Monday 31 January 2011

Movie Review: Sudden Impact (1983)


After a seven year hiatus, Inspector Harry Callahan returns, his .44 Magnum handgun blazing, bodies piling up all around him, and an assortment of bad guys realizing that he may be getting older, but he certainly isn't getting any cuddlier.

Icy cool blond Jennifer Spencer (Sondra Locke), a respected painter, is on a killing spree. She and her sister were gang raped 10 years prior; her sister was left in a vegetative state. Now Spencer is back to destroy the white trash group that committed the rape, including their unhinged leader Ray Parkins (Audrie J. Neenan) and the group of scum men who hang around her. Spencer's blunt signature in committing her revenge is shooting the rapists once in the groin, and once in the head. Spencer kills her first victim in his car on the beach in San Francisco, before relocating to the nearby town of San Paulo, where the rapists reside.  

Meanwhile, Inspector Harry Callahan is having a busy few days. First he disrupts a restaurant robbery by killing all but one of the heavily armed robbers. Then when another group of gangsters tries to kill him in a drive-by bombing, he lobs back their own Molotov Cocktail and dispatches them into the bay. Finally, Callahan deludes an aging crime boss into having a heart attack, which results in another bunch of goons coming after Callahan with machine guns; he kills them all. To end the mayhem, Callahan is sent by his superiors to San Paulo, presumably to follow-up on the leads of Spencer's first victim, but really to stop the carnage in San Francisco.

What is meant to be quiet time for Harry in San Paulo quickly turns into a serial killer investigation, as Spencer ups the pace and successively eliminates her victims. Callahan is soon on her trail, but he also encounters Parkins and her troop of ugly thugs; worse still, there are connections between Parkins and San Paulo chief of police, so Callahan gets precious little support in stopping the bloodshed. Dirty Harry is finally faced with his greatest dilemma: deciding what exactly is justice, and when are revenge killings justified, if ever.

Sudden Impact matches, and in some ways improves upon, the original Dirty Harry (1971). Joseph Stinson's script introduces a range of villains and foes worthy of Callahan's attention, and in Jennifer Spencer, the series gets its most intriguing killer. Both a victim and an assailant, and with Locke perfect in the role, Spencer has the deepest back story of any criminal faced by Harry, and presents him with his most twisted moral quandary. What Spencer is doing is self-defense, but 10 years after the fact. Her victims deserve their fate, but she is delivering frontier justice. Does she deserve Callahan's sympathy or his rage?

Sudden Impact bravely takes Callahan out of San Francisco for the second half of the film, the only time in the series that he leaves his home town.  The risk works, and in San Paulo Harry is a big and prominent fish in a small but infected pond, and he perfectly attracts the attention of all criminal classes.

Stinson also peppers the script with memorable one-liners and dialogue exchanges, including the "Go ahead, make my day" tag line and the brilliant "dogshit" tirade in the courthouse elevator. Meanwhile, Eastwood directs with a panache not seen in any of the other series entries, and his back-lit entry into the climactic scene at the San Paulo boardwalk is an absolute gem.

Sudden Impact marks the welcome return of an old friend: he is back to prove that although the battlefields are new, the old methods still work just fine.


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Sunday 30 January 2011

Movie Review: The Fighter (2010)


Based on the true story of unlikely boxing champion Micky Ward, The Fighter is an enjoyable celebration of family ties and irrepressible spirits.

Brothers Micky Ward (Mark Wahlberg) and Dicky Eklund (Christian Bale) are both boxers from the working-class Massachusetts town of Lowell. Older brother Dicky is long past his prime, but remains a local legend for having once fought and knocked-down Sugar Ray Leonard, although it was more of a Leonard stumble. Dicky now pretends to train Micky for upcoming bouts arranged by their overbearing manager mother Alice (Melissa Leo), but Dicky is really just an addict, spending most of his time at the local crackhouse while Micky's career stalls.

After Micky is pummeled in a mis-match that he is pushed into by Dicky and Alice, he questions the ability of his family to properly guide his career. He develops a romantic relationship with local bartender Charlene (Amy Adams), and she encourages him to distance himself from his brother, mother and his numerous ugly sisters. Dicky lands in jail after a run-in with the police, but uses the opportunity to break his addiction. With Charlene's support and new management, Micky's career takes a turn for the better, winning several bouts as he starts getting closer to a shot at a world title. Dicky, now clean, is released from prison and has to find a way to reconnect with his brother without jeopardizing his one chance at career success.

While Mark Wahlberg is relatively subdued as Micky Ward, playing the family meal ticket and black sheep not quite fitting in with his brash surroundings, Christian Bale delivers a remarkable performance as Dicky Eklund. Bale's shifty, restless, yet charming portrayal as the drug-addicted Dicky, living in the past and building his entire life's legend on a single moment that he barely contributed to, is mesmerizing. Dicky discovering his true calling and contributing to his brother's success is the heart of the movie, and director David O. Russell lands an emotionally devastating knock-out punch when the brothers enter the hostile arena for the climatic bout, Dicky leading Micky in softly signing, only to themselves,Whitesnake's Here I Go Again. It's a moment of quiet movie magic.

Amy Adams as the trigger for Micky leaving the nest and Melissa Leo as the domineering matriarch of the family both give memorable performances, filled with passion, pride, and mastery of every button that women push when struggling to gain or maintain control.

The Fighter does not flinch from portraying life in the lower classes of depressed industrial towns, and the societal bleakness is an obvious reason for the lure of boxing as an escape to a better paycheque. Russell's cameras find excellent drama both on the streets and in the boxing ring, and The Fighter scores a victory in both arenas.






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Movie Review: Cairo Time (2009)


Cairo Time is a tender, old-fashioned romance, presented at a leisurely pace and finding the right balance between two journeys of exploration, one emotional and the other cultural.

American magazine editor Juliette (Patricia Clarkson) flies into Cairo for the first time to meet her husband Mark (Tom McCamus), a United Nations worker, for a brief vacation. But Mark is held up helping to resolve a conflict in Gaza. He calls upon Tareq (Alexander Siddig), an Egyptian coffee shop owner and an old UN colleague, to meet Juliette at the airport and see her safely to her hotel. Mark's delay is extended. Knowing no one in Cairo and quickly encountering culture shock, Juliette turns to Tareq to help her tour the City. He shows her the local souks, they take a  trip on the Nile, and they travel to Alexandria to visit Yasmeen (Amina Annabi), who is Tareq's old flame, and whose daughter is getting married. Slowly Juliette and Tareq warm up to each other, despite the enormous cultural gulf between them.

Juliette and Mark had promised that they would only visit the pyramids together; but with the simmering attraction between Juliette and Tareq threatening to erupt into a full romance, Tareq escorts Juliette to the pyramids at sunrise, in what seems like a prelude to consummating their romance.

Cairo is the catalyst for the tale of unexpectedly emerging attachment, Juliette gradually falling in love with the City just as gently as she finds sparks building in her relationship with Tareq. Patricia Clarkson is steady at the core of the film, but almost too cold. Director Ruba Nadda's script rarely requires Juliette to do much more than nervously smile as she awkwardly navigates the next cultural hurdle. Alexander Siddiq is a more magnetic screen presence, and has a more interesting role as the host who needs to maintain the politeness of a generous tour guide, introducing Juliette to a foreign but welcoming culture while confronting the undeniable attraction growing between them.

Cairo Time has vague echoes of Romeo and Juliet, with its two unlikely lovers from different tribes battling against cultural barriers. The film also works as an interesting metaphor for political relationships between East and West: the unexpectedly deep involvement of the West in the affairs of the Middle East typically ending with aching hearts. When Juliette, based on the most meager of information and with little knowledge of their history, encourages Tareq to pursue a new relationship with Yasmeen, who is of a different ethnicity, it is difficult not to notice the parallels with the often ill-fated US meddling in the region, undermined by limited comprehension of local customs and intricacies.

Overtones aside, Cairo Time is a welcome throwback to old-school film-making, where characters and locations are the main focus, and romance is given the necessary time to blossom in the most unlikely places.





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Saturday 29 January 2011

Movie Review: The Enforcer (1976)


Inspector Harry Callahan (Clint Eastwood) is back for the third of his initial three adventures, and now he faces a triple threat: a band of anarchists intent on blowing up San Francisco; smarmy politicians; and creeping gender equity policies that translate into an inexperienced female officer being assigned as his partner.

The Enforcer is polished and satisfying, but it is also the most straightforward of the initial Dirty Harry movies, the series settling into a mostly predictable routine. Harry's criminal adversaries in this episode are the least developed and most forgettable: a mishmash of generally faceless youth who get their hands on sophisticated explosives and weaponry and hold the City to ransom. Their leader, an unhinged Vietnam War vet, is hardly given any back-story, and is almost relegated to another generic bad guy who needs to be dispatched. The entire main plot appears contrived to end with a climax, filmed at Alcatraz, that allows Harry to fire an anti-tank LAW rocket, his Magnum handgun no longer considered a sufficiently large gun.

Callahan's continuous friction with his superiors is also a regurgitation of the first two movies. The Enforcer adds a minor twist by dropping the Mayor personally into the danger zone, forcing Harry to save a politician that he despises.

The introduction of Tyne Daly as Inspector Kate Moore, a smart but green officer foisted upon Callahan, could have been handled with more subtlety, but director James Fargo jackhammers in all the stereotypes, with Moore the subject of utter and open disrespect until she proves herself. Regardless of her abilities, The Enforcer does increase the already remarkably high mortality rate of Callahan's partners: he loses two in this film alone.

The film suffers from a lackluster supporting cast, Daly joined by cop movie stalwarts Harry Guardino and Bradford Dillman as they stand anonymously in Eastwood's long shadow.

The struggle to keep the character fresh is evidenced by four screenwriters wrestling with a script that rarely rises above the adequate. Dirty Harry was never going to settle for average, and he wisely took a long break after this outing.






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Tuesday 25 January 2011

Movie Review: Magnum Force (1973)


Harry Callahan's second outing is the most ambitious of the original trilogy. Two years after Dirty Harry, Clint Eastwood reprises the role of the grizzled San Francisco Inspector, and in Magnum Force he comes face to face with a more extreme version of himself: a police death squad cleaning up the streets when the justice system fails.

When a mob boss is acquitted on a technicality, a motorcycle cop catches up with the mobster's limousine and kills him and his entire entourage. Callahan wants to investigate the case but is soon butting heads with his superior, Lieutenant Briggs (Hal Holbrook), who is proud never to have used his gun, and who thinks that Harry is a relic.

The extra-judicial killings continue: another mobster and all his outdoor pool guests are wiped out by a machine-gun wielding cop; a vicious pimp is pulled over by an officer and gunned down; and another crime boss is eliminated in his penthouse suite. With Briggs and his men floundering, Callahan and his partner (Felton Perry) begin to suspect a tight-knit group of new young police rookies, including Officers Davis (David Soul), Sweet (Tim Matheson), and Grimes (Robert Urich), of running a death squad. Ballistic tests confirm his suspicions, and soon Callahan is faced with the choice of joining the killers or standing in their way -- and becoming one of their victims.

Magnum Force combines prolonged scenes of intense action with welcome interludes to humanize Harry. We see him having dinner with the estranged wife of a fellow officer; and he enjoys a tryst with a neighbour from his apartment building. As Harry is portrayed in a more sympathetic light, the film poses the tricky question: is the death squad not an extension of Harry's own preferred methods? Magnum Force tries to make a distinction between Callahan pushing the limits from within the system as being better than the rogue cops operating completely outside the system, but screenwriters John Milius and Michael Cimino do not seem too convinced by their own arguments.

Ted Post directs with confident panache, frequently filling the screen with an assortment of roaring oversized American cars that were enjoying their peak in 1973. Eastwood is supported by a worthwhile cast: Holbrook bring some weight to Lieutenant Briggs, while the young cops David Soul (Starsky and Hutch), Robert Urich (Vegas), and Tim Matheson (Animal House) all went on have reasonably prominent careers.

The second outing was never going to retain the freshness of the original, so Magnum Force did the next best thing: it added depth to the character, and presented him with a suitable moral dilemma to grapple with and lots of bad guys to blow away with that cannon of a handgun.






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Monday 24 January 2011

Movie Review: Black Swan (2010)


A study of a character in pure turmoil, Black Swan invites us to watch as the pressure of being perfect causes a crack in the normally straightforward ability to distinguish what is real from what is imagined. And in the case of Nina, her imagination is soaked with increasing amounts of blood, lust and the ability to cause damage to herself and others.

Nina (Natalie Portman) is a technically proficient ballerina, but lacking in passion. The ballet company's artistic director Thomas (Vincent Cassel) nevertheless selects her to play both the White Swan and the Black Swan in the upcoming production of Swan Lake. Nina has no trouble with the White Swan role; but Thomas needs her to dramatically improve her interpretation of the passionate, seductive Black Swan.

Nina soon finds herself struggling to manage a host of problems: Thomas seems to be making unwanted advances. Lily (Mila Kunis), a new dancer with the company, appears to deliver passion effortlessly and is eager to step into Nina's role should she falter. Beth (Winona Ryder), the aging, retiring star of the company, believes that Nina plotted to dethrone her. And Nina's mother Erica (Barbara Hershey) is supportive to the point of suffocation, eager to ensure that the daughter achieves the fame that eluded the mother.

As Nina struggles to step into the role of the Black Swan, reality and fantasy meld together, and a series of harrowing - and sometimes exhilarating - events, some real and some in her mind, hurtle her towards opening night.

Director Darren Aronofsky follows up The Wrestler with another bleak look into a profession that requires the abuse of the human body to achieve success, but whereas in The Wrestler he was satisfied portraying the physical cost of success, Aronofsky has no hesitation in Black Swan to push deep into the mental damage caused by intense, cut-throat competition.

Black Swan sets out to be thought provoking and to a certain extent traumatizing. Into the normally staid world of ballet the movie throws a lot of blood, mutilation, brazen jealousy, and insanity. Taken literally, Black Swan is a journey into the mind of a perfectionist cracking under the enormous pressure of expectation. Nina is losing her mind trying to meet the expectations of Thomas, trying to make amends for the interrupted career of her mother Erica, trying to avoid the cattiness of the other dancers, and trying to satisfy her own desire for perfection while struggling to learn that dancing can be as much about passion as about technique.

But more interesting are two more metaphorical interpretations: Black Swan is a representation of the harrowing changes needed to push to the limit and break through psychological barriers to attain previously impossible objectives. To achieve her goal Nina has to abandon her old self and re-invent a new, more powerful Nina that she herself can believe in, and this process requires lot of pain and the breaking of old, entrenched habits. The more paranormal events that she encounters are symbolic of this transformation, and include physical changes, new sexual awakenings, and breaking free of her mother's dominance. She can only achieve a triumph as the Black Swan by bidding an agonizing farewell to the constraints of her old life.

Also thought-provoking are the greater metaphorical questions that Black Swan asks: are the sacrifices that ballerinas are expected to make to reach the pinnacle of their art rational? The film is clearly saying no: although many want to reach the peak, the price involves no small amount of madness. The same can be said of many athletic professions that involve inhumane extremes of physical exertion.

Wading through the increasingly shocking psychological trauma, Natalie Portman delivers a wonderful performance, conveying with her eyes the tremendous building levels of anguish beneath Nina's facade of ballerina grace. The supporting cast is fairly one-dimensional, but livened up by the welcome appearance of Barbara Hershey and Winona Ryder. While Vincent Cassel never breaks out of the stereotypical manipulative company director role, Mila Kunis brings a passionate vibrancy to Lily that bodes well for more starring future roles. Both Portman and Kunis underwent extensive ballet training in preparation for their roles, and they are generally convincing.

In an era of mostly sugar-coated movies desperately chasing tidy resolutions and happy endings, Black Swan is challenging, disturbing and most memorable.






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Sunday 23 January 2011

Movie Review: Patriot Games (1992)


A thriller that easily abandons any sense of gritty realism and rolls over to die on the meek hill of Hollywood excess.

Harrison Ford brings Tom Clancy's hero Jack Ryan back to the screen, and he is surrounded by no shortage of talent including Anne Archer, James Earl Jones, Samuel L. Jackson and Richard Harris.  But Patriot Games is too eager to pile on the fake threat by villains in the shape of an Irish Republican Army (IRA) splinter group. The bad guys combine the worst excess of incredible, inexplicable resources attached to stunning incompetence and lack of discipline when it matters most.

Retired CIA analyst Jack Ryan (Ford) is in London to give a speech when he foils an attempted assassination of a member of the Royal Family by Irish terrorists. The terrorist hit-squad includes brothers Patrick and Sean Miller; Ryan kills Patrick, and Sean Miller (Sean Bean) is captured but traumatized by his young brother's death and vows revenge.

The terrorist group is led by Kevin O'Donnell (Patrick Bergin) whose methods are too extreme even for the IRA. O'Donnell and his men violently free Miller during his transfer to prison, and are soon distracted from their homeland mission: they head to the US to take pot-shots at Ryan, his wife Cathy (Anne Archer) and young daughter Sally. With his family threatened, Ryan rejoins the CIA to help bring down the terrorists, who take refuge at a training camp in the North African desert -- but only temporarily. O'Donnell, Miller and their crew are soon back on US soil, mounting a most ridiculous full frontal commando assault on Ryan's home.

Patriot Games collapses early and often by abandoning all links to reality in a film that demands some semblance of authenticity. The ease with which the terrorists criss-cross the Atlantic is laughable. The abandonment of their struggle to pursue a distraction in eliminating Ryan is ridiculous. The spectacular resources they bring to the battle to free Sean Miller en-route to prison are impressive but absurd. The British security arrangements and responses to terrorism are breathtaking in their ineptitude.

Worse of all, the sudden incompetence of the terrorists at critical moments, in being unable to complete the opening assassination or achieve any of their targets at Ryan's house, just amplifies the farcical nature of the script. In both instances director Phillip Noyce effectively freezes time to allow Ryan's heroic intervention.

Along with Harrison Ford and Anne Archer, a strong supporting cast barely saves Patriot Games from fully-baked turkey status. James Earl Jones is head of the CIA; Samuel L. Jackson a military training officer; Richard Harris an IRA fundraiser in the US; all are nearly wasted as Patriot Games lurches from one ludicrous moment to the next. Rarely have so many stars been so badly let-down by so much nonsense.






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Thursday 20 January 2011

Movie Review: The King's Speech (2010)


A period drama that peels one layer of mystique away from the British Royal Family, The King's Speech is a captivating, multi-dimensional period piece, and easily among the best films of 2010.

It's 1925, and Albert, the Duke of York (Colin Firth), is second in line to the British throne. But Albert suffers from a terrible stammer, and embarrasses himself and the nation with every attempted speech. With no traditional doctors able to help, Albert's wife Elizabeth (Helena Bonham Carter) seeks the help of speech therapist Lionel Logue (Geoffrey Rush). An Australian with unconventional methods, Logue agrees to treat Albert, but Albert has deep reservations and insists that the treatment focus only on speech mechanics, and not the causes of the stammer.

Albert's father King George V eventually passes away; Albert's brother Edward (Guy Pearce) assumes the throne, but is embroiled in a scandal with divorcee Wallis Simpson. With Albert suddenly much more likely to become King, he needs Lionel's help more than ever, and the two start to delve into the psychological reasons for Albert's stammer.  But they have a serious falling-out when Lionel appears to push Albert to prematurely think of himself as a King, colliding with Albert's feelings of loyalty to his brother.

Edward does abdicate; and Albert is indeed King. He again turns to Lionel for help, and this time the speeches that Albert needs to deliver are not meaningless royal engagements but the words of the leader of the world's greatest Empire. As war flares across Europe and the menace of Nazi Germany needs to be confronted, Lionel guides Albert, now King George VI, as he delivers his first speech of the war, preparing his people and his Empire for the long struggle that lays ahead.

The King's Speech gently but deeply probes several intricate themes. A loveless childhood, stern paternal expectations, and a domineering older brother are not unexpectedly revealed to be the cause of Albert's impediment. The Royal Family only amplified what was the expected method of treating British children in the early 20th century, and the movie asks at what price was the legendary British stiff upper lip earned.

The non-existent opportunities for the Royals to interact with their subjects is another thread running through the movie. How can the Royals be the symbols for people they never talk to?

Most interesting is the role of Albert's wife Elizabeth (later the Queen Mother). She is portrayed as both strong-willed yet kind; determined yet respectful; patient yet persistent; supportive of her husband as he is, yet willing to help him in any way possible; majestically royal yet able to communicate with commoners.  Helena Bonham Carter is superb in portraying the emergence of the modern woman, and The King's Speech wholeheartedly agrees that behind every great man is a much greater woman.

Both Colin Firth and Geoffrey Rush deliver memorable performances. Firth as the stammering Albert, Duke of York and later King George VI is magnificent, carrying in his face the shame of the stammer, the pride of the Royals, the agony of a miserable childhood, and at the end the expectations of a nation at war. Rush has a relatively simpler, steadier and sometimes comic role: the Australian speech therapist with unconventional treatments and unshakable belief in his approach, even in the face of royal, religious, and academic scrutiny and doubt. In their scenes together, Firth and Rush capture the stages of a slowly emerging friendship that bridges an enormous gulf in status and wealth, and grows to be strong enough to survive serious mis-steps and doubts.

Director Tom Hooper follows up the excellent The Damned United (2009) by recreating an even earlier era: the Britain of the 1920s and 1930s comes to life in The King's Speech, Hooper surrounding his actors with plenty of fog, early 20th century streetscapes, and royal lavishness.  The film looks as good as the performances deserve.

The King's Speech is ultimately a tribute to the power of good intentions to overcome the significant damage caused by past failures, and the message of optimism that lies within hard-earned friendship is refreshingly daring.







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Tuesday 18 January 2011

Movie Review: Barney's Version (2010)


Is there a reason to care about tragedy in the life of a man who does everything possible to undermine all his opportunities for happiness?

Paul Giamatti works hard to create a flawed character worthy of sympathy. Giamatti's performance is flawless, but ultimately, Barney is such a brilliant architect of his own failure that his misery is not sad; it's expected.

Barney (Giamatti) is a chain smoker, a heavy drinker, and a hopeless womanizer. As a young man in Italy, he marries a woman after taking her word that she's carrying his child. It turns out that he's not the father of the still-born baby; he immediately abandons his wife and she kills herself. Moving to Montreal, he inherits a career as a producer of cheap television series and finds his second wife (Minnie Driver), who is attractive, rich and well-educated. And on that wedding day Barney starts uncontrollably lusting after another woman, Miriam (Rosamund Pike). While wallowing in the misery of being married to one woman while chasing another, he carelessly handles a gun while drunk, unintentionally causes the demise of his best friend. He celebrates his second wife's infidelity since he can now more easily dump her.

Although otherwise an intelligent career woman, Miriam eventually and inexplicably falls for Barney's obsessive courtship, and becomes his third wife. She really has no right to be surprised when he eventually starts spending his evenings fueling up on beer and watching hockey games down at the bar instead of paying any attention to her. After having spent half a lifetime pursuing Miriam, Barney takes the first opportunity to cheat on her. Of course Miriam leaves him and he ends up lonely, miserable, and fighting a losing battle against dementia. Perhaps all that alcohol killed a few too many brain cells.

Dustin Hoffman makes a welcome appearance as Barney's father Izzy, a retired cop. There are hints that Barney is only accentuating the self-defeating habits inherited from Izzy, but director Richard Lewis, adapting Mordecai Richler's book, does not explore these themes in too much depth. Bruce Greewood as Blair, the man who eventually provides stability for Miriam, is by far the most normal man in the movie. He is portrayed as steady to the point of boredom, opposite Barney's self-absorbed but colourful life.

Rosamund Pike is luminous as Miriam, and her performance may allow her to achieve a rare feat: a former Bond girl (from Die Another Day) who transitions into a respectable career.

People who help themselves are worth pulling for; instead, Barney is a man who has a special talent for repeatedly pushing the self-destruct button.  We watch more with bemusement than any genuine caring.






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Saturday 15 January 2011

Movie Review: Dirty Harry (1971)


You've got to ask yourself one question: "Do I feel lucky?" Well, do ya punk?

Inspector Harry Callahan (Clint Eastwood) does not much care for due process or legal niceties; he generally just wants to blow the bad guys away with his .44 Magnum gun.  He asks questions only if they survive the shootout and are lying in a puddle of blood.

Dirty Harry keeps the Man With No Name in the wild west, in this case San Francisco, but fast forwards to the modern era. Cars replace horses, highrises replace saloons, but the general rules remain generally the same: the difference between the bad guys and the good guys is a matter of perception.

The main bad guy here is an unhinged murderer calling himself Scorpio (Andy Robinson), killing innocent victims with a sniper rifle and taunting the Mayor of San Francisco (John Vernon) that the killing will continue unless a ransom is paid. Callahan is assigned to the case, but the politicians and his police superiors do not approve of his straightforward methods, and Callahan grows increasingly frustrated by what he perceived to be the weak-kneed reaction of the Mayor. When Scorpio is finally apprehended, he is let loose because Callahan failed to secure a search warrant. The killings therefore resume, and a disgusted Callahan has to disobey orders to bring the matter to an end.

In bringing Eastwood's western movie persona to an urban setting, Dirty Harry re-wrote the rules for police action films. The anti-establishment, unconventional loner cop, frustrated by rules and process and prone to extreme violence, became the new standard for movie cops.

Director Don Siegel and Eastwood provide Harry with an overwhelming cool factor. Standing straight and without cover as he trades blasts of gunfire with the bad guys, Harry needs to look down at his leg to realize that he has been hit by a shotgun. His walk, his talk, his hair and his cheap shades create an instant movie hero.

Robinson is a genuinely disturbing Scorpio. Although the movie may have benefited from providing a more in-depth back-story for the villain, when Scorpio starts to abuse school kids on the hijacked bus while demanding with increasing agitation that they sing "ROW ROW ROW YOUR BOAT!", he enters the annals of great screen bad-guys.

Dirty Harry spawned four direct sequels and countless imitators.  Its achievements also include creating in Harry Callahan one of the movies' most memorable screen characters; igniting Clint Eastwood's career as a Hollywood superstar; and giving the film world a most memorable line of dialogue, delivered through gritted teeth.






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Movie Review: The Bourne Identity (2002)


Robert Ludlum's abandoned hero Jason Bourne comes to life in The Bourne Identity, a rousing action film that starts a franchise, with Matt Damon stepping effortlessly into the role and confronting a mess of a broken life with danger around every corner.

Jason Bourne is floating in the Mediterranean Sea, unconscious and with two bullets in his back. Picked up by a fishing trawler, he is helped back to health by the fishing crew, but is suffering total amnesia. The only clue to his identity is embedded in his skin: a tiny laser projector with a Swiss bank account number.

Making his way to Zurich, Bourne finds his safety deposit box: it's filled with a large amount of money in different currencies, multiple fake passports, and a gun. His address appears to be in Paris, but before he can travel, he finds himself being pursued and targeted. Despite remembering nothing, Bourne discovers that he has exceptional combat, surveillance and survival abilities.

He doesn't know it yet, but Bourne is a CIA-trained assassin who has botched a hit against a deposed African dictator. His CIA black-ops unit, headed by Alexander Conklin (Chris Cooper), wants Bourne dead to clean up the mess, and soon a succession of CIA hit-men as well as police authorities from Zurich to Paris are after him. The only help Bourne gets is from Marie (Franka Potente), an unsuspecting US visa applicant who runs into Bourne at the consulate and agrees to drive him across Europe in exchange for $20,000. As his travel companion, Marie soon finds herself as wanted as Bourne, and she has to decide how much to stick around as Bourne tries to find a way to survive, stop the carnage, and confront his former controllers.

Director Doug Liman briskly shepherd the action around Europe and finds the required delicate balance between humanizing Bourne and delivering highly kinetic action, including a terrific Parisian car chase. The film is sharply edited to capture the energy while keeping the action comprehensible, a skill lost in many subsequent action movies.

Damon makes the role of Bourne his own, and although he does not need to stretch, he mixes to great effect the icy coolness of an assassin with the confused anguish of a man who does not know his own name. Germany's Franka Potente holds her own against him, playing the weary Marie, quickly finding out exactly how much trouble is attached to the $20,000 that Bourne gives her. The rest of the cast is somewhat lightweight, but enlivened with relatively small roles for Clive Owen and Julia Stiles.

The Bourne Identity is an enjoyable, intelligent action film, with a compelling central character buffeted by a neverending series of absorbing, if slightly over-the-top, calamities.






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Wednesday 12 January 2011

Movie Review: Conan The Barbarian (1982)


How does an Austrian bodybuilding champion with limited command of English embark on the path of movie superstardom? A movie that requires him to (a) say very little; (b) appear mostly shirtless; and (c) demonstrate strength by chopping people's head off, should do the trick.

And so Arnold Schwarzenegger takes the first few steps of a journey that would lead him to the absolute peak of the screen action hero mountain. In Conan The Barbarian he says perhaps ten words over the course of two hours. The medieval setting gives him the excuse to wear wild-man clothes, and to lose his shirt frequently. A couple of  enthusiastic sex scenes even allow him to go pantless as well. And the generally barbaric behaviour of everyone involved in the mythical story gives him license to slaughter with a sword en-mass, proving that when it comes to brute strength, Schwarzenegger has no competitors.

Conan The Barbarian is a simple story of revenge.  A peaceful village is sacked by a horse-riding, snake-worshiping tribe, under the leadership of Thulsa Doom (James Earl Jones). A young boy witnesses both his parents killed, but survives the massacre. He is taken into slavery, gains enormous strength and swordsman skills, is given his freedom, becomes Conan (Arnold Schwarzenegger), and sets off to avenge his parents. He teams up with Valeria (Sandahl Bergman), also a skilled warrior, and they run across King Osric (Max Von Sydow). His daughter has been abducted by Thulsa Doom, now a leader of a large cult. Conan, Valeria and a couple of friends invade Doom's compound, free the King's daughter, and have a final confrontation to the death with the snake-charming Doom and his guards.

Conan The Barbarian aims for a grand, mythical, mystical, fog-shrouded mood. It achieves it in patches, and when it strikes the target, the film is engrossing. But just as often the film comes across as barely a notch above unintentional parody.

Schwarzenegger establishes unmistakable presence and commands the screen to the point that his lack of lines almost goes unnoticed.  James Earl Jones and the brief appearance of Max Von Sydow add weight to the film, making up for the largely inexperienced and unknown other cast members.

Director John Milius does well to surround his star with carnage.  The continuous gory blood-letting, body-part hacking, head-lopping and skull-crushing action works to immediately elevate Schwarzenegger into a larger than life character. He is one of the very few star-destined actors who could have possibly benefited from his kind of screen introduction, and he made the most of it.

Produced by the master of opportunity Dino De Laurentiis, Conan The Barbarian features a rich orchestral music score by Basil Poledouris. With the limited dialogue throughout the film, the soundtrack plays a prominent role in augmenting the on-screen action. Similar to the movie itself, the music walks a fine-line between serious grandness and self-bloated cheese. In this case, an appropriate description for the star, as well.






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Sunday 9 January 2011

Movie Review: Animal House (1978)


The film that invented the modern teenage gross-out comedy, Animal House has a lot to answer for. It's a genre that refuses to die, despite running out of fresh ideas decades ago. Nevertheless, in 1978 Animal House struck a chord, created a superstar, generated enormous profits, and set a standard. Franchises like Porky's (starting in 1982) and American Pie (starting in 1999), and films from Revenge Of The Nerds (1984) to There's Something About Mary (1998), owe their existence to Animal House, as do numerous other less famous and fortunately less successful titles.

The film tracks the adventures of the Delta fraternity on the campus of Faber College in 1962. Larry (Tom Hulce) and Kent (Stephen Furst) are new students who join Delta, and are soon acquainted with the other members including the slob Bluto (John Belushi), the biker D-Day (Bruce McGill), the smooth Otter (Tim Matheson) and his friend Boon (Peter Riegert). The Deltas are hopeless when it comes to academics, so they spend their time holding parties, starting food fights, going on road trips, chasing girls, irritating the snobs at the Omega fraternity, smoking pot with the cool Professor Jennings (Donald Sutherland), and making life miserable for Dean Wormer (John Vernon). Wormer is doing all he can to have the lot of them expelled, and he eventually succeeds. In revenge, the Deltas wreck the College's homecoming parade.

Not that any of the plot elements really matter. Animal House is all about the colourful characters and the quick, funny scenes of juvenile antics. Belushi's Bluto has all the subtlety of a cartoon character (think a combination of Yosemite Sam and the Tasmanian Devil), but he is genuinely funny and creates many of the best moments in the movie. With a twitch of the eyebrow Belushi signals that something is happening in Bluto's dense brain, and many of his lines and scenes have become legendary:  "Holy Shit!" (repeated three times with increasing panic); "Toga! Toga!"; "...when the Germans bombed Pearl Harbour..."; "when the going gets tough...(long pause to remember the rest of the phrase)...the tough get going!"; the exploding zit in the cafeteria; and his encounter with the guitar player are all classic comedy moments.

Supporting Belushi is a more than capable cast, with Sutherland and Vernon providing some weight, and Karen Allen (as Boon's girlfriend) making a memorable debut as seemingly the only person in the movie with a head screwed on straight. Tom Hulce went on to a distinguished acting career, while Kevin Bacon, who has a small role, achieved stardom.

Director John Landis does not try to keep a lid on the proceedings, allowing most of the scenes to go way beyond the edge of sanity and ludicrousness. Why crash into one car in the parking lot when there are five that can be smashed? Why have one topless girl in the window when six can be frolicking in a pillow fight? Why insult one ethnic group at the Omega recruitment gathering when three or four ethnicities - and a person with a disability - can be lined up on the couch? And why disrupt only the College parade when the whole town can be brought down?  Landis was not only directing Animal House he was inventing the DNA of an entire genre, where the motto can be summarized as "push to excess."

Animal House is funny, and compared to more modern examples of the gross-out comedy, surprisingly subdued. But other than its genre-creating legacy, it is mostly memorable for showcasing Belushi's comic talent, sadly lost to the movies just four years later.






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Movie Review: Enemy At The Gates (2001)


Major Wold War Two films that focus on the Eastern Front are few and far between. Enemy At The Gates is a powerful and captivating look into the hell that was the battle of Stalingrad, as told through the story of real-life Soviet hero Vassili Zaitsev.

It's late in 1942, and the all-conquering German invaders have arrived at the gate of Stalingrad.  The under-powered Soviet army makes a stand to hold the city at all costs, resulting in a meat-grinder of a pitched battle that would last for months. Thrown into the battle on the Soviet side is green recruit Zaitsev (Jude Law), an uneducated shepherd from the Ural mountains. Although he barely survives his first chaotic battle, Zaitsev soon proves himself an ace sniper. With the Soviets desperate for heroes to inspire their troops, propaganda officer Danilov (Joseph Fiennes) convinces the army commander Khrushchev (Bob Hoskins) to build Zaitsev up as a heroic figure and an inspiration for the defenders of the City.

Danilov befriends Zaitsev and sets the propaganda machine in motion. With Zaitsev's reputation spreading, and the number of his German victims growing, the Germans bring in an ace sniper of their own, Erwin Konig (Ed Harris), to eliminate Zaitsev. Meanwhile, both Danilov and Zaitsev are falling in love with Tania (Rachel Weisz), a citizen-turned soldier, while Sacha, a young Soviet boy, begins to fulfill a dangerous double-agent role, apparently helping Konig to find Zaitsev while really feeding intelligence to Danilov.

With the battle of Stalingrad at a bloody stalemate, Tania creates tension between Danilov and Zaitsev, who is also playing a deadly game of cat and mouse with Konig in the ruins of a destroyed city.

Enemy At The Gates is a grand, satisfying, and unflinching war film.  An American / European co-production, it's the story of one of the most pivotal battles of the war, as the German machine was finally brought to its knees, its eastern expansion halted once and for all. After Stalingrad, the German retreat would begin, ending with the Soviet army in Berlin.  The script, by director Jean-Jacques Annaud and Alain Godard, based on the William Craig book, does distill the battle to the struggle between individuals, an effective technique but perhaps in this case resulting in a focus that is too narrow.

The second half of the film does get obsessed with personal conflicts at the expense of the overall battle. The love triangle becomes a relatively unwelcome diversion, and the duel between the two snipers takes over as an overwhelming metaphor for the larger war. The strength of the cast allows the film to survive despite the human drama taking centre stage, but a bit more context and bit less tiresome self-centred soul-searching would have helped.

Enemy At The Gates looks spectacular, capturing the utter agony of war. The recreation of a city reduced to rubble but still being contested by two massive armies is breathtaking. Cinematographer Robert Fraisse lyrically films a dead city reduced to its most elemental structures of crushed concrete, twisted steel, destroyed buildings, and dust, and fills it with the gruesome sight of equally crushed, twisted, and destroyed bodies turning to dust -- everywhere. It is one of the most clear-eyed views of gory warfare put on the screen, and Annaud ensures that the cameras continue to stare as bullets hit humans and open wounds belch out still-pumping blood.  The human enemy may be at the gates, but the real enemy of humanity is war itself.






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Saturday 8 January 2011

Movie Review: Rebel Without A Cause (1955)


Rebel Without A Cause is one of the earliest serious teenage dramas, an examination of the seemingly insurmountable agony faced by young people in the face of clueless parents. It is also a gripping film, tightly directed by Nicholas Ray, who extracts enthralling, haunting, and career-defining performances from James Dean, Natalie Wood and Sal Mineo.

Jim (Dean), Judy (Wood), and John, nicknamed Plato (Mineo) are deeply troubled Los Angeles teenagers: all three are suffering from severe conflicts with their parents. Jim's dad is spineless, and his mother domineering. Judy is getting no affection and a lot of verbal abuse from her father, and she is hanging out with "the kids", the local bully gang and their leader Buzz. Plato's parents are simply not there: he does not really know anything about his father, and his mother recently abandoned him, leaving him in the care of a housekeeper.

After an evening when their lives cross at the local police juvenile office, Plato befriends Jim and sees in him a replacement father figure. Jim is attracted to Judy, but she pretends to be more interested in fitting in with the kids while flirting with Buzz. Jim is soon on the wrong side of the kids and agrees to challenge Buzz in a chicken run: an illegal car race towards a sheer cliff, with the first to bail labelled a chicken. As Judy, Plato, and the rest of the local teenagers watch, the race ends in tragedy. Judy and Jim warm up to each other, but the bully boys want to silence Jim before he talks to the police about the illegal race.


Rebel Without A Cause features a memorable and dominant James Dean performance. Showing remarkable vulnerability and anguish, his portrayal of Jim Stark as a tormented teenager crying out for guidance is riveting. The movie piles the pressure on Jim: he get no help from his Dad; the local bullies turn against him; all of a sudden Jim is thrust into the role of Plato's surrogate Dad; and his first, seemingly innocuous mis-step as a father figure results in a calamity. The film at least offers some hope that with a woman believing in him, things could get better.

James Dean at 24 years old, Natalie Wood at 17 and Sal Mineo at 16 dominate Rebel Without A Cause, and enshrine their screen personas: Dean as the cool but troubled soul; Wood as the innocent but dangerous girl, and Mineo as the sad misfit. Their performances shine through the film, and into legend.

In one of movie history's cruel twists, all three suffered unexpected deaths. Dean perished in a head-on car crash later in 1955, the same year that Rebel was released, and just three films into his career. Mineo was murdered in a 1976 random stabbing. Wood accidentally drowned in 1981, after falling overboard from a yacht.

Rebel Without A Cause draws a straight, bold line between failed parenting, specifically failed fatherhood, and troubled teenagers. The film is not subtle about Jim's emancipated dad utterly failing to provide any guidance about becoming a man. Judy's father appears unable to deal with her as a woman rather than a child. And the void created by the absence of a father figure in Plato's life is the core of his journey into darkness. In the absence of a named cause, disillusionment stemming from emotional abandonment will have to do.






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Thursday 6 January 2011

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Monday 3 January 2011

Movie Review: All The President's Men (1976)


The uncovering of the Watergate scandal was a real-life thriller; translating it to the screen was never going to be easy.  All The President's Men takes the concept of investigative journalism as far as it can go in terms of a cinematic experience.  The drama is good; the entertainment modest.

After the police arrest burglars in the act of breaking into the Democratic National Committee Headquarters in the Watergate complex in Washington DC, relatively inexperienced news reporter Bob Woodward (Robert Redford) of The Washington Post starts to notice expensive lawyers being mysteriously appointed to represent the suspects. Woodward soon learns that the burglars had been in touch with Howard Hunt, formerly of the CIA and consultant to high-level Nixon Administration staff members. More senior reporter Carl Bernstein (Dustin Hoffman) joins forces with Woodward, and soon they uncover a hidden slush fund used by the Committee to Re-Elect President Nixon. The fund is used to finance dirty tricks against the President's opponents, and the journalists come to the realization that no more than five men control the money.

Getting anyone to talk is a struggle, but The Post's Executive Editor Ben Bradlee (Jason Robards) provides the necessary guidance, while Woodward leans heavily on a secret source within the Nixon Administration dubbed Deep Throat (Hal Holbrook) to keep the story alive. The Post is risking its reputation by pursuing the story based on anonymous sources, but finally Woodward and Bernstein are able to connect the pieces and force the scandal into the open: the dirty tricks campaign was approved straight from the White House. Their investigation results in the 1974 resignation of President Nixon.

Not unexpectedly, the work of Woodward and Bernstein consisted of making countless phone calls, preparing numerous type-written reports; and conducting endless interviews to chase down leads and try to shake tongues loose. Director Alan J. Pakula, working from the script based on the book of the same name by Woodward and Bernstein, does his best to make political journalism an engaging film experience. But ultimately, only so much interest can be generated by filming phone conversations and men sitting at typewriters. Doors slamming in the face of Woodward and Bernstein are about as heightened as the tension gets, other than the overly dramatic encounters between Woodward and his Deep Throat source in a darkened parkade. The latter half of the film gets seriously bogged down in endless conversations about numerous names of men who are never seen on the screen.

The film does highlight the not-so-subtle differences between the two journalists. Bernstein's insidious interview style is contrasted with Woodward's more honest and respectful approach.  Bernstein is quick to jump to conclusions with few supporting facts; Woodward is more careful to fill the gaps before deciding on the full picture. And the film is an ode to the typewriter: effectively, the clattering of typewriters is the soundtrack of the movie.

But All The President's Men does disappoint in revealing next to nothing about Woodward and Bernstein outside the newsroom. Other than Bernstein's impressive chain-smoking, the two men remain total blanks as far as personalities outside of work.

A lot of solid middle-aged character actors round out the cast, playing the senior grey heads at The Washington Post. Jason Robards, Jack Warden and Martin Balsam do a lot of sweating, arm waving and shouting in white shirts as the newspaper sticks its neck out to follow the story.

All The President's Men is an important chronicle of the potential positive power that lies within honest, uncorrupted journalism.  That this does not make for a great movie experience does not lessen the importance of the message.






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Movie Review: From Dusk Till Dawn (1996)


An exercise in stylishly meaningless blood-letting, From Dusk Till Dawn just wants to have fun.  Director Robert Rodriguez delivers an enjoyably gory package, while stars George Clooney and Quentin Tarantino are captivating as they play their over-the-top roles appropriately straight.

Brutal criminal Seth Gecko (Clooney) and his psychotic sex-offender brother Richie (Tarantino) have just violently robbed a Texas bank and are holding hostages as they make a run to Mexico. At a grocery store near the border, Richie kills a local lawman, and in the ensuing shootout, the brothers also shoot and kill the store clerk, but not before Richie is wounded with a bullet through his palm. In the chaos, all their hostages flee except for an elderly bank clerk; Richie kills her anyway when the brothers take refuge in a seedy motel.

Seth kidnaps a vacationing family consisting of pastor Jacob (Harvey Keitel) and his two teenage children, Scott and Kate (Juliette Lewis). The group crosses into Mexico, where Seth has arranged a dawn rendezvous with local crimelord Carlos (Cheech Marin). Seth and Richie force their hostages to settle in for a night of drinking at the Titty Twister strip joint, a rough, isolated biker and trucker hangout. But when the sun goes down, most of the staff, dancers and regulars at the Titty Twister transform into ugly, vicious vampires, intent on devouring the human customers. Seth and Richie need the help of their hostages as well as other colourful customers, including Sex Machine (Tom Savini) and Vietnam War veteran Frost (Fred Williamson), to fight back and survive the night.

Once the vampires take over From Dusk Till Dawn, the movie does not pretend to be anything more than a hyperkinetic blood-soaked comedy of catroon-level violence. Tarantino's screenplay delivers the laughs as Clooney and company fend-off endless hordes of blood-suckers, finding a never ending stream of tools to try and prevent the vampires from having their dinner.

Despite the orgy of violence, Tarantino finds time in the script to give Seth some humanity: Seth blames himself for Richie turning into a sick psychopath. And if there is a message among the bloodied and mangled bodyparts, it is that even individuals as messed up as Seth and Richie will encounter more horrible creatures at some point in their life.

Supporting Clooney and Tarantino is an entertaining cast that adds to the merriment. It's a treat to find Williamson, a veteran of 1970s cheapo exploitation movies, as an unexpected ally in the long battle at the cantina. Cheech Marin plays three manic roles, as a border guard, a greeter at the Titty Twister, and as Carlos. Salma Hayek shows up briefly but memorably as the awesome Satanico Pandemonium, the club's star performer. And Harvey Keitel brings a comically false solemness to the proceedings as a pastor questioning his calling after the death of his wife.

Thanks to the talent on both sides of the camera, From Dusk Till Dawn is much more entertaining than an ultimately pointless movie has any right to be.






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Sunday 2 January 2011

Movie Review: Green Zone (2010)


A jaundiced view of the war on Iraq, Green Zone has good intentions to tackle the duplicity that went into justifying the war, but suffers from both over-simplification and over-stretching.

Immediately after the 2003 invasion of Iraq and the overthrow of the Saddam Hussein regime, Chief Warrant Officer Roy Miller (Matt Damon) of the US Army is in charge of a unit tasked with searching Iraqi sites suspected of housing Weapons of Mass Destruction (WMDs). After encountering nothing but long-abandoned sites, Miller starts to question the sources of the WMD intelligence.

He is approached by Martin Brown (Brendan Gleeson), the CIA Baghdad Bureau Chief, who is skeptical about the WMDs, and is sure that unless the US reaches out to the leaders of the Iraqi Army and the remnants of the old regime, the country will disintegrate into Civil War and chaos. The informant Freddy (Khalid Abdalla) soon places Miller on the trail of a General Al-Rawi, a key Saddam loyalist and Iraqi Army leader.  Al-Rawi is waiting to see if the US will turn to him to help keep the country together, otherwise he will unleash his forces in an insurgency.  As Miller closes in on Al-Rawi with Brown's help, they are thwarted by Clark Poundstone (Greg Kinnear) of the Pentagon, who is manipulating the future of Iraq and has no intention of working with Al-Rawi or any other Saddam-era leaders. Miller finally finds his own life in danger after he starts to uncover the high-level manipulation that went into justifying the war.

Green Zone reduces the WMD issue to blatant fabrication of intelligence and outright lying. It also portrays the Pentagon officials in charge on the ground in Iraq as consummate conspirators who will stop at nothing, including badgering their own troops and the CIA, to cover-up the truth. It all makes for good drama, but the nuance of partial incompetence and selective intelligence being a large part of any perceived conspiracy is missed, and the film loses credibility when the actions of Miller, Brown and Poundstone veer far from the bounds of reason.

Green Zone also stops short of tracing the only real beneficiaries of a prolonged war ignited on a false premise, namely the ideological puppet masters and war weapons merchants. Placing the Pentagon's chief intelligence guy in Iraq in the role of main conspirator may be good for the drama but is otherwise a dead-end in logic.

A sub-plot involving a Wall Street Journal correspondent who was manipulated into publishing false WMD reports prior to the war is an attempt to highlight the complicity of a brain-dead press in the build-up to the war. It succeeds only to a certain extent, and then becomes a cliched mechanism for outing the equally poorly researched new truth.

Matt Damon delivers a typically solid day at the office as Miller, without ever needing to stretch.  He is surrounded by generally stereotypical characters that populate many other war movies.  The directing by Paul Greengrass is notable for its grainy, jittery, hand-held documentary feel, and the action sequences do deliver a street-level grimness.

Green Zone has its heart in the right place, but sacrifices the complexities of the real story for the convenience of a more typical bow-tied cinematic experience.






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Movie Review: Thelma & Louise (1991)


Thelma & Louise is a road movie, a fugitive movie, and a buddy movie. Callie Khouri's rich screenplay and director Ridley Scott manage to find the best qualities of all three sub-genres, and they impressively avoid most cliches. Thelma & Louise is never predictable, and it has become one of the standards by which movies in these genres are defined.

Louise (Susan Sarandon) and Thelma (Gena Davis) are best friends in Oklahoma, and both are at a dead-end in life. Louise is a waitress at a cheap diner; Thelma is a housewife being controlled and emotionally trampled by her uncaring husband Darryl. The two friends embark on a short vacation getaway in Louise's Ford Thunderbird. They stop at a roadside cowboy bar en-route, where Thelma meets and gets cozy with the womanizing Harlan. When he tries to rape the almost-drunk Thelma, Louise saves her friend then shoots and kills Harlan when he insults her. The women drive away from the scene, and from then on are fugitives wanted for murder.

Thelma and Louise head for Mexico, but Louise insists that they avoid driving through Texas, due to a dark incident in her past. Sticking to the back roads, they pick-up the drifter J.D. (Brad Pitt), who for the first time ignites Thelma's passion. Meanwhile, the police, including Detective Slocumb (Harvey Keitel) descend on Darryl's house to monitor his phone and try to trace the two women.

As the chase heats up, Thelma holds up a grocery store; the two ladies overcome an Arizona state trooper; and they repeatedly encounter and finally engage a tanker truck driven by an obscene chauvinist. But the noose gets tighter, and before they make it to the border, Thelma and Louise face a stark fork in the road.

As with all road movies, Thelma & Louise is really about the trip of self-discovery that the characters need to take. Thelma's transformational trip is dramatic: from a meek wife to a confident outlaw, Thelma finds her calling and is keen to make up for lost time in a hurry. Her trigger point is the night of passion with J.D., her sexual awakening corresponding to the start of a new, dynamic, vibrant, but likely fairly short life. Geena Davis has a lot of fun steering Thelma from the wife who does not dare tell her husband that she is leaving on a short trip, to the outlaw who stuffs a police officer in the trunk of his cruiser, but only after shooting air holes into it.

Louise goes through a more subtle, inward journey. Suppressing memories of a never-revealed trauma that occurred in Texas, what Louise refuses to talk about is the cause of the entire manic adventure. As events spiral out of control around her, Louise still refuses to confront her past: not with Thelma in the car, not with Detective Slocumb over the phone, and not with herself. She is a classic tragic hero, and her flaw colours her fate. Susan Sarandon delivers an anguished, introverted performance. With mayhem all around her, there is even more going on behind her eyes as she fails to come to terms with her scars but realizes that she is coming to terms with her life.

While each woman embarks on a separate emotional journey, they are in the car together, and the ups and downs of their relationship is the glue that holds the movie together. Thelma and Louise share moments of love, hate, frustration, fun, terror and sheer exhilaration with each other, and by the end of their trip their car is holding a lifetime's worth of emotions and memories.

Lushly photographed by Adrian Biddle to showcase the rural back roads of America, Thelma & Louise is a most fulfilling, poignant and memorable journey.






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