterpiece presents us with vicious brawls within the Heke family, mainly between Beth and her husband Jake. The film is rendered frighteningly credible in no small part due to the performances of the two good-looking lead characters. They also look the part in terms of possessing pure sinew and brawn. They live in a messy state house with their five children. Jake likes to play the role of the genial, loveable, beer-swilling host, strumming tunes on his guitar, singing songs and appearing to be liked by all. The place he clearly feels most at home is in the pub with his drunken buddies and as long as he has alcohol and his so-called drinking friends, he's content. However that initial sunny glint in his sleepy eyes can change in a flash. If someone crosses him, he lashes out in the blink of an eye, inflicting a ruthless beating on some muscle-bound pretender fuelled by alcohol in a boiling rage. It's safe to say Jake loves to fight! He'd have made a great cage fighter if a scout had spotted him. Beer fuels Jake's resentments and insecurities, and masks his strength. When he's not drinking, he appears to be a self-satisfied man brimming with confidence but of course, that is not the case. He's just been made redundant when we open up the film and looks completely at ease with accepting government handouts. We learn early in the film that Jake is capable of unleashing unrestrained violence on anyone and we expect this to play a major part in the remainder of the film. It is the contrasts in Jake's mean streak with his physical appeal that has kept Beth tied to her violently abusive and at times charming husband. Still, it's also clear to see that she's not simply a victim. In fact Beth, played by the fiery and beautiful Rena Owen, is the central character in this film. She blames herself whenever she is savagely beaten. She has this sad, sensual look of a roughed up Hollywood 50s pin-up queen, radiating a physical vitality that makes sense of this union. Against her better judgement, Beth has fallen and continues to fall for Jake's swagger even while she recoils from his bullying cruelty. Despite her shortcomings she has this indomitable spirit throughout as she struggles to hold together her disintegrating family.
The film establishes early on, the cultural void that's been created in all the main characters' lives due to a loss of their heritage that also affects their circle of friends and this makes you wonder who the family could turn to in their hour of need if everyone appears so lost. These so-called friends give the impression that they would not only be powerless to find answers to the Hekes' predicament but would turn on them if they had to in this dog-eat-dog world. When Jake brings home his drunken buddies for one of his many middle-of-the-night parties in the Heke household, the revellers sing together as if they were gathered around a campfire, wishing for a fellowship that no longer exists in their everyday lives. Behaviour within this group is ritualized and sharply divided along male and female lines. While the men brawl heartily and glower at their women, the women are meant to stand by admiringly and gossip about the men's sexual prowess. When we first see Beth, she still accepts these ground rules, however grudgingly and drinks heavily herself. "You're a hard lady," Jake tells her, delivering what sounds like the highest compliment of which he's capable. "You're a hard man, Jakey," she replies. This sets the tone of their relationship and environment.
Ultimately the toll on the children as a result of their parents' problems becomes the focal point of the film. Fully aware of the kind of battering their mum regularly endures, the children suffer in different ways from their parents' brawls and heavy drinking, left in almost complete neglect. One of the sons, Boogie is on the brink of being put in a reform school having had a history of petty criminal offences, the eldest son Nig who loves his siblings and mother but walks away from the fighting finds solace with an ornately tattooed leather-clad gang who are about to brutally initiate him into their exclusive membership, which offers him a family-like closeness and a steelier sense of identity than Jake's sodden crowd; then there's the gentle affecting teenaged daughter, the precocious Grace, who reflects a hope and optimism that somehow shines even on the family's darkest days where happiness and dreams are possible, but ultimately who suffers in ways too terrible she won't even describe the horrors to her best friend, a homeless boy who lives in an abandoned car, and instead retreats into a private journal that she keeps. They are forced to fend for themselves or clean up after their parent's mess. It is the children's unhappiness that makes Beth examine her life and try to make amends. The inevitable questions arise as to how much damage has the lack of parenting caused and at what stage in the story will it be when Beth finally wakes up from her slumber. She appears to have been content with her own beatings but it clearly becomes unbearable to see her children spiralling into the residual pain. Apart from the uplifting, angelic-like figure of their daughter Grace, there are some other positive scenes. The son who is sent to reform school regains some sense of Maori pride with the aid of a reformatory school teacher. Then there is Beth and Jake themselves, flirting with each other, singing boozy duets and making passionate love. You're therefore never quite sure what's around the corner.
This film is elevated to its breathtaking quality because it not only works for its pitiless depiction of these characters' seemingly hopeless and unhappy lives but also for its genuinely poignant idea of how their collective destiny has gone astray which is also suggested in the brilliant title. You end up with a powerful sense of longing. Even when Jake threatens or exerts brute force, the musical composition brilliantly exhibits and hints at Maori-like instrumentation that echoes the undoubted Maori warrior spirit he possesses except that he cannot harness this furious energy in the right way in which it was intended. Hence there is a sense of ancestral awakening. They have been shaken from their graves by his betrayal of their traditions.
I've already mentioned one of the film's purposes, which is to condemn violence, primarily the type of a domestic nature, as well as abuse, which it succeeds in doing but this is the obvious message in the film which we are all too familiar with. Why Once Were Warriors stands out so brightly in the echelons of moviemaking is because of its brilliant perception in showing the way alcohol triggers sudden personality shifts. It also turns Jake in particular, completely blind to the problems faced by his family as a result of his actions and immune from pain as he is immersed in the booze. He actually thinks Boogie being in reform school will toughen him up and do him some good. Huddled in their room one night with the sounds of anger crashing through the walls, Grace explains to her brother: "People show their true feelings when they're drunk."
I have to pay further homage to the main actors. The two leads are on scintillating form. In Temuera Morrison, we have a male lead who is elemental, charismatic and brutal, and it's his likeability that makes the violence portrayed by his character so chilling and shocking. Jake is a wildly dangerous presence, a tortured man whose only means of addressing his own pain - which he masks so well - is hurting others. He's a cursed soul and you sense his ancestor's spirits won't welcome him into the Maori world unless he starts repenting and pretty soon at that. As for Rena Owen's turn as Beth, you're not likely to see a female dramatic role like hers, nor a one-of-a-kind performance that's so emotionally engaging, complex and complete. Beth represents a voice that past generations of women were probably not allowed to have. There's no Hollywood heroism here from Rena Owen in her harrowing portrayal of this clearly flawed and volatile character with the best of intentions. Owen maintains great intensity throughout and delivers every line with measured force that is just right. As an audience, you really come to realise why Beth has stayed with this monster for so long. The towering performances bring the Academy Awards into perspective because neither of these actors even picked up a nomination.
Marrying the violent scenes with loving ones enhances the impact of the former. Perhaps no scene is more sad than the one in which the family rents a car and sets off on a picnic, happy and in good spirits, only to have everything go wrong when Jake decides to stop for just one drink. The powerful emotion in the film is so affecting. You know that the odds are stacked up against the Hekes before you even take into account the domestic violence, loss of cultural identity and alcoholism, simply because this is a family on the bottom end of the socio-economic scale.
The narrative momentum is such that we're swept along in the enveloping tragedy of the family's life with the full force of a tidal wave. The director has created a convincing setting of daily life in the household and neighbourhood. The drama maybe gritty but it is filmed with cool style. To give you some semblance of the visual style of the film, the opening scene begins with a sharp contrast of an idyllic New Zealand landscape which turns out to be a billboard and we then pan to the grey, decaying reality of the actual setting. The misery seen in this film is something that can be seen anywhere in the world and that is why we can all relate to it in some way.
Throughout the film, you are rooting for the family to come through, including Jake but you sense there will be some inevitable and tragic sacrifices that will need to be made. You hold out hope that the eldest son Nig will take a stand, or that Grace's idealism will have a bearing. Then there are the smaller characters like the reform school teacher or Beth's and Jake's friends, or even Beth's strong rooted family who could make a difference though you doubt this because they are on the periphery of the film. You feel that because of Beth's moral centre in the film, it will be her who will have to rise above everything to change the course of her family's lives. One way or the other, you will find yourself truly gripped by every moment of the movie.
Mississippi Burning deals with a number of key subjects, some of them controversial, and is a fictional film partly based on real events. Perhaps for this reason it took some twenty-four years for the story to finally be told after the initial inciting incident. Firstly, a crime is committed and the film becomes a battle for civil rights, which in turn highlights a brutal racism that poisons the film's environment, leading to racial politics and what that means to the white people depicted in the film. The other key area of the film is a wonderfully told procedural investigation that takes place and most surprising of all, a hint at love in an absolutely beautiful and subtle way that touched a nerve. What you ultimately have is a compelling overview of the battle between white liberals and white supremacists struggling to assert control over the black population in the south, be it a positive or a negative one.
This masterpiece is loosely based on the actual murders of three civil rights workers in the segregated southern state of Mississippi in 1964. The film opens with a chilling scene showing the three activists who are driving at dusk, tailed by several cars and then stopped by the white mob in those vehicles clearly connected to the Ku Klux Klan before being murdered. This opening premise is the only major scene that is as close to the truth as the film apparently gets. After the three activists, two of them white, Jewish young men and one black, are reported missing, two FBI agents, Anderson played by the incomparable and intuitive acting giant that is Gene Hackman in probably his most accomplished role, and Ward played by the well versed Willem Dafoe, are sent to investigate the disappearance in a place called Jessup County, a rural backwater part of the Mississippi.
The two agents tackle the investigation in completely different but honourable ways; Agent Ward is a young, white, idealistic, liberal and intellectual type northerner with a politically correct demeanour who takes a direct approach whilst the older Agent Anderson, a rough-around-the-edges type man who was a former sheriff in a Mississippi county not so dissimilar to Jessup, takes more subtle, low profile and at times back-to-basics measures because he has an experienced understanding of the intricacies of race relations in the south. He literally tries to sniff out any clues by the behaviour of the locals. Regardless of their approach, both men are met with the same resistance from the local sheriff's office because it appears to have a close affiliation with the Ku Klux Klan and as a result of these opposing forces, there is total silence from the black community for fear of violent retribution if they even speak to the agents. Ward escalates the investigation by laying siege on the county with an army of Washington-based FBI agents and even the National Guard, setting up a makeshift HQ in a huge local movie theatre to intensify the manhunt. This only leads to a breakdown in relations between the sheriff's office that is in effect a representation of the state and the FBI who represent the federal government, as was true to the historical context of the film. Relations between Anderson and Ward also become strained by the latter's actions. Local officials including the sheriff's office complain that the whole case is a publicity stunt, dreamed up by Northern liberals and outside agitators.
The bulk of the film is focused on this relationship and the two agents' methods as well as the hostility felt by the white Mississippians as outsiders come into town to seemingly stir things up by supporting the black community's interests, and how many of the white extremists go about putting fear into the minority population. The irony in some of the race politics in the film is that the only real reason the FBI from the north get involved and the national media with them is because two of the missing activists happen to be whites from the north itself.
There is a wonderful line early on in the film that gives some indication of what the agents are truly up against when Anderson and Ward are talking about how they can get someone to give useful information that could help solve the case. Anderson tells Ward "Down here we have a saying...rattlesnakes don't commit suicide," meaning that the conspirators aren't going to just given themselves up. Sheriff Stuckey leads the intimidation and his deputy, Pell, played by the brilliant Brad Dourif is a shifty-eyed, weasel-like cop with an alibi for the time that the three men disappeared. The alibi comes from his long-suffering wife Mrs Pell, acted by the great Frances McDormand, who has clearly put up with a great deal from her husband. You get the feeling pretty early on that Pell holds the link between the officialdom and the white mob that perpetrated the savage acts. He comes across as a really horrid and cowardly racist, typical of the Klan membership who hid behind hoods and guns. Anderson appears to immediately single out Mrs Pell as the key to the case but ultimately, you know that the only way to bring the whole house of cards crashing down is if the two agents can come together and employ both their tactics, albeit if some of them become underhand and a little crude.
There are no great villains and sadistic torturers in this film, only a group of banal little racists with a vicious streak and that's more than enough to keep an entire town to tow the line. It starts at the top with the town's bigoted mayor played to perfection by R. Lee Ermey, clearly not a Klan member but certainly a responsible figurehead and therefore being part and parcel of allowing the extremists to be able to function by sticking up for what he thinks are the righteous old values, even though they are completely and utterly wrong. He epitomises the same officialdom that stubbornly keeps quiet and doesn't actually look truthfully into what is happening to their community. Then there's the local law courts who are just as bigoted as the rest of the community and as such, cannot bring about any justice.
Though the evil is understated, it looms large over the murky swamp that is much of the Mississippi and the atmosphere is so palpable you feel the kind of currents that were in the air at the time. The white supremacists and all those who either aided them or stood by in silence create a reign of terror that is unprecedented in most other crime films.
One of the strongest reasons why the Mississippi Burning is so effective on many levels is the period sets that have been remarkably recreated making it feel so real. Some locations are obviously authentic too and give the impression that they've stood still in time whilst the rest of the world has moved on. The set dressing is something to marvel at. You could just about believe you'd be hard pressed to find any inaccuracies. There's a dusty atmosphere in the air of so many shots that creates an atmosphere that diffuses the light. This gives the effect that the movie is actually living in the town. You get an acute sense of time and place and this is the lifeblood of the film. You literally feel as if you know where it's safe to go and where it's best to avoid. You feel like you know most of the people intimately because everything's so detailed. This goes for the characters and extras in the film as well, who are the other major strength of this film. Director Alan Parker used non-professional actors from the state so there's no illusion. There's a documentary-like feel to the scenes at times. Much of these using the non-professional cast are improvised so the bigotries and unpleasantries that are so shockingly and ridiculously primitive feel so real you can actually believe it's all still happening. It gives you a sense of just how shameful a chapter this was in American history. You always get a sense in the film that Mississippi is playing catch up with the rest of America - even at the time of the film being made! There's so little to like about the townsfolk which may seem a somewhat one dimensional but maybe it's this way because the characters were that ignorant as a community, silent to the atrocities that took place and quite against the black community that there's no other defence for them. Clearly the general population hid behind the white supremacists in the state and you can see that in the film through these improvised scenes with the locals. Although the Klan has almost been crushed in current America, the internal feelings of many white people remains hostile to the black community.
The overall main cast of the film is perfect. Defoe gives an understated and simmering performance as Ward. Gene Hackman stands head and shoulders above everyone else in this film. He's an instinctive actor who seems as though he can look at a scene and cut through to what is actually necessary to make the point that's required with extraordinary economy. He's the quintessential movie actor. Everything he does is so effortless. He cuts to the truth and heart of any scene. He brings great depth and dimension to his character. We gather a great insight into his character. At first you might easily mistake Hackman's Anderson for having sympathy with the Klan as many FBI agents of his age did - he has a magnificent monologue that's worth watching alone which gives you a sense of where he gets his ideals of justice and equality from. He too is the product of a bigoted father so full of hate he couldn't see what was killing him. Hackman switches temper dramatically. One minute he's smiling or just patiently biding his time and the next he's squeezing down on his prey. Hackman's great genius is to pare scenes down to the bare minimum and yet still make the strongest possible point in a scene. There's a brilliant scene where a civil rights march takes place and Hackman has to cross the melee of the crowd. He simply pushes down the threatening night-stick held by one of the guarding police officers that says everything about what's so wrong with the aggressive nature of men confronting other men.
Hackman saves some of his best acting for when he's playing off the almost equal brilliance of Frances McDormand. You get a sense that there is a sexual chemistry between their characters but not quite. She's clearly a lonely woman with a good conscience though subservient to her chauvinistic and racist husband. Hackman's Anderson is very duplicitous in that you feel he really likes her and yet he's using her. But there is a genuine feeling for her from him without any need to make it all explicit that is really worth watching in itself. It's such a pure relationship you feel the compassion in it. You're left on that knife-edge of is he using her or does he care for her that makes for intriguing viewing.
R. Lee Emery as the mayor delivers dialogue like he's written it for himself. His line to Anderson "You're getting so far up my nose I'm beginning to feel your boots on my chin" is just out of this world. I've spared a thought for Michael Rooker who is so aggressive as an actor he is very believable as a heavy. Brad Dourif another great actor who doesn't appear to say much but conveys a great deal of cowardice or menace just by his facial expression or gestures.
There's a nice piece of refrain music throughout Mississippi Burning which intensifies the scenes and gives them an eerie tension full of suspense with regards to how long things can hold on for without a major breakthrough. Then there's the gospel music that works so well as an underscore to aid with the imagery of the beautiful blacks carrying the burden of 300 years of suffering and oppression in their eyes.
Director Alan Parker appears to have actually burned a number of buildings, mainly churches in the film that makes you feel that the state really is on fire. This is very powerful symbolism for depicting a society that can't live in harmony with its different ethnic groups. Churches in particular, to give some historical context, were easy targets for the Klan because these places of worship acted as a focal point for the entire black community so were very important to them and the Klan members were as mentioned earlier very cowardly so this was effective on many levels.
Yes the film is not without its controversies from both a black perspective and a white one. The film is a fiction but uses significant factual details as its basis which are then changed to suit the story that you end up rewriting history, whereby the liberal whites came to the rescue of the black man in America to emancipate him. So what you end up with is a film that shows the black fight for equality as extremely passive and lacking any significant role in changing America for the betterment of all human beings. It would need someone of great courage to attempt this but you would end up with a far more truthful account of the civil rights struggle through this most wonderful story. You get a sense that the film got made by Hollywood because its two heroes were white but this notion is not simply reserved at the movie business but is a reflection of the entire American society in general. This course of action in choosing two such protagonists would probably not have come from the director but from the studios. It's almost some sort of contrition on the part of white liberal America to try to make amends for something it was clearly responsible for as a society but all along, it only ever wanted to reduce blame to some members of its community, thus softening the blow on an extremely dark period in history. There are two exceptions to the passive role by blacks in their struggle for freedom. A young black boy has some worthy lines demanding his rights though this could be seen as a cop-out because being a boy he's less threatening to a white audience. Then there's an FBI agent who is willing to go beyond the confines of the law to get information that he wants from potential conspirators; essentially he's a bit of a monster. This clearly echoes what Rudyard Kipling once said about conquered people as the black community clearly are in this film, whereby he described them as "half-devil and half-child."
Nonetheless I feel the film has good intentions overall and at least opens up a debate around racism. You realise how recently black people were denied basic rights we take for granted today through no fault of their own because of the way the film is made. You can really feel the racism in the air with all your senses more than any other film I've ever seen and the entertainment it brings to these extremists' lives as a replacement for their sense of worthlessness. Every bit of character development is subsequently followed by a dynamic action that reveals the gritty nature of the entire county. The essence of the film and its time is best summed up by Anderson's line when he is asked if he likes baseball by the sheriff to which he responds, "Yeah I do, you know it's the only time when a black man can wave a stick at a white man.and not start a riot."
You may think the title tells you a great deal about the film and you would be right in part but essentially it's an extremely intricate and at times confusing confidence game planned and executed with great care by a group of aging master cracksmen led by Joe Moore, played by the imperious and at times effortless Gene Hackman who is easily the best thing in the film. He is supported by the very underrated but dynamic Delroy Lindo as one of his partners and friends.
During a daylight jewellery store raid, Joe's face is captured by a security camera after things don't quite go to plan forcing him into a decision to retire from the heist business. This doesn't go down to well with Joe's fence Mickey Bergman played by the annoying and very talkative Danny Devito who doesn't exactly strike fear in you as a powerful underworld figure. He's unhappy because he's set up another daring heist and in so doing, has incurred a great deal of expenses. He refuses to pay the gang for the jewellery raid until they go through with the new heist. To complicate matters further, Bergman insists his hot-headed nephew Jimmy played by an eye-catching Sam Rockwell participate in the job. All sounds quite intriguing but predictable so far but this is where the film for me begins with its major flaw that is repeated throughout the 105 minutes of its running time. Jewellery store raids are few and far between these days thanks to the high tech security systems that are in place and if Joe's face is now known to the law enforcement agencies, you'd expect him to be highly sought after. Yet somehow he walks about freely throughout the film, his path crossing with many police officers, sometimes actually in the process of creating his meticulous plan for the heist and at other times, causing havoc and mayhem that is always inevitable in this sort of work without drawing any attention to himself.
It appears that so much of the plans for the heist are perfectly laid in place by writer and director David Mamet himself that makes everything seem all too convenient. There are just no real obstacles from the law. Instead the gang face antagonism is from Bergman and Jimmy who don't trust Joe because he has been trying to double cross them so as to not have to carry out the heist. They see Joe's trophy wife Fran played by Mamet's real-life wife Rebecca Pidgeon, who is part of the gang as the weak link. Her performance is quite wooden as the femme fatal and this more than anything else in the plotting creates confusion as you never quite know where her loyalty lies. Maybe this inadvertently works in the film's favour.
So you have the robbery set up as a series of misdirections and you have numerous implausible set ups where the police fail to act like you'd expect them to act after such a major incident and numerous other authorities behave in a manner that is completely lax. The gang seem to complicate matters that aren't really necessary and in fact make the film very unrealistic. Then there's the sting element of the film revolving mainly around Fran. There's one double-cross after another, a trick here and a trick there which go one step too far.
Remembering the brinks Matt Robbery at Heathrow Airport back in the early 80s and the number of people involved in that heist, it beggars belief that a gang of three elderly men and a young woman could pull off everything so quickly. The only thing that keeps the film from falling apart is the incredible acting from Hackman, Lindo, Rockwell and Ricky Jay who plays Pinky. There is enough betrayal and tension to keep you watching and though the dialogue is stylish as only Mamet can come up with, it is overindulgent, over-stylised and excessive. Gene Hackman brings great emotional power to his lines that only he can but its overall effect is just too much to digest.
I've watched this made for TV debut from Steven Spielberg at various intervals across my life from bright eyed infant through to rebellious teenager, university geek and mature adult and find this marvel to be just as gripping as the first time I laid eyes on it. It's just about perfect as simply a rivetingly murderous game of cat and mouse that keeps you on the edge of your seat. The tension is so palpable that whenever you're on the road again and you see a tanker on your tail, your feelings will never be the same again!
David Mann played by everybody's favourite dad from Gentle Ben fame, Dennis Weaver is a salesman driving along a highway trying to visit a client to save an account who gradually learns that he's being relentlessly pursued and toyed with by a monster of a tanker without any motivation or explanation.
In many ways this is a classic Hitchcock-style masterpiece that the maestro himself would have been proud of directing. Shot entirely on location, the camera angles lend excessive weight to the film and Dennis Weaver as a panic stricken and tormented city slicker reminds you of his wonderful performance as the Mirador Night Motel manager in A Touch of Evil. But the real star of the movie is the tanker itself, perfectly cast from amongst a dozen other juggernauts. It has its own face and character. Wee see little of the driver which adds to the air of mystery, other than his arm egging Mann on as he encourages him to pass the tanker, or when we see his cowboy boots as he walks to check his vehicle.
The highway is seen as a lonely environment with only a few people about who are too alien to even bother to assist this out-of-towner - in one scene when Mann is nearly run off the road and suffers from whiplash, the crowd in the diner laugh at our hero's predicament and it only adds to the isolation of the character. No one is willing to really help. Mann really tries everything to sort out the situation but he is met with resistance at every turn. he comes across a broken down school bus full of children who are too pre-occupied in their own excitement to be worried about Mann or the owner of a gas station worried about her pet rattlesnakes and other reptiles who've been cut loose by the might tanker on the rampage rather than assisting our hapless Mann.
Spielberg thinks of every avenue for the character to try to escape from the jaws of the tanker as well as every conceivable nightmare that could possibly face Mann such as having his car shunted into an oncoming cargo train at a level crossing. Yes, he's borrowed from the likes of Hitchcock and an entire scene that's reminiscent of Kurosawa's Stray Dog where a we hear the inner thoughts of a paranoid and whip lashed Mann trying to deduce which one of the diners where he's sat is the murderous driver of the tanker.
It's amazing that with imply one good guy in Mann and a bad guy in the tanker, that Spielberg is able to create great depth in character. We learn substantially about Mann's family life and his city sensibilities. There is a magnificent scene that I've already eluded on, whereby a school bus is stranded and we see the tanker show its good side by aiding the school bus to jump start with a simple push but there is no such clemency or mercy for Mann.
The opening shots of Mann's POV leaving his house on the road and slowly departing the city with the traffic becoming less and less is haunting until he is the only vehicle on the road for miles. Duel wastes little time in sidetracking from the battle between David and Goliath. Even when Mann has a conversation with his wife on a payphone, the shot is carefully crafted so you still see the tanker in the background. If there is any criticism it is that the Kurosawa-like voiceover of Mann's inner thoughts as he tries to decided who the driver of the tanker is and what to do about him is a little on the long side.
It's absolutely incredible that the film feels like a horror movie and yet there is no night scene. Credit must go to the music composer who creates a spooky and eerie score that sounds like it was made from the grimy bits of ancient metal that form the parts of the tanker. The camerawork clearly heightens the suspense on literally every single shot. It's simply relentless from start to finish. This is a must-see timeless classic!
Director David O. Russell reunites his cast from 'The Fighter' (Christian Bale, Amy Adams) and 'The Silver Linings Play Book' (Bradley Cooper, Jennifer Lawrence) for a Scorcese-style, late 70's set drama based on the FBI's 'Abscam' sting operation (where a fake Sheik would entrap corrupt politicians accepting bribes).
'American Hustle' sees shambolic conman, Irving Rosenfeld (Christian Bale) and his partner Sydeny Prosser (Amy Adams), coerced into working for FBI agent Richie DeMaso (Bradley Cooper) to set up New Jersey Mayor, Carmine Polito (Jeremy Renner).
I liked the way Russell drives a scene one-way, before changing gears and taking it in a different, altogether more interesting, direction. 'American Hustle' is, however, too long at 138 minutes and there are some moments (e.g. the laundry scene) that don't so much pay homage to Scorcese, as they do outright rip him off. The film also falls victim to the dreaded third act trap, by trying to tie things up in a bow and portray a largely unlikeable character as the good guy.
The cast are excellent and compensate for some of the flaws in the story: Bale and Cooper receive top honours with Jennifer Lawrence (playing Rosenfeld's eccentric, estranged wife) turning in her best performance to date. Surprisingly, it's the usually brilliant Amy Adams who lets the side down with a shaky English accent that undermines the idea that she's supposed to be a top grifter (for there are times when you'll wonder--'how can anyone not know she's putting on an accent'? or 'why is she still using the accent'?).
Most critics over-hyped 'American Hustle' to the point where it couldn't possibly meet anyone's expectations. But despite some issues, its' still an entertaining, well-acted, well-directed movie that's definitely worth seeing once.
An excellent DVD with some wonderful archive footage. It reminds us of the great achievements of the post war Labour government and how, in more recent times, those achievements are being eroded and are under threat. Following the depression of the inter-war period and the experience of war the 1945-51 Labour government promised hope and attempted to create a different world, where health, education, housing and employment were seen as the right of everyone. The film certainly captures the spirit of that time. Highly recommended.
Ken Loach directs this documentary about the rise of the British Welfare State after 1945 by a Labour government which won a landslide election. The film argues for the need to safeguard these achievements.
This debacle of a film is absolutely appalling. Keanue Reeves plays Johnnny Utah, a newly recruited hot shot FBI agent who attempts to infiltrate the Californian surfing community in search of a group of bank robbers known as the Ex-Presidents who have so far eluded the police and not left any clues, except for a hunch by veteran agent Pappas who suspects the robbers may be surfers. Utah goes undercover by lying, cheating and cruelly tricking his way into surf babe Tyler's life.
Over the course of the investigation, Utah is not only apparently seduced by Tyler's beauty which I couldn't see due to Reeves wooden performance but also by the enigmatic and spiritual surfer Bodhi played by a brilliant Patrcik Swayze - spoiled by a laughable beach blonde mop to boot - which I equally couldn't see for the very same reasons. More believably however, which is where the film's strengths lie but more down to the mystical surfing cinematography, Utah becomes addicted to the adrenalin rush of life on the edge and the control freak life that Bodhi and his merry band of surfers lead. The two don't sit comfortably because the oneness with the sea and even the adrenalin junkie nature doesn't sit well with the wreckless and stone cold desire to rob banks and take risks with innocent people's lives. You have Bodhi's danger seeking character filling an elemental void in Utah's very shallow and hollow soul. Reeves tries to act too mature and yet the character is a schmuck just out of the academy with not much experience. I could have actually believed that a cop like Utah could have been seduced by Bodhi but Reeves's performance is so confused and the script so weak that there's not a line that passes the so-called actor's mouth that you believe he means any of it.
The film falls to its lowest ebb in depicting the relationship between Tyler and Utah. Once she is terribly hurt by his deceit, there is no justification for her returning into the imposter's arms. If he truly loved her he would have come clean at some point in the film. This is even further made more embarrassing by the fact that the director is a woman but what do you expect from Kathryn Bigelow, she was so seduced by James Cameron she obviously couldn't see anything bad in creating such a deceptive character to fall in love with. Plausibility has never been Bigelow's strongpoint.
The best thing about the film is the best chase scene I've ever seen on foot. it is so well staged you feel you're right there amongst the action. There's great cinematography and stunt work throughout including surfing and daredevil skydiving scenes that though appear unbelievable are done so well they look pretty real and are loaded with excitement and breathtaking and exhilarating beauty.
My only defence for Keanu Reeves is a lame one; He's very handsome and was physically in great shape for this film. He was young and believable to look at in terms of being a wannabe surfer freak.
Silent Waters is set in the rural Punjabi village of Charkhi, Pakistan situated near the Indian border in 1979, with the political backdrop being the hanging of Prime Minister Zulfikar Ali Bhutto by the new military ruler General Zia-ul-Haq who has promised to enforce Islamic Law using Islamic missionary and political groups to spread Islamism across the nation in earnest. The film is about a middle aged widow, Ayesha, played by the brilliant Kirron Kher and her relationship with her only son, teenager Saleem.
Her son is in love with Zubeida, a teenage village schoolgirl. Ayesha barely manages to support herself and her son by her late husband's pension and by giving lessons in the Qur'an to village girls but she appears to be content and looking forward to her son's impending wedding. She is well respected in the neighbourhood but she harbours a secret by not ever going to the well to fetch water, instead relying on her neighbours to collect it for her.
Two activists from an Islamist group come to the village, and backed by the village landlord, start spreading their message of Islamic zealotry and typically gain disillusioned and young impressionable recruits to fight the then-impending Soviet invasion of Afghanistan. The older men in the village react with disdain for the Islamists' message of intolerance and puritanism, even accusing them of being un-Islamic traitors. Amongst the new recruits is Saleem who immerses himself into extremist tendencies on a daily basis having found what he was looking for prior to meeting the activists; namely to lead a more meaningful life than that of a simple village farmer under the command of the feudal landlord. The more extremist Saleem becomes the greater his estrangement from his liberal thinking mother and pretty soon he also abandons Zubeida as they each in turn without reward try to dissuade him from following the Islamists. Saleem steadily grows into an angrier and hostile young man with a new and renewed purpose in life.
A group of Sikh pilgrims are granted permission by the military dictatorship to visit Charkhi from nearby India to pray at a Sikh holy site, the village having been their ancestral home before the creation of Pakistan and forced to flee during the violent partition of India in 1947. Some of the Pakistani villagers treat the pilgrims with a warm welcome whilst others more aligned with the Muslim zealots show hostility. One of the Sikh pilgrims starts enquiring about his long lost sister whom he believes may have survived the violence.
Family tranquillity is shattered when Saleem, already suspicious of his mother's open-minded views about Islam and her open support for the Sikh pilgrims discovers a Sikh pilgrim talking to her outside their house and learns to his disgust that she was abducted during partition and is not the pure Muslim he believed her to be. Ayesha converted from Sikhism to Islam. We also discover that at the time of the partition, a group of Sikh women were lining up at the orders of their men folk to commit suicide by jumping into the well rather than be raped by the rioting Muslim mobs. This discovery brings Saleem into direct conflict with his mother and his new found friends and beliefs and he simply has to choose one or the other.
Ayesha's secret is now under threat as her past catches up with her. Can she rely on her son's support to help her get through the coming ordeal or will old wounds be too strong? Will the revelations that Saleem learns about his mother be enough for him to support his mother or drive him even further into the arms of radicalisation? Can Ayesha be accepted as a Muslim?
Silent Waters is a film trying to investigate the legacy of the tragic events in the old Punjab in 1947, when Muslim and Sikh women alike were abducted, raped and sometimes murdered, and entire communities were split apart. It is very deliberate and interesting that director Subiha Sumar has chosen 1979 as a point of reflection about the past, when Islamic fervour was at it's most turbulent until 9/11 tragically struck us. This film was made after that atrocity in New York that changed the world forever so Sumar had this history and its hindsight to give her some advantage compared to say, My Son the Fanatic which explores a similar theme of Islamic radicalisation of a young man and how he drifts further apart from his liberal thinking father. But that film was more exceptional because it was made before the events of 9/11 and foresaw some of the potential dangers the Western world faced in having to tackle disaffected young impressionable Muslim men becoming radicalised long before we received it from any other media source.
The strength of the film is clearly Khirron Kher's central performance as a mother who has clearly suffered at the hands of this brutal partition and men, both Sikh and Muslim, who either couldn't stand up for Ayesha's rights or simply took advantage of her. Admirably Ayesha maintained her dignity and converted to Islam despite being let down by men of that religion. You can feel her pain and suffering but you can also see that as long as she has her son on her side, she has the will to carry on. But once he starts to drift apart, she becomes vulnerable and that time is actually not a healer. This is essentially a women's film, a feminist film about men letting down women regardless of religion.
The problem is that the film is not well researched and I don't mean by historical facts but by actually trying to understand the people who either became radical or those that tried to radicalise others, and what does it truly mean to be radical. As Malcolm X once said, "extremism in defence of liberty is no vice, moderation in pursuit of justice is no virtue." Being extreme is not necessarily a bad thing and depends on the situation. This could have been a virtuoso film if the writer and director had bothered to argue a stronger case for the opposing side of the film's wrath and enemy, namely Islamic extremism. If you do that you make a compelling film and then overcome the obstacle of your bogeyman. As the story developed Sumar should have been able to entertain the opposite negeative forces and their ideas ideas even if they might be repugnant to her. But Sumar went on a self-righteous path that Islamism is the root problem. Maybe it is but you have to make a more compelling case. This makes for a better film when the enemies are stronger. But she makes caricatures of the radicals, turning them into foolish and uneducated people who force their beliefs upon other people.
She had some nice scenes showing some political meetings where we heard some of what made the so-called extremists mad at the world, namely that Pakistan just wasn't progressing since its creation. But it was all done to show how terrible and dangerous these people were. It failed to mention that clearly much of the blame for Pakistan's lack of progress clearly falls on all of the previous governments of Pakistan as people in a position of responsibliity thus leaving it in its current predicament when the film was set, plundering for themselves and bowing to external Western pressures which hasn't always had the Pakistani people's best interests at heart. The extremists felt outside forces were imposing their will on the people who had their own cultures and traditions for many hundreds of years that they valued highly. The very best films are always able to make a case for both sides, arguing for both so you're never sure who is right or wrong and which side is going to win, and which side is the director on. Silent Waters was pretty staunch for only one side. If Sumar had done this she would have weighed each living issue and experienced all its possibilities and then express what she truly believes, that men who interpret religion extremely cause great harm to and control over women's lives. Sumar would then have a controlling idea that has won in its message to deliver a victory, even with great sacrifice, over the powerful forces that she could have arrayed against it.
In many ways the director shot herself in the foot because many intelligent audiences would see that Saleem's alternatives were very bleak as a feudal system awaited him so you understand his disillusionment. The irony of this is that wanting to break free from the choking feudal system where a young person isn't allowed to have any aspirations but instead have his destiny already determined, rather than wanting the American dream of writing his own future, Saleem turned to Islamic extremism, the very opposite of what one would expect.
It is a terrible shame that one of the few films with great potential to put Pakistan on the filmmaking map ends up stifling much of what is good about Sumar's country. I cannot recall any Hindu filmmakers from India making films about their fellow Hindu religious fanatics being responsible for terrible atrocities against Muslim women. But Sumar has done just that for the Muslims with a terrible punch on Pakistan and Islam without looking at the causes a little more deeply. She seems happy to devour anyone she doesn't like. I feel she could have redeemed herself by showing some compassion by the Muslim men. Not all of them were barbaric during partition. It's all too relentlessly gloomy against every Pakistani man, including Ayesha's son Saleem. It's amazing that Ayesha remained a Muslim under the film's circumstances. She actually causes a lack of unity amongst her own people by making this critique in such a way. Sumar could have looked at the problems leading up to 1979 and that all was not right prior to General Zia-ul-Haq's move towards Islamism.
In some ways the film has a disillusionment plot from Saleem's point of view. I find it truly astounding that once Saleem understands his mother's suffering during partition that he would take the path that he does. Having said that, maybe that only promotes Islam as offering a better solution for the young man.
To end on a positive note, the director clearly has an eye for Pakistani culture as she depicts general everyday life very well. I particularly enjoyed the beautiful wedding scene and the colours.
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