Movie Review: All Quiet On The Western Front (2022)

Genre: War

Director: Edward Berger

Starring: Felix Kammerer, Daniel Brühl

Running Time: 147 minutes

Synopsis: Two years into the Great War, the trench warfare between Germany and France is extracting a huge human toll. Nevertheless, German teenager Paul (Felix Kammerer) is excited to enlist with his group of friends. At the front, their misconceptions about a quick glorious victory are soon replaced by the grinding agony of death in the muck, but Paul finds a mentor in veteran soldier "Kat" (Albrecht Schuch). As the war drags on, Paul tries to cling to his humanity while politicians and generals dawdle.

What Works Well: This German production adapts the Erich Maria Remarque novel into a gruesome, close-up view of an impassive war machine consuming young men. The combat scenes are harrowing, director Edward Berger using long takes to capture the breathless randomness of some men succumbing while others survive to run another yard. The overarching theme of destructive futility is underlined by generals dispatching troops to their death from the safety of palatial offices. Good work by Felix Kammarer highlights a young man transforming into a battle-hardened soldier, enhanced by excellent makeup, a menacing soundtrack, and expansive cinematography.

What Does Not Work As Well: Although this is part of the point, the battle scenes eventually become wearily repetitive. Paul entering the conflict as a naïve young man is also integral to the story's essence, but this remains cinematically troublesome as he is broadly uninteresting. The running length is overlong, and many scenes would have benefitted from a trim. Apart from Paul and Kat, most of the rest of the soldiers meld into obscurity.

Conclusion: War in sodden trenches is a special kind of hell.



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Movie Review: 7 Days In Entebbe (2018)

A recreation of an infamous airline hijacking and subsequent rescue operation, 7 Days In Entebbe (also known as simply Entebbe) takes time and care to cover all perspectives despite traversing well-known terrain.

In June of 1976, four German and Palestinian terrorists seize command of an Air France flight from Tel Aviv to Paris during a stop-over in Athens. Close to 250 passengers and crew-members, including more than 80 Israelis, are held hostage. The two German hijackers are Brigitte Kuhlmann (Rosamund Pike) and Wilfried Böse (Daniel Brühl), members of the Revolutionary Cells. She is fiery and committed, while he is more of an intellectual idealist. 

The plane eventually lands at Uganda's Entebbe Airport, where the hijackers receive reinforcements. The hostages are crammed into the old terminal building and Uganda's eccentric President Idi Amin (Nonso Anozie) milks the event for publicity. The terrorists demand the release of prisoners and set a deadline to start killing the hostages. As the tense hours and days tick by, Israel's Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin (Lior Ashkenazi) and Defence Minister Shimon Peres (Eddie Marsan) have to decide whether to break a policy of non-negotiation, or mount a daring rescue operation.

Soon after the actual events at Entebbe, the rescue codenamed Operation Thunderbolt was portrayed in several breathlessly produced movies funded by US television networks and starring the likes of Charles Bronson and Burt Lancaster. Benefitting from the passage of time and more than 40 years of subsequent history, here writer Gregory Burke takes a deep breath and adopts a more cerebral approach. 

With director José Padilha at the helm, 7 Days In Entebbe laments the lack of meaningful progress in advancing peace between Israel and the Palestinians, and draws a jagged line between fallen heroes and obstinacy. Within the 1970s ambience bathed in brown/orange colours plus corduroy and polyester, Burke also injects a pointy cultural streak through the story of Israeli soldier Zeev Hirsch (Ben Schnetzer), part of the commando team, and his dancer girlfriend Sarah (Zina Zinchenko). She is the star performer rehearsing an interpretive modern dance set to a traditional Hebrew song, and Padilha builds to a quite brilliant juxtaposition of art and war.

Elsewhere the focus among the hostage takers is on the two German terrorists, Brigitte and Wilfried covering the spectrum from ruthless pragmatist to rudderless theoretician, and both grappling with how the world will perceive Germans threatening or killing Jews, no matter the cause. The debate around the Israeli cabinet table is a candid portrayal of political opportunism and careerist calculus clashing with a real-time crisis. The Palestinian voice is relatively underrepresented, although on a couple of occasions the Palestinian hijackers do provide stark reminders to their German comrades about the difference between ideology and sober reality. As for the hostages, the flight engineer of the Air France crew carries the load of grounded courage.

As the rescue team takes flight into the turbulent winds of a never ending conflict, 7 Days In Entebbe earns the right to theatrically celebrate audacious heroism while simultaneously unleashing a cry for a long overdue peace.

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Movie Review: Burnt (2015)

A drama set in the world of haute cuisine, Burnt is an overcooked attempt to stage a high-stakes thriller in the kitchen.

Adam Jones (Bradley Cooper) was once a top chef in Paris, but lost everything due to a life of excess and addictions. After three years of self-imposed exile to clean up his life, he heads to London to reestablish his reputation. He conspires with food critic Simone (Uma Thurman) to secure the chef role at the prestigious hotel restaurant of his former partner Tony Balerdi (Daniel Brühl), although Tony ensures Adam stays clean through weekly check-ups with Dr. Rosshilde (Emma Thompson).

Adam hires a kitchen team from among his former associates, including Michel (Omar Sy) and Max (Riccardo Scamarcio). And after some effort he convinces the promising Helene Sweeney (Sienna Miller) to join his crew. Adam renews his rivalry with chef Montgomery Reece (Matthew Rhys) and obsessively drives his staff in pursuit of the elusive three-star Michelin Guide rating.

Almost everything about Burnt is overdone. Adam Jones is an unlikeable character ripped from cheap action thrillers, leather-jacketed and obsessive about getting his revenge on a world that chewed him up and spit him out. Whether he does or does not achieve his third Michelin star means everything to him, but director John Wells, filming a Steven Knight script, is very far from making anyone else care.

A large part of the problem is the unironic setting within the tony world of unaffordable uppity restaurants where food critics opine about the minutiae of whether the scallops stayed on the fire for seven seconds too long. And Wells does not help his cause by overheating all the emotions to child tantrum levels, then plastering the film from start to end with kitchen staff shouting at each other and close-up shots of food being prepared and served. To suit the milieu Cooper does his best foul-mouthed impression of Gordon Ramsey on a gnarly day.

Jones' background and intriguing sexual preferences, including a complex relationship with Tony, are promising topics when touched upon, and the film would have greatly benefited by better exploring the man outside the kitchen.

Instead, Burnt loudly smashes the promising dishes against the wall and settles for 100 minutes of food porn.

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Movie Review: The Fifth Estate (2013)

A biographical technology drama, The Fifth Estate delves into the chaotic formative years of WikiLeaks and the profound questions caused by the sudden public availability of state secrets.

The film briefly starts in 2010, with The Guardian, The New York Times and Der Spiegel about to co-publish The Afghan War Logs, derived from thousands of United States secret government cables leaked to WikiLeaks by Bradley Manning. The story then shifts back to 2008, when German tech whiz Daniel Domscheit-Berg (Daniel Brühl) meets and agrees to help WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange (Benedict Cumberbatch). Assange is passionate about providing an unfiltered anonymous platform for whistleblowers to reveal hidden corporate and government information.

The popularity of WikiLeaks grows with revelations about tax evasion on a grand scale at a Swiss Bank. Daniel is captivated by Julian, who is enigmatic but also obsessed with his own version of the truth and not beyond twisting facts for his benefit. The worldwide scoops multiply, and WikiLeaks becomes a thorn in the US government's side. Daniel's relationship with girlfriend Anke (Alicia Vikander) suffers, and more tension lies ahead as Assange seems oblivious to the individual harm that could be caused by the release of unredacted data.

Directed by Bill Condon, The Fifth Estate is only a few years removed from the events depicted. Both a biography of Assange and a commentary on the rapidly shifting world of no secrets, the film is always dynamic, sometimes frantic, and often resembles the chaotic no-one-is-in-control reality of information in the citizen journalist world.

The Fifth Estate is based on two 2011 books: Inside WikiLeaks: My Time with Julian Assange at the World's Most Dangerous Website by Domscheit-Berg, and WikiLeaks: Inside Julian Assange's War on Secrecy by David Leigh and Luke Harding. And this is not a hero-worship story: the film presents Assange as a deeply flawed man living in his own world, charismatic enough to dominate a room and attract ardent followers but also blinkered in pursuing a self-defined mission. It's an attractive proposition for a biography to pursue, and allows screenwriter Josh Singer to chase the various shades of grey morality in the WikiLeaks story.

Aware that the film is treating history too close to the source, Condon expands the breadth and triangulates numerous issues, rather than diving too deeply into any one aspect. The Fifth Estate takes pains to cover the people, the technology, the profession of journalism, the actual historical events, and the implications both intended and not, and never dwells for too long in one place. There is something here from every angle, and while none of it is perfect or fully satisfying, it is all rich fodder for thoughtful discussion.

Through the sub-story of a trio of State Department and White House officials (played by Laura Linney, Stanley Tucci and Anthony Mackie) struggling to cope with the sensitive state secrets suddenly detonating on WikiLeaks, Condon takes a stab at reflecting the information age's unexpected consequences. He also throws in a sub-sub-story of an American informant in the Libyan government, whose identity is potentially exposed in the leaks.

Elsewhere traditional journalists at The Guardian, already struggling with the digital revolution, now have to contend with defending their professional standards as a tsunami of astounding information is about to be unleashed on an unsuspecting world in unfiltered format. Are the rules being rewritten, or is this the reason the tried and tested rules exist in the first place?

Benedict Cumberbatch delivers a chilling performance as Assange, self-assured, emotionally domineering and steely-eyed, his shock of white hair working to his advantage. Daniel Brühl gets plenty of screen time, and the film is as much the Domscheit-Berg story as it is about Assange, and this is not necessarily always a good thing. Alicia Vikander cannot do much with the role of the token girlfriend.

The Fifth Estate doesn't contain any great revelations, yet it's a stylish point-in-time marker, a chronicle of an inflection point in privacy's death march. Governments are also losing the right to keep any secrets, and all it took was one determined man and one website to make it happen.

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Movie Review: Woman In Gold (2015)

Inspired by a true story, Woman In Gold is a drama about an Austrian woman's fight to reclaim precious family paintings seized by the Nazis during World War Two. The film is sincere and engaging, with the flashback scenes packing particular resonance.

It's 1998 in Los Angeles, and the elderly Maria Altmann (Helen Mirren) lays her sister Luise to rest. Maria was born and raised by a wealthy Jewish family in Austria, but as a young bride fled to the United States to escape the Nazi occupation. In Luise's belongings Maria finds evidence to suggest that the she may be able to recover precious family paintings, including Gustav Klimt's Portrait of Adele Bloch-Bauer I, now called Woman In Gold and claimed by the Austrian government after having been stolen by the Nazis. Adele was Maria's loving aunt, and Klimt a family friend.

Seeking legal advice, Maria turns to young lawyer Randy Schoenberg (Ryan Reynolds), the son of a family friend and himself the grandson of the famous Austrian composer Arnold Schoenberg. Initially skeptical, Randy agrees to help upon discovering that the Klimt painting may be worth $100 million. He travels with Maria to Vienna, and they find an ally in Hubertus Czernin (Daniel Brühl), a magazine editor eager for Austria to confront her past. They take Maria's case in front of the Art Restitution board, but Woman In Gold is now considered a national treasure, and the government will make every effort to block Maria from reclaiming the painting of her aunt.

A hybrid of Philomena and what The Monuments Men was trying to be, Woman In Gold largely succeeds in its mission to juxtapose the legal battle for personal restitution with the wider background of the horror unleashed on Austria's Jewish population. Director Simon Curtis finds a harmonious balance between the sepia-toned flashback scenes in Vienna with Maria as a young woman (played with palpable fervency by Tatiana Maslany), and the more modern day legal machinations played out on two continents. The flashbacks carry the emotional punch, capturing a Vienna torn asunder, with many residents welcoming the Nazis while the intelligentsia recoil in horror and the Jews stare at annihilation.

There is less drama in the numerous but brief court scenes. This becomes more the story of lawyer Randy Schoenberg, with Maria frequently reduced to delivering quips for comic relief. Randy's passion starts with a pursuit of possible riches, but after confronting Austrian government intransigence and coming face to face with the Holocaust memorial, he adopts Maria's fight as his own personal quest for a larger justice. To liven up the otherwise staid court battles, there are moments of mild drama involving Maria having to overcome her fear of traveling back to Austria, and Randy's wife (a bright Katie Holmes performance) coming to terms with his new found commitment to a cause.

Helen Mirren sparkles as only she can, and gradually steers the film towards a very personal story of recovery from the grave injustice inflicted upon her family by an evil tide of history. Curtis allows his star free reign to dominate, but then carries the emotions a bit too far into teary eyed nostalgia territory. Reynolds is better when he is likeable and skeptical, and stumbles somewhat when he needs to convey dramatic intensity. The scenes requiring him to be angry or emotional emerge as the weakest parts of the film. The strong cast is rounded out by Charles Dance as Randy's law firm boss and Antje Traue as Adele in the flashbacks, while Elizabeth McGovern and Jonathan Pryce enjoy bit parts as sympathetic judges.

Woman In Gold may not fully glitter as intended, but it does achieve a steady shine.

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Movie Review: Rush (2013)

An intense rivalry speeding in the lush valley between glory and death, Rush recreates the turbulent 1976 Formula 1 motor racing season, and the epic battle for the title between defending champion Niki Lauda and challenger James Hunt.

It's the early 1970s, and Englishman James Hunt (Chris Hemsworth) is making a name for himself in the lower leagues of open wheel racing. Young, brash and living the life of alcohol, sex, drugs and more sex, Hunt's natural talent gets him a ride with a private team funded by playful millionaire Alexander Hesketh (Christian McKay). Meanwhile, Austrian Niki Lauda (Daniel Brühl) is also climbing the racing ranks, having turned his back on the business opportunities provided by his well-heeled family. The antithesis of Hunt, Lauda is cold, calculating and single-mindedly focused on winning. He buys his way into Formula 1 with the struggling BRM team, while Hesketh also steps up to the top echelon.

Lauda quickly moves to the prestigious Ferrari team, meets future wife Marlene (Alexandra Maria Lara), and in 1975 seals his first world title, with Hunt still struggling in inferior equipment. Hunt marries glamorous model Suzi Miller (Olivia Wilde), but their marriage is soon on the rocks, and things look really bleak when Hesketh's financial losses force a withdrawal from the sport. But the front-running McLaren team unexpectedly lose their top driver and turn to Hunt as a replacement. The scene is set for the 1976 season, with Lauda expecting to easily defend his throne, and Hunt equally determined to prove that he belongs at the top of the sport. The season would include controversy, disqualification, a near fatal crash, and a climax in the torrential rain at the base of Mount Fuji in Japan.

The 1976 Formula 1 season is the stuff of legend, the type of sports drama that, as fiction, would be considered outlandish. Director Ron Howard and screenwriter Peter Morgan deserve credit for faithfully recreating in Rush a moment in time when all the ingredients came together to create an unforgettable championship battle. In a sport that, at the time, married gung-ho magnetism to a ridiculously high risk of fatal crashes, one or two deaths per year was still considered normal. The racers attracted to the sport where either daredevils like Hunt or calculating perfectionists from the Lauda breed, and all of them needed to possess a mix of self-confidence and a sense of invincibility to shake hands with mortality at every corner.

Rush also wades into the sport's arcane but fascinating technical battles. By the mid-1970s commercial interests had started to become more important, the money flowed, and behind the scenes politics started to exert a huge influence. Hence top teams like Ferrari and McLaren started arguing about every inch, literally, and legal interpretations of the regulations became a sport within the sport. Hunt and Lauda's on-track rivalry was augmented by accusations of cheating and rule bending that further heightened the tension, resulting in disqualifications, appeals and reinstatements. Morgan actually simplifies some of the major controversies to keep the spotlight on the drivers.

And Rush is, ultimately, about the two drivers. The film steers far from heroism and presents both Hunt as Lauda as supremely talented racers with very human characteristics. Both are fallible, both can be rude and dismissive, and both are self-centred. And yet they are polar opposites, driven to the top of the sport by completely different motivations. Their rivalry, at least in 1976, propelled them both towards achievements greater than either would have accomplished without the other. Ironically, Rush places more emphasis than necessary on the friction points between the two men, who, in reality, where closer friends than inferred by the film.

Chris Hemsworth and Daniel Brühl are both excellent, quickly settling into the personalities of the drivers. Hemsworth gets the showier role and polishes Hunt's flash-in-the-pan, fun-loving persona to a shine. Brühl generates the necessary intensity as the methodical, in-for-the-long-term Lauda, in a performance that is deeper, and ultimately, more poignant, as Lauda's rationality and force of will is severely tested more than once during the course of the season.

The on-track sequences are superb. Howard and cinematographer Anthony Dod Mantle capture the thrilling speed generated by the sleek Formula 1 machinery, and never go over the top in exaggerating the racing action. The recreations of the fiery crash at the Nurburgring track and the final, monsoon-drenched race in Japan are handled particularly brilliantly.

In a race to the chequered flag, Rush crosses the finish line first, triumphant in chronicling a celebrated rivalry between equal yet opposite competitors.

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