3/1/15: Everybody is Somebody

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2014 Academy Awards, 21 Jump Street, 22 Jump Street, 87th Annual Academy Awards, adventure, Alison Brie, animated films, Batman, Channing Tatum, Charlie Day, Chris Pratt, Christopher Miller, cinema, Cloudy With a Chance of Meatballs, co-directors, co-writers, colorful films, destiny, directing team, duty, Elizabeth Banks, family films, father-son relationships, film reviews, films, friendships, good vs evil, heroes, individuality, Jonah Hill, Lego Movie, Liam Neeson, Mark Mothersbaugh, Morgan Freeman, Movies, multiple writers, Nick Offerman, Oscar nominee, Oscars, personal expression, Phil Lord, positive films, positivity, romance, Shaquille O'Neal, stylish films, superheroes, The Lego Movie, Will Arnett, Will Ferrell, Will Forte

In an increasingly cynical, self-absorbed world, genuine displays of emotion often stick out like sore thumbs. When everyone is shuffling around with their hands in their pockets, rolling their eyes and being openly dismissive, the person who’s jumping around, laughing, shouting and having a great old time seems quaint, at best, and kind of idiotic, at worst. That, unfortunately, is one of the myriad curses of our modern age: our healthy sense of irony has mutated into an outright dislike of anything that seems too sincere…after all, what’s cool about that?

Being cynical is not a problem for Phil Lord and Christopher Miller’s The Lego Movie (2014), however: I wager that you’d be hard-pressed to find a film that wears its heart on its sleeve more proudly than this one. In fact, their film is so upbeat, jubilant, frenetic and good-natured that it seems ready-made for nothing less than complete and total derision…even kids movies are world-weary these days, after all. The crucial thing here, however, is that The Lego Movie is actually the furthest thing possible from a mindless, slobbering puppy: in reality, the film is actually quite clever, combining a dizzying, scattershot approach to pop culture references (albeit in the furthest way possible from the dated treacle of the Shrek films) with a tenderly insightful look into father-son relationships. The themes are always big and on the nose but it’s also pretty impossible to keep from getting swept up in the spectacle: in every way possible, The Lego Movie is the epitome of a big-budget, multiplex kids’ movie with heart, spirit and something to say.

Our plucky hero, Emmett (Chris Pratt), is a thoroughly average, cheerful, workaday drone who always follows the rules, has little imagination, no friends and no chance for any sort of wider recognition. His thoroughly average life comes to an end, however, after he meets the rebellious Wyldstyle (Elizabeth Banks) and comes into possession of the fabled Piece of Resistance. As luck would have it, Emmett appears to be the prophesied “Special,” the Master Builder who can save all of the Lego realms from the dictatorial homogenization efforts of President Business (Will Ferrell), who sidelines as the evil, outrageously outfitted Lord Business. Business hates individuality and wants to use the dreaded “Kragle” to freeze the denizens of Legoland in place.

In the best epic tradition, it’s up to Emmett and Wyldstyle, along with a motley group of new friends, to save the day. Along for the adventure of a lifetime are Wyldstyle’s arrogant boyfriend, Batman (Will Arnett); Metal Beard (Nick Offerman), the hybrid-pirate; Uni-Kitty (Alison Brie), the perpetually chipper horned cat; Vetruvius (Morgan Freeman), the wise wizard who foretold Emmett’s appearance; and Benny (Charlie Day), the displaced astronaut who just wants to make an old-fashioned spaceship. The group will need to work together if they want to succeed, however, since President Business’ right-hand-man, Bad Cop/Good Cop (Liam Neeson) is hot on their trail. As the dreaded TAKOS Tuesday looms, will Emmett restore individuality to the various kingdoms of Legoland or will the Kragle seal their fates forever?

Even at nearly two hours long, The Lego Movie packs an awful lot of action, plot and chaos into its stylish framework, making the film as dizzying as it is relentlessly upbeat and fun. There are so many small details crammed into every frame, so many running jokes, gentle satire and pop culture references, that the film sometimes feels like being dropped into a life-size Pachinko machine. There’s a method to the madness, however, a natural flow that allows one to get caught up in the eye-popping visual candy and just go with it. Unlike many modern animated films, which often seem so frenetic as to be unintelligible for anyone older than a pre-teen, The Lego Movie never seems completely nonsensical, even as it constantly smashes the wall between audience and action, animation and live action.

One of the film’s neatest coups is the way in which it mashes together so many disparate pop culture figures, superheroes and assorted film franchises. Not only do we get a full complement of iconic superheroes (besides Batman, the film also features Green Lantern, Wonder Woman, Superman, and, if I recall correctly, Spiderman) but we also get Star Wars characters (Han and Lando show up for a funny bit), real-life figures (Shakespeare and Honest Abe are here, along with Shaquille O’Neal, for some inexplicable reason) and at least a couple dozen that managed to sail right by me. If there’s one deficit to The Lego Movie’s “everything and the kitchen sink” approach, it’s that it’s pretty impossible to catch everything the first time through: it’s like the scene in I Love Lucy where she tries (and fails) to combat the conveyor belt. By the time we’ve recognized and laughed at one reference, we’ve missed three more. On the flip side, however, I’d rather have an embarrassment of riches than a veritable wasteland…there, literally, is something for everyone here.

Along with being upbeat, fun and goofy, The Lego Movie also comes with a raft of good, positive messages and morals behind it: the importance of imagination; building people up rather than tearing them down; fostering teamwork; self-sacrifice; giving your children enough autonomy for them to succeed (or fail) on their own terms; the need to think outside of the box in order to solve problems…they’re all here and none of the messages (including the father-son bit) are so forced, maudlin or obvious as to be cloying. As previously mentioned, Miller and Lord’s film is the furthest thing from “big, dumb and loud” that there is (although it is pretty noisy, to be honest).

As far as voice talent goes, The Lego Movie is like an endlessly replenishing Horn of Plenty: we get the now ubiquitous Chris Pratt (giving Bradley Cooper some competition in the box office recognition stakes), a great performance from Banks as the self-assured Wyldstyle, terrific comedic support from Offerman, Day and Brie (the part where Uni-Kitty goes ballistic is pure gold) and incredibly fun performances from Ferrell and Neeson. Neeson, in particular, seems to be having a blast playing off his recent tough-guy image and he really lights up the screen whenever he’s barreling through the action. And then, of course, there’s Arnett as (arguably) the most self-centered, egomaniacal Batmen in the history of the character. Arnett is always fun but he’s especially good here, managing to bring subtle nuance to a character that didn’t really need it: thanks to his performance, the Emmett/Wyldstyle/Batman love-triangle has just enough pathos to feel real.

At the time, much was made of The Lego Movie’s general snubbing at this year’s Academy Awards (the film was only nominated in the Best Original Song category, which it won). After finally seeing the film, I must freely admit to being just as baffled by its exclusion: while I’ve yet to see the actual nominees, I find it rather hard to believe that How to Train Your Dragon 2 (2014) was a better “mainstream, multiplex” choice for nomination than The Lego Movie. The integration of actual Legos with computer animation, alone, makes the film eminently more interesting and impressive than many animated films I’ve seen recently and it’s intelligent enough to appeal to adults, as well as children. To be honest, it’s a real head-scratcher that ranks along the exclusion of Enemy (2014) and Nightcrawler (2014), at least as far as I’m concerned.

As someone who dislikes noisy, crass, chaotic, self-referential modern animated films, I was fully prepared to hate The Lego Movie, even though I really enjoyed the duo’s Cloudy With a Chance of Meatballs (2009). Instead, I was kind of blown away by it: the film is consistently impressive and, when it soars, it really hits some heady heights. Add in a great score from Devo mastermind Mark Mothersbaugh and there’s really precious little to complain about here. Whether you’re a parent, a kid or just someone who loved Legos growing up, I’m willing to wager that you’ll find something to love here.

One of the most beautiful aspects of childhood is the sincere joy that kids have over everything that they come across: kids don’t “like” stuff, they just like it, no qualifiers or snark necessary. The Lego Movie understands how important it is to dream, believe and shoot for the stars, how the boundless depths of our imaginations once took us to unbelievable places…and how they can still take us there, if we let them. In many ways, The Lego Movie is about the pure, undiluted joy of being a child: you’d have to be a real Lord Business to make fun of that.

8/24/14: A Fistful of Nuts

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animated film, animated films, bank robbery, based on a short, Brendan Fraser, cartoons, cinema, film reviews, films, Gabriel Iglesias, Gangnam Style, heist films, Jeff Dunham, Katherine Heigl, Liam Neeson, Maya Rudolph, Movies, nut store, nuts, Peter Lepeniotis, Sarah Gadon, self-sacrifice, squirrels, Stephen Lang, Surly Squirrel, The Nut Job, Will Arnett

There are few things in this world that I openly detest quite as much as overly referential animated films, ala Shrek (2001), although films like Scary Movie (2000) and Disaster Movie (2008) are certainly right up there. My big problem with movies like this (aside from the fact that they’re usually obnoxious, shrill and prone to induce seizures in anyone younger than 20) is their undue reliance on “of-the-moment” pop culture references: a few months (or even weeks) after films like this are released, they’re instantly dated and feature no staying power whatsoever. It’s similar to SNL skits that are based on recent celebrity faux pas and “current affairs”: these incidents may have relevance at the moment but who’s going to care in a month, let alone a decade?

I begin with this disclaimer by way of saying that Peter Lepeniotis’ The Nut Job (2014) almost lost me before it had a chance to grab me. Within moments of starting the film, I was treated to my first pop culture reference (albeit an extremely dated one): the heroic squirrel Grayson (Brendan Fraser) smirkingly remarks to another character that “Chicks dig the tail.” Not only was this roughly the millionth tired variation of the Batman & Robin (1997) bon mot that I’d been treated to over the years but it also managed to come almost twenty years too late to be anything more than a complete head-scratcher: do people still remember Joel Schumacher’s Batman films, especially in the wake of Christopher Nolan’s extremely popular modern reboot? More importantly, does anything really care enough to be tickled by another stupid reference to an already tedious film?

I say “almost lost me,” however, because The Nut Job manages to pull off a rather nifty hat trick: it nimbly straddles the dividing line between “cheeky, good fun” and “hyperactive kiddie fodder,” coming out quite handily on the side that doesn’t tend to make me see red. In many ways, The Nut Job reminds of recent films like Free Birds (2013) and The Croods (2013), although it’s a solid step down from either of those movies. Nonetheless, there was enough good stuff here to keep me utterly engaged all the way up to the end credits, wherein an animated Psy appeared to shake his pixels to his mega-hit Gangnam Style: it probably says a lot that not even the ultimate gratuitous pop-culture reference could spoil the good will that the film earned.

The Nut Job concerns the misadventures of Surly Squirrel (Will Arnett), the disagreeable loner with the “all about me” attitude. Surly lives in one of those giant cinematic urban parks that seem to consist of miles of unspoiled trees, pristine ponds and general pastoral beauty. The rest of the park’s resident animals, including the aforementioned Grayson, Andie (Katherine Heigl), Mole (Jeff Dunham) and Buddy the Rat (Rob Tinkler), are ruled by the iron-fisted Raccoon (Liam Neeson), a smooth-talking “Tammany Hall”-type politician with a hidden agenda. When Surly’s newest scam (stealing a mobile nut cart) backfires and leads to the destruction of his fellow animals’ winter food storage, the angry animals banish the rapscallion to the terrifying wilds of the city proper, the worst punishment that any of the animals can imagine.

Once in the city, alone but for the continued friendship/servitude of his mute buddy Buddy, Surly happens upon a little bit of nirvana (nutvana?) in the form of a nut store, seemingly run by the same shady fellas that ran the doomed nut cart. Turns out that these fellas, Fingers (James Rankin) and Lucky (Scott Yaphe), are a couple of gangsters working for King (Stephen Lang) and the mysterious, mute Knuckles: they’re all playing to use the nut store as a front for breaking into the bank next-door. In a cute bit of symmetry, Surly plots to break into the nut shop in the same basic way that King and his gang plot to break into the bank. When Andie and Grayson show up, however, looking for food for the rest of the park animals, Surly is forced to reexamine his standoffish ways and must decide whether to swallow his pride and help those who’ve exiled him. As Surly will learn, it doesn’t take anything special to look out for number one but it takes a whole other kind of animal to selflessly look out for others: it takes a hero.

While The Nut Job features a witty, tight script, its two greatest strengths are, without a doubt, the exceptional voice acting and the eye-catching computer animation. While I’ve always been a huge fan of the traditional cel-style of animation (think the classic Disney films), I’m gradually warming to the more recent computer animation of films like the aforementioned Free Birds, The Croods, Rango (2011) and ParaNorman (2012). When done well, these films can look quite beautiful (if slightly colder than more traditional animation styles) and The Nut Job is no exception. Indeed, the scene where the animals’ storage tree burns is quite wonderfully evocative, almost artistic in its destruction. Nothing about The Nut Job looks cheap, which really helped to pull me into the story.

The biggest boon for any modern animated film is its voice cast, however, and The Nut Job features some real winners. While Arnett is a slightly less interesting presence here than in his live-action performances (or the animated Bojack Horseman, for that matter), he’s still a commanding performer and utterly magnetic. I’ve, personally, never been the biggest fan of Katherine Heigl, but was completely taken with her Andie: she brings a refreshing measure of common sense, trepidation and strength to the character that makes her not only an interesting character but a pretty good role model, to boot…not a bad trick for a “kid’s movie” to pull off. For my money, however, the real pick of the litter this time around has to be Liam Neeson: the veteran actor (now action star, apparently) rips into his role with absolute gusto, turning in one of the most bravura performances of a pretty bravura career. Neeson is having so much fun as the nefarious Raccoon that it’s completely infectious: I found myself grinning from ear to ear whenever he showed up to spread his pretty poison about and the climatic battle with Surly is a complete treat. My only complaint with the voice cast at all, to be honest, is with the relative lack of Fraser as the boneheaded, heroic Grayson: there just wasn’t enough of him here, making the character come across as woefully underdeveloped and strictly one-dimensional. This, of course, is a tremendous pity, since Fraser is one of the few human actors around (Andy Serkis being another one) who almost seems more of an animated character than a flesh-and-blood person.

Ultimately, I found a lot to like about The Nut Job. The film is vibrant and kinetic, yet manages to downplay the hyper-active pop-culture references that manage to sink similar films (at least as far as I’m concerned…Shrek’s massive popularity seems to bespeak of a much more tolerant attitude among the general movie-going populace). The voice talent is top-notch and the film is full of nicely orchestrated, suitably tense action scenes and set-pieces. I also really liked how the film manages to serve as commentary on our current superhero-obsessed culture: despite Surly’s position as park savior, the film is really about how self-sacrifice is necessary to the continued survival and evolution of our communities and societies. Surly doesn’t truly find happiness until he sets aside his own selfish needs and feelings and works towards the greater good: I’m not suggesting that I completely believe in this kind of “feel-good community activism” but it sure as hell beats the “every man/woman for him/herself” tact by a country mile.

6/6/14 (Part Two): Alpha Males

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action-adventure, adventures, Alaska, Alaskan wilderness, alpha males, based on a short story, Bronson, cinema, Dallas Roberts, Dermot Mulroney, faith, fighting animals, film reviews, films, flashbacks, Frank Grillo, Greg Nicotero, guy movies, isolation, Jack London, Joe Anderson, Joe Carnahan, killer wolves, Lee Marvin, Liam Neeson, man vs. nature, Movies, Narc, Nonso Anozie, oil riggers, Ottway, plane crash, Smokin' Aces, snow, stranded, survival, survival-horror, The A-Team, The Descent, The Grey, voice-over narration, wolves, writer-director

Mankind likes to think that it’s the master of any domain it comes across but the reality isn’t quite as optimistic. Sure, we can go into frigid Arctic areas, travel deep below the sea and even walk on the Moon: if we put our minds to it, nothing seems impossible. Throw humans into any of these situations wearing just the frail skins we were born with, however, and see how far we get. We may be able to use technology and innovation to take us further than anyone has gone before but, at our core, we are shockingly fragile, insignificant little things. Without the various safety nets we establish for ourselves, like clothing, shelter and weaponry, humanity is very much at the mercy of the natural world. Hunters are all-powerful when they’re armed but look an awful lot like food when they aren’t. A shady banker with a computer can bring down the world: a shady banker, in the forest, with no protection, will get eaten by a bear…that’s just the way the world works.

Writer-director Joe Carnahan’s The Grey (2011) (an adaptation of Ian Mackenzie Jeffer’s short story, “Ghost Walker”), is yet another examination of “man vs. nature,” one of those time-honored tales where disparate and diverse personalities must come together in order to survive a greater threat. In the process, the characters will do lots of surviving, lots of dying and lots of personal discovery. While this type of story is certainly nothing new (hell, Jack London may have invented this subgenre all the way back in the 1900s), The Grey ends up being an extraordinarily powerful film, anchored by a quietly explosive performance from Liam Neeson and a strong, viscerally violent atmosphere. While popular jokes at the time may have cast The Grey as nothing more than “Liam Neeson punching wolves,” the film is a helluva lot more than that. In fact, it may just be the best survival-horror film since Marshall’s classic The Descent (2006).

We’re immediately dropped into the desolate, snow and wind-blasted wilderness of Alaska, where we meet Ottway (Liam Neeson), our guide through this particular wasteland. Ottway is a master outdoors-man and responsible for protecting the rugged members of an oil-rigging crew from the hungry wolves that endlessly patrol the icy wastes. Ottway is also a hopelessly damaged individual, suffering from some sort of unnamed loss (we get lots and lots of flashbacks) that drives him perilously close to eating a bullet. He doesn’t, however, and boards a plane with the rest of the crew, including Diaz (Frank Grillo), Flannery (Joe Anderson), Talget (Dermot Mulroney), Henrick (Dallas Roberts) and Burke (Nonso Anozie). When the weather gets worse, the plane freezes over and ends up crashing in a spectacular, absolutely thrilling sequence (talk about edge of your seat…literally): the lucky ones are killed in the crash. The unlucky ones, led by Ottway, must now survive in the harsh elements with only the clothes on their backs and a few canisters of pilfered airplane fuel to start fires. They need to get back to civilization but there are plenty of eyes watching from the woods…hungry eyes.

As Ottway does his damnedest to keep the survivors alive, he finds himself butting heads with the worst aspects of humanity, including greed, fear and the selfish desire to survive at the cost of everyone else. In particular, Ottway finds himself at odds with Diaz: while the vicious wolves circle in the darkness, Diaz and Ottway circle each other in the light, sniffing for weakness and constantly struggling for domination. Even as Ottway discusses the need to find and slay the alpha male wolf, the struggle for alpha dominance within the survivors threatens to tear them all asunder. Will Ottway be able to overcome his own emotional issues in order to fulfill his duties as group protector? Will the men learn to work together, against all odds, or will they continue to be picked off, one by one, until only their bones remain to remind of their existence? In order to survive, the men will not only need to overcome the wolves: they will need to become the wolves.

The Grey is, first and foremost, a glorious return to the kind of big-screen adventure-survival epics that used to be de rigueur at the box office back in the ’70s. In many ways, the film isn’t such a huge departure from films like Deliverance (1972), Jaws (1975) or Sorcerer (1977) but a much closer parallel would be the aforementioned one with The Descent. In many ways, The Grey is definitely a survival-horror film: the wolves are introduced in a way that establishes them as monsters (the glowing eyes and frightening baying) and the alpha male wolf is established in a way that sets him up as the “chief bad guy” (the scene where Diaz tosses the decapitated wolves’ head into the darkness, only to be met by the angry response call from the alpha male, isn’t much different from any scene where an evil leader reacts in anger to the death of a subordinate at the hands of the heroes). In this way, the wolves are very similar to something like Peter Jackson’s orcs or Marshall’s cave dwellers and serve a similar function in the film.

An action-adventure film lives or dies by its action sequences and, in this regard, The Grey is a complete stunner. From the initial plane crash to the heart-in-mouth scene where the survivors rappel down a craggy mountain-side to the final confrontation with the alpha wolf, The Grey is one incredibly intense scene after another. Carnahan masterfully coils and uncoils the tension, building up quiet, personal dialogue scenes into explosive action beats, prompting me to (literally) jump out of my seat on at least a half-dozen occasions. One of the scenes, which begins as a confrontation between Diaz and Ottway but ends as a confrontation between Diaz and a wolf, is so perfectly executed that it’s almost a textbook example of how to set-up and execute such a moment. I’ve never been a huge fan of Carnahan’s other films (I positively abhor the empty-headed Smokin’ Aces (2006)) but he displays an absolutely deft touch on The Grey that has me eagerly anticipating his next project.

The film almost always looks and sounds great (the sound design is particularly strong) but I wasn’t fond of cinematographer Masanobu Takayanagi’s (who also shot the Oscar-winning Silver Linings Playbook (2012)) frequent over-reliance on blown-out visuals. His landscape cinematography was so beautiful that it was frustrating to have such an obvious visual aesthetic for the more intimate scenes: I get that it’s a cold, white, desolate place…no need to rub my nose in it. Additionally, in the minor quibble department, I felt that Ottway’s frequent flashbacks/dream sequences wore out their welcome pretty early into the film and frequently killed the forward momentum. The sequences did a little to help establish Ottway’s character, although this type of character development seems particularly heavy-handed and unnecessary.

Ultimately, however, no discussion of The Grey can be complete without singling out Liam Neeson for some special recognition. Although the rest of the cast is solid (Dermot Mulroney is particularly good as Talget), this is definitely Neeson’s film. Over the last few years, Neeson has been gradually morphing into an action star, not too far removed from what Bronson and Eastwood were doing in the ’80s and ’90s. In fact, it’s pretty easy to imagine someone like Bronson, Eastwood or Lee Marvin playing the part of Ottway: it’s a quiet, brooding role that requires not only plenty of ass-kicking but also some degree of wounded vulnerability. Ottway may be a man of action but he’s still just a man: Neeson shows us the confusion, fear and conflict beneath his stoic visage, without doing anything to denigrate his inherent heroism. Ottway is not some unrealistically pure “white knight”: he’s just as fucked up as everyone else, yet manages to work through his issues to do what needs to be done. It’s a truly multi-faceted performance made all the more impressive by how little (relatively speaking) Neeson says. Those flinty eyes tell a helluva story, however, and Carnahan/Takayanagi take full advantage of this with plenty of intense closeups, ala Eastwood and his similarly flinty orbs.

While The Grey could, perhaps, be considered the ultimate “guy movie,” (the only women in the film appear in flashback/dream sequences, which is probably rather telling) I think that there’s a lot more bubbling beneath the surface than mindless chest-beating and machismo. This is definitely an action film, through and through, and packed with enough hardcore, visceral violence to please even the most discerning gorehound (the film doesn’t skimp on the “wolves eating people” visuals and there’s one bit involving half of a guy that’s pretty difficult to watch). Along with action and violence, however, there are some surprisingly deep conversations about the nature of faith and there’s one particularly moving scene where Ottway helps a dying man pass on peacefully. They’re rare moments of beauty and serenity in an otherwise unforgiving, harsh landscape but they make the film an overall richer experience.

Ultimately, I found myself quite taken with The Grey: perhaps future viewings will help push it into the neo-classic status of films like The Descent but, for the time being, it simply stands as an extraordinary, ridiculously exciting adventure film. That being said, the film also features one of the most perfect final scenes I’ve ever seen (ruined only so slightly by an unnecessary post-credits tag), a scene that manages to be simultaneously regal, sad and ruthlessly badass. It’s a scene that stops right before it begins, leaving the viewer’s brain to fill in the gap. It’s a wonderful, powerful, amazingly cinematic moment: it’s what movies are all about (in my non-humble opinion) and any modern film should be proud to feature anything close to it. If the finale doesn’t find you on your feet, fist thrust heroically into the air…well, let’s just say that there may not be any hope for you, after all. The Grey is vicious, vital, bloody filmmaking at its very best: you’d be wise to give it a look sometime.

 

1/26/14: 90 Minutes in Purgatory

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action films, Alistair Little, cinema, drama, Film, Five Minutes of Heaven, forgiveness, Irish films, Irish Republic, James Nesbitt, Liam Neeson, Mark Ryder, Movies, Northern Ireland, Oliver Hirschbiegel, Protestant vs Catholic, reconciliation, retribution, revenge, UVF

Sometimes, you can have the very best intentions and still fall short. You may set out to help someone, for all the right reasons, only to have everything backfire completely. You might attempt to atone for a past transgression, only to re-stoke flames of hatred that might, otherwise, have been forever snuffed. You might even attempt to make a film that deals in highly personal issues of redemption, forgiveness and hatred while simultaneously showcasing pulse-pounding action. Five Minutes of Heaven strives for many things but, unfortunately, falls just as short on many of them.

Five Minutes of Heaven is a fictional film that’s actually inspired by real events, although the bulk of the film still dwells in the land of supposition and “what-if.” The movie begins in 1975 with young Alistair Little, a member of the Ulster Volunteer Force, in Northern Ireland. The UVF were a staunchly anti-Catholic, anti-Irish Republic group that patrolled Northern Ireland during the worst part of the age-old British/Irish conflict. In retaliation for a perceived threat by Catholic workers against a Protestant worker, Little finds and kills a Catholic man, Jimmy Griffin, in front of his younger brother, Joe. Alistair ends up serving time in prison, where he seems to have come out a changed, repentant man. Joe survived a childhood where he was unfairly blamed by his mother for his older brother’s death and made to suffer every day under her emotional and physical abuse. His only dream has been the “five minutes of Heaven” that he would experience as he killed Alistair Little. Thirty-odd years later, Joe just may get his chance as a TV crew facilitates a meeting between Alistair and Joe, under the guise of promoting a reconciliation between the two men. Alistair is cautious yet seems to genuinely desire a chance to begin the healing process. Joe, for his part, just can’t keep his hands off that sharp knife in his pocket. Which notion will prevail: forgiveness or vengeance?

As stated earlier, Five Minutes of Heaven has noble, if rather scattered intentions. There is some genuinely good work being done here, especially by Liam Neeson as modern-day Alistair. Neeson brings much of the quiet reserve that he’s noted for to the role, somehow making a former terrorist into something of a penitent monk. It’s not the easiest transition to swallow but Neeson really sells it. There’s a notable difference between the brash and arrogant young Alistair (played quite capably by Borgia’s Mark Ryder in a part that amounts to little more than a cameo: he’s so good that I wish we’d spent more time in the past) and the quietly religious older Alistair.

James Nesbitt, as modern-day Joe, is good but he has the tendency to play everything too aggressively, too unhinged. It reminds one of the criticisms lobbed at Jack Nicholson for his portrayal of Jack Torrance in The Shining: he started off unhinged, so the slippery slope to madness isn’t very steep. Similarly, Nesbitt plays Joe as such a damaged, fractured, spastic creature that it’s difficult to get a sense of anything from him except for pain. Every line is delivered with either clenched-teeth, ready-to-explode anger or an actual outburst, a few of which are powerful enough but lose impact through repetition. There’s something of a Nicholas Cage quality to Nesbitt’s performance, which doesn’t necessarily work to the film’s benefit. We’re allowed to see Alistair cycle through several emotions: sorrow, anger, regret, hesitation, confusion, serenity. For Joe, however, we only get pain, anger, regret and fear. This can, of course, be chalked-up to Joe’s miserable childhood and single-minded desire to kill Alistair: all well and good. Nesbitt’s constant red-lining of the emotions, however, leaves no room whatsoever for emotional building or resonance: it’s either flat or outraged.

Structurally, the film makes a few odd choices that tend to detract from the overall package, particularly involving confusing voice-overs (at one point, I thought Joe was actually talking, only to realize it was the voice-over, which promptly segued back into actual dialogue: needlessly confusing. The strangest aspect of the film, however, is the abrupt transition from emotional drama to action film in the film’s climax. It’s a scenario that the film seems to have been building up to for some time but, when it comes, the moment feels entirely out-of-place and strange, like a scene lifted from another film (possibly one of Neeson’s Taken films) entirely. That the film manages to end in a manner more consistent with the dramatic angle than the action one only further compounds the situation and makes the climatic fisticuffs that much odder and, to be frank, sillier.

Five Minutes of Heaven is a decent film with performances that range from the very good (Neeson and Ryder) to the very presentational (Nesbitt and Jill Crawford as a rather bizarre makeup assistant who functions as a sounding board for Joe’s rants as they await the arrival of Alistair). I can certainly appreciate the sentiment but can’t help feeling that a much more interesting film, a film that I really wanted to see, was left back in 1975 with all of those misguided young men patrolling the night and shooting each other for reasons even they can’t figure out. That sounds like a pretty great film, to be honest: as it stands, Five Minutes of Heaven is just a decent one.