Sunday 29 November 2009

Movie Review: The Good, The Bad, And The Ugly (1966)


"You see, in this world there's two kinds of people, my friend: those with loaded guns and those who dig. You dig." Blondie (Clint Eastwood), talking to Tuco (Eli Wallach).

After the success of A Fistful Of Dollars and For A Few Dollars More, Sergio Leone finally gets his hands on the budget of his dreams, and assembles the first western opera to conclude the Dollars trilogy.

Driven by an Ennio Morricone music score featuring the two-note coyote yell that has since become legend, and with every scene a lesson in framing, actor dynamics, and fluid camera motion, The Good, The Bad, And The Ugly is an all-time classic.

It's a sprawling epic about three men chasing after buried gold coins in the midst of the American Civil War. Tuco (Wallach, as the Ugly) is a common bandit with a bounty on his head; Blondie (Eastwood, as the Good, although the term is only relative) is a bounty hunter; and Angeleyes (Lee Van Cleef, as the Bad) is a brutal henchman who is single-mindedly pursuing the buried loot. The three men wage a triangular battle against an unforgiving desert landscape littered with desperate, colourful and disposable secondary characters fully aware they are bit players in a masterpiece of storytelling.

Tuco and Blondie start out as partners but their relationship quickly deteriorates. They are soon engaged in a deadly personal feud when they stumble onto the clues needed to locate the treasure. Angeleyes is mercilessly abusing or mowing down anyone who gets in his way. The three men, after taking turns to brutalize each other, need to make their way to the cemetery where the gold awaits, while guarding against each other in a deadly game of shifting alliances, with the added inconvenience of avoiding the brutality of the Civil War raging around them.

Leone could now afford a third American actor, and Eli Wallach gives the performance of his life as Tuco. While Eastwood and Van Cleef nail their stoic and tough personas, Wallach takes over the heart of the film as the scrambly, shifty bandit scratching out a form of survival. He is also afforded the only back-story in the movie in a sequence where he meets his brother. Tuco's subsequent description of his relationship with his sibling as he rides away with Blondie is the trilogy's most human moment.

The film has two enormous, drawn-out showcase scenes, and both come in the final hour of this 160 minute epic. In the first, Tuco and Blondie stumble upon a stand-off at a bridge between the Union and Confederate armies, and need to resolve the meat-grinding battle hindering their progress . The second showcase occupies the final 30 minutes, and takes place at the cemetery. Here Leone conjures up one of the best scenes in the history of movie-making. As Ennio Morricone unspools the magnificent The Ecstasy of Gold theme, Leone's cameras alternate their focus between Tuco sprinting through the cemetery and the whirling multitudes of headstones. The end-result is spine-tingling, hypnotizing and brilliant, all at once.

Leone follows this with the classic triangular showdown between the three men in the middle of the cemetery, unimaginably stretched in time and filled with trademark tight close-ups. The Good, The Bad And The Ugly is a breath-taking conclusion to a magnificent trilogy, and also one of the best films ever made.






All Ace Black Movie Blog reviews are here.

Saturday 14 November 2009

Movie Review: Zombieland (2009)


A movie that is not pretending to be anything other than a hip comedy-horror-zombie adventure had better deliver good characters at the centre of the action or else risk being nothing but a satire: Zombieland aces this test with four terrific characters in Columbus (Jesse Eisenberg), Tallahassee (Woody Harrelson), Wichita (Emma Stone) and Little Rock (Abigail Breslin), portraying survivors of the zombie apocalypse who need to also survive each other.

So Mad Cow disease makes the jump and creates Mad Humans, with almost everyone transformed into manic flesh-devouring zombies. These zombies are not the undead -- they are fast, hungry, ugly and just a bloody mess. They are also thankfully easy to kill. The surviving humans who have not yet been infected can use a variety of weapons, from shotguns to banjos (you gotta see the movie to appreciate this) to avoid becoming zombie meals.

Columbus is the nerd type who survived the apocalypse mostly because he enjoys the company of his computer more than the company of people. He is making his was to Columbus, Ohio (hence the name), to check on his parents. Along the way he teams up with Tallahassee, the tough urban-cowboy type who was told by his mother a long time ago that he will eventually be good at something. That something turned out to be killing zombies, a task he accepts with a worrisome relish.

Columbus and Tallahassee eventually encounter Wichita and Little Rock, sassy street-smart sisters who are making their way to California's Pacific Playland, which is rumoured to be zombie-free. The girls twice dupe the guys before the group gels and the foursome team up on their journey west.

The movie quickly settles into a terrifically enjoyable, character-driven road movie, with frequent zombie-killing interludes, and achieves just the right balance between wry comedy and hard-edged action. The four actors play their roles to perfection, with a sparkly smile behind their eyes. They are briefly joined by Bill Murray in a cameo as himself, when the group take refuge in his Beverly Hills mansion.

Eisenberg as Columbus provides the level-headed perspective on the unhinged world, while Harrelson as Tallahassee is very close to being suitably unhinged himself. This is a career-defining Harrelson performance that will long be remembered.

Stone as the tough Wichita nails the dark elder sister who becomes the eventual target of Columbus' affection. Breslin as the younger sister manages the difficult task of portraying the capable 12-year old without the nausea-inducing wise-cracking-smarter-than-she-looks stereotype.

In addition to the four lead performers, director Ruben Fleischer deserves a lot of credit for perfectly pacing the movie and drawing out the strengths of each of the characters. The editing is thankfully coherent and avoids epilepsy-inducing micro-cuts. The music, including crunchy heavy metal from the likes of Metallica, perfectly accompanies the action.

The movie is brave enough and good enough to pull off a running gag relating to Columbus' numbered "rules of survival" for Zombieland. Everytime he introduces us to a rule, it appears as text on the screen, and everytime the rule is put into action, it is also re-displayed on the screen. It's an audacious moviemaking stunt, and it works.

The move thankfully does not shy away from blood, gore, and foul language -- this is not a sanitized family-friendly comedy. The hard edges of the zombie apocalypse are up-front and are gruesome -- which all serves to enhance the impact of the characters and the comedy when they take centre stage.

It all ends with a massive and hyper-enjoyable zombie-killing extravaganza at Pacific Playland, complete with a large clown. It's a fittingly insane ending to a highly engaging movie.






All Ace Black Blog Movie Reviews are here.