Movie Review: Don't Worry Darling (2022)

A dramatic mystery thriller, Don't Worry Darling adds a modern spark to established ideas.

In a 1950s setting, married couple Alice and Jack Chambers (Florence Pugh and Harry Styles) live in an idyllic company town called Victory, located on the edge of the desert. Jack joins all the men every morning as they go to work on a secret technology project led by the mysterious Frank (Chris Pine). Alice is friends with the other wives, including Bunny (Olivia Wilde), Shelley (Gemma Chan), and the pregnant Peg. They spend their days luxuriating by the pool and shopping, with everything around them operated by the company.

Alice notices Margaret (KiKi Layne), one of the wives, acting erratically. Then she witnesses a plane crash, leading her to discover and touch the company's out-of-bounds Headquarters building. She starts to suffer from strange visions and the same behaviours that afflicted Margaret. Despite Frank's smooth talk and Jack's attestations that everything is fine, Alice begins to suspect something is very weird about the town of Victory.

Written by Katie Silberman and directed by Olivia Wilde, Don't Worry Darling carries familiar echoes from The Stepford Wives, Eternal Sunshine Of The Spotless Mind, and Inception, among others. But once revealed, the secrets of Victory are also steeped in an evolved context where the thin line between technology's use and misuse becomes increasingly blurry.

On the way to the third act climax, Wilde creates stylish Douglas Sirk/Desperate Housewives mash-up fun with an undercurrent of mounting dread. The ecosystem of Victory provides an intriguing setting of creepy perfection, the men going to work secure in the knowledge that their gratified women are waiting for them at the end of the day. Alice and Jack are an attractive couple not beyond enjoying quick sex in the kitchen with guests milling in the next room, and with Jack on the fast track to success as Frank's next golden boy and Alice surrounded by happy friends, life is good.

Except that Margaret babbles incoherently and seems intent on killing herself, an airplane falls out of the sky and no one seems to care, and Alice starts suffering suspicions and visions (including Busby Berkeley-style dancing girls). Jack can never quite articulate exactly what it is he does for a living, and the middle chapter develops a delectable combination of rising tension and expert gaslighting.

The resolutions are frenzied and frantic, Wilde dumping a big load into the final 30 minutes at the expense of tight dramatic coherence. Pugh soldiers on, her central performance capably carrying the burden of discovery. Harry Styles is less convincing, and Pine is under-utilized.

Don't Worry Darling questions the essence of contentment by unleashing doubt on utopian suburbia. When everything seems quite perfect, it is indeed time to worry.



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Movie Review: All The Old Knives (2022)

A spy drama, All The Old Knives is a slow burning series of revelations. The multiple flashback structure is suitably complex but shaky plot points remain evident.

In 2012, Flight 127 is hijacked at Vienna airport by Islamist terrorists. The CIA's Vienna station chief Vick Wallinger (Laurence Fishburne) monitors the crisis with his team of agents, including veteran Bill Compton (Jonathan Pryce), field agent Henry Pelham (Chris Pine), and agent Celia Harrison (Thandiwe Newton), who is also Henry's lover. The hijacking ends badly, and Celia immediately breaks up with Henry and leaves the agency.

In 2020, Vick tasks Henry with reopening the Flight 127 file, to investigate allegations by recently captured terrorist leader Ilyas Shishani (Orli Shuka) that a mole in the CIA's Vienna office assisted the hijackers. Suspicions swirl around Celia, who is now married with two children and living in California. Henry first visits the retired Bill in London, then meets Celia at a seaside restaurant in Carmel-by-the-Sea. Over a long meal they probe each other about events surrounding Flight 127, their relationship, and secrets they have both protected for years.

A grim battle of wits unfolding over multiple timelines, All The Old Knives seeks thrills through mental duels. Avoiding action cliches, the narrative settles down to a series of conversations circling crucial secrets. Olen Steinhauer wrote the script based on his own novel, and Janus Metz Pedersen directs with dour intensity. The burden of spying, mixed with a torrid romance and past betrayals, creates a dense foundation for the drama.

While the narrative starts with Henry's perspective, Celia eventually emerges as an equal, and their dinner-and-wine interaction benefits from lingering uncertainty surrounding exactly what happened during the hijacking. The timeline jumps allow gaps to be introduced, paused, and later filled-in, adding a crackling current of tension. But unfortunately, as the puzzle pieces consisting of hidden motives, personal agendas, and clandestine meetings start to form a picture, the overall plot loses a layer of logic.

Although a few other agents are sketched in, the emphasis remains on Henry, Celia, Bill, and to a lesser extent Vick. The list of possible collaborators is therefore short, reducing the impact of the inevitable twists. Within the limits of the material, the two leads avoid the theatricality encouraged by the confined sets. Chris Pine sips his role through Pierce Brosnan's wine glass, while Thandiwe Newton allows Celia's distance from active service to round her edges into more human than spy.

All The Old Knives refreshingly dares to ignore car chases, combat scenes, and shoot-outs. The focus on psychological control, emotional scars, painful compromises, and principles of trust is sometimes over-extended, but always cerebral.



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Movie Review: Jack Ryan: Shadow Recruit (2014)

A spy action thriller, Jack Ryan: Shadow Recruit is competently predictable. A good cast and surface gloss only partially obscure the inherent lack of creativity.

College student Jack Ryan (Chris Pine) is working towards an economics degree when terrorists attack the US on September 11, 2001. He enlists and serves in Afghanistan, where he is severely wounded in a helicopter crash. Back in the US, medical student Cathy Muller (Keira Knightley) helps in his rehabilitation, and they fall in love. The CIA's Thomas Harper (Kevin Costner) recruits Jack as an undercover financial analyst to trace terrorist funding sources.

Ten years later, Jack is living with Cathy but his secretive activities strain their relationship. After Russia loses a key United Nations vote, Jack uncovers shady financial transactions linked to the conglomerate headed by oligarch Viktor Cherevin (Kenneth Branagh). He travels to Moscow and concludes Cherevin is plotting a terrorist attack followed by a massive dollar sell-off to cripple the US economy. With Cathy unexpectedly showing up in Moscow and assassins already on his trail, Jack has his hands full.

An attempted re-boot of the Tom Clancy-created Jack Ryan franchise with Pine stepping into the role previously occupied by Alec Baldwin, Harrison Ford, and Ben Affleck, Shadow Recruit is merely serviceable. Kenneth Branagh directs (in addition to playing Cherevin) and provides a polished, often glistening aesthetic, but with the Bond, Bourne, and Hunt franchises redefining genre depth and artistry, Shadow Recruit suffers from a nothing-new-here feel and struggles for relevance.

Pine is fine in the role, mixing charisma with determination and flashes of anxiety to capture the psyche of a cerebral analyst thrown into the operational spy theatre's deep end. But he is not helped by a barely-there plot, in which nothing is known about the planned terrorist attack until the final act. The threat to sell dollars on the financial markets is always going to fail the challenge of creating tension from techno-talk and computer screens filled with so much gibberish. Girlfriend Cathy being drafted into a CIA operation at short notice provides further evidence of flaky scripting.

The film's centrepiece is better. Jack, Cathy and Cherevin attend a fancy dinner and engage in a battle of wits, subterfuge and seduction, with Harper orchestrating support from the wings. Here writers Adam Cozad and David Koepp assemble a worthwhile evening, leveraging the tension between Jack and Cathy, east/west cultural rub points, and Cherevin's deep-rooted character traits.

The rest of the action speeds downhill, the usual hostage-taking and frantic car chases leaving no impression. On a plane ride back to the US, Jack, Cathy and Harper plus a small team of analysts fill in the conspiracy gaps on-the-fly (literally), in a scene intended to demonstrate connect-the-dots analytical work but in fact demeaning the process with cinematic shortcuts.

In a movie world where other spies get more elaborate resources, Jack Ryan: Shadow Recruit has a lot to learn, and not a lot of time to do it.



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Movie Review: Unstoppable (2010)

A runaway train thriller, Unstoppable is visually appealing but has an extraordinarily limited premise.

At a Pennsylvania rail yard, a sloppy worker jumps out of slow moving train AWR 777 to throw a track switch. The train kicks into gear, and with the air brakes unattached, accelerates and leaves the yard unattended. The runaway train is half a mile long with four of the cars carrying dangerous cargo that could ignite on impact. Train yardmaster Connie Hooper (Rosario Dawson) swings into action to clear the track ahead of the runaway. Her boss Oscar Galvin (Kevin Dunn) tries to take charge, but makes all the wrong calls.

In the meantime veteran railroad engineer Frank Barnes (Denzel Washington) is winding down his career and spending the day training rookie conductor Will Colson (Chris Pine). Barnes lost his wife to cancer and has a strained relationship with his two daughters. Colson is in trouble with his wife, who has issued a restraining order. In their own freight train 1206, Barnes and Colson barely avoid the runaway. They take off after it in reverse, hoping to catch it, couple to it and slow it down before it derails at a dangerous curve in an urban area.

The last film directed by Tony Scott, Unstoppable is inspired by an actual, if much less dramatic, runaway train event that occurred in Ohio in 2001. The film contains no shortage of astounding cinematography capturing the raw kinetic energy of an out-of-control red beast on rails, cutting a swath through the countryside. And of course this being a Tony Scott film, a news helicopter or three always clatter away, inches from the train, just to add flair, drama and fury to the sound and visuals.

Unfortunately, Unstoppable offers precious little else beyond the obvious feast for the eyes. "Two men stop a train" is about as far as as the plot goes, and milking a 98 movie out of that flimsy premise proves to be as challenging as it sounds. Attempts to flesh out family stories for Frank and Will come across as contrived in the extreme, as does the awkward portrayal of dufus and incompetent managers back at the train company's headquarters. And while it is difficult to keep count, Unstoppable likely violates all the laws of physics before the drama comes to a smokey halt.

Denzel Washington and Chris Pine are workmanlike but constrained by the material, although the evolving level of respect between the two men within the train cab's confines maintains marginal interest. Rosario Dawson tries to inject some energy into proceedings back at the yard.

Unstoppable whizzes by, great visuals on rails, everything else an inconsequential blur.

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Movie Review: The Finest Hours (2016)

A rescue-at-sea drama, The Finest Hours is serviceable but never rousing.

The year is 1952, the location coastal Massachusetts and the Chatham Coast Guard Station. Boatswain's Mate First Class Bernie Miller (Chris Pine) meets and falls in love with local girl Miriam (Holliday Grainger). When he dawdles to commit, she proposes marriage, but Bernie insists on following the tradition of requesting permission to get married from his stiff Chief Warrant Officer Daniel Cluff (Eric Bana).

But Cluff is preoccupied with a massive incoming storm, and two oil tankers break apart in rough seas on the same night. One of them is the SS Pendleton, where the reticent engineer Ray Sybert (Casey Affleck) has to rally the surviving crew to keep half the massive ship afloat. Using a small boat, Bernie is dispatched to the Pendleton's last known location on a dangerous rescue mission, joined by Coast Guard Seaman Richard Livesey (Ben Foster), Engineman Andrew Fitzgerald (Kyle Gallner) and Navy Seaman Ervin Maske (John Magaro). Back on shore, Miriam frets about the fate of her husband-to-be.

The story of one of the Coast Guard's most famous rescues, The Finest Hours gets most of the technical details wrong, and is infused with a heavy dose of Disney's saccharine wholesomeness. The music crescendos to epic levels every five minutes, the dangers faced by Bernie and his crew are exaggerated to Greek mythology levels, the faces of Bernie and his love Miriam always glow in the incandescent light of love, and any hints of darkness, death, and guilt are pushed far to the edges, and often fully off-screen.

But after an ill-considered and really slow start that stumbles to connect Bernie with Miriam, director Craig Gillespie settles down to a respectable retelling of a harrowing rescue at sea, with Bernie's against-the-odds small-boat-in-a-big-storm journey intercut with Sybert rallying the Pendleton crew to improvise a pathway to survival. For once the CGI is extensive but also good; the images of a monstrous sea are impressive, whether threatening to swallow up Bernie's tiny motor lifeboat or mercilessly tossing half an oil tanker.

Less effective is Miriam's subplot back on shore. She runs around rather aimlessly and tangles with other locals who are suspicious about Bernie's competence due to a previous non-rescue that is only ever hinted at but never properly discussed, the script dangling a backstory and then timidly backing away from it.

Out on the seas Chris Pine and Casey Affleck are stoic without ever stretching, the enormity of events surrounding them enough to sustain the drama without the need for stellar performances.

The Finest Hours is a rescue adventure painted by numbers, produced with slick efficiency but tightly confined between dependable and predictable.

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The Movies Of Chris Pine

All movies starring Chris Pine and reviewed on the Ace Black Movie Blog are linked below:

Smokin' Aces (2006)

Unstoppable (2010)

Jack Ryan: Shadow Recruit (2014)

Z For Zachariah (2015)

The Finest Hours (2016)

Hell Or High Water (2016)

Wonder Woman (2017)

All The Old Knives (2022)

Don't Worry Darling (2022)

All Ace Black Movie Blog reviews are here.
The Movie Star Index is here.

Movie Review: Z For Zachariah (2015)

A post-apocalyptic drama, Z For Zachariah explores the quiet dynamics between three survivors.

An unspecified event has wiped out most of humanity from the face of the earth. Somewhere in the southern United States, Ann Burden (Margot Robbie), a resilient young woman, survives on her own in a small lush valley mysteriously spared from the ravages of radiation. One day she stumbles upon fellow survivor John Loomis (Chiwetel Ejiofor) and nurses him back to health. John helps Ann with her farming efforts, and develops a plan to generate hydroelectric power from a contaminated waterfall.

Ann was brought up in a deeply religious household while John is more of a non-believer, but they get along and grow close. Their domestic bliss is disrupted when Caleb (Chris Pine), another survivor, walks into their valley. Ann is welcoming, John is suspicious, and gradually sexual tension develops within the triangle of survivors.

Directed by Craig Zobel and written by Nissar Modi as an adaptation of a book by Robert C. O'Brien, Z For Zachariah contains plenty of food for thought. The idea of a small pocket of land remaining untouched while the rest of the landscape is devastated by radiation is an intriguing premise, while the tentative rebuilding of societal relationships between a few people who may be partially carrying the burden of repopulating Earth is rich with possibilities.

Zobel builds the story up slowly, introducing each of the three characters in turn, and only upon their entry into the green valley. Ann is initially the only resident, then she finds John and helps him survive, and then their tiny society is interrupted by Caleb. The communal tensions are reset with every new arrival, as the backdrop of devastation starts to take a backseat to the complications of one becoming two and then three.

Even in a group this small, familiar disruptive issues quickly emerge, including the clash between religion and science, as well as racism, sex and jealousy. John's plan to build a power plant would mean dismantling the small church that holds special meaning for Ann. Caleb and Ann are the same race and maybe closer in age; when they start to get close, John feels emotionally abandoned.

This familiarity of themes also weakens the film's final act. Caleb's introduction tilts the film towards domestic drama with less emphasis on the setting and more focus on the well-worn narrative of envy within triangular tensions.

Margot Robbie remains at the centre of the film throughout, and her accomplished performance holds the drama together during both the survival and emotional scenes. Ejiofor and Pine have less to do but provide able support.

Z For Zachariah creates a new small garden of Eden on a destroyed planet, but not surprisingly, given a chance at a new start the human tendency for mischief and mistrust stays the same.

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Movie Review: Wonder Woman (2017)

A superhero adventure, Wonder Woman combines perfunctory Greek mythology with wartime heroics in an entertaining package. The film pushes female empowerment in the name of peace, but is nevertheless weighed down by the genre's heavy anchors.

On the hidden fog-shrouded island of Themyscira, Princess Diana (Gal Gadot) is the daughter of Queen Hippolyta (Connie Nielsen), leader of an all-woman Amazonian tribe tasked by Zeus to maintain peace and be ready to fight off warmongering god Ares. Diana is trained by her warrior aunt General Antiope (Robin Wright) to be a fierce combatant, while Hippolyta hints to her daughter that she possesses special powers.

Diana rescues British spy Captain Steve Trevor (Chris Pine) from drowning when his plane crash lands in the adjacent sea. She soon learns that the Great War is raging, and assuming that Ares must be behind the carnage, she perceives it her duty to leave Themyscira and put a stop to the evil. She accompanies Steve to London where he connects with politician Sir Patrick Morgan (David Thewlis), and then onto the trenches of the front lines, where Diana discovers her powers as Wonder Woman. She then has to find a way to stop General Erich Ludendorff (Danny Huston), who is planning to unleash a new highly destructive poison gas with the help of the evil Doctor Isabel Maru (Elena Anaya).

Directed by Patty Jenkins with a budget close to $150 million, Wonder Woman finally comes to the big screen after decades of false starts. The delays were partially caused by the critical and commercial failures of Catwoman (2004) and Elektra (2005) casting doubt on the marketability of a female protagonist in the overcrowded superhero space. Within the tight confines of the genre, Jenkins and writer Allan Heinberg get almost everything right, mixing a mythology-heavy origins story with a World War One action adventure filled with raucous action, villains and the requisite sidekicks.

Themes of duty, sacrifice and the essence of humanity are dealt with in straightforward broad brush strokes. Wonder Woman is a novice in the big bad world of humans, and the film benefits from her sense of learning and discovery. Her initial childlike naivete has to be replaced by a better understanding of the complexities of what humans are capable of, and her journey underpins the film's narrative.

Moments of humour also help, including a conversation between Diana and Steve about sexuality and procreation, and reactions to Diana's warrior mentality invading London circa 1918 and the muddy trenches of a stalemated front.

But for all its polished elements, this is a superhero movie, and the genre is tightly handcuffed by its childish fundamentals. There will be many large scale battles, there will be an overabundance of CGI, and there will be many large explosions, pyrotechnics and destruction on a mammoth scale. It's all remarkably predictable and unspools at the expected intervals, the special effects methodically gaining the upper hand over the humans as the end credits approach. A lot of the dialogue is stiff, and most of the characters are superficial. The 140 minutes do begin to drag.

Helping maintain interest is a terrific Gal Gadot performance. She steps into the role with ease, proving a perfect fit and immediately owning the best Wonder Woman attributes: feminine strength, smarts and curiosity in a perfectly calibrated athletic package.

In a creatively exhausted genre running on fumes, Wonder Woman is a brighter spark than most.

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Movie Review: Hell Or High Water (2016)

A rural heist drama with plenty of soul, Hell Or High Water is a superlative crime film, delving into the us-versus-them psyche where resentment justifies audacious lawlessness.

In rural west Texas, divorced dad Toby Howard (Chris Pine) seeks the help of his older brother Tanner (Ben Foster) to go on a bank robbing spree. The brothers are about to lose their sprawling family property to the unscrupulous bankers, and Toby wants to quickly raise the cash to pay off the lien and allow his sons to inherit the property clear of debt. While Toby is low key and has led a quiet life, Tanner is more unstable, prone to violence, enjoys the thrill of crime and has just been released from prison.

The brothers try to hit the banks early in the morning to avoid customers and casualties, and aim to get away with a relatively small cash amount from each branch. Their exploits nevertheless attract he attention of gruff Texas Ranger Marcus Hamilton (Jeff Bridges) and his partner Alberto Parker (Gil Birmingham). Marcus is nearing retirement but likes nothing more than tracking down bad guys. He sets about trying to predict what the robbers' next move will be, not an easy task in the wide open and sparsely populated terrain dotted with small towns.

Directed by David Mackenzie and written by Taylor Sheridan, Hell Or High Water breathes deeply from its surroundings and creates a complex world where good and evil co-exist in many of the same people. The film is smart and nuanced, tense action sequences sitting comfortably next to rich character development scenes to create a tapestry of rural life where different rules apply.

The three key characters are conflicted and not easy to like, but Mackenzie patiently rounds Toby, Tanner and Marcus into real people with faults and dreams, pursuing their targets as best as they know how. The scenes between the brothers allow the criminals to emerge as men worth caring about, trying to push back against unfavourable economic and social forces.

Meanwhile, Marcus does not even try to hide his colours: he is a politically incorrect borderline racist, with his partner Alberto bearing the majority of Marcus' taunts. Toby and Tanner may have been left behind by the American dream, but Marcus never went looking for any modern version of society: he is happy to be retiring with his caustic attitude towards life fully intact.

The landscape is a big part of the film's ambiance. With New Mexico representing West Texas, cinematographer Giles Nuttgens captures a sun-drenched, sweaty environment simmering under impressively huge skies, forgotten by much of what counts as progress. Here small town main streets look pretty much the same as they did a hundred years prior, and working the land whether to feed cattle or extract oil is still the main occupation. Except that the wide open secondary highways are dotted with signs of an ever lingering recession, with advertisements for loan and bankruptcy services providing the most prominent smudges of colour.

Chris Pine and Ben Foster are the heart of the film, and the two actors find the comfortable space where brothers naturally understand and support each other without necessarily sharing all the same values. Jeff Bridges casts a long shadow as the Texas Ranger who will only fade into the sunset once he solves his last case on his own terms.

Hell Or High Water stands tall on the prairies of rural despair where, with just some squinting, the rewards of crime shimmer as a viable tool to redress the economic balance of power.

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