Fracture (2007) November 17, 2008
Posted by gproject in : Recently Viewed , add a commentDirected by: Gregory Hoblit
Last year I was extolling the virtues of Ryan Gosling, an actor who I had made no previous acquaintance with, for his performance in the independent hit Half Nelson [review]. The film was quite far off the beaten track, with a strong sense of itself and not afraid to get wrapped up in its downbeat atmosphere. After such a left-field victory, it comes as a surprise to see the same actor follow it up with this, a run-of-the-mill crime thriller (with a twist, of course) that never strays far from the prescribed standard structure, ultimately, to the detriment of itself.
Gosling plays Willy Beachbum, a hotshot attorney who is taking on one last case with his current small firm, before moving to the big leagues and a major private law company. Perceived as an open and shut case, the defendant is Ted Crawford (Anthony Hopkins), a man who has already confessed in writing to the murder of his young wife. When the case moves to a hearing, however, Crawford pleads not guilty and asks to defend himself in court. Suddenly, the simple job becomes a battle of mental prowess, as Beachum’s unflinching desire to win is matched against Crawford’s meticulous planning of a perfect murder. With no way of proving his case, Beachum is forced to consider measures that bend his moral flexibility to breaking point.
I guess you can’t really fault Gosling for making a picture like this - everyone has to pay the bills, after all. He remains a very strong presence in it too, bringing the relatable ordinary-ness from Half Nelson to a character that is quite badly drawn by the script (we never really get a sense of whether he is devious and underhand, as some conversations about his background suggest; or the good-guy who’s just trying to fight for the truth). Gosling is in good company too, with David Strathairn as his overlord boss, and Billy Burke playing the arresting officer who holds hidden ties to the victim.
Of course, there’s also Anthony Hopkins, who is quite fitting as the central scheming intellectual. It may just be Hannibal Lecter with the volume down, but I suppose you could cast worst for a role like this. There’s still the normal dispute over his accent, which changes like you’re flicking through a set of international TV stations, but that’s just something we’ve got to come to terms with. Finally, ex-bond girl Rosamund Pike features as love interest and potential new boss for Gosling’s character, but she unfortunately feels like a side-note to the main story and just a reason to get one major female character in the movie.
With a script and story by Daniel Pyne, who also helped write the muddled Sum of All Fears as well as the tepid Manchurian Candidate remake, the film sets off with great intentions. The “I’m telling you I did it, but you can’t prove a thing” concept played very well in trailers for the movie, which made it look like a tense thriller, with characters becoming increasingly entangled in a web of deception and confusion. As it stands, although the opening plays out like this, by the mid point we’re already circling back around on previous ideas. The number of times that ‘finding the gun’ is talked about (or shown) seems to imply a lack of creativity when it came to angles of investigation on the case. There’s not nearly enough discovery and disproving to really stay interested in the situation, and, apart from a brief moral dilemma, no decent events before the conclusion.
So it’s the conclusion, then, that everything really hangs on. Unfortunately, it’s also the weakest part of the whole affair; disassembling Ted Crawford’s so-far insurmountable cunning and logic by having Beachum just simply ‘work the case out’. The Crawford we are shown throughout the movie is way too smart to have let the final events occur, and there’s no clever bit of last-minute inspiration from the protagonist to defend against the possibility that, like everything so far, the villain had already protected himself. Conveniently, this time he just hasn’t bothered to look into it. Very dull.
Fracture starts out as a fun bit of Se7en style cat-and-mouse (albeit without quite the same level of creepy menace), yet it isn’t long until the cracks start to show. Without nearly enough twists and turns to keep its audience interested, the film peters out to a rather sub-par ending, eventually deciding that neatly wrapping itself up is more important than leaving the viewer with any sense of discovery. I still look forward to seeing more of Ryan Gosling; I just hope that this movie has covered his living expenses for a while, so that he can get back to the independent characters we all crave.
Quantum of Solace (2008) November 12, 2008
Posted by gproject in : Cinema, Recently Viewed , 3 commentsDirected by: Mark Forster
Casino Royale [review] was, undoubtedly, a shot in the arm for the Bond franchise. Having severely flagged under the weight of increasing technological lunacy, the rebooted Bond was rough, ready and suitably more visceral, both in physical and visual terms. It was a film that brought us a heavy, emotionally weighed protagonist, who, for once, actually had a story worth telling, while its frenetic action and astounding stunt work left audiences rooted to their seats; shaken, but unstirred. This is the continuation of that story, a leap from the fresh platform of the origin, into the murky waters of Bond’s larger world. His licence to thrill is unchanged, but it seems the plot may have gotten a little soggy.
The descriptively-challenged Quantum of Solace picks up right where Royale left off, having been betrayed by his former love, Vesper Lind, Bond is transporting Mr White for questioning. He reveals that there is a worldwide organisation operating on a level that MI6 haven’t even begun to fathom. Intelligence links the organisation to Dominic Green, with whom Bond finds himself acquainted after securing the services of Green’s previous lover, Camille. After much globe hopping, Bond tracks Green to Bolivia, where his devious organisation is involved in overthrowing the Bolivian government in return for land rights that, at first glance, seem worthless. As his suppressed feelings for Vesper have made Bond reckless, he must fight outside MI6 authority to stop Green, and uncover the true nature of the mysterious organisation.
The film is a strange mix of familiarity and failure – it’s the very definition of the old paradox ‘the same but different’. Let’s talk about what’s the same. Daniel Craig, for one, looks, sounds and feels like he just stepped right out of Casino Royale. His brooding intensity and rather curt manner bring the cold 21st century Bond back to the screen with equal success to 2006, yet a narrative turn has left him slightly less humorous or quipping this time around (the days of “How’s your lamb?”, “Skewered. One sympathises”, already seem far behind us).
Also making a return is the action, with pulse pounding chase sequences making up a majority of it. On foot, in cars, in planes, on ropes, more cars, in the elevator, at the opera, there seems to be no limit as to where Bond will pick a fight, and he regularly picks them, especially during the opening scenes and then approximately once every ten minutes after that. Count along – if it has been too long without any action, people just leap out from behind doors, ready to attack. In the grand scheme of things this would be okay, except it doesn’t always integrate itself well into the plot, so as to feel like a natural extension of the story, something that Royale knew how to do perfectly.
And so, on to the differences. First up, it’s hard not to make note of director Mark Forster, for whom this action-oriented feature is something of a departure. As the director of dramatic character pieces like Monster’s Ball, Finding Neverland, The Kite Runner and Stranger Than Fiction [review], he’s not an unwelcome addition to this more dramatic era of Bond. Or at least, that’s true on paper. The fact is that maybe he wasn’t the right choice for this franchise, dramatic experience or not, as he overcompensates in the areas with which he is less familiar. Action sequences are pulse-pounding, but disappointingly messy affairs, that often have you struggling to tell exactly what’s going on.
This isn’t completely Forster’s fault, although re-using cinematographer Roberto Schaefer (who has worked on all Forster’s previous dramatic features) was maybe a little shortsighted. Out goes the gritty brutality of Casino Royale, where you felt every punch and heavy landing like it was happening directly to you; in comes a reliance on fast-cutting and CG, which adds too glossy a sheen to make the action hard-hitting enough. It would be wrong say that the action sequences weren’t entertaining, they are by far the best element of the movie, but by not sticking to the reboot template this film does exactly what people pre-emptively criticized it of last time: competing directly with Bourne.
And yet, the biggest letdown comes from the most unlikely source. With Casino Royale writers Paul Haggis, Neal Purvis and Robert Wade back on board, it was assumed that we would see a return of the down-to-earth plotting that is clearly going to become a feature of the new Bond. That’s certainly what they go for, with no schemes to take over the world, or underground bases hidden in volcanoes. The problem lies in that it’s so real world, that it’s almost mundane. Land ownership contracts and utilities blackmail aren’t jobs for James Bond, especially when they side step the real issue of Bond’s revenge for the death of Vesper. The plot is dished out in dribs and drabs, making it hard to follow. Enough is revealed to piece it together, but when you do, you discover just how pointless it all is. By the end of the film we’ve taken precisely one step away from where we ended Casino Royale – not enough to warrant even this decidedly short 106 minutes of story.
It’s undeniably disappointing to tear down a franchise that started in such good stead. Quantum of Solace is by no means an awful film; just Daniel Craig and the action sequences alone make it a worthwhile timewaster. But that also stands as a criticism. The whole plot is a timewaster, taking an emotionally conflicted central character and giving him no decent reason to deal with those feelings. Instead, he blasts his was through numerous gunfights and stops a mildly creepy man from doing something slightly underhand. It’s fair to say that this film was never going to blow us away because it inherently lacked the ’shock of the new’ effect. But giving credence to pre-existing lazy comparisons with the Bourne movies [review] is what really hurts. Bring back the brutality, bring back the charm, and take solace, if only a quantum, in the fact that one weaker instalment has never irreparably damaged this franchise before.
Quantum of Solace is currently on UK general release.
W. (2008) November 7, 2008
Posted by gproject in : Cinema, Recently Viewed , add a commentDirected by: Oliver Stone
Taking dark and complicated presidential situations and spotlighting them over an epic running length has become somewhat of a calling card for the man who brought both the disgraced Richard Nixon, and a probing look at the JFK assassination, to our screens in the early nineties. Oliver Stone returns to those roots here, with the first movie to be made about a sitting president. It’s not as if he’s short of material either - this presidency has been packed with enough controversy and scandal to justify a three-plus-hour dissection. And yet, the final film is little like what you would expect: light, funny, and a just single sitting in length.
Jumping back and forth between past and recent-present, we are introduced to a college-age wild-child, whose drinking and troublesome frat-boy antics are a bit of a black spot on the good family name. His name is George Bush, and he’s determined not to disappoint his father, even if it seems like that’s all he can do. Flash forward to 2002 and he’s president of the most powerful nation in the world, making decisions that will potentially put lives at risk, and his family’s name on the line. George wonders if he can win his father’s approval by finishing the job he began over a decade ago. The real question is: should we even be starting?
Despite this topical plot, the most notable feature of the film is just how fair it is about sticking to its subject without getting bogged down in the issues. The film is titled ‘W.’ and so it keeps its gaze firmly fixed on the personality at hand, never blinking or wandering, even as the well publicized events of the past few years start to escalate. I would stop short of calling it completely balanced, but it’s certainly a much more even-handed film than many were expecting, and in no way a tearing down of the man, or his beliefs.
In fact, it’s George’s beliefs that are very much at the centre of this film; the most prevalent of which stems from a father / son story that forms a majority of the background content, and informs much of the present. While I suspect that it is also the most over-dramatised subject, there are some nice lines drawn between their differing attitudes to wartime strategy, and the painful quest for approval. More insightful are the small flashback scenes that set his current reputation into context: “I’ll never be out Texan-ed, or out Christian-ed again”, says Bush after losing out on a Texas governor position.
The younger-years material is consistently more perceptive and clearly the main draw, especially as everything post-2001 is already well documented in the public consciousness. We focus almost exclusively on the Iraq war for the modern day scenes, which leaves a few potentially fascinating areas unexplored (namely two almost unmentioned presidential elections which could be the subject of movies in their own right). A couple of Bush’s more famous verbal gaffs turn up, sometimes under slightly different contexts; more interesting, however, is the backroom frustration he shows after fluffing a press conference question about the failures of Iraq. These moments are the ones that stand out, as they smartly break down the perception that Bush is ignorant of his self-humiliation.
Bringing these emotional highs and lows into sharp perspective is a standout central performance by Josh Brolin. The man who so impressed in No Country for Old Men [review] puts in a stellar turn, leaping recognisably into the shoes of a man whose mannerisms and facial expressions are known the world over. Kudos to the make-up department too, as the physical resemblance both in youth, and with age, maintains the visual illusion very effectively. The supporting cast is full of quality performers, including Richard Dreyfuss as Dick Cheney, Thandie Newton as Condoleezza Rice, Jeffrey Wright playing Colin Powell, James Crowell taking on George Bush Sr. and, probably best of all, Toby Jones as long-term advisor Carl Rove. Most ironic casting goes to Rob Corddry, whose direct association with The Daily Show and their frequent mocking of the Bush administration, means he raises a smile in a small role as press secretary Ari Fleischer.
Most surprising is how open Oliver Stone has allowed his perspective to be. Even when detailing Bush’s wilder ways during college, he never plays it for anything more than disorderly young rebellion, rather than a judgemental statement of disapproval. The director holds tightly onto his film though, and controls the action with all the skill of a man who has been making movies for three decades. It’s not a particularly flashy movie to look at, but it doesn’t need to be, and this knowledge helps bring simple charm to the scenes where we get a wide-angle shot of Brolin in the Oval Office, or leading his party of advisors on a stride through the desert.
All in all, W. (or ‘Dub-ya’, as we should probably refer to it) is a solid piece of work from Stone, who, maybe unknowingly, has made a film that almost directly follows up his similarly controversy-free World Trade Center [review]. With a fantastic central performance from Josh Brolin, as well as a smart script by writer Stanley Weiser, the movie does an excellent job of humanising a character both built and destroyed by media dissection. There’s no doubt that his actions and decisions were wrong, and the film goes no way to hiding this fact; but what really surprises is how admirably the film reigns itself away from the obvious, striking a tone that neatly treads the line between becoming a stone-faced analysis of ineptitude, or an outright comic farce.
W. is on UK general release from today.
Righteous Kill (2008) November 2, 2008
Posted by gproject in : Cinema, Recently Viewed , add a commentDirected by: Jon Avnet
Whenever any big names get together in the movie world, it’s always going to cause a stir. Clooney and Pitt are two, paired for the Ocean’s films, and recently reunited, to less fanfare, for the Coen Brothers’ Burn After Reading [review]. Or how about Hoffman and Hackman (Runaway Jury), or Nicholson and Freeman (The Bucket List). Their names stand atop the posters, and sometimes, atop the movie itself, leaving the actual film to cower in their shadow. The DeNiro / Pacino relationship is special, however, even in this regard. It has been teased to us for twenty years, as mere possibility in The Godfather Part II, and a brief but not unwelcome climatic showstopper to Michael Mann’s Heat. Now, drawing back the curtain to a full hundred minutes of frame sharing, it’s difficult to remember why we cared.
Here’s what it takes to bring two academy award winners together: Turk and Rooster are bizarrely named, aging New York police officers, who get caught up in the middle of a serial murder case where all the victims are themselves major criminals. At first the clues are slight: no fingerprints or signs of forced entry, just a poem left behind with each body. But when younger police partnership Perez and Riley get involved, they soon reach the most obvious conclusion: that the murders can only be the work of a cop. Tensions flare as Turk faces inquiry into his past, and Rooster works to defend him, hoping to find some justification for a so-called ‘righteous’ murder.
While not without interest, the plot is a secondary concern when you have potentially exclusive access to two Hollywood titans. Yet it actually makes all the difference, since if this is to be the one big sparring session between these greats, there’s little evidence of it. The story plods, rather than fizzles, and so the characters plod too, taking large noisy footsteps around the details rather than the light-footed encirclement we’d like. As the investigation continues, the questions posed surrounding the identity of the killer, as well as the constant implication about whodunit, make for consistently slushy plot progression.
The one-sidedness of it all is so heavy-handed that it’s almost impossible to believe anything but a twist is coming. Your cynicism is rewarded (or not), by a rather boring turn of events that aren’t only disrespectful to the rest of the plot, but which mostly stand to qualify a suggestion presented throughout the entire running time, namely: ‘cops are good, even when they’re bad’. It’s not a very elegantly made point, nor is it ever anything approaching convincing. As DeNiro tries to explain: “there’s nothing wrong with a bit of shooting, as long as the right people get shot”. I’m not so sure.
Trying to ignite this smoking pile of ash are its leads, who are never less than watchable, although this is hardly the compliment we should be handing to such a powerhouse offering. Most of this is down to the script, which is as mundane and uninspired as any middle of the road cop drama from the past decade. Written by Russell Gewirtz, his previous screenplay was the similarly twisty, but undoubtedly more intelligent, Spike Lee directed Inside Man. It seems he should stick to the good guys versus bad guys style thrillers, where the cheap twist tactics play so much more effectively. Even for a crime drama, there’s just very little exciting about Righteous Kill’s dialogue or story.
Supporting cast come in the shape of Carla Gugino, John Leguizamo, Donnie Wahlberg, and Brian Dennehy. All are fine, though no sparks really fly, especially as both characters and their respective actors appear sidelined against a story that holds its focus quite tightly on the central duo. Maybe the film would have benefited from letting a few of these periphery characters in – 
it might at least have added some intrigue to the principal mystery, rather than simply serving the wishes of Turk and Rooster. Director Jon Avnet, whose last feature was also a rather poorly received crime drama starring none other than Al Pacino, holds the reigns firmly here, but still can’t ever bring the tepid plot to boil.
Which brings us to the central problem. While we still hold the names in such high regard, their recent output has seen a fair share of tripe (The Recruit, Two for the Money / Hide and Seek, Showtime). It doesn’t matter how many DeNiro’s or Pacino’s you get, there’s still the need for great stories and solid scripts, which is why even this seemingly robust pairing of old hands turns out so disappointing. Maybe they should have broken the barrier and got this over with years ago. Or maybe their ten minutes together in Heat was exactly the right way to allow such strong personalities to co-exist. Briefly, they excel together in a way that doesn’t play over a hundred straight minutes.
Burn After Reading (2008) October 24, 2008
Posted by gproject in : Cinema, Recently Viewed , 2 commentsDirected by: Ethan Coen & Joel Coen
Take two Oscar winning directors, a cast that would make any financier weak at the knees, a heavy dose of intentional stupidity, and a pinch of ignorance towards convention. Chances are you’d end up with a bit of a mess, albeit a well regarded, critically anticipated mess. No prizes for fitting that particular recipe to Burn After Reading, the follow-up to contentious filmmaker duo the Coen brothers’ most revered work: No Country for Old Men [review]. As an undeniably ‘wacky’ addition to their cannon, and with opinion varying so wildly on their past similar efforts, it seems rather ill-advised to grab the Oscars and run straight back there. Ill-advised, yet entirely Coen-esque.
In this circular caper comedy, it all starts with one man: Osbourne Cox, a government analyst, who is fired for having a drinking problem and thus begins writing his memoirs. Unfortunately, his scheming wife, Katie Cox, steals all the information from his computer in a pre-emptive divorce strike, and then promptly loses the disc. The controversial memoirs end up in the hands of numbskull gym trainer Chad Feldheimer, who, along with his colleague and only-slightly-wiser friend Linda Litzke, promptly blackmail Osbourne for what they believe to be sensitive top secret information.
Meanwhile, Linda is also searching for romance, and ends up dating serial love rat Harry Pfarrer, a slightly clueless federal marshal who happens to be conducting an affair with none other than Katie Cox. The coincidences and bizarre happenings continue to spiral out of control, with all five hapless contributors never discovering the links that bind them. It’s a fairly involved story, and not entirely well formatted for film, although it seems the Coens are happy to admit a one-sided approach to their process: “We’re fond of stories; movies are a way of telling stories. We found out that we had some facility for writing them and we got an opportunity to actually make one. It’s not as if we have some mystical attachment to film.”
Maybe it’s their lack of adulation for the format that leads to such consistent disregard for convention in their films. Here, in particular, the brothers jump between genres on a scene by scene basis, often wrong-footing the audience over whether it’s a comedy or a work of dramatic intent. Some will say they have seen this before; that the Coen’s most definable attribute is the sly humour injected into even their bleakest movies. But this is different. Its reach covers both laugh-inducing stupidity and rather dark turns of violence, usually changing tack in a blink. It’s a hard tone to adapt to, and one which might leave you less than comfortable.
Of course, comfort is not what the brothers want you to feel. I think they take pleasure in detaching an audience from their true intent. No Country for Old Men took you ‘on the run’ for most of the film, before slamming on the brakes 
and leaving Tommy Lee Jones to pick up the pieces. The ending here is similarly curt, although by no means comparable to the dead-air discomforting experience of No Country. It neatly wraps up its story and poses the question “what did we really learn?”. What, indeed?
And yet, for all the irresolution and unbalanced tonality, the Coen’s script and characterisation helps pull the film out of the gutter and give you a reason to watch. It takes a little while to pick up, pretty much holding out until Brad Pitt arrives to steal all the funniest lines. His boneheaded performance might not be an artistic highpoint, but it’s hard not to find him humorous, especially when paired against John Malkovich’s standard hard-nosed intellectual. Then there’s Coen-favourite George Clooney, doing his below-the-curve loser enough justice to be watchable, if not entirely believable (nobody would ever give him a gun, for example). Tilda Swinton dials up the weirdness, and at times it’s a little too much, but then there’s Frances McDormand neatly managing her emotional spectrum without the pantomime delivery.
With its twisting narrative, Burn After Reading is comic exuberance unhindered by the ‘rules’ of comic filmmaking. My concern about previous Coen productions was that their tendency to lean towards the bizarre meant I always felt at arms length from the film. For all its joviality, this is a similarly cold affair. It can be lively and it can be fun, but it can’t be meaningful as anything other than an observation of stupid people and their silly coincidences. No Country had pretensions towards a wider point, yet here, the pointlessness is the point. You could say that maybe the Coen’s have earned it, but really, they probably haven’t. One Oscar success does not a legend make, and yet, you get the feeling that as long as they can keep telling their off-kilter stories, neither of them really cares.
Burn After Reading is currently on UK general release.