10/21/14 (Part One): Take This Job and Shove It

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31 Days of Halloween, barbarians, black comedies, Botched, Bronagh Gallagher, cinema, co-writers, Derek Boyle, directorial debut, Eamon Friel, Edward Baker-Duly, favorite films, feature-film debut, film reviews, films, gallows' humor, Geoff Bell, high-rise building, horror, horror-comedies, hostage situation, Hugh O-Conor, Ivan the Terrible, Jamie Foreman, jewel heist, Kit Ryan, Movies, Raymond Friel, Russell Smith, Russian mobsters, Sean Pertwee, set in Russia, Stephen Dorff

Although filmmakers have been crafting big-screen, live-action adaptations of cartoons for some time, to greater or lesser (mostly lesser) effect, very few have been able to actually approximate the sheer insanity of said cartoons. In most cases, it’s enough to simply cast real actors that kind of look like their cartoon counterparts and put them into settings that kind of approximate their respective animated backgrounds. For the most part, however, the number of live-action films that have the chaotic energy and feel of classic Merrie Melodies or Looney Tunes cartoons are pretty few and far between.

The reason for this, of course, should be pretty simple: by their very nature, animated works can get away with about 1000% more things than live-action productions can. As an example, think back to that hoariest of all animated clichés, the mid-air “run and fall.” It’s a pretty simple task to make a cartoon Bugs Bunny run on thin air, stop, ponder, pull a sign from some hidden orifice and then plummet to relative safety at the bottom of a canyon: to paraphrase some old baseball movie, “If you draw it, it will happen.” Try this same gag in a live-action format, however, and it’s automatically a whole different ballgame: as a rule, flesh-and-blood actors and animatronics are much more beholden to the law of gravity than their animated counterparts. Toss a real actor over a cliff and see how long they tread open air before crashing to terra firma: I’m guessing it won’t be a pretty sight.

All this is by way of saying that live-action features that actually have the zany, unpredictable feel of cartoons are exceptionally rare beasts, scattered unicorns in a field full of shaggy ponies. Of these rare beasts, one of the very best, brightest and most outrageous would have to be Kit Ryan’s no-holds-barred Botched (2007). Nominally about a botched heist, Ryan’s amazing little film manages to throw everything and the kitchen sink into the mix, coming up with a film that’s howlingly funny, unbelievably violent, ludicrously hyper-kinetic and endlessly surprising. It’s a movie that plays on audience expectations before systematically shattering them, all the way to a great twist ending that feels less tacked on than absolutely necessary. I fell in love with Botched the very first time that I saw it: if you’re an adventurous movie fan, I’m willing to wager that you probably will, too.

The movie kicks off with a thrilling diamond heist, led by the perpetually unlucky Ritchie (Stephen Dorff). As the title tips us off, Ritchie ends up botching the heist something fierce, losing his accomplices and the stolen ice in the process. Returning to his no-nonsense boss, the stony-faced Mr. Groznyi (Sean Pertwee), Ritchie gets a chance to make everything right, via yet another heist. This time, Ritchie must travel to Russia, where he teams up with the bumbling brother duo of Peter (Jamie Foreman) and Yuri (Russell Smith): the three men are charged with infiltrating a high-rise office building and stealing a special jeweled crucifix from the penthouse suite. As luck would have it, Peter is a complete and total psychopath and ends up blowing someone away, leading the trio to be locked-down on the top floor, along with a handful of hostages.

The hostages are a decidedly odd bunch, including a group of conservatively dressed, ultra-religious women, led by Sonya (Bronagh Gallagher), a dim-witted Russian soldier by the name of Boris Bogdanovich (Geoff Bell) and the uber-nerdy Dmitry (Hugh O’Conor). During a bit of organized chaos, Sonya pulls a gun and flips the script, taking Ritchie, Peter, Yuri, Boris and the others hostage, all in preparation for a big sacrifice to “the Almighty.” Did I mention there’s a mysterious, blood-thirsty barbarian (Edward Baker-Duly) roaming the halls of the office building wielding an enormous ax and an equally massive, bug-eyed, grin? Yeah, well, he’s there’s and he’s a real hoot, let me tell ya.

With all of these decidedly strange forces massed against him, Ritchie must stay the course and complete his assignment, lest he wind up in Groznyi’s crossfires when/if he should survive his trials. There’s more to the mysterious office building than meets the eye, however, and Mr. Groznyi might be more intertwined with Sonya and the barbarian than it first seems. If he’s not careful, Ritchie may just end up on the business-end of a huge ax, just one more victim of the working-class malaise.

At first blush, there probably doesn’t seem like a lot of parallel between Botched and something like a Wylie Coyote short. Digging a bit deeper, however, they don’t look so radically different: both are kinetic, hyper-self aware and ultra-violent little jewels that barrel ahead on their own feverish logic and display a blatant disregard for such things as basic anatomy and physics. There’s one point in the film where Baker-Duly’s gleeful berserker gets blown up and stands there, smoking and covered in soot, that should be readily familiar to anyone who grew up on old Daffy Duck cartoons: all he’s missing is an orange bill spinning around his dazed face.

So much of the film is pitched at a cartoonish pace that Botched often has the feel of a rollercoaster ride where we’ve begun just as the car is accelerating down its first huge drop. With little exposition, the film throws viewers into the deep end and then keeps shifting gears into each fresh absurdity: the heist aspect of the film turns into a hostage comedy which suddenly ratchets up into a strange occult shocker before leveling off into something that could best be described as a “light-hearted serial killer bloodbath.”

Throughout everything, however, the film manages to never lose either its inherent good nature or its sense of humor. Since the entire film plays out like a live-action cartoon, the over-the-top bloodshed takes on an altogether different…daresay I say “wholesome” feel: bodies are cleaved in two, heads roll, more fake blood is shed than a Gwar concert and yet the film never manages to seem mean-spirited or oppressive.

Part of the credit for this goes to the genuinely funny tone that’s maintained throughout Botched’s quick running time. Chalk this up to a superbly sharp script, credited to Raymond Friel, Eamon Friel and Derek Boyle: three writers would normally spell the kiss of death for a script but they obviously functioned like a well-oiled machine. The humor in the film is a great blend of witty dialogue and absurd, outrageous situations/sight gags that make for a heady mixture: the comedy is often pretty rapid-fire and there’s almost always something to laugh at, whether it’s Boris explaining how a filing cabinet can be deadlier than a tank “in the right hands,” Dimitry cautiously determining just what “saved” means before he volunteers (it’s not what he hoped) or the unforgettable scene where Sonya realizes that her brother is getting up to some unsavory business with the bodies. Unlike many horror-comedies, both sides of the coin are duly served: Botched is laugh-out-loud funny and just as horrifying as any “serious” fright film out there.

This would all be for nought without a killer cast, however, and there are some absolutely priceless performances here courtesy of Stephen Dorff, Jamie Foreman, Bronagh Gallagher and Geoff Bell. Dorff is perfect as the exasperated thief who just wants something, anything, to go right in this shitty nightmare that he calls a life, while Foreman and Bell bring just the right amount of sweetness with their psychopathy: neither guy are the kind of person you’d want in your home but either one would (probably) be a real blast in a dive bar. Top marks must go to Gallagher and Baker-Duly as the gonzo, batshit crazy dastardly duo: they’re both amazing comic actors with impeccable timing and every minute they’re on-screen is a real delight. Truth be told, the villains in Botched are so fascinating that you really end up wanting to spend more time with them then you do: Dorff is no slouch, mind you, but Sonya and the barbarian are something else entirely!

There’s so much to love about Botched that I’m tempted to call the film one of my all-time favorites, despite the fact that it’s not even ten years old. Lightning-paced, stocked with fascinating characters, hilarious situations, witty dialogue, lavishly-executed setpieces and enough gore to please the most jaded of hounds, Botched is an absolute treat from start to finish. I’ve always wondered what happened to director Kit Ryan but I now see that his sophomore feature, Dementamania (2013), just opened in the UK this month. If his new one is anything like his first one, it looks like I’ve got another potential “favorite film” to add to my list.

 

10/13/14 (Part One): Going to the Dogs

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31 Days of Halloween, action films, aliens, auteur theory, British films, Centurion, Chris Robson, cinema, cult classic, Darren Morfitt, Dog Soldiers, dogs, Doomsday, Emma Cleasby, extreme violence, feature-film debut, Film auteurs, film reviews, films, horror films, horror movies, isolation, James Cameron, Kevin McKidd, Leslie Simpson, Liam Cunningham, Movies, Neil Marshall, Sam McCurdy, Sean Pertwee, soldiers, The Descent, Thomas Lockyer, war games, werewolves, writer-director-editor

Like horror-comedies, action and horror hybrids walk a pretty fine line: too much of the action side of things and you get, well, an action film. A film which features endless scenes of zombies engaged in bone-crunching MMA action might be thrilling but it probably won’t be very blood-chilling. Likewise, traditional zombies that pop out of the background, stumble around and bite people might be horrifying and blood-chilling but probably won’t elicit the kinds of fist-pumping responses we might get from our mixed-martial artist gut-munchers. It’s a real formula, in a way, a formula which very few films really get right. The gold standard for these types of horror-action hybrids, as far as I’m concerned, is James Cameron’s classic Aliens (1986), the direct sequel to Ridley Scott’s horrifying sci-fi classic. Coming in at a close second, however, would have to be writer-director Neil Marshall’s extraordinary feature-film debut, Dog Soldiers (2002). Soldiers fighting werewolves? It doesn’t get much more thrilling than that, friends and neighbors.

As befits its no-nonsense style, Dog Soldiers jumps us into the action fairly quickly and keeps the accelerator floored for the majority of its running time. A small squadron of British soldiers, led by Sgt. Harry Wells (Sean Pertwee) and including Pvt. Cooper (Kevin McKidd) among their ranks, are in the Scottish Highlands for a run-of-the-mill training exercise. They seem to be a good bunch of guys, close-knit and good at what they do: we’ve already spent a little time with Cooper as he tries out for a Special Forces position and know that he’s a helluva fighter with a strong moral center and a particular respect for dogs, which seems to befit the protagonist of a werewolf film.

In short order, our intrepid group of soldiers begins to get the idea that things might not be as copacetic as they originally thought: they constantly hear odd noises in the surrounding forest and someone/thing tosses a slaughtered cow in their general direction, which would be enough to unnerve just about anyone. The situation gets even more extreme once they stumble onto the destroyed campsite of Capt. Ryan (Liam Cunningham) and his Special Forces unit. Ryan was the son of a bitch from the intro to shot the innocent dog but he appears to have seen much better days: he’s cut up pretty bad and looks as white as a ghost. He’s also babbling that “They tore them apart!” and the even more sinister, “There was only supposed to be one!”

Faster than you can say “Full moon,” the squadron are under siege and end up taking refuge with a passing Good Samaritan (Emma Cleasby) at a nearby abandoned farmhouse. As the enraged werewolves try to storm their meager safe house, the soldiers must band together against a foe that seems to be not supernaturally strong but also unbelievably cunning and vicious. There’s more than meets the eye here, however, and the odious Capt. Ryan appears to be right at the very heart of the mystery. What is the secret behind their hirsute attackers and will any of them survive to greet the new day?

Horror films have incorporated action elements for generations but this really became explicit with the rise of horror franchises, such as Friday the 13th and A Nightmare on Elm Street, in the ’80s. One of the conventions of these type of films, perhaps best exemplified in something like A Nightmare on Elm Street 3: The Dream Warriors (1987), are the scenes where the protagonists engage in heated battle with the main villain. These “action” moments are almost always qualified, however, with the knowledge that the “normal” people are never a match for foes like Jason or Freddy: they might temporarily get the upper hand (at least until the finale) but they’re way to “wimpy” to ever pose any real threat to these super-strong monsters. This is one reason why Scott’s Alien (1979) can be considered a horror film, whereas Cameron’s follow-up is distinctly horror-action: in Alien, the human characters (with the exception of Ripley) are all too weak to even finish off one Xenomorph, let alone a handful of them. The hat-trick that Aliens pulls, then, is to give us a group of protagonists who are utterly and completely badass: Space marines, as it turns out, and set them loose against the alien menace.  This way, we don’t question when the marines are kicking alien ass up one side and down the other (although this doesn’t happen quite as easily as I’ve, obviously, made it sound) because that’s what rough-and-tumble space marines are supposed to do: kick ass.

By making our protagonists tough-guy soldiers, Dog Soldiers levels the playing field quite a bit and allows us to suspend disbelief for the resulting action sequences. We don’t question that these guys have sharp reflexes and are able survivalists because, well, that’s kind of what we expect of soldiers. Since the opponents are more evenly matched (at least slightly more, as the werewolves are still towering, mountainous and furry buzzsaws), this allows for a more even balance between the action and horror elements. There are genuine horror elements in the film, not least of which is the ultimate “reveal” about the werewolves identities, which are allowed to play out at a more leisurely pace. For the most part, however, Dog Soldiers definitely plays like one all-out action sequence after another, similar to the way that Dario Argento liberally sprinkled murder set-pieces throughout his early classics.

For a debut film, Dog Soldiers is a remarkably assured and nearly flawless construction. Marshall also handled the editing of the film and displays a deft talent for putting action scenes together in fast-paced and evocative yet clear ways: this isn’t the chaotic chop-chop editing of Greengrass’ The Bourne Ultimatum (2007) but something that’s altogether more fluid, with characters being much more delineated on the screen. The cinematography, by extension, is also crystal clear and sharp: Sam McCurdy, the director of photography on all of Marshall’s films, thus far, has a real eye for color and detail that gives the proceedings a rich look.

Effects-wise, Dog Soldiers is a complete marvel: the violence is sudden, harsh and well-done, while the creature effects are simply stunning, recalling nothing so much as Rick Baker’s groundbreaking work on The Howling (1981). Unlike films that hide their monsters behind shadows and off the edge of the frame, Dog Soldiers is (rightfully) proud of its lycanthropes and takes every opportunity possible to trot them before the camera. Thanks to the stellar effects work, the creatures look equally imposing whether shot in a long shot or in close up: you won’t see any zippers on these costumes.

One of the most important aspects of any “squadron-based film,” of course, is the effectiveness of the ensemble cast: as with everything else, Dog Soldiers knocks this out of the park. Sean Pertwee does a great job as the Sarge who just wants to get his guys out of the shit and Kevin McKidd (from TV’s Rome) injects enough grit into his performance of Pvt. Cooper to prevent the character from seeming like too much of a “goody-goody” cliché. Cunningham is a rather teeth-gnashing, over-the-top villain, but the performance ends up working, perhaps because it gives the group someone entirely more “manageable” to fight against.

One aspect of Dog Soldiers that sets it a bit apart from similar films (and parallels it with Cameron’s Aliens) is the film’s overall serious tone and intent: while there are the occasional clever one-liners and cheeky moments, the emphasis is definitely on adrenaline over the easy release that comic relief affords. Truth be told, the film’s funniest moment is also one of its most badass: as Spoon (Darren Morfitt) is about to be devoured by a werewolf, he tosses out the immortal retort, “I hope I give you the shits, you fucking wimp!” Epic, indeed.

For my money, Neil Marshall is, hands-down, one of the single most impressive genre directors in the business. While I’ve enjoyed some of his films more than others (Dog Soldiers and The Descent (2005) occupy a pretty lofty perch, whereas Doomsday (2008) and Centurion (2010) reside a bit closer to solid ground), I’ve never been anything less than completely entertained with any of his work: he’s the kind of director that can get me excited for any project, sight unseen, and is a filmmaker that I expect to follow for several good decades to come. It’s always handy, however, to go back to the beginning and see how it all started. For Marshall, it started with this thrilling, edge-of-the-seat classic about werewolves and the soldiers who fight them and it doesn’t show any signs of stopping anytime soon. Utterly essential for genre fans and anyone who relishes a ripping good, military-themed action film.