8/16/15 (Part Two): Two Against the World

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A Most Violent Year, Abel Morales, Albert Brooks, Alessandro Nivola, Alex Ebert, All Is Lost, American Dream, Ben Rosenfield, Bradford Young, capitalism, Catalina Sandino Moreno, Christopher Abbott, cinema, corruption, David Margulies, David Oyelowo, dramas, Edward Sharpe and the Magnetic Zeros, Elyes Gabel, family business, film reviews, films, Giselle Eisenberg, heating oil, heists, hijacking, husband-wife relationship, husband-wife team, immigrants, J.C. Chandor, Jason Ralph, Jerry Adler, Jessica Chastain, John Procaccino, Margin Call, Movies, New York City, oil industry, organized crime, Orthodox Jews, Oscar Isaac, period-piece, personal codes, Peter Gerety, Pico Alexander, Quinn Meyers, Ron Patane, set in New York City, set in the 1980's, snubbed at the Oscars, suicide, the American Dream, writer-director

While most people will freely admit to having some sort of unalterable moral code, the reality is much less black and white: I’m willing to wager that we’ve all compromised our personal codes, from time to time…that’s just what life is about. Perhaps you’ve tolerated prejudicial beliefs from an otherwise beloved relative. Perhaps you’re an environmentalist who’s taken a soul-killing corporate job with a King Kong-sized carbon footprint in order to pay the bills. When faced with the choice between suffering for our “code” or bending our beliefs in order to achieve some measure of happiness, it’s tempting to say that we would all be able to stand firm in the face of adversity. It’s tempting, sure…but is it true?

Abel Morales (Oscar Isaac), one half of the married couple that stands at the exact center of writer/director J.C. Chandor’s A Most Violent Year (2014), is a man with one of those aforementioned “unalterable moral codes,” an individual who prides himself on always taking “the path that is most right.” Abel is a man with principles, with drive, ambition and an internal compass that always keeps him oriented towards true north…or, as it turns out, his own personal notion of true north. When his world begins to collapse around him, however, Abel will be forced into a rather unenviable position: greet his massing enemies with the violence and corruption that they’ve shown him or stick to his code and, quite possibly, become nothing more than a minor footnote in someone else’s story. As Pink Floyd so eloquently put it: “a walk-on part in the war or a lead role in a cage”…Abel can have either one but he can’t have both.

Kicking off in the Big Apple during the titular “violent year” (also known as 1981), Chandor’s newest opus concerns Abel and his wife, Anna (an absolutely ferocious Jessica Chastain), as they try to carve out their own piece of the American Dream. They own a heating oil company and have just started the process to acquire a prime piece of seafront real estate, all the better to bring in their own shipments directly and cut out the middle man. While Abel tries to pull together the $1.5 million that he’ll need for the deal, he also must deal with a raft of other problems including his mercenary competitors, a nearly non-stop barrage of violent fuel hijacking and an overly zealous district attorney (David Oyelowo) who’s been investigating the Morales’ company for several years.

After another series of thefts, including one where one of Abel’s drivers, Julian (Elyes Gabel), gets his jaw broken, the head of the teamsters (Peter Gerety) insists that all of Abel’s drivers be issued handguns: he refuses to put his men into any more unsafe situations, despite Abel’s protests that faked gun permits are only going to add to his legal woes. As this is going on, Abel surprises an intruder in his home, a shady individual who drops a gun as he flees. Anna, putting two and two together, realizes that the attempted invasion might not be part of the year’s “crime wave” but actually related to their current problems with the company. The message is clear: the Morales’ aren’t safe anywhere, including their own home.

As Abel watches his carefully constructed plan fall apart, piece by piece, he’s goaded by his loose-cannon wife to take more drastic, unsavory measures: she’s the daughter of a mobster, after all, and those guys always know how to take care of business. Abel has that aforementioned “personal code,” however, and he’s determined to do everything on the up-and-up, even if it means putting his family and business through the wringer. When Julian gets attacked again and takes matters into his own hands, however, it forces Abel to scramble and try to put all the pieces back together before his time runs out on the real estate deal. Will Abel stick to his code or will he give in to the violence around him and respond in kind? Will he become the monster that he fears in order to get the life that he deserves?

Extremely stylish, beautifully shot and as cold as an iceberg, A Most Violent Year packs plenty of punch but still manages to fall short (to this viewer, at least) of Chandor’s previous film, the “Redford on a boat” mini-epic, All is Lost (2013). There’s plenty to like and respect here, no doubt: Chandor is a sure-hand as both writer and director, displaying an admirable ability to cut the fat and get right to the meat of the situation. That being said, A Most Violent Year feels too long and bloated for the relatively simple story beats involved: the structure and pacing feel off, leaving too much “dead air” and sapping some of the film’s forward momentum.

One aspect of the film that manages to shoot for the moon and score brilliantly, however, is the extraordinary performances. Front to back, A Most Violent Year is loaded with so many memorable performances and masterfully acted scenes that he handily establishes itself as a real actors’ showcase. The supporting cast, alone, would make the film worth a watch under any other circumstances: Albert Brooks turns in another great, weary performance as Abel’s lawyer/confidant; Oyelowo is solid as a rock as the dogged D.A.; Gabel offers up some genuine anguish as the conflicted Julian (the parallels between his failure and Abel’s success are one of the film’s most subtle motifs) and Jerry Adler (perhaps best known for his recurring roles as Hesh in The Sopranos) brings a surprisingly gentle, paternal quality to his performance as the Orthodox Jewish owner of the property that Abel and Anna are trying to buy.

The real stars of the show, however, are undoubtedly Oscar Isaac and Jessica Chastain. For his part, Isaac downplays the character of Abel masterfully, allowing all of the anger, frustration and fear to bubble and boil just below the surface until it finally explodes skyward in a truly volcanic display. He’s a case study in restraint and chilly resolve and Isaac works wonders with nothing so much as a soft word and piercing glare.

Chastain, on the other hand, is a completely unrestrained force of nature, the raging hurricane that tosses the rest of the cast around like so much flying junk. To not put too fine a point on it, she’s absolutely astounding in the film: it’s impossible to look away whenever she’s onscreen. From the stunning showpiece where she blows away the wounded deer to the fist-raising moment where she tells Oyelowo’s D.A. just where he can shove it, Chastain’s Anna is, easily, one of the most memorable modern cinematic creations.

Less Kay Corleone than Ma Barker, Anna is the true power behind the throne and Chastain tears into the role with absolute gusto. The fact that she wasn’t nominated for an Oscar only goes to show how vapid that particular process is: the fact that her performance was considered a “supporting” role in other nominations only goes to show how flawed that rationale is. Quite plainly, Chastain is as much a part of A Most Violent Year as Isaac is…perhaps more so, to be honest.

Despite the top-shelf performances, gorgeous cinematography (Bradford Young also shot Selma (2014), giving him two prestige pictures in the same year), great score (despite not caring for Alex Ebert’s main gig in Edward Sharpe and the Magnetic Zeros, his score is absolutely perfect) and effective mise en scene, I still found myself slightly let down by the whole thing. Perhaps it speaks more to personal choice than any major flaws in the film (short of really trite ending to Julian’s arc, there aren’t many major missteps) but A Most Violent Year never quite struck me as “essential,” merely very well-made.

In truth, short of two chase scenes (one decent, the other a real showstopper), the whole film ends up being rather uneventful. Sure, Abel and Anna are faced with a seemingly insurmountable array of problems but each issue ends up being resolved a bit too casually to provide much tension. The resolution of the Julian storyline, the resolution of the fuel hijacking, the resolution of the property deal…in each case, it feels as if Abel and Anna are plucked from the stew-pot just as the water begins to get nice and hot. One of the things that really struck me about the chase scene between Abel and the hijackers is how unhinged and dangerous it felt: for that brief time period, I really found myself questioning the outcome. Were that overriding sense of danger more present throughout the film, perhaps it might have gripped me a little tighter.

Ultimately, A Most Violent Year is a film that deserves no small amount of praise: the performances, alone, are enough to make this a must-watch. That being said, it’s also a film that never quite sunk its claws into me, never quite demanded my complete adoration. Perhaps, in the end, A Most Violent Year is a perfect case of “different strokes for different folks”: extremely well-made and quite evocative, there’s nothing overtly wrong with the film, yet it never quit kicks like it’s supposed to.

That’s quite alright, however: I’ll keep looking forward to Chandor’s films just like I have ever since All is Lost proved him to be a modern master. In an age where “bigger, louder, dumber” seems to rule the box-office, we could always use more films like A Most Violent Year. Essential? Not quite. Worth your time? Without a shadow of a doubt.

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

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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

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.