5/26/15: He’s Got the World Up His Ass

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abusive relationships, America's Cup, Andy Canny, Angus Sampson, Australia, Australian films, based on a true story, Chris Pang, cinema, co-directors, co-writers, corrupt law enforcement, crime thriller, dark films, dramas, drug dealers, drug mule, drug smuggling, Ewen Leslie, film reviews, films, Fletcher Humphrys, foreign films, Geoff Morrell, Georgina Haig, Hugo Weaving, Ilya Altman, Insidious, Jaime Browne, John Noble, Leigh Whannell, mother-son relationships, Movies, multiple directors, multiple writers, Noni Hazlehurst, period-piece, Richard Davies, Saw, set in 1980s, set in Australia, Stefan Duscio, The Mule, Tony Mahony, writer-director-actor

If you think about it, being a drug mule has to have one of the worst risk-to-reward ratios of any job, roughly equitable to being the royal food taster in medieval times. Let’s see…you get to swallow multiple, latex-bundled packages full of potentially lethal narcotics, any of which could burst, come open or leak out into your stomach, flipping the hourglass on what could be the last, miserable moments of your existence. If this works out, you then get the white-knuckle thrill-ride of attempting to bypass police, customs, airport security and drug enforcement officials, often in countries where illegal drug possession carries a life sentence (if you’re lucky) or something a bit more permanent (if you’re not).

Get through all of that in one piece and you still have to deal with whomever gave you the job in the first place: historically, drug traffickers haven’t been known to be the most trust-worthy folks, so there’s still every possibility that you’ll get a bullet to the face instead of an envelope of cash for your troubles. Of course, if it all works out perfectly, well…you get to repeat the whole process all over again, rolling the dice anew every step of the way. Small wonder they don’t talk about this one on career day, eh?

While drug mule might not be the profession of choice for most, there’s always a first time for everything: under the right (or wrong) circumstances, the role of smuggler’s little helper might be the only one available. This, of course, is the crux of actor Angus Sampson’s co-directorial debut (he shares the role with Tony Mahony), the appropriately named The Mule (2014). Pulling triple-duty, Sampson co-writes, co-directs and stars in the film as the titular character, a meek, down-trodden nebbish who, quite literally, ends up sticking his future right where the sun doesn’t shine. In the process, Sampson and company come up with one of the most intense, unpleasant and genuinely impressive films of last year, a roller-coaster ride where the weak of stomach would be well-advised to keep a bucket close at hand, while those who like their entertainment pitch-black might just find a new favorite for their collections.

Set in Melbourne, circa 1983, we meet poor Ray Jenkins (Sampson), the kind of salt-of-the-earth, blue-collar guy who seems tailor-made for getting screwed over in film noirs. A rather simple TV repairman who’s really into his footie team, loves his mom (Noni Hazlehurst) and step-dad (Geoff Morell) and can chug a pint of beer faster than most folks can blink, Ray seems to have a pretty decent life. He’s also lifelong mates with Gavin (co-writer Leigh Whannell), who happens to be the captain of Ray’s football team…when he isn’t trafficking drugs for the team’s president, the by-turns jovial and terrifying Pat (John Noble), that is.

When the team decides to take a trip to Thailand to celebrate the end of another successful season, Gavin and Pat see it as the perfect opportunity to bring back another half key of heroin. Although he initially refuses Gavin’s request to help mule the drugs, he changes his tune once he realizes that his step-dad, John, is up to his eyeballs in debt to Pat: if Ray doesn’t help, Pat and his over-sized Russian thug will take John apart and put him back together upside down.

Once Gavin and Ray get to Thailand, however, Gavin calls an audible: he purchases an extra half key of product with the express purpose of selling it himself, without Pat’s knowledge. Despite changing his mind and wanting out, Ray is manipulated into swallowing the entire key of heroin, separated out into a multitude of condom-wrapped packages. With a gut full of drugs and enough anxiety for an entire continent, Ray makes it back to the Australian airport but gets busted after he acts like the kind of twitchy idiot who normally, you know, mules drugs.

Separated from his family, his mates and his normal life, Ray is taken to a motel by a couple of hard-ass detectives, Paris (Ewen Leslie) and Croft (Hugo Weaving), after he refuses to either admit to smuggling drugs or submit to a stomach x-ray. Paris and Croft make the situation quite clear: they’ll keep Ray there, under 24-hour surveillance, until they get the drugs…one way or another. From this point on, it becomes a (literal) fight against the clock, as Ray does everything he can to make sure that the drugs stay right where they are. The record for a mule keeping drugs in his system is 10 days, Croft smugly tells Ray: if he can “hold it” for longer, he’ll be a free man.

While Ray is staying true-blue from the isolation of his motel room prison, however, things are a little dicier on the outside. After figuring out what happened, Pat decides that Ray has become too much of a liability and tasks his best friend with the job of silencing him, once and for all. As all of these forces swirl around him, Ray, with the help of his cheerful public defender, Jasmine (Georgina Haig), puts a final, desperate plan into action. Pat and Gavin aren’t the only threats to his existence, however: sometimes, the baddest people are the ones you least suspect.

From the jump, The Mule is a ridiculously self-assured film, the kind of effortless thriller that the Coens used to pump out in their sleep. Despite this being his first full-length directorial effort, Sampson reveals a complete mastery over the film’s tone, triple impressive considering that he also co-wrote and stars in it. There’s never a point in the film where Ray is anything less than completely sympathetic and some of Sampson’s scenes are so unbelievably powerful that it’s rather impossible for me to believe no one saw fit to nominate him for any kind of acting award. In particular, the showstopping scene where Ray needs to re-ingest the packages is one of the most powerful, painful bits of acting I’ve ever seen. The biggest compliment I can pay Sampson is that he actually becomes Ray: it’s an astonishingly immersive performance.

Sampson isn’t the only actor who goes above and beyond, however: if anything, The Mule is a showcase for intense, masterful performances. Whannell, perhaps best known as the co-creator of the Saw franchise, along with James Wan, is perfect as Ray’s best mate/biggest problem. Weaving and Leslie are, likewise, perfect as the bad cop/bad cop duo, with Weaving turning in the kind of terrifying performance that should make folks remember how versatile and valuable he’s always been. Haig does some really interesting things with her portrayal of Ray’s lawyer, adding some shading and subtle deviousness to a character who could have been a crusading do-gooder on paper. Hazlehurst and Morrell are excellent as Ray’s loving parents, with each of them getting some nice opportunities to shine on their own: the scene where Hazlehurst tries to force-feed Ray some laxative-doped lamp is pretty unforgettable, as is the one where Morrell drunkenly confronts Pat and his murderous restaurant employee, Phuk (a likewise excellent Chris Pang).

And speaking of Pat: let’s take a few moments to sing the praises of John Noble, shall we? As an actor, Noble seems to have the singular ability to not only crawl beneath the skin of many a reprehensible character but beneath the audience’s skin, as well: in a long-line of memorable roles, Pat Shepard is, easily, one of Noble’s best and scariest. Riding the fine-line between joviality and cold-blooded, murderous evil, Pat is a perfect villain and Noble lustily grabs the film with both hands whenever he’s on-screen.

While the acting in The Mule is strictly top-notch, it also helps considerably that the actors have such a great script to work with. Loosely (very loosely) based on true incidents in Sampson and Whannell’s native Australia, The Mule is lean, mean and exquisitely plotted, breathlessly swinging from Ray’s motel imprisonment to Pat’s outside machinations with stunning ease. Full of great dialogue, thrilling setpieces and nicely intuitive emotional beats, The Mule reinforces that Sampson and Whannell are one of the most formidable teams in modern cinema. Throw in some excellent, evocative camerawork, courtesy of Stefan Duscio, along with a great score by Cornel Wilczek and Mikey Young, and you have a film that looks and sounds great: there are no smudged brushstrokes or missing lines in this particular “painting.”

To sum it up: I absolutely loved The Mule from start to finish. Smart, twisted, endlessly entertaining and constantly thrilling, it was nothing short of a minor masterpiece. At times reminiscent of the Coens’ iconic Fargo (1996), at other times bringing to mind Sam Raimi’s relentlessly bleak, under-rated A Simple Plan (1998), Sampson’s The Mule still manages to carve out its own unique acre of cinematic real estate. While you might not think that a film about a man steadfastly refusing to take a shit for over a week is your cup of tea, I’m here to tell you to think again: if you like smart, edgy films with brilliant acting, you’d be an absolute fool to pass up The Mule. Suffice to say, I’ll be sitting right here, breathlessly awaiting the next Sampson/Whannell joint: I’d advise you to do the same.

5/21/15: The Tale Lost in the Telling

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Ben Shenkman, Brian Cox, Burgess Jenkins, Carol Kane, cinema, con artists, Coupling, crime thriller, Darren Genet, directorial debut, dramas, film noir, film reviews, films, flashbacks, gangsters, golfing, grifters, Hugo Weaving, husband-wife relationship, independent films, insurance fraud, insurance salesman, Jack Davenport, Josh Noyes, Josh Pais, Judy Greer, Movies, period-piece, Peter Himmelstein, Robert Miller, scam, set in 1970s, split-screen, stylish films, The Key Man, writer-director

For my money, nothing beats a simple tale told well. Sure, there’s plenty of joy and value to be found in complex structures, eye-popping visual feasts and all-or-nothing editing extravaganzas: spectacle and cinema will always go hand-in-hand. There are times when there’s nothing finer than getting lost in the sturm und drang of a good, ol’ special effects bonanza, while, sometimes, you just want to see a film so complex and involving that it makes your forehead throb. There’s nothing wrong with big films but they’re also only half of the coin.

The other half of the coin, of course, are the smaller, subtler films: the quietly provocative indie dramas…the sparse, spare experimental films…the incisive character portraits and razor-sharp crime thrillers that don’t require flashy editing, huge explosions or pounding metal scores to make their points. These are films stripped down to their bare components, left to sink or swim by those old-fashioned standbys: absorbing characters, dramatic tension, smart dialogue and genuine emotional resonance. I may enjoy huge, noisy and stuffed-to-bursting event pictures but my heart will always belong to the same part of town that you’re most likely to find me hanging out: the quiet side.

Writer-director Peter Himmelstein’s The Key Man (2011) is a small, quiet film trapped inside a much flashier, more vapid one, the cinematic equivalent of one of David Byrne’s comically over-sized suits. At its heart, all of the components are in place for an effective, if modest, noirish crime thriller, something akin to a more po-faced Fargo (1996). Thanks to the ridiculously heavy-handed editing and visual flourishes like endless split-screens and out-of-place time-lapse photography, however, Himmelstein’s directorial debut ends up collapsing under the weight, burying the effective core under tons of pretty but useless rubble.

The film’s set-up is almost “Indie Crime Film 101” in its simplicity and familiarity: a down-on-his-luck insurance salesman with a wife and kids to feed gets involved with a pair of grifters and their scam to buy the Red Sox. The insurance salesman, Bobby (Coupling’s Jack Davenport), isn’t a bad guy but he is a desperate one: he’s just lost his oldest client right at the time when his wife, Karen (Judy Greer), is pushing to finally settle down and buy a home. Into his despair strides Vincent (Hugo Weaving) and Irving (Brian Cox), a pair of fast-talking, golf-playing con-men who want to enlist Bobby’s aid in a bit of insurance fraud: namely, they want to take out a “key man policy” on Vincent’s old partner, Charles (Burgess Jenkins), in order to bump him off and use the insurance payout to purchase their sports team.

As often happens, however, nothing goes quite according to plan and Bobby soon finds himself in way over his head. More and more people end up involved in what was supposed to be a fairly low-key event and Vincent and Irving gradually reveal themselves to be both unstable and dangerous, by turn. Will Bobby be able to see everything through to his big pay-day or will his conscience kick in and spoil the party? Most importantly: are Vincent and Irving the kinds of business partners that take “no” for an answer?

Deep down, at its heart, The Key Man is a decent, often quite effective, little noir/heist film, albeit one prone to particularly on-the-nose, expository dialogue. The acting is effective across the board, although Weaving’s flamboyant, sleazy Vincent will, undoubtedly, be the performance that sticks in the mind the longest: Davenport is fine, if rather vanilla, as Bobby, while Cox gets a few over-the-top blow-outs that tend to lessen the final impression of his otherwise impressive Irving. Greer’s Karen is a bit less effective, although that’s never due to the performance: her motivations always seem a bit off, however, making the character play out more as a plot element than actual flesh-and-blood person.

While the particulars of the scam aspect were a bit foggy to this particular viewer (insurance fraud sounds sexier than it really is), everything fell into place with a nice sense of purpose and irony that often felt perilously close to approximating a Hitchcockian vibe. Several scenes, such as the one where Bobby races home only to find Vincent acting the perfect gentleman with his family or the one where Vincent does a bit of impromptu Shakespeare, have nicely realized senses of tension that yield fairly thrilling payoffs.

Indeed, all of the pieces are in place for The Key Man to be a real sleeper, the kind of low-budget micro-masterpiece that coulda/woulda/shoulda been a contender. Practically from the opening credits, however, the film is almost completely hamstrung by one crucial element: the overly busy, fussed-with editing and over-used tricks like split-screens tend to drown out every other aspect of the film.

The biggest offender here is the damnable split-screen, an effect that’s used so much as to approach the level of SNL-type parody. Truth be told, I don’t think I’ve ever seen a film that uses as many split-screens as The Key Man does: hell, even the above poster art is set up as a kind of split screen…it’s practically wired into the film’s DNA. When used in moderation (or for an actual purpose), there’s nothing whatsoever wrong with a split-screen: it’s just another filmmaking tool like any other. When the split-screen begins to call attention to itself outside of the actual film framework, however, this feels a bit like the cart dragging the horse. There’s one instantly memorable moment where multiple split-screens fly around the central frame until to unite into one screen that becomes Vincent’s face: it’s silly, flashy and, ultimately, very pointless, the very definition of style for style’s sake.

While the split-screens are the biggest offenders, they’re not the only ones. There are also numerous instances of needless time-lapses, in-camera focus changes, out-of-focus images, you name it, that tend to pull attention off of what the film is trying to say and puts it squarely on how the film is saying it. There are certain films that can employ an “everything and the kitchen sink” approach – Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels (1998) and Wrong (2012) come immediately to mind – and work spectacularly, allowing the medium and the message to come together in complete harmony. The Key Man is not one of those films. Here, the low-key, engaging crime thriller aspect is completely over-shadowed by the flashy editing and the split-screens.

Perhaps the split-screens are by way of helping to sell the era (the film takes place in 1975) but that also becomes a bit of an issue: rather than feeling organic, the time-period in The Key Man always feels forced, as if the filmmakers need to constantly remind us of where we are. Karen reads a copy of Jaws, they watch Johnny Carson on TV, outfits get almost as much screen-time as actors, the score is the kind of jazzy funk that underlined a million ’70s-era cop shows…over time, it feels less like we’re immersed in an actual era than an Ikea showroom dedicated to more “happenin'” times.

There’s no doubt that Himmelstein has some skill behind the camera, both directing and scriptwise. While the dialogue was often too obvious, the actual setup had enough twists and turns to justify the above Hitchcock reference, even if infrequently. There’s something about a good grift/heist film that’s almost irresistible and The Key Man often scratches that itch quite ably. In fact, I daresay that a no-frills, stripped-to-the-bone version of this same film would score quite a bit higher on my personal meter: there’s a lot to like here, despite how infuriating much of the over-stuffing becomes. Ultimately, it’s easy to look at this as a case of “first-time-around-the-block-blues”: as a debut, The Key Man has a lot to recommend it but it also fails in some pretty fundamental ways. Here’s to hoping that, the next time around, Himmelstein and company go a little easier on the frosting and give the actual cake a chance to shine.