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6/20/15 (Part One): The Enemy of My Enemy

22 Monday Jun 2015

Posted by phillipkaragas in Uncategorized

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action films, Andrea Riseborough, bad cops, British films, cinema, conspiracy, corrupt law enforcement, crime thriller, Daniel Mays, David Morrissey, Ed Wild, Elyes Gabel, Eran Creevy, father-son relationships, film reviews, films, gorgeous cinematography, Harry Escott, heists, Jacob Sternwood, James McAvoy, Jason Flemyng, Johnny Harris, Mark Strong, Max Lewinsky, Movies, odd couple, set in London, slo-mo shots, stylish films, thrillers, UK films, violent films, Welcome to the Punch, writer-director

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Possessing plenty of sizzle but precious little steak, writer-director Eran Creevy’s Welcome to the Punch (2013) is a classic example of style-over-substance: although the film has a high degree of technical polish, with some truly gorgeous cinematography and a collection of strong performances, it’s also unnecessarily complex, emotionally hollow and more than a little trite. At the end of the day, sitting down with Welcome to the Punch is a lot like watching a particularly vibrant fireworks display: you may be captivated in the moment, oohing and aahing in all the right places, but it’s highly unlikely that you’ll remember any of the explosions after the smell of gunpowder has wafted away.

The film kicks off with a tense and genuinely thrilling (if overtly flashy) heist sequence, followed by a high-speed escape on motorbikes through the streets of London. The leader of the thieves is Jacob Sternwood (Low Winter Sun’s Mark Strong), while the pursuing detective is Max Lewinsky (James McAvoy): when Max finally catches up to his quarry, he earns a bullet in his leg, for his troubles, and one helluva grudge. Sternwood escapes and our plucky hero vows to tear up every inch of ground from here to hell in order to get him back.

Flashing forward three years, Max is still nursing along his wounded leg, while Jacob is hiding out somewhere in Iceland, waiting for the heat to die down. When Jacob’s hot-headed son, Ruan (Elyes Gabel), is injured during his own heist, however, his father decides to risk returning to England in order to check on him. Big mistake, as it turns out, since Max has been biding his time for just such an instance. He may have a level-headed partner, Sarah (Andrea Riseborough), to keep him in check but he also has three years of pain and lost time to pay back: suffice to say, Max has no intention of letting his prey slip away twice.

As Max and Sarah pursue Jacob and investigate the details behind Ruan’s botched heist, they also begin to uncover hints of some sort of conspiracy going on behind the scenes, a conspiracy which may or may not involve their commanding officer, Lieutenant Geiger (David Morrissey), and his second-in-command, the officiously slimy Nathan Bartnick (Daniel Mays). In a properly ironic twist, it seems that the only person who can shed light on Max’s potentially crooked peers is the one man who he’ll stop at nothing to destroy: Jacob Sternwood. Will Max and Jacob be able to set aside their bad blood in order to get to the bottom of things or will the need for revenge override the need for truth?

From a technical standpoint, Welcome to the Punch is just about as good as this type of film gets: Ed Wild (who also shot one of my all-time favorite films, Severance (2006)), turns in some suitably eye-popping cinematography, featuring a wealth of beautiful crane and helicopter shots, a cool color palette and some immaculately composed shots, while Harry Escott’s score is duly thrilling, amping the numerous car chase/shootouts up to almost mythic proportions. This is the kind of film made for a wall-rattling sound system, the kind of movie where every gunshot and tire screech roars from the screen larger than life and ready to knock the unsuspecting viewer through the far wall.

The fight and chase scenes are all nicely composed and choreographed, avoiding the overly hectic editing of something like the Bourne series and ending up closest to the string of hard-edged ’80s action films that starred Burt Reynolds and an assortment of cannon fodder. It’s quite easy to get caught up in the film’s rollercoaster ride, especially when great patches barrel forward at such a relentlessly breathless pace.

The problem, unfortunately, ends up being that the whole thing makes such imperfect sense. At times, there’s the distinct feeling that Creevy has written his characters (and film) into such a corner that a dizzying amount of misdirection is required to keep us all on-track. There are so many crosses, double-crosses and red herrings that I gave up trying to make sense of it all about halfway through: it was much easier (and more pleasurable) to just shut off that part of my brain and enjoy the (admittedly) flashy ride.

This ends up being a huge problem because logic and thrills don’t have to be mutually exclusive: there’s no rule-book that says a heist/revenge film has to be any more nonsensical than your average “drama,” no blueprint that requires the jettisoning of common sense. This, ultimately, is what separates a film like Welcome to the Punch from a truly exceptional action movie like John Wick (2014): they’re both relentless thrill rides but John Wick always feels likes there’s more going on below the surface than we can catch, despite the film’s deceptively “simple” structure, whereas Welcome to the Punch produces the exact opposite reaction.

More’s the pity, since Creevy makes good use of a pretty stellar cast. As usual, McAvoy is granite-block sturdy as the honest cop with a grudge, while Strong turns in his best performance (as far as I’m concerned) yet. There’s a nuance and complexity to Sternwood that Strong really brings to the surface, making a nice contrast to the other, more reptilian, side of his coin. Riseborough does well with the slightly thankless role of the do-gooder partner, although both Morrissey and Mays turn in pretty standard-issue crooked cop roles: since we never really get under any of these characters’ skins, many of the performances come across more as generic types than actual individuals, despite the universally strong performances. While some of the performances are head-and-shoulders above the others (McAvoy and Strong, in particular), none of the actors are bad: it kind of goes hand-in-hand with the film’s high level of polish.

Ultimately, I found Welcome to the Punch to be fun and fast-paced, if largely forgettable. While there are a handful of really great scenes here (the one where Dean shows up at his mother’s house, only to find Max and Jacob already waiting for him, is one of the finest bits of sustained tension I’ve seen, while there are any number of endlessly kinetic, thrilling shootouts), the whole film is just too clichéd and “comfortable” to ever carve out its own patch of ground. In many ways, Welcome to the Fold reminds me of another loud, flashy and, ultimately, disappointing action film, Michael Davis’ Shoot ‘Em Up (2007).  While there will always be a place for a few mindless thrills, I can’t shake the feeling that Eran Creevy’s Welcome to the Punch could have been so much more.

3/10/15: Man…What An Animal!

25 Wednesday Mar 2015

Posted by phillipkaragas in Uncategorized

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Aidan Devine, Amy Matysio, bad cops, campy films, cheesy films, cinema, Corinne Conley, film reviews, films, Hobo With a Shotgun, horror-comedies, immortality, Jason Eisener, Jesse Moss, Jonathan Cherry, Leo Fafard, Lou Garou, Lowell Dean, Movies, Ryland Alexander, Sarah Lind, shapeshifters, sins of the fathers, Toxic Avenger, Troma films, werewolves, WolfCop, writer-director

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Making an intentionally campy, self-aware film is always a bit of a gamble. When it works, as with Jason Eisener’s peerless Troma-homage Hobo With a Shotgun (2011) or, to a lesser extent, Garrett Brawith’s FDR: American Badass (2012), the effects can best be described as pure, unabashed cinematic joy. These films thrive on a razor-thin separation between “clever” and “stupid,” the unspoken assumption that we’re all in on the same joke but we’re just going with the flow. Broad acting…crude humor…gory SFX…silly story developments…it’s all just part of the plan. These are the kinds of crowd-pleasing popcorn flicks that deserve a large crowd of giddy goofballs, ready to party and shout dialogue back at the screen.

When intentionally campy films don’t work, however, you get things like Sharknado (2013): shrill, cartoonish affairs that flaunt their cheap effects and bad actors with an almost pathological sense of glee. These are the B-movies (or C, in some cases) that tend to clog the feeding trough, making it harder to sift out the truly quality nuggets among the…refuse, shall we say. The bad news? There are a lot of really terrible “bad” films out there. The good news? Lowell Dean’s WolfCop (2014) sure as hell ain’t one of ’em.

The premise behind the film is appropriately lunk-headed, with just the right amount of awesome added, for spice: a ridiculously bad cop, Lou Garou (Leo Fafard), is knocked unconscious while poking around in the woods and wakes up with a pentagram carved in his chest. Since Lou’s the kind of guy who actively avoids busting criminals, drops his gun on a regular basis and shows up to work drunk, it’s probably not surprising that he’s gotten mixed up with some bad shit. When Lou turns into a werewolf (the bravura scene, set in a bar bathroom, really puts the “dick” in detective, shall we say), however, we might be forgiven for raising a few eyebrows.

Partnered up with the earnest, by-the-book Sgt. Tina Walsh (Amy Matysio) and scuzzy, gun enthusiast Willie Higgins (Jonathan Cherry), Lou delves into the mystery of his new “condition” and uncovers a mysterious plot that involves the town elders, an immortality ritual and evil, shapeshifting, lizard people. It’s an impossible case and the odds are impossibly high. Good thing Lou’s not just any old law enforcement officer…he’s WolfCop…and shit is about to get real hairy.

After a rough opening that comes uncomfortably close to bad TV, writer-director Dean’s WolfCop hits a pretty great groove and rides it effortlessly to a pretty satisfying, if silly, conclusion. In many ways, the film is like a kinder, gentler Hobo With a Shotgun or a less Dada take on Kaufman’s classic Toxic Avenger (1984). The acting is always broad (although the principals, particularly Fafard, are consistently good), the action is gory and goofy and subtlety is never one of its strong points. That being said, WolfCop is a relentlessly good time and much smarter than it appears: the film is full of clever background details and wolf imagery that helps drive home the central meaning without ever beating things into the ground.

When the film is firing on all cylinders (pretty much anytime WolfCop is whupping ass nine ways to Sunday), it’s a thing of beauty: Dean is a deft hand with the action sequences and manages to keep everything popping along in a truly kinetic fashion. This isn’t the same vaunted territory as Eisener’s Hobo, mind you (an obvious reference point for WolfCop, especially given the specious nature of each film’s protagonist), but it’s close enough for government work. The numerous transformation scenes…the bit where Lou turns his cop car into a sweet ride…the part where WolfCop rips off a dude’s face and throws it against a windshield, as the faceless guy runs around like…well…a chicken with its face ripped off…the acrobatic “SkiniMax” scene where bartender Jessica (Sarah Lind) has sex with WolfCop…they’re the great, giddy, B-movie moments that really make genre films like this so much fun.

WolfCop ends with an obvious setup for a sequel (on-screen text informs us that WolfCop 2 is coming soon, after all) and the biggest compliment I can offer the film is that I eagerly await said promised sequel. There was plenty of great stuff here and the barest minimum of unnecessary bummers (the numerous flashbacks were intrusive and rather irritating). Leo Fafard shows himself to be perfectly adept with the material, bringing just enough positive qualities to what could have been a pretty reprehensible character: we end up really feeling for Lou, which is a pretty big coup considering where the film started. Matysio makes a good foil for Fafard and there’s some genuine chemistry there: I hope the follow-up plays that up to good effect.

More than anything, I was impressed with the massive restraint that Lowell Dean showed here: there were about a million wrong turns that he could have taken, at any particular moment, but he manages to steer the film into some pretty inventive territory. WolfCop doesn’t reinvent the wheel but it hits cruising speed quickly and stays there: count me Team WolfCop from here on out…something tells me Dean has got plenty of tricks up his sleeve for future goodness.

12/14/14 (Part Two): The Little Garda Who Could

17 Wednesday Dec 2014

Posted by phillipkaragas in Uncategorized

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auteur theory, bad cops, Bad Lieutenant, Brendan Gleeson, buddy cop films, Calexico, cinema, corrupt law enforcement, David Wilmot, Declan Mannlen, Don Cheadle, drug dealers, dying mother, eponymous characters, FBI agents, feature-film debut, Film auteurs, film reviews, films, Fionnula Flanagan, fish-out-of-water, gallows' humor, Garda, Gary Lydon, Guy Ritchie, Irish films, John Michael McDonagh, Larry Smith, Liam Cunningham, Mark Strong, mother-son relationships, Movies, racism, Rory Keenan, Sergeant Gerry Boyle, set in Ireland, small town life, stolen guns, The Guard, UK films, Wendell Everett, writer-director

TheGuard

Towards the end of writer-director John Michael McDonagh’s The Guard (2011), there’s a scene where Sergeant Gerry Boyle (Brendan Gleeson) solemnly changes into his traditional “Garda” uniform before heading out to face-off with the vicious drug dealers who have cold-bloodedly killed his partner. As he drives down the country-road, eyes locked straight ahead, he’s saluted by a young boy: a hero being recognized by the very people that he’s sworn to protect, an image as timeless as the very concept of law enforcement. It’s a huge, soaring moment for one important reason: for the first time in years, Sergeant Boyle has decided to actually do his job and we know, without a doubt, that the end result will be simply glorious.

Sergeant Boyle is the titular “guard” of the title but he’s also The Guard in a larger sense: every frame of the film, every plot twist, blackly comic moment and dastardly deed in McDonagh’s stunning feature-debut is completely and totally dominated by the towering presence that is Gleeson’s Boyle, a character who manages to be gleefully corrupt, yet still stands as a beacon of truth amidst those who are, you know, a whole lot worse. In a career that’s stretched to nearly three decades, Gleeson has never been better or more explosive: take a seat, Harvey…this here is the REAL bad lieutenant and you won’t be able to take your eyes off him.

We first get introduced to Gerry as he steals drugs from the bodies of a bunch of teens who just flipped their speeding car. The police officer nonchalantly drops acid, says “What a lovely fucking day” and we get the title, so big that it fills the entire screen, squeezing Boyle into the margins. The intent, as mentioned above, is pretty obvious: Boyle will dominate the proceedings, no two ways about it. Boyle might not be an honest cop, but he’s sure a helluva lot smarter than the rest of his peers: his partner, McBride (Rory Keenan) is one small step away from being a complete idiot and their superior officer, Inspector Stanton (Gary Lydon), thinks that “liquidated” people are actually turned into liquid. In this environment, can anyone really blame Boyle for looking out for number one? It’s not so much that Boyle is a bad cop, or even a lazy one, per se: he’s just so burned out on all the bureaucratic bullshit that he’s completely tuned-out…no sense getting fired-up about fighting crime if everyone around you keeps dropping the ball, is there? Better to spend one’s time cavorting with prostitutes, playing video games in a pub during the middle of your shift and getting shit-faced whenever possible.

Boyle gets shaken from his comfortable stupor, however, when his small, Irish hamlet ends up with a certifiable murder-mystery: a body has been found, shot in the head and posed in a way that seems to indicate some sort of cult activity. Despite caring so little about the case that he practically yawns his way through the initial investigation, Boyle goes through the motions, since that’s what he’s expected to do. Things really get interesting, however, when FBI agent Wendell Everett (Don Cheadle) shows up in town, investigating some sort of major drug case that involves four seriously bad dudes: Francis (Liam Cunningham), McCormick (Declan Mannlen), O’Leary (David Wilmot) and Clive (Low Winter Sun’s Mark Strong).

During Everett’s debriefing, Boyle makes a complete ass of himself after stating that he thought “only black lads were drug dealers:” Everett calls him a “racist,’ to which Boyle snaps back that “racism is part of Ireland’s tradition.” Casually racist though he might be, Boyle also recognizes McCormick as their anonymous murder victim, which gives Everett his first actual break in the case. Faster than you can say “odd couple,” Boyle and Everett are soon working together, albeit as reluctantly as possible. “I can’t tell if you’re real motherfucking dumb or really motherfucking smart,” Everett notes, at one point, and it’s a pretty valid question: Boyle is constantly working so many angles that he’s either the dumbest guy in town or the smartest, depending on whose bad side he happens to be on. When Everett and Boyle end up in the crosshairs of Francis and his gang, however, Boyle’s going to need all of his wits to survive. When the drug dealers kill one of his own, however, regardless of what an idiot he was, Boyle has no choice: it’s time for this Garda to quit messing around and get to the business of putting away the bad guys.

The Guard is an exceptional film, no two ways about it: quite possibly one of the very best films of the last five years. So much of the film works to an almost supernatural degree that it readily brought to mind “instant classics” like Guy Ritchie’s Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels (1998). The cinematography, by frequent Nicholas Winding Refn collaborator Larry Smith, is beautiful, making expert use of bright, primary colors and that lush, gorgeous Irish countryside. The score, by the Southwestern-based Calexico, is ridiculously rousing, all spaghetti-Western horns, steel guitar and action beats like one of Ennio Morricone’s classic scores. McDonagh’s script is airtight, full of deliciously snarky dialogue and some of the driest humor ever put to film. There’s something rather amazing about watching Everett and Boyle feint, parry and thrust around each other, testing for weak points and trying to push as many buttons as possible.

Let’s not forget about the cast, however. While Cheadle and Gleeson are the main focal points, The Guard is filled with interesting, three-dimensional characters, not least of which are the three drug dealing villains. Veteran character-actor Liam Cunningham is great as the exasperated leader of the group, while David Wilmot shares a thoroughly badass scene with Gleeson that features one of the film’s most joyous surprises. Nearly stealing away their shared moments, however, is Mark Strong’s Clive Cornell: morose, philosophical, depressed and given to metaphysical ponderings, Clive is an awesome creation, at once lethal and silly. In fact, it’s to McDonagh’s great credit that one of the film’s sneakiest ideas (that no one, including the drug dealers, are actually doing the jobs they want to do) comes across entirely through subtle character development and dialogue: no unnecessary hand-holding to be found here!

It pretty much goes without saying that Cheadle is excellent as the put-upon fish-out-of-water FBI agent but let’s go ahead and say it again, anyway: Cheadle is absolutely excellent as Everett. Long one of Hollywood’s most dependable actors, Cheadle is the kind of performer, like Ron Perlman, who can elevate any film, regardless of the amount of screen time he gets. Here, we get lots of Cheadle and I don’t that anyone would mind. His scenes with Gleeson are marvelous little jewels but the really revelatory moments come when Everett is forced to pound the small-town pavement solo: his interactions with the overly hostile, racist locals are some of the best scenes in the film, hands-down.

The unquestionable star of the show, however, the “reason for the season,” as it were, is the amazing, unstoppable Brendan Gleeson. Towering over everything like a ragged, Gaelic god, Gleeson doesn’t appear to be acting: he honestly seems to be channeling the very spirit of Gerry Boyle. Gleeson doesn’t make a single misstep in the film: whether sneaking his dying mother (an outstanding Fionnula Flanagen) into the pub for one last pint, blowing Everett’s mind by rising from the freezing ocean in a skin-tight wetsuit or telling each and every authority figure in the world to sit and spin, Boyle is never less than completely charismatic and magnetic. I dare you to tear your eyes from the epic climax where Boyle strides relentlessly through the middle of a firefight, a rosy-faced Angel of Death who knows that he’s screwed and yet refuses to admit the fact to anyone, much less himself. There are countless good reasons to watch The Guard but there’s one necessary reason: no one who considers themselves an aficionado of fine acting can afford to miss Gleeson’s performance…it really is that good.

As it stands, The Guard is another film that I feel pretty confident recommending to anyone under the sun: if you’re a fan of darkly humorous UK crime films, “cops gone bad” movies or “buddy action” flicks, this one’s definitely for you. Truth be told, I really can’t see anyone walking out of The Guard disappointed or underwhelmed: if you should find such a person, stay far away, my friends…it’s obvious that they can’t be trusted.

9/14/14: This Little Piggy

29 Monday Sep 2014

Posted by phillipkaragas in Uncategorized

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bad cops, bad decisions, Bad Lieutenant, based on a book, black comedies, Brian McCardie, British films, cinema, Clint Mansell, corrupt law enforcement, Eddie Marsan, electronic score, Emun Elliott, film reviews, films, Filth, gallows' humor, Gary Lewis, homophobia, Imogen Poots, infidelity, insanity, Irvine Welsh, James McAvoy, Jamie Bell, Jim Broadbent, John Sessions, Jon S. Baird, Matthew Jensen, mental illness, Movies, pigs, racism, sexism, Shauna Macdonald, Shirley Henderson, Trainspotting, voice-over narration, writer-director

Filth-free-cinema-tickets

When it comes to filmed adaptations of Scottish scalawag Irvine Welsh’s novels, Danny Boyle’s extraordinary version of Trainspotting (1996) will probably always be the gold standard. In a way, Boyle’s film was a perfect storm and, perhaps, the only one of the adaptations to truly capture Welsh’s unique voice and style. Boyle managed to find the essential humanity at the core of some pretty reprehensible characters and wrapped the proceedings in an alternately candy-colored and bleakly hallucinatory environment: the film was the perfect combination of the romantic and the scatological, the joy and shuddering horror of the trod-upon Scotch lower-class writ large for the whole world to see. In Boyle’s hands, there was equal parts poetry and filth, the proverbial rose pushing up through a mountain of shit. Trainspotting works so well because Boyle walks the tightrope so perfectly: too much glitz and we lose the allure of Welsh’s gutter-punk angels…too much vulgarity and we tune out the misery, if only to avoid staring too deeply into the abyss.

Although it’s not (necessarily) meant as a pejorative, writer/director Jon S. Baird’s adaptation of Welsh’s Filth (2013) is no Trainspotting. In certain ways, the film plays more like an over-the-top (waaaaay over the top) take on Abel Ferrara’s classic of feel-bad-cinema, Bad Lieutenant (1999), just as content to shove our noses in bad behavior as it is to comment on it. Where Ferrara’s film wore its intentions on its sleeve, (any film that centers around a nun forgiving her rapist is obviously interested in more than just a visceral reaction), Filth is a little cagier about its ultimate goal. When Baird’s film works, it’s ferocious, funny, eye-popping and endlessly offensive, featuring a truly great ending and a career-best performance by James McAvoy. When the film doesn’t work, however, it’s actually rather dreadful: pretentious, empty-headed and more stylish than substantial, Filth manages to make all of the mistakes that Trainspotting didn’t. While I (ultimately) ended up liking the film quite a bit (no doubt due, in no small part, to that phenomenal ending), there was plenty that I found to be equally eye-rolling, obnoxious and tedious. Filth may not ascend to the heady heights that Trainspotting did but there’s plenty to enjoy here: fans of Welsh’s purple prose may, indeed, celebrate the fact that Baird has captured the author’s often difficult voice so well.

Our “hero” and guide through this little section of Hell is none other than Bruce Robertson (James McAvoy), a cop so completely and thoroughly corrupt/reprehensible that he makes Harvey Keitel’s titular “bad lieutenant” look like a real sweetheart. Bruce is virulently sexist, racist and homophobic, hoovers up cocaine by the metric ton and eagerly blackmails the underage daughter of a prominent lawyer into performing oral sex on him. He steals money from his “best friend” while anonymously serving as obscene phone-caller to the poor guy’s wife, while also sleeping with the wife of one of his co-workers. Bruce is angling for a department promotion which, in his fetid little world, involves doing everything he can to sabotage his fellow officers’ chances of vaulting over him to the finish line.

We first meet Bruce’s co-workers via a series of fantasy vignettes in which our resident Mr. Wonderful gives his (slanted) take on his peers: Dougie (Brian McCardie) is the “Nazi” who’s being cuckolded by Bruce; Peter (Emun Elliott) is the “metrosexual” and “closeted gay”; Ray (Jamie Bell) is the “coke-head rookie”; Gus (Gary Lewis) is the “old as dirt, single-IQ” department veteran and Amanda (Imogen Poots) is the “token female” who “must be sucking off the whole squad,” at least according to Bruce’s jaundiced worldview.

While Bruce’s work-life appears to be one never-ending scheme after another, his home-life appears to be just as complicated and unpleasant. We meet his lovely blonde wife, Carole (Shauna Macdonald), through a series of largely unsuccessful vignettes/voice-overs and get some hint of a past trauma after Bruce attempts (and fails) to give CPR to someone who has collapsed on the street. The dead man’s widow, Mary (Joanne Froggatt), periodically appears to serve as Bruce’s conscience, in a way, while also giving hints at the kind of love story that belongs in a much nicer film.

To muddy the waters even further, Bruce’s squad is currently embroiled in the controversial case of a Japanese exchange student who has been brutally beat to death by a gang of Scottish punks. As the team investigates the case, the stakes are raised when it’s revealed that closing the case will virtually guarantee one of them a plum new promotion: Bruce wants that promotion and sets out to stop his fellow officers in any way he can. Bruce has such single-minded devotion to his plan, in fact, that the actual murder case fades into the background, even when it appears that Carole may be the only witness to the incident.

As Bruce dives deeper and deeper into the sewage around him, his tenuous grasp on reality begins to flicker in and out: he starts to imagine people (including himself) with animal heads, loses control of his hair-trigger temper at a moment’s notice and descends even further into an unrelenting drug hell. Will Bruce be able to keep it all together long enough to solve the murder or, at the very least, completely wreck his co-workers’ lives? What mysterious incident happened to Bruce that causes him to constantly reminisce about a dead boy? And what, exactly, is going on with Bruce’s absent wife, Carole? The ultimate revelation is quite a surprise and leads to a truly bravura climax that almost (but not quite) rivals the “Choose life” finale from Trainspotting, albeit from a much grimmer angle.

As mentioned above, Filth is a pretty hit-and-miss affair but the hits are heady enough to gloss over the misses. Chief among the “pros” here is McAvoy’s astounding performance as Bruce: as painful as a raw nerve, as dastardly as any villain and just charming enough to prevent you from wanting to squash him like a bug, Bruce is a massively interesting construct and is brought to glorious life by McAvoy. Without a strong center, the film would, literally, collapse into wet newspaper: who the hell wants to get stuck with an unlovable, lecherous sociopath for 90 minutes? To McAvoy’s immense credit, he manages to humanize Bruce just enough (the guy is still an inhuman creep, mind you) to allow the finale to have genuine impact. There’s a truly odd but relentlessly effective scene where Bruce obscene calls his friend’s wife while watching old home movies: as tears stream down his cheeks and his eyes betray pure misery, Bruce mouths some of the most vile “sex talk” in some time and masturbates in almost robotic fashion. The split screen shows us that Bunty (Shirley Henderson) is also furiously pleasuring herself, which makes a ludicrous parallel to Bruce’s miserable actions. It’s a small but effective moment, a bit that fuses the film’s twin obsessions of gutter-trawling and emotional overload into one dynamic whole.

Although McAvoy is, head and shoulders, the focal point of the film, it’s definitely not a one-man show. The ensemble is a particularly strong one, with all of Bruce’s co-workers receiving their own moment in the sun, along with some despicable behaviors of their own. Particularly impressive, however, is veteran British character-actor Eddie Marsan as Bruce’s put-upon “best friend” and Masonic Lodge brother Clifford. With his doughy features and perpetually hang-dog demeanor, Clifford is a fabulous foil for Bruce: the scene where Bruce takes Clifford out for a night on the town flops wildly between a “night out for the lads” and “complete psychological torture.” Clifford is an intriguing character and Marsan goes for the gusto in the role, expanding what could have been a caricature into a fully fleshed, if largely worthless, individual.

From a craft standpoint, Filth looks great, although it’s occasionally a little blown-out for my tastes. The film also has the benefit of a pretty excellent soundtrack courtesy of former Pop Will Eat Itself frontman Clint Mansell: while the score doesn’t rival the iconic soundtrack from Trainspotting, it’s still an effective combination of Mansell’s traditional electro scorework and some pretty apt pop tunes (Mansell’s evocative cover of Radiohead’s Creep scores the final scene and is absolutely perfect for the mood Baird has established.

While the film has plenty to recommend it, however, there’s also plenty that nearly derails it completely. The interludes with Carole never work and always seem ancillary to the main narrative. They’re also quite irritating, to be honest, and tonally out-of-sorts with the rest of the film. Along those lines, several scenes, such as the impromptu musical number, seem out-of-place and manage to fall completely flat, affording nothing more than a shrug. For a film that’s about lurid and anti-social behavior, Filth also has a strange tendency to seem…well, just a little bit tame, if that makes sense. Whereas Ferrara’s Bad Lieutenant was a feral, unhinged fever dream, Filth plays out more as a snide, tongue-in-cheek expose on “bad behavior”: it’s a little like crossing the street to avoid an exceptionally creepy looking stranger only to discover that the stranger is actually Robert Pattinson with drawn-on tattoos. In many ways, I fear that this comes down to the film’s “style over substance” issues: like many other “everything and the kitchen sink films,” Filth throws so much stuff at the audience that, inevitably, fatigue sinks in. Compare this to the groodiest moments in Boyle’s masterpiece and it’s easy to see how less can, indeed, often be more.

Ultimately, I found myself quite taken with Filth, even though it’s several solid steps below Trainspotting. McAvoy is pitch-perfect throughout and is just good enough to warrant watching the film: regardless of your tolerance for the debauchery on display, McAvoy is outstanding and turns in a real “actor’s performance.” If you can forgive the film its excesses and step over the plot holes that begin to spread like wildfire in the second half (my least favorite being the revelation that Bunty doesn’t realize it’s Bruce that’s been prank-calling her: Really? I mean…really?), I think that you’ll find Filth to be a massively entertaining examination of one of the slimiest cinematic slugs to slither its way across the silver screen in some time. You might not be able to stand in Bruce’s corner (I’d be kind of scared if you could) but that shouldn’t stop you from seeing him get his just desserts. Filth might not be Trainspotting but, for patient and tolerant viewers, it just might be the next best thing.

7/19/14 (Part Two): Sucker’s Bet

14 Thursday Aug 2014

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13 Sins, bad cops, bad decisions, brothers, cinema, conspiracy theories, corrupt law enforcement, Daniel Stamm, deadly games, desperate times, Devon Graye, dysfunctional family, Elliot Brindle, film reviews, films, horror films, Mark Webber, Movies, Pruitt Taylor Vance, remakes, Ron Perlman, Rutina Wesley, The Game, The Last Exorcism, Tom Bower, writer-director

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Just what, exactly, would you be willing to do for complete financial freedom? It’s an interesting question, especially in this day and age where any and everyone seem desperate to secure their “15 minutes of fame” by any means necessary. The formerly notorious but now (presumably) passe game show, Fear Factor, sought to answer this question with a variety of stunts and “dares,” although the rewards usually fell far short of the aforementioned “complete financial freedom” angle. In this case, contestants would eat reindeer testicles, sit in glass boxes filled with tarantulas and perform “hazardous” stunts (hazardous, of course, being a relative term when network television takes as many precautions as humanly possible to avoid on-air death), all for a cash prize that, if memory serves correctly, was nowhere near the amount required to make someone financially independent.

In the case of Fear Factor, people were willing to do some pretty icky things (eating balut, as far as I’m concerned, will always be a deal-breaker) but everything was undertaken with the assurance (again, born of network television, the “safe word” of the entertainment industry) that no harm could really befall the contestants or those around them: the very worst that could happen would be someone puking, which falls pretty low on the “soul-shattering” scale. What if the safety nets of polite society were removed, however? What if the stakes were raised and someone were actually offered complete financial security in exchange for completing a series of ever more heinous tasks? Where would we end up drawing the line? Would we draw a line? These are the questions that writer/director Daniel Stamm asks in 13 Sins (2014), a remake of the earlier Thai film 13: Game of Death (2006). When basic morality stands in the way of a truly life-changing amount of money, is the world really as black and white as we wish it were? Or are the obvious shades of gray that fill the margins more terrifying than any potential monster under the bed?

After a truly dynamic, disturbing opening that introduces us to the closing moves of a previous “game,” 13 Sins begins proper by introducing us to our hero, the put-upon sad-sack known as Elliot Brindle (Mark Webber). As far as problems go, Elliot has a fairly full plate: he’s just about to get married to his pregnant fiancée, Shelby (Rutina Wesley), while also taking care of his mentally disabled brother, Michael (Devon Graye) and his bitter, racist, hateful father (Tom Bower). To make everything better, Elliot has just been fired from his job as an insurance salesman (he isn’t able to “do what it takes,” which is about as obvious as the foreshadowing really gets), his brother is getting kicked out of his care facility and his father is getting kicked out of his retirement home. Holy insurmountable problems, Batman! To whit: Elliot now has no income, an expensive wedding to take care of and needs to move his vile father (Shelby happens to be black, which makes her a constant target for the father’s virulent racism) and loving but “challenging” brother into his small home. For most people, these might be the kind of issues that would completely crush and destroy someone’s spirit. Turns out, Elliot may just be one of those kind of folks, after all.

Our hero’s luck changes, however, when he gets a mysterious phone call while stopped at a deserted intersection in the middle of the night. The unknown, excessively jovial person on the other end of the line tells Elliot that he has the opportunity to be on a game show: when Elliot, rightfully, expresses his disbelief, the caller proceeds to reveal several aspects about Elliot’s personal life that no one should really know. He then tells Elliot to swat the pesky fly that’s currently bopping around his car: if he does, he’ll automatically earn $1000. After swatting the fly, Elliot receives a text message that alerts him to the successful completion of Task 1. A follow-up calls gives Elliot his next task: eat the dead fly and receive $3622, the exact amount that Shelby owes on her credit card. This would make an awfully nice wedding present, according to the voice, and a perfect way to begin Elliot and Shelby’s life as a married couple.

After getting home and checking his bank account, Elliot realizes that the caller isn’t joking: $1000 has recently been deposited to his account. After roughly a second of forethought, Elliot eats the fly, completing Task 2 and receiving his next payment. At this point, the mysterious caller fills him in on the rest of the details: Elliot must complete a total of thirteen excessively more difficult tasks, each task worth an increasingly large sum of money, all the way up to the 13th task, which will reward Elliot with a “life-changing amount of money.” Failure to complete any task will result in “losing it all,” including all money won up to that point, as will trying to interfere with the game in any way. Telling anyone about the game, whether his loving fiancée or law enforcement officials, will also result in a loss: according to the voice, the game is solely Elliot’s to win (or lose). If he wins, Elliot and Shelby will begin their new life on their own terms. If he loses, well…how much worse off could he get? Elliot completes his registration process by facing the bathroom window and intoning “I will dance with the golden toad”: with that, the game is afoot…and Elliot’s fate is sealed.

The kicker, of course, is that Elliot really has no idea how bad things will get until the shit hits the proverbial fan. While the initial tasks seem harmless, if decidedly odd (killing and eating a fly may be nasty but it doesn’t exactly turn someone into Ed Gein), the follow-up tasks find Elliot going down an increasingly grim rabbit hole of public disturbance and reprehensible behavior: making a child cry, burning up a church’s nativity scene (handcrafted by blind children, naturally), getting revenge on a childhood bully. As Elliot completes the increasingly more unpleasant tasks, he must take great pains to keep Shelby, Michael and his father from figuring out what’s going on. Things become even more complicated when a gruff, no-nonsense police detective (Ron Perlman) begins investigating Elliot’s various “crimes.” As the caller continually reminds Elliot, he’s now so far into the game that winning it is the only way out: otherwise, he’ll end up serving some pretty decent jail time for his various “crimes against humanity.”

Elliot is fundamentally a good guy, however, and really just wants to provide for his family under some pretty difficult circumstances. As a nice guy, he begins to balk at some of the tasks but an odd thing begins to happen: as Elliot completes more and more tasks, he begins to get a bit…well, acclimated, to the whole thing. He begins to swagger around and get back some of his old self-confidence. While Elliot may not be doing particularly nice things, he is, at the very least, taking direct steps to dig his way out of the financial hole he’s buried in. He’s doing what all of us would like to do: pulling himself up by his own bootstraps and initiative. Once the tasks take a horrifying turn, however, Elliot is left with a very basic but all-important question: what does it benefit a man to gain it all if he loses his very humanity, in the process? As his life spirals completely out of control and Elliot comes ever closer to that feared 13th Task, he will quickly learn that there are more than one way to play any game. And, sometimes, winning can be worse than losing.

While watching 13 Sins, I was constantly reminded of an old saying: “If this is the kind of thing you like, then you’re gonna love this.” In some ways, Stamm’s film is the very epitome of this ideal: certain people (myself included) will eat up the film’s concentrated nastiness with a spoon, whereas others will find the whole thing to be such a despicable little bit of coal-black misanthropy that they probably won’t make it past the first 10 minutes. To be fair, both viewpoints are completely valid: 13 Sins is absolutely not for everyone and anyone with a decidedly “sensitive” palette should approach this with extreme caution. While the film does go to some pretty intense places, gore-wise, it goes to some even more intense places, concept-wise, which will probably be the dividing line for most folks.

In many ways, the film acts as a sort of moral barometer, asking the audience just how far “too far” really is. I can think of very few people who would have significant moral quandaries over eating, much less killing, a fly. I even know plenty of people who might not balk at making an anonymous child cry (if you know who you are, for gods’ sake, keep your damn hand down!). Suffice to say, however, that I’m eternally grateful for not knowing anyone who could surf through all 13 tasks without feeling at least some sort of pang to the conscience area, especially once we get to the dreaded 13th task. This, then, is the film’s greatest coup and its biggest virtue: it sets up a slippery-slope of dubious actions that traps the viewer half-way down, like a Venus Fly Trap. As we find more and more ways to justify what goes on (I could do that, if I really tried…I could do that if I didn’t think about it…I could do that if I really had to…I could do that if I had absolutely no other choice), it becomes painfully clear that morality and the notion of “good vs evil” are much less concretely defined than many of us might have previously hoped. Even when one adds in the supposed assurances of organized religion, there’s still the unspoken notion that we would violate any and every taboo if only to safeguard our loved ones: hard-and-fast rules are all well and good until it’s your husband/wife/baby/parents/siblings/best friends on the chopping block. At that point, many of us might find ourselves rethinking long-held notions of right and wrong, arriving at a definition that’s a bit more conditional and less rigidly enforced.

But this is all, of course, almost completely academic: a film can worry us with moral quandaries until the cows come home (Are the cows properly treated? Have they been fed growth hormones and kept in tiny pens? Are we raising them simply to be slaughtered or do realize that all living creatures have inherent value as individuals? What if the cows can’t find their way home?) but still have as much impact as one of those old videos from high school health classes. How does 13 Sins hold up as an actual film? Does it work as both a thriller/chiller and a thought-provoking dissertation on our modern malaise? For the most part, despite a few rather sizable plot holes, the answer is a resounding “absolutely.”

While I’ve never seen Stamm’s previous films (I’ve never cared enough for demonic possession films to have really paid The Last Exorcism (2010) much attention and his debut, A Necessary Death (2008) sounds intriguing but was, likewise, off my radar), 13 Sins is a thoroughly well-made, effective little film. Mark Webber channels the working-class relateability of someone like Sam Rockwell in his portrayal of Elliot, which makes it much easier to empathize with his character’s oftentimes terrible decision-making. Devon Graye is excellent as the developmentally-disabled Michael, managing to make the character seem less stereotypical than might previously be possible for a character of this type in a genre film. Perlman, of course, is spectacular but when is the guy ever bad? Even if he were phoning in the performance (which he doesn’t), Perlman would be an utterly magnetic, charismatic presence: there’s one throwaway bit where he sticks his tongue out at a little girl that manages to be hit so many character “buttons” at one time that it’s kind of ridiculous…in a completely badass way, of course. My big complaint with Perlman’s performance in 13 Sins is the same from any film that he doesn’t star in: there’s way too little of him here, although what’s here is suitably excellent. The rest of the cast, from Tom Bower’s obnoxious father to Rutina Wesley’s eternally faithful, if utterly confused, Shelby provide great support for Webber but, ultimately, this is his film and his journey to make.

From a production standpoint, 13 Sins is top-notch: while the film often has a glossy, heavily produced look, the subject matter is pure exploitation, taking a certain perverse glee in presenting a raft of unpleasant situations in as visually appealing a way as possible. When they saw an arm off in the film, it looks great, even if the scene is so protracted as to practically demand nausea: it’s the film’s great blessing (curse?) that everything is delivered in as hyper-realistic a way as possible, even as the scenarios become increasingly fanciful and “unrealistic.”

Since 13 Sins is, technically, a mystery (at least in the same vein as Fincher’s The Game (1997)), the script becomes all-important and Stamm (working with co-writer David Birke) has crafted a particularly smart, strong foundation. While I found the ultimate resolution to be a little problematic (without going into much detail, it bothered me that Elliot didn’t think through the ultimate ramifications of his final bit of revenge: could he have really been that short-sighted?), the plot is exceedingly tight. The tendency to group certain tasks together felt a little arbitrary and more than a little lazy, on occasion (Wait…we really have to think up 13 different tasks? What if we just came up with…I dunno…11 or so and just fudged the rest?) and there were a few elements that seemed unnecessarily vague (I still have no idea what the 5th Task entailed, although I’m pretty sure the filmmakers didn’t, either) but these are, ultimately, pretty small quibbles. When 13 Sins works, it works amazingly well, provided the same sort of gut-punch, visceral reaction that I had to the first Saw (2004). When it doesn’t work, it’s a quick-paced, highly entertaining and suitably sleazy thriller: in my book, that’s kind of a win-win situation.

Ultimately, 13 Sins, like American Mary (2012), is one of those films that is easy for me to like but difficult for me to recommend. While the subject matter is certainly less immediately reprehensible than the body modification/torture scenarios of American Mary, I can’t help but feel that many viewers will feel completely shut out of the pitch-black heart that beats at the center of 13 Sins. In many ways, Stamm’s film is holding a cracked fun house mirror up to society and asking us if we like what we see: in a day and age where, literally, “anything goes,” Stamm asks us to reconsider that notion just a little further. After all, you might be willing to do just about anything to provide yourself with a viable future but how far are you actually willing to go to test that hypothesis? Killing that fly is a small step, sure, but it’s still the first step: at this point, what step are we all on and how far will we go before we say “enough is enough?”

7/16/14: Hat’s Off to the Old School

12 Tuesday Aug 2014

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action films, bad cops, based on a book, bullies, Burt Reynolds, Chuck Zito, cinema, corrupt law enforcement, DEA agents, drug dealer, druglord, film reviews, films, Frank Grillo, Gary Fleder, Homefront, Izabela Vidovic, James Franco, Jason Statham, Kate Bosworth, Marcus Hester, Movies, Rachelle Lefevre, single father, small town life, Sylvester Stallone, thrillers, Winona Ryder

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There’s certainly something to be said for a nice full-throttle, no-frills, old-fashioned action film. You know the kind that I mean: white hats vs black hats, clear-cut heroes and villains, lots of ass-kicking and just enough tension to make us think that anything could happen, even if our steadfast hero has everything locked down tighter than Fort Knox. The ’80s were a pretty fertile breeding ground for films like this, turning square-jawed bruisers like Chuck Norris, Sly Stallone, Bruce Willis, Burt Reynolds and their ilk into box-office warriors and giving a generation of kids a bakers’ dozen of take-charge “do-gooders” to look up to. While it’s debatable whether modern audiences are looking that far backwards (although the prevalence of remakes and re-dos as of late makes me think that someone has their eye planted on the rearview mirror), it’s pretty clear that filmmakers are, consciously or not, evoking the Reagan-era left and right. Case in point: director Gary Fleder’s recent Homefront (2013), a film that comes off as so influenced by gritty ’80s action films that it plays as more of an homage to the era than other obviously ’80s-leaning flicks like Almost Human (2013) and Hobo With a Shotgun (2011).

In certain ways, Homefront plays like a long-lost Burt Reynolds film, perhaps one of the string of gritty shoot-’em’ups that the hirsute mega-star was involved with throughout the ’80s: movies like Sharky’s Machine (1981), Stick (1985), Heat (1986) and especially Malone (1987) certainly seem to be spiritual forefathers to Homefront, if not strictly genetic ones. It’s certainly not difficult to see star Jason Statham as the successor to ’80s action stars: his patented brand of brooding, kind-hearted cynicism seems tailor-made for films where he reluctantly (but efficiently) opens industrial-sized barrels of whup-ass on thoroughly deserving bad guys. With Homefront, however, Statham might have just found his most implicitly ’80s film yet: that the film also ends up being one his most entertaining is certainly no mean feat.

Homefront kicks off with a sequence that, for better or worse, looked and felt like a scene from Sons of Anarchy: we watch as undercover DEA agent Phil Broker (Jason Statham) is involved in the takedown of big-time biker/druglord Danny T (Chuck Zito) and his gang. During the bust and subsequent high-speed chase through the city, Danny T’s son pulls a piece and is promptly aerated by multiple rounds from about a million cops. Broker is disgusted by the senseless killing (although, to be fair, the dude did pull a gun while surrounded by at least an entire squadron of police officers…what did he assume would happen?) and quits the force.

Fast-forward two years and Broker is now the single-father to adorable 9-year-old munchkin Maddy (Izabela Vidovic). The two live in a small, Southern town where Broker is a building contractor and does everything humanly possible to blend into the background. Blending is difficult when you have a self-assured kid who’s an expert at self-defense, however, which Broker learns after Maddy (politely) kicks the ever-loving shit out of a douchbag bully at school. Enter the bully’s repulsive parents, the ridiculously white-trash-and-proud-of-it Cassie (Kate Bosworth) and her spineless asshat of a husband, Jimmy (Marcus Hester). Cassie is furious that her beloved meatsack son got schooled by a girl and browbeats Jimmy into confronting Broker. This, of course, is a terrible move, as Broker proceeds to politely kick Jimmy’s ass up one side of the street and down the other, all while the local Sheriff (Clancy Brown) looks on.

Since Cassie has never been one to leave well-enough alone, she decides to take her complaint up the food chain: next stop, her insane brother and local meth kingpin, “Gator” Bodine (James Franco). Gator is a real piece of work, as we see when he mercilessly beats a group of sad-sack wannabe meth cooks with a baseball bat. Gator may be providing meth to his miserable addict of a sister but she’s still family, dammit, and no smooth city boy is gonna fuck with his family. This ends up setting off a chain of events where Gator and his men try to run Broker and his daughter out of town, all while Broker finds new and exciting ways to break jaws, legs, ribs and skulls. All that Broker wants is to be left alone to raise his daughter in (relative) peace and quiet. When Gator ups the ante by getting Danny T involved, Broker has no choice but to take it all to its logical extreme: if it’s a war that the backwoods mafia wants, it’s a war that they’re gonna get. To paraphrase that paragon of ’80s badassery: I pity the fool who gets between Broker and his daughter.

Like the best ’80s action flicks, Homefront is one big, thrilling mess of shattered limbs, anonymous baddies getting ventilated with automatic weapons, massive explosions, gritty violence and memorably evil antagonists. As with the best ’80s action flicks, however, Homefront lives or dies based on the inherent cool of its hero and Statham is more than up for the task. While I’ve always enjoyed Statham as an action figure, I must admit that most of his more popular films (The Transporter series, the Crank series) tend to just wear me out: as a rule, the films are kinetic nightmares, full of seemingly endless stunts, fights, explosions and little to no sense of narrative flow. If anything, they seem sort of like R-rated cartoons, so chaotic and manic that sitting through them is more about overcoming the distractions and “absorbing” the films versus actually enjoying them.

Not so with Homefront, thankfully: despite its overly polished look and sound (at times, the film looks distressingly like a Hallmark Movie of the Week, albeit one with a poundingly loud soundtrack and more casual ultra-violence than most Schwarzenegger flicks), Homefront is just about as gritty as it gets and is decidedly reminiscent of the aforementioned ’80s actions flicks. Statham brings a tired, world-weary sensibility to his portrayal of Phil Broker that really works: he doesn’t want to keep cracking skulls but he’ll be damned if these morons just can’t take the hint. Every good ’80s action star needs a good villain, however, and Franco is more than capable as the bat-shit-scary Gator. I have a love-hate relationship with Franco, to be honest: when the guy is on point, he’s pretty damn amazing, a smirking chameleon who can easily morph into whatever role he wants. The rest of the time, however, I find him to be a rather pretentious douchbag, more given to creating and upholding his own “mythology” than he is in crafting an indelible body of work: I can totally dig “Franco the actor” but I often find myself wanting to kick “Franco the celebrity” square in the family jewels.

Luckily for me, “Franco the actor” is front and center in Homefront and his Gator may be my favorite role of his yet. Franco can be an unusually expressive actor and his performance here is a minor miracle of facial tics, raised eyebrows, subtle mannerisms and explosive violence: he underplays the role so much that when he finally lets loose, he really lets loose, bringing the thunder in a pretty major way. Compare this to Winona Ryder’s “gal Friday” part as Gator’s on-again/off-again girlfriend Sheryl for an interesting parallel: Franco underplays everything to marvelous effect while Ryder overplays everything and comes across like a nitwit. In a long career of hot-and-cold performances, Ryder’s Sheryl has to be one of her coldest: despite the histrionics, there’s no part of her performance that resonates in any meaningful way.

Kate Bosworth, on the other hand, surprises rather handily as the virulent, awful Cassie. At first, Cassie comes across as the worst kind of stereotypical redneck (think a Deliverance (1972) baddie but with less self-control) but Bosworth is a gifted enough performer to bring plenty of nuance to her character, enough so that her 11th hour “humanization” comes across more as a natural progression than a deus ex machina. Poor Rachelle Lefevre (Under the Dome), however, ends up being completely wasted as Susan, one of Maddy’s teachers. In certain ways, the character of Susan feels as if it were hacked to pieces and left to bleed out on the cutting-room floor: not only does the expected (and teased) romance with Broker never materialize but Susan doesn’t really do much of anything, save walk around and look concerned. Faring much better is current action star Frank Grillo (The Grey (2011), The Purge: Anarchy (2014)), who makes a pretty scary badguy as Danny T’s lieutenant, Cyrus. The scene where he forces Sheryl to meet him at a seafood restaurant, despite her allergy to shellfish, is pretty unforgettable and prime Grillo, a it were.

Despite really enjoying Homefront, there were a few issues that forced me to rate it a little lower than I might have otherwise. As mentioned earlier, the film is never quite gritty enough to shake off that whole “Hallmark Movie” notion (in particular, the score is always heavy-handed and way too leading), despite the abundance of violence. There’s also an odd tendency for the “heroes” to seem all but invincible: there are at least four, if not more, times during the film where a good guy suffers what appears to be a fatal injury only to just “walk it off.” The same doesn’t apply to the bad guys, however, who tend to kick the bucket in herds. I was also less than enamored with a weird, irritating editing tic wherein upcoming scenes are briefly edited onto the tail-end of the preceding scene. I’m not sure who thought this was a good (or even clever) idea but it really isn’t: had the rest of the film not been so rock-solid, this would have been a deal-breaker, for sure.

That being said, I ended up enjoying Homefront to an almost ludicrous degree, perhaps because it so effectively channeled those ’80s flicks I grew up on. The script, based on a novel but adapted by action star Sly Stallone, is quite good and the numerous fight scenes are real corkers: Statham really knows how to portray a cinematic asskicker and Fleder, who also helmed Things to Do in Denver When You’re Dead (1995) and Kiss the Girls (1997), really knows how to make him look badass doing it. I really bought the relationship between Maddy and her dad, which never seemed forced and overly saccharine. And then, of course, there’s that glorious performance by Franco: somebody make this guy a Bond villain, stat!

At the end of the day, Homefront is unapologetically violent, a little cheesy and over-produced. The film is also genuinely exciting, action-packed and full of undeniable energy and verve. If you’re looking for a good, old-fashioned, black-and-white story about good guys kicking the snot out of bad guys, you could do a whole lot worse than Homefront. For anyone who grew up on those caustically cool ’80s actioners, however, Homefront may just look a lot like manna from heaven. Statham may not have Burt’s chest-chair but he sure as hell has his eye for dependably tough action roles. Let’s hope he can grind out a few more of these and give the Transporter and Crank films a rest.

7/4/14: Moonshine Over My Hammy

07 Thursday Aug 2014

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bad cops, based on a book, based on a true story, Benoit Delhomme, bootleggers, brothers, Chris McGarry, cinema, corrupt law enforcement, Dane DeHaan, film reviews, films, Gary Oldman, Guy Pearce, Jason Clarke, Jessica Chastain, John Hillcoat, Lawless, Mia Wasikowska, moonshine, Movies, Nick Cave, period-piece, romance, set in the 1930s, Shia LeBeouf, the Great Depression, The Proposition, The Road, Tom Hardy, voice-over narration

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There are some writer/director relationships that end up bearing more interesting fruit than others and the pairing of Australian director John Hillcoat and post-punk savant Nick Cave is certainly one of those. Beginning with the brutal Ghosts…of the Civil Dead (1988) and continuing on into the equally raw The Proposition (2005), Hillcoat and Cave have proved a formidable team: Hillcoat is a masterful director who’s able to wring genuine pathos out of Cave’s often unpleasant, animalistic but eternally vital characters. Stylistically, Cave’s voice approximates Cormac McCarthy’s tales of moral decay, explosive violence and doomed fatalism, which are only complimented by Hillcoat’s panoramic, sweeping visuals. When it was revealed that Hillcoat and Cave’s next pairing would be an adaptation of Matt Bondurant’s novel about his bootlegging family, The Wettest County in the World, I was interested to see how the two native Australians would be able to bring their particular vision to bear on Prohibition-era rural Virginia. Turns out, there’s still plenty of brutality to go around, although Lawless (2012) ends up feeling like a much different beast than either Ghosts…of the Civil Dead or The Proposition.

Lawless involves the various machinations of the Bondurant family: brothers Jack (Shia LaBeouf), Forrest (Tom Hardy) and Howard (Jason Clarke). The brothers run one of the biggest, most impressive bootlegging operations in rural Virginia and are something of local gods, particularly when one factors in the local legend about the Bondurant’s invincibility (an interesting hint of magical realism that also informed bits of The Proposition). Brutish, laconic Forrest is the defacto leader, although youngest brother, Jack, is our entry point into the story. He’s the “new generation,” as it were, and constantly strains at the restraints that he feels are placed by his more cautious older brothers. Jack also idolizes urban gangster Floyd Banner (Gary Oldman), a flashy, tommy-gun-wielding hothead who bears more than a passing resemblance to the legendary “Pretty Boy” Floyd. Forrest, for his part, just wants life to keep going as it has been: the family has managed to carve out their own piece of happiness and success amid the turmoil of the Great Depression and Forrest will do anything to protect their way of life.

Trouble, as it often does, ends up riding into town in the person of sleazy G-man Charlie Rakes (Guy Pearce). Rakes, all ash-white complexion, plucked eyebrows and fastidious dislike of dirt and germs, is a mealy-mouthed monster and just about as far from “law and order” as a lawman can get. Together with corrupt Virgina Commonwealth Attorney, Mason Wardell (Tim Tolin), Rakes is more interested in shaking the Bondurants down and taking a cut of their profits than he is in eliminating the run of moonshine from Franklin County out to the rest of the bone-dry state. Hard-headed Forrest won’t budge, however, initiating a war between the bootleggers of Franklin County and Rakes. As the casualties build up on both sides, the polar ends of the Bondurant clan must deal with their own issues: Forrest begins a halting, tentative relationship with Maggie (Jessica Chastain), a waitress at the Bondurants’ “bar,” while Jack tries to court Bertha Minnix (Mia Wasikowska), the virginal daughter of a local fundamentalist preacher. When Forrest is ambushed and injured during a liquor delivery that Jack was supposed to back him up on, Jack decides to strike a deal with Floyd Banner, which irks Forrest and creates a division in the family. As the corrupt feds close in and their fellow bootleggers either fall in line or are outright killed, the Bondurants must make a desperate last stand to preserve their way of life. Will Forrest be able to pulverize the problem into submission or has his luck (and invincibility) finally run out?

While Lawless has moments of abject brutality that nearly rival anything in Hillcoat and Cave’s previous films (the scene where Forrest beats ten shades of red out of a pair of barroom louts with some brass knuckles manages to be both immensely horrifying and primally satisfying, while the scene where Rakes’ men tar and feather a bootlegger is just horrifying), this is a much “softer” film than either Ghosts…or The Proposition. For one thing, Hillcoat and Cave break up the brutality with the twin romance angles, which bring some delicate balance to the proceedings: while the relationship between Jack and Bertha often feels a bit silly and clichéd, there’s some genuine pathos to the tender, wounded courtship between the formerly big-city Maggie and the resolutely grim Forrest. While neither romance ever really takes center stage, they both serve as decent enough ways to break up the near constant stream of beatings (poor Jack gets wailed on at least three separate times, including once by his own brother), shootings and stabbings, along with the odd rape and tar-and-feathering here and there.

While Lawless looks absolutely gorgeous (veteran French cinematographer Benoit Delhomme provides us with some truly striking, beautiful images, as well as a really evocative way with hard shadows and dark areas), the whole film is let-down by the often out-of-place acting. Hardy, in particular, is frequently kind of awful but there isn’t a single performance in the film that feels genuine or rings true. Perhaps the award here must go Guy Pearce, however, who plays Rakes right to the cheap seats and comes up with something akin to a mustache-twirling Bond villain. LaBeouf (who can be decent-enough, given the right role) feels severely light-weight as Jack and Jason Clarke gets so little to do as “other brother” Howard that I kept wondering if most of his character arc got left on the cutting-room floor. Only Chastain (who’s always been hit-or-miss for me) acquits herself admirably as Maggie: there’s genuine pain in her performance but there’s also some steel there, too, a fighting impulse that somehow seems both more real and more feral than the one ascribed to Hardy’s character.

With more fine-tuned, realistic performances, Lawless would be a much better film, although it’s still decidedly lightweight when compared to Hillcoat and Cave’s other collaborations. There were several points during the film, not least of which during a thoroughly unnecessary closing tag, where it felt like Hillcoat lets the material get away from him and the tone had a tendency to flop violently between breezy, musical montage action scenes and moments such as the one where a character is “reverse-gutted” from tailbone to neckbone. This back-and-forth was also evident, to a much smaller degree, in The Proposition but Lawless’ tone feels less structured and more haphazard. When the film works, it works spectacularly well: the combination of the Depression-era setting, extreme violence and a rousing bluegrass-ish score never cease to get the blood-pumping. When one steps back to examine the film as a whole, however, it seems to come up a bit short. It’s a pity, really: there seems to be a really intense, gritty story locked inside but the constant overacting took me out so often that I ended up viewing events in a much more clinical manner than I would have liked. The greatest criticism that I can level against Lawless is that, for the first time, Hillcoat and Cave appear to have created something that feels disposable rather than essential. Here’s to hoping that their next partnership bears better fruit than this one.

6/11/14: Workin’ on Something Big

21 Monday Jul 2014

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abusive relationships, bad cops, Bitter Feast, character dramas, cinema, con-men, Dennis Farina, dignity, dramas, film reviews, films, Gary Cole, getting back in the game, growing old, grown children, Ian Barford, Jamie Anne Allman, Joe Maggio, Joe May, Matt DeCaro, Meredith Droeger, mobsters, Movies, old age, precocious kids, respect, short money con, sick characters, single mother, The Last Rites of Joe May, writer-director

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And it wasn’t no way to carry on

It wasn’t no way to live

But he could put up with it for a little while

He was workin’ on something big.

“Something Big” — Tom Petty & the Heartbreakers

At some point or another, everybody has felt that they were on the cusp of “making it big.” Some people are born with that feeling, the notion that the universe has something greater in store for them. Others come into that notion more organically: maybe you hear about a “can’t fail” money-making proposal…maybe you’ve got a line on a big con…maybe you’ve been promised a position of power and authority in exchange for unfailingly loyal service…maybe you’ve got the winning lottery ticket in your pocket, even though the numbers haven’t been drawn yet…regardless of the situation, we’ve all felt, at some point, like we were just one move away from winning the game. We may feel stuck right now but when that big break comes through…buddy, the sky’s the limit!

But what happens when you keep working on that “big break” your whole life and it never materializes? While we might all feel like we’re destined for more than Point A-to-Point B drudgery, the truth is probably a little less optimistic. Getting that “something big” might take self-confidence, sure, but it also takes hard work, dedication, drive, sacrifice, an innate ability to keep getting up after getting knocked down and more than a little luck. No one is guaranteed a big, important life, although those born into royalty and family dynasties might take issue with that. Sometimes, we can work on “something big” our whole lives and still come up empty. Writer/director Joe Maggio’s understated but powerful drama, The Last Rites of Joe May (2011), takes a long, hard look at just such a lost soul, a man who has spent so long trying to “make it” that he’s forgotten how to actually live.

Joe May (Dennis Farina), an aging small-time con man, has had better days: he’s just been released from the hospital after spending the past seven weeks recuperating from pneumonia, his only friend, Billy (Chelcie Ross), has just been moved to an assisted living facility and his only other “friend,” the neighborhood bartender (Matt DeCaro), lies about even knowing Joe was sick. As we see, Joe is pretty much all alone in this world but he seems to like it that way: he’s a tough, sardonic old bastard with a thick skin and a hair-trigger bullshit detector. As long as he still has a place to call home and another scam, Joe can make anything work. Life, however, has other plans for Joe: when he returns home to his apartment, Joe discovers that his sleazy landlord has rented his place out to a single-mother, Jenny (Jamie Anne Allman) and her precocious young daughter, Angelina (Meredith Droeger). He’s also thrown out all of Joe’s belongings, which leaves the guy homeless and with nothing to his name but the clothes on his back. As Joe tells Angelina on his way out the door, “Life sucks.” And it certainly can, although life still has a lot more in store for Joe.

After seeing Joe aimlessly riding the city bus, Jenny takes pity on him and invites him to spend the night: in a cruel twist of fate, Joe is now a guest in the home that he’s lived in for 40 years. Refusing any further “charity,” Joe hits the road but ends up right back on the same bus bench where Jenny finds him after another long day of work. She comes up with a solution: Joe can stay with her and Angelina if he pays them $100/week. Joe gets a place to stay, Jenny gets some extra money and Angelina gets a much-needed father figure…it’s a win/win/win situation. In no time, grumpy old Joe has become the most fascinating person in the world to young Angelina and, despite his constant exclamations that he hates kids, Joe really seems to be warming to the little rugrat and her mom. Jenny is a perpetual survivor, just like Joe, but she’s also saddled with an abusive, hateful, obnoxious shit of a boyfriend named Stan (Ian Barford). Stan just happens to be a cop, which gives him an unbearable God-complex to go with his flying fists. When Joe comes home drunk one night, Stan berates and slaps him, getting his kicks from bullying a helpless man who’s about 20 years his senior. Like Joe, Jenny seems to be trapped in a drab nightmare but, at the very least, she’s “working on something.” Aren’t we all?

Turns out Joe is “working on something,” too: he wants to get back into the short-money racket and goes to see his old friend, Lenny (Gary Cole), to see if the “organization” has anything for him. Turns out that Joe isn’t just a relic among the regular folk in the world: he’s also a relic among his own brotherhood of mobsters, con men and shadowy underworld figures. Joe is a throwback to an older, simpler time and Lenny decides to throw him a bone (literally) by having him pick up some “merchandise” from one of Lenny’s connections. If Joe can sell the product and get Lenny his cut, Lenny will get him something bigger next time…and on and on until Joe is “officially” back in the business. He’s only ever wanted to be a “big” guy and if it doesn’t happen until he’s in the final act of his life, who’s Joe to complain? When the “product” doesn’t end up being quite what Joe expected, however, in a scene that manages to be both heartbreaking and uproariously funny, Joe is right back at square one. At this point, everything looks stacked against him: no one seems to respect Joe, his health is getting worse, Stan is becoming more violent towards Jenny and a reunion with Joe’s estranged son, Scotty (Brian Boland), goes as poorly as possible. Don’t count ol’ Joe out just yet, however: even the oldest, mangiest hound can still bite, if backed into a corner, and Joe doesn’t plan to leave without sinking his teeth into something big.

In many ways, The Last Rites of Joe May is as much of an old-fashioned throwback as its titular subject. It purposefully seems to echo those gritty, small-scale, character-driven dramas from the ’70s and ’80s that featured actors like Walter Matthau, Paul Newman, Clint Eastwood and Charles Bronson. These were films where quietly strong, beaten-down loners were finally able to strike back at the world around them, trying desperately to carve out a place for themselves, usually resulting in bloodshed and heartbreak. While The Last Rites of Joe May isn’t quite as gritty as those films, it certainly comes from a similar mindset, which goes hand-in-hand with the film’s themes of being slightly out-of-step with the times.

While so much of The Last Rites of Joe May will seem familiar for different reasons, the film is actually pretty good at subverting expectations, setting up situations that seem “old hat” but having them pay off in unexpected ways. The film’s central male-female relationship seems to be building into a stereotypical “May-December” romance but takes a sharp turn down a different road. The mafia subplot about “getting back into the game” seems to be a tired bid for redemption but ends up bearing more bitter fruit. We’ve seen lots of films where a “white knight” tries to protect a “damsel in distress” from an abusive relationship but The Last Rites of Joe May is more interested in the pathology behind the abuse than any kind of ass-kicking revenge. Joe isn’t some kind of superhuman thug: he’s an old man who’s just getting over pneumonia, has a terrible cough and has been a survivor for almost 70 years. The climax could have played out in many different ways but, to its great credit, it feels authentic: there’s a bit of wish-fulfillment here but it’s tempered by some surprisingly bittersweet, but not cloying, emotional heft.

In many ways, the key to the film’s success is Dennis Farina. Over the course of some 33 years and 70-odd roles, Farina proved himself to be not only one of the most iconic actors of his generation but one of the best. While my favorite role of his will always be Mike Torello in Crime Story (1986-1988), I never actually saw Farina in anything where he wasn’t thoroughly impressive. Farina, like Newman and Matthau, was an actor’s actor, someone who submerged himself so completely in each role that no trace of the man behind the mask could be seen. Thanks to Farina’s innate skill, Joe May doesn’t come across as pathetic: we feel his pain and want him to succeed but we also see the steel and fortitude that enabled him to survive as long as he did. Farina may be playing an aged tough guy but he plays like him like a real person, not a caricature. This, in some ways, will always be Farina’s greatest legacy: his death in 2013 left a void that will, most likely, never be filled.

While the film belongs completely and totally to Farina, a more than capable supporting cast helps keep the material elevated, even during the rare moment where things become to soggy and predictable. Jamie Ann Allman is the perfect synthesis of vulnerable and tough as nails, while Meredith Droeger manages to prevent Angelina from straying into “ultra-precious poppet” territory, particularly as her friendship with Joe grows. Ian Barford is suitably despicable as the abusive Stan, one of those characters who seems to solely exist as a lightning rod for the audience’s negativity. Character-actor Gary Cole has a nice, if too-short, appearance as Lenny and manages to make the character impressively three-dimensional using as few brushstrokes as possible. Again, this was a character that could have been strictly “Screenwriting 101” but Lenny gets several nice moments, including a subtly powerful closing moment that manages to tie everything together.

While I’m not familiar with most of writer-director Joe Maggio’s filmography, I have seen the film that preceded The Last Rites of Joe May, Bitter Feast (2010), and found it to be a quite interesting, if ultimately disappointing, take on the torture-porn subgenre. Despite the film’s flaws, Bitter Feast had an exceptionally sharp script, which is something it shares with his most recent film. Maggio is good at setting a quiet, reserved mood, accented by moments of explosive violence, and The last Rites of Joe May utilizes this loud/quiet aesthetic much better than Bitter Feast did. While Maggio is not quite “there” yet, he’s definitely a filmmaker to keep your eyes on.

Ultimately, The Last Rites of Joe May ends up being a fairly old-fashioned movie about a pretty old-fashioned kind of guy. Joe May might be out of step with the modern-era and as “unhip” as they come but he’s also a principled, pragmatic, self-assured and undefeatable type of guy. Regardless of what the world throws at him, Joe pulls up his collar, digs his heels in and keeps fighting the good fight. Joe may have spent his whole life looking for his “big break” but the irony may be that he’d already found it: living your own life, under your own terms, for better or worse, may be the biggest break of them all. Joe might have been looking for something big but I’m willing to wager that you’ll remember The Last Rites of Joe May for all the little things.

6/2/14 (Part Two): From the Sublime to the Rocket Launcher

02 Wednesday Jul 2014

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'80s action films, 1980's, action films, Alex Winter, Assault on Precinct 13, bad cops, Charles Bronson, cinema, crime wave, Death Wish, Death Wish 3, Deborah Raffin, Ed Lauter, film franchise, film reviews, films, Fraker, gang rape, gangs of punks, Gavan O'Herlihy, gun enthusiasts, guns, Jimmy Page, Kirk Taylor, liberals vs conservatives, Mad Max, Marina Sirtis, Martin Balsam, Michael Winner, misogyny, Movies, New York City, over-the-top, Paul Kersey, post-apocalyptic wasteland, revenge, rocket launcher, sequel, sequels, set in the 1980's, the Giggler, The Warriors, Tony Spiridakis, Troma films, vengeance, vigilante, vigilantism

death_wish_3_poster_01

As a youth, many of my favorite films tended to be of the ultra-violent action variety. While I watched a lot of different things, there was a certain group of films that seemed to get rewatched endlessly, as if on a loop: Magnum Force (1973), Pale Rider (1985), The Good, the Bad and the Ugly (1966), Death Wish 3 (1985), RoboCop (1987) and Die Hard (1988). Most of these could probably be chalked up to the fact that Clint Eastwood and Charles Bronson were two of my parents’ favorite actors, thereby gaining plenty of airtime in our household. As for RoboCop and Die Hard: what 11-year-old boy wouldn’t love those? As time passes, I find that my opinion on most of them still holds up: for one reason or another, these are all fundamentally solid films.

Of the group, Death Wish 3 is one of the ones I watched the most, while younger, but have revisited the least as time goes on. As part of my personal film festival, I decided to finally revisit the film, pairing it with the original (if I had access to the second film and hadn’t just watched the fourth a few months back, this would have been the whole quadrilogy). As seen in my previous entry, I found that the original Death Wish (1974) still holds up some forty years later, retaining lots of subtle power among the flying bullets. How, then, would one of my formerly favorite films hold up? Journey behind the curtain and let’s find out.

As far as genre franchises go, the Death Wish series actually tells a continual story, give or take the rather large lapses in time between the first and third entries (8 years). In the first, we were introduced to the character of Paul Kersey (Charles Bronson), a mild-mannered, pacifistic New York City architect who becomes a vigilante after a gang of punks rape his daughter and kill his wife. The second film continues the storyline as Kersey and his daughter, Carol, move to Los Angeles in order to start a new life. After Carol is once again attacked and ends up killing herself, Paul picks up his revolver and hunts down the creeps responsible. By the end of the film, we see Paul all alone, the last of his family gone: the assumption is that he will continue to hunt the streets, cleaning up the criminal element. Since there ended up being a third (and fourth) film, that assumption would be right on the nose.

After some time has passed, “legendary” vigilante Paul Kersey boards a bus and returns to New York City, the place where it all began. He’s on his way to visit an old war buddy, Charley (Francis Drake), but this isn’t the same New York City from a decade before: this is the ’80s, baby, and shit’s bad…real bad. It seems that roving gangs of punks, similar to the creepazoids from Max Max (1979) or Troma’s Class of Nuke ‘Em High (1986), have taken over the city and Paul gets to his friend’s apartment just after the punks have beaten him nearly to death. Charley dies, the cops burst in and Paul is hauled off to the station house for a little good-natured “interrogation.”

Once there, Paul catches the eye of Lt. Shriker (Ed Lauter), who just happened to be a beat cop when Paul went on his initial “cleaning” spree in NYC. Seems that Shriker is fighting a losing battle against the punks on the street and he needs something that his entire police force can’t provide: he needs the “bad guys” to start dying. Shriker knows that Paul used to handle that particular “job” quite handily and offers him a deal: he can return to the streets, killing as many punks, criminals and ’80s metal-heads as he wants, as long as he keeps Shriker in the loop and throws him a few choice busts every so often. When the alternative is a hefty jail sentence, Paul agrees: time to hit the streets, once again.

As Paul wanders the post-Apocalyptic neighborhood outside Charley’s apartment (seriously: the place is like a cross between The Warriors (1979) and Assault on Precinct 13 (1976) on a bad day), he starts to figure out the hierarchy. Seems that Fraker (Gavan O’Herlihy), the platinum-blonde psycho that Paul briefly encountered in lockup, is the ringleader, ruling everything with an iron fist and really sharp knife. With his gang of goons, including The Giggler (Kirk Taylor), The Cuban (Ricco Ross) and Hermosa (Alex Winter), Fraker has the entire neighborhood terrified and paying protection money in order to stay alive. It’s a bad bunch of dudes…but there’s big trouble coming.

Paul also meets the residents of Charley’s apartment building, including Charley’s best friend and fellow war vet, Bennett (Martin Balsam), Manny and Maria Rodriguez (Joseph Gonzalez, Marina Sirtis), Eli and Erica Kaprov (Leo Kharibian, Hana-Maria Pravda) and Mr. and Mrs. Emil (John Gabriel, Mildred Shay). To complete his merry circle of friends, Paul also becomes romantic with Kathryn Davis (Deborah Raffin), the attractive young public defender that he met at the police station. It would all be so lovely, of course, if Fraker wasn’t so dead-set on running Paul out of the neighborhood, one way or the other. In short order, the place becomes an absolute war-zone and death comes to visit them all: it comes for the punks, of course, because Paul is one helluva shot. It also comes for the innocents, of course, because this wouldn’t be Death Wish without a whole lotta revenge. As the body count rises on both sides of the line, one thing remains clear: Kersey ain’t leaving until he’s either outta ammo…or targets.

Right off the bat, there’s absolutely nothing subtle or subtextual about Death Wish 3 whatsoever: this film is all raging id, rampaging from one extreme to the other. Unlike the basically good but ineffectual cops from the first film, every cop in DW3 comes across as a steroid-addled, trigger-happy goon, particularly the incredibly dastardly Lt. Shriker. Hell, he was technically only one twirled mustache away from a Perils of Pauline-era villain. He bashes Paul around, snarls that he could have him killed at any time and punches him square in the face just because it’s “his” jail.

Whereas the punks from the first film weren’t exactly multi-dimensional (Jeff Goldblum’s sneering mug was about as much character development as we got), the gangs in DW3 are completely over-the-top and cartoonish. Many of them do seem to have been lifted wholesale from The Warriors, right down to the odd matching outfits for certain groups within the gang (Gang subgroups? What nightmare of micro-management is this?!) and by the time we get to the finale, where gang members ride around on motorcycles while hurling grenades willy-nilly, it will be pretty impossible to not expect Mad Max to come zooming over the horizon. Fraker is so evil that he easily surpasses Bond villains, winding up somewhere in the neighborhood devoted to Marvel villains.

In many ways, there’s definitely a consistent through-line from the first film to the third: after all, director Michael Winner was on board for the first three films and the overall message (a good man with a gun trumps a bad man with a gun) is unwavering. Where Death Wish was careful to portray both sides of the issue, even if it obviously only gave credence to one side, DW3 dispenses with this facade completely. Paul isn’t on any kind of journey in DW3: he’s already there. While the first film grappled with the disparity between wanting to defend yourself and taking revenge, there’s no question as to what needs to be done by the time the third film opens. If Death Wish and its first sequel could be seen as drama-suspense hybrids, DW3 is almost entirely an action picture. In the first film, Paul has to deal with both the police (polite society) and the criminals: the police didn’t condone his activities, they just ran him out of the city. In the third film, not only do the police condone Kersey’s vigilantism, they actively push him into it. By the time we get to the finale, where Paul and Shriker run down the street, side by side, merrily gunning down anonymous bad guys (the body count in this thing, for the gangs alone, has to be in the mid-hundreds), DW3 is the furthest thing from the original film it could possibly be. The thought-provoking, gut-quaking violence of the first film has been replaced by a Ren and Stimpy-level of carnage that certainly befits most mid-’80s action sequels but makes it impossible to take anything seriously.

Perhaps the biggest issue with the film, however, and one that continually flew over my head as a kid, is the rampant misogyny. Admittedly, the first and second films were precipitated upon the sexual assault of a young woman but they also featured peripheral female characters: in DW3, every single (good) female character is either assaulted or killed. It’s such an obvious part of the film that it’s hard to believe the filmmakers didn’t intend it but it’s unpleasant, nonetheless. ’80s action films were never known for their progressive gender politics, in the best of situations, but the female characters in DW3 all seem doomed from their introductions. When combined with the over-the-top, testosterone-fueled action sequences, the absolute lack of surviving female characters makes this very much a “boys’ club.” To be honest, it’s probably no wonder that this film appealed to me so much as a kid: this movie was pretty much made for boys in their early teens, rating be damned.

And yet, despite its inherent flaws and ham-fisted politics, there something kind of charming about Death Wish 3. The parts that I remembered loving as a kid (blowing away the purse-snatcher, Paul’s ingenious booby traps, Fraker’s delicious villainy) were just as enjoyable this time around. Sure, the film may be full of holes and uses a disturbing amount of fantasy to glide over the rough patches (the cops are nowhere to be found, while everything is blowing up, until they’re needed for the big finale, at which point they all swoop down, en masse: were they all on break or something?) but it also has a gonzo sense of energy and vitality to it. The film looks pretty great, full of rich, vibrant colors and the soundtrack, by Jimmy Page (yep, that Jimmy Page), is pretty awesome: it’s a keyboard-heavy, funky batch of tunes that perfectly evoke the theme songs to various ’80s cop shows…in the best way possible, mind you).

Unlike Death Wish, which operated in shades of gray, Death Wish 3 is very much a black-and-white film: the bad guys are all absolutely bad, the good guys are all absolutely good. Guns are not only good but absolutely necessary. When the law fails you, take measures into your own hands. There’s no room for dialogue or division here: you’re either standing with Paul, shooting at the creeps, or you’re getting shot at…simple as that. When I want to watch something thought-provoking and visceral, I’ll undoubtedly return to the original. When I want to turn my brain off and root for the white hats, however, there’s no doubt that I’ll be returning to Death Wish 3. After all, any film that features a reverse mohawk, giggling purse-snatcher and death by (close-range) rocket launcher can’t be all bad. It was the ’80s, after all.

5/31/14 (Part Two): The Children Suffer

25 Wednesday Jun 2014

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abused children, Aharon Keshales, Ami Weinberg, bad cops, Big Bad Wolves, black comedies, child killing, cinema, co-directors, co-writers, cops, cops behaving badly, Doval'e Glickman, Dror, fairy tales, film reviews, films, gallows' humor, Gidi, irony, Israeli films, Kalevet, Lior Ashkenazi, Menashe Noy, Micki, missing child, Movies, Nati Kluger, Navot Papushado, Prisoners, Rabies, revenge, Rotem Keinan, torture, Tzahi Grad, vengeance, writer-director

Big-Bad-Wolves

While we’d all like to think that we’re above primal emotions like hate and fear, the reality is actually a lot less black-and-white. The human animal may try to distance itself from its more feral, four-legged “cousins,” casting its eyes (and aspirations) to the cosmos, suppressing more earthy, “unpleasant” instincts. It may do this to its heart’s content but one overwhelming fact cannot be denied: the wild, untamed brutality of the animal kingdom always lurks just below the serene, civilized facade of humanity. At any given moment, we all walk the razor’s edge, careful not to give ourselves over too completely to the darkness.

This delicate balancing act becomes a lifelong task, then, just one other facet of life to navigate. We’re always perfectly balanced, the necessary combination of light and dark to survive in a dangerous world…until we aren’t. When we allow powerful, devastating primal urges like hate, fear and vengeance to take the controls, we tempt the fates, throw off the natural order of things. Too little of the “animal instinct” and we’re gingerbread figures, empty haircuts that mean as much to the natural order as plankton do to whales. Too much of the “old ways,” however, and we become something much different from human…much more dangerous. When the hearts of men and women become overstuffed with hate and vengeance, when we cast aside all other notions of humanity in service of stoking the indignant fire in our guts, we become wolves, ourselves. As we see in Aharon Keshales and Navot Papushado’s extraordinary, incendiary new film, Big Bad Wolves (2013), even the desire for justice can become something ugly in the blast furnace of hate, leading us to do all of the right things for all of the most terribly wrong reasons.

Our protagonist, Micki (Lior Ashkenazi), is a charismatic Israeli police detective with a huge problem: there’s a psychopath kidnapping, raping, torturing and killing young girls. Micki’s a good guy, at heart, but he’s also one of those movie cops who operates best outside the polite constraints of the law. Along with his by-the-book partner, Rami (Menashe Noy), and a couple of eager young cops nicknamed “Beavis and Butthead,” Micki takes the chief suspect in the case, Dror (Rotem Keinan), to an abandoned factory for a little good old-fashioned “questioning questioning.” Dror, a religious studies teacher, is a particularly pathetic figure, resembling nothing so much as one of those shaggy dogs that gets wet and ends up looking like a drowned rat. During the course of the “interrogation,” Micki and the perpetually giggling moron brothers put quite the smack-down on Dror (including actually smacking him repeatedly with a phone book), all in the hope of getting him to cop to the heinous crimes. When the factory ends up being less than abandoned, footage of the entire incident is uploaded to YouTube: Micki becomes an instant celebrity and is rewarded with being busted down to traffic cop, while Dror is summarily released into a community that has pretty much already convicted him. Not the best situation for a school teacher, it turns out, and Dror is quickly asked to take a little “vacation” by the principal (Ami Weinberg): he’s welcome to come back once everyone’s “got over it,” presumably sometime between “the distant future” and “never.”

Despite being summarily chewed out by his superior, Tsvika (Dvir Benedek), Micki is still positive that Dror is guilty and intends on continuing to push him until he cracks. With a knowing look, Tsvika tells him that he can do whatever he likes, since he’s no longer working the case…as long as he doesn’t get caught, of course. But Micki does end up getting caught, right at the key moment when he has spirited Dror away to an isolated forest locale and made the terrified man dig his own grave. Far from an agent of law enforcement, however, Dror’s “guardian angel” ends up being a devil in disguise: Gidi (Tzahi Grad), the vengeful father of one of the dead girls. Like Micki, he’s also convinced that Dror is guilty but his ultimate intention is a bit different from Micki’s: he intends to torture Dror until he reveals the location of his daughter’s missing head. By inflicting all of the torture onto Dror that he suspects the schoolteacher of inflicting on the girls, Gidi hopes to achieve a kind of perverted justice. If Dror talks, he gets a merciful bullet to the brain. If he doesn’t, he’ll get the hammers…and the pliers…and the blowtorch.

As the three men interact within the isolated, soundproofed house that Gidi has set-up expressly for this occasion, allegiances are formed and torn asunder. Micki alternates between being Gidi’s captive and his accomplish, depending on how far down the rabbit-hole he’s willing to go. Dror tries to appeal to Micki’s basic humanity, as well as their shared connection as fathers: both Dror and Micki have young daughters and difficult relationships with their respective wives. Complications arise when Gidi’s pushy father, Yoram (Doval’e Glickman), drops by to bring him some soup. Upon seeing the situation, Yoram gently chides Gidi but offers to help: he’s ex-military, after all, and knows a thing or two about getting men to talk. As the situation for Dror (and Micki) becomes more dire, new revelations threaten to spin the entire mess off the rails. When men become angry, desperate and frightened, they become dangerous: they become big, bad wolves.

One of the first things that becomes clear in Big, Bad Wolves is that there’s a strong, consistent dose of gallows’ humor that runs throughout the entire film. In fact, right up until the gut-punch final image (which manages to be as terrifyingly bleak as the final scene in Darabont’s The Mist (2007)), the film is actually quite funny. Bleak, violent, savage and hopeless? Absolutely. The dark subject matter is leavened considerably, however, by a script that manages to be not only subtly clever but also broadly comedic, when called for. One of the best scenes in the film is the one where Tsvika calls Micki into his office. It’s “Bring Your Son to Work Day” and Tsvika has brought his son with him: in a classic scene that works on a number of levels, Tsvika and his son engage in some tandem ball-busting that’s pretty damn funny. “This is the yellow card conversation,” Tsvika tells his son, at one point. “Like in soccer, dad?” “Just like in soccer, son,” Tsvika says proudly, mussing his son’s hair while staring Micki down with a glare that would melt Medusa.

Keshales and Papushado (whose debut film, Kalevet (2010), bears the distinction of being Israel’s first-ever horror film) use this scene of humor is some truly surprising, disarming ways, none more so than the scenes where Gidi tortures Dror. There’s never anything funny about torture but the filmmakers manage to wring a surprising amount of genuine laughs out of these scenes. As Gidi sets about on his path of vengeance, he’s constantly interrupted by reminders of the “polite” world. As Gidi is about to begin breaking Dror’s fingers, one by one, his cellphone rings: it’s Gidi’s mom and he’d better take the call, lest she go “crazy.” Gidi and Micki flip a coin to see who gets the first go at Dror, only to have the coin dramatically roll away. Micki tries to stall the inevitable mayhem by telling Gidi that they should drug Dror first, if they really wanted to do everything to him that he did to the kids: Gidi matter-of-factly tells him that Dror also violated the girls sexually but they’ve both decided to pass on that punishment…there are always compromises.

In many ways, Big, Bad Wolves plays as a sardonic counterpart to the much more po-faced Prisoners (2013). While the Jake Gyllenahaal-starring Oscar nominee had a portentous, serious tone that practically demanded it be taken seriously, its Israeli “cousin” is much more loose and easy-going. For one thing, Ashkenazi is a ridiculously charismatic lead, sort of a Middle Eastern take on George Clooney: he does more acting with his eyes and the corner of his mouth than most actors do with the entire script. In a particularly knockout moment, Micki stares incredulously as Dror stops to help an old woman cross a busy street. The look of surprise and disbelief is obvious, but there’s an undercurrent of amusement and, dare I say, approval, that comes through just as loud and clear. Micki is a complex, engaging character with a truly heartbreaking arc and one of the most interesting cinematic creations in some time.

The real revelation of the film, however, is the towering, absolutely astounding performance of Tzahi Grad as Gidi. By the time we’re introduced to him, Gidi is already “past” the actual murder of his daughter and is moving on to the closure that he wants: there’s very little outward “sadness” to the character and no moping or chest-beating whatsoever. Gidi is a practical, cold and successful man who has been dealt a terrible blow and now must make it all “right,” just as he’s always done. As additional details about Gidi’s character creep in, we begin to see a more fully formed vision of the man, making his actions that much more difficult to fully condone (or condemn, if we’re being honest). There is nothing stereotypical about Gidi or his actions. Frequently, I would find myself genuinely shocked by something he does (the film does not wallow in gore and violence but what there is tends to be extremely sudden, extremely brutal and rather unforgettable) but I never lost my connection to him as a character. While the writing in Big, Bad Wolves is pretty flawless, a lot of the credit for this must go to Grad: it’s not easy to make a potentially monstrous character “human,” but Gidi manages to be not only massively human but completely relateable and likable, as well. He feels like a real person, not a film construct.

Big, Bad Wolves ends up being filled with the kind of subtle details and moments that practically demand repeat viewings. A throwaway line of dialogue becomes an important bit of foreshadowing…a “random” encounter with a mysterious, nomadic horseman (Kais Nashif) becomes an opportunity for an incisive point about Arab/Israeli relations. The whole film is full of fairy-tale imagery, from the opening title sequence to the trail of “breadcrumbs” that lead to the dead girls to the title of the film, itself. Far from being an all-too obvious bit of symbolism, the fairy-tale aspect is completely organic, seamlessly interwoven into the film and providing a rich depth missing from the straight-laced, nuts-and-bolts construction that was Prisoners.

Despite being an exceptionally difficult film to watch, at times, Big, Bad Wolves is the furthest thing possible from “torture porn” like Hostel (2005) and Seven Days (2010). Unlike more shallow genre exercises, the torture and violence in Big, Bad Wolves is not intended to be fodder for gorehounds: there is real pain and suffering to be found here, not just from the battered, bloody man receiving the violence but from the emotionally scarred men distributing it. Similar to Winner’s original Death Wish (1974), Keshales and Papushado’s film goes to great lengths to explore the actual concept of vengeance: inflicting pain on someone will never bring back a loved one. In a way, it’s just another death: the death of the soul and the death of essential humanity.

Ultimately, Big, Bad Wolves is a fierce, ferocious and utterly alive film. It practically bursts from the screen, thanks to a combination of exceptionally skilled filmmaking (the script and cinematography, alone, are two of the very best of 2013) and raw, vital acting. If Keshales and Papushado marked themselves as filmmakers to watch with their debut, they’ve cemented their reputations with its follow-up. Undoubtedly, there will be some who can’t stomach the audacious mixture of soul-crushing violence and humor that the film offers and that’s quite alright: the real world, the terribly unfair, brutal and beautiful orb that we stand on, is the same mixture of violence and comedy and many can’t deal with that, either. As the most cutting, intuitive writers have always known, however, comedy and tragedy always go hand-in-hand…it’s quite impossible to live without experiencing more than your fair share of both. It may seem wrong to laugh as it all comes collapsing to the ground but it’s also necessary. After all, without a sense of humor, aren’t we really all just wolves?

 

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