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.

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9/14/14: This Little Piggy

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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

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.