Movie Review: Wake Up Dead Man (2025)

Subtitled: A Knives Out Mystery

Genre: Murder Mystery  
Director: Rian Johnson  

Starring: Daniel Craig, Josh O'Connor, Glenn Close, Josh Brolin, Mila Kunis, Kerry Washington, Jeremy Renner  
Running Time: 144 minutes  

Synopsis: Young priest and former boxer Jud Duplenticy (Josh O'Connor) is assigned to an upstate New York parish where Monsignor Jefferson Wicks (Josh Brolin) presides over a small congregation. Jud finds Wicks' behaviour intentionally boorish, and meets Wicks' loyal assistant Martha (Glenn Close) and regular attendees including lawyer Vera (Kerry Washington), her adopted son and failed politician Cy, despondent doctor Nat (Jeremy Renner), a fading author, and a cellist with a health ailment (Cailee Spaeny). When a murder is committed, local police chief Geraldine (Mila Kunis) and renowned private detective Benoit Blanc (Daniel Craig) investigate.  

What Works Well: The second sequel is both more intimate and more ambitious. Writer and director Rian Johnson finds a brooding church setting to host personal agendas and broader societal commentary, and wisely de-emphasizes detective Blanc in favour of a conflicted main protagonist in Father Jud. Carrying heavy luggage from the past (he killed a man in the boxing ring) and confronted by the spooky history of his new parish and an unhinged Monsignor Wicks, Jud stumbles upon a compelling mystery. Josh O'Connor and Josh Brolin are effective counterpoints across compassion and delusion, and beneath the murder plot resides clever discourse about the role of organized religion, from comforting those in need to raising the sword in battles real and imagined.

What Does Not Work As Well: The running time is undisciplined in an attempt to cram in a few too many sub-stories. Beyond the main characters, most of the cast members never move beyond "making up the numbers". 

Key Quote:

Father Jud: You're right. It's storytelling. The rites and the rituals. Costumes, all of it. It's storytelling. I guess the question is, do these stories convince us of a lie? Or do they resonate with something deep inside us that's profoundly true, that we can't express any other way except storytelling?

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Movie Review: Glass Onion: A Knives Out Mystery (2022)

Genre: Comic Murder Mystery

Director: Rian Johnson

Starring: Daniel Craig, Edward Norton, Janelle Monáe, Kate Hudson, Kathryn Hahn, Dave Bautista

Running Time: 139 minutes

Synopsis: During the Covid pandemic, billionaire business tycoon Miles Bron (Edward Norton) invites a group of rich friends to his lavish island resort. The invitees include a fashion mogul (Kate Hudson), a video game streamer (Dave Bautista), the governor of Connecticut (Kathryn Hahn), Miles' chief scientist (Leslie Odom Jr.), and Miles' ex-business partner Andi (Janelle Monáe). Detective Benoit Blanc (Daniel Craig) joins the party, although no one knows how he was invited. Everyone has something to hide, the intended harmless whodunnit game is quickly derailed, and Blanc has to sort through what is really going on.

What Works Well: This first sequel aims for broader laughs, plus a glitzy and vivid lifestyle-of-the-rich-and-famous aesthetic. Director and writer Rian Johnson aces the opening hour of character introductions and context setting, with the cast members letting loose and enjoying themselves. Miles' glass-dominated resort is a Bondian wonder, and within it the back-stabbing greed and corruption revelations score direct hits on the dilapidating foundations of modern celebrity, business, and political culture.

What Does Not Work As Well: The mystery, murder, and crime solving elements are clumsy and toothless, with flashbacks and shifting perspectives cluttering the flow. Two murders compete for attention with a mediocre sub-plot about a new energy source, while Blanc's deductions are ultimately shoved to the side in favor of a fire-and-destruction climax. The running time is needlessly too long.

Conclusion: The island offers fun in the sun, but the frolicing is unwieldy.



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Movie Review: No Time To Die (2021)

The 25th chapter in the James Bond franchise, No Time To Die enhances a rich story with human emotions and plenty of action, but balloons to a staggering 163 minutes.

In a pre-prologue, Lyutsifer Safin (Rami Malek) avenges his family's murder by killing the wife of Spectre assassin Mr. White, but he spares the life of White's young daughter Madeleine. 

In the prologue, Spectre's leader Blofeld (Christoph Waltz) has been captured and is being held by MI6. Retired agent James Bond (Daniel Craig) is vacationing in Italy with his lover Dr. Madeleine Swann (Léa Seydoux), now a psychotherapist. Bond barely survives an assassination attempt and suspects Madeleine may have betrayed him. He breaks off their relationship.

Five years later in London, Dr. Obruchev is kidnapped along with files and vials related to Project Heracles, a secret initiative funded by MI6's head M (Ralph Fiennes) to develop DNA-targeting weaponry. The CIA's Felix Leiter (Jeffrey Wright) prods Bond out of retirement to find Obruchev in Cuba. He tangles with Nomi (Lashana Lynch), the new Agent 007, but is helped by the CIA's agent Paloma (Ana de Armas). Bond has to dodge another assassination attempt as he uncovers Safin's destructive plot, with Madeleine re-entering his life under unexpected circumstances.

Daniel Craig's fifth and final outing as James Bond is an engrossing adventure, infused with soulful reflection whenever the action pauses. This is Bond in retirement, seeking a graceful exit and the longshot promise of a lasting love, licking his emotional wounds and forced back into free-lance service. He appears detached and far removed from events back at MI6, where M, Moneypenny (Naomie Harris), and Q (Ben Whishaw) now have a new 007 to support.

But loyalty runs deep, and with M facing a mess of his own making, director Cary Joji Fukunaga taps into the close ties between Moneypenny, Q, and Bond for the ex-agent to receive needed logistical support. The plot is relatively straightforward if well beyond the bounds of logic, Blofeld still dangerous from his prison cell but Safin consigning Spectre to the sidelines as he expands his quest for maniacal revenge to global proportions.

In pursuit of yet another infiltrate-and-destroy-the-fort climax, the script (worked on by a combination of Neal Purvis, Robert Wade, Fukunaga, and Phoebe Waller-Bridge) starts to mix-up science and technology with old fashioned and seemingly absurd men in hazmat suits mixing a witch's broth of poison in underground lakes. Safin's motivations become murkier by the minute, Rami Malek sinking so deep into the role that his own poisonous flowers start to bend away in confusion, and Bond survives numerous un-survivable moments to set up the final showdown.

The action scenes are well-staged, crisply edited, and keep on coming. None are necessarily original, but good quality supports the overwhelming quantity. Nothing justifies the mammoth running time, but to its credit, the film is also never boring. Bond, Paloma, and Nomi gatecrashing then escaping a convention of Spectre assassins stands as the most memorable highlight.

Amidst all the bullets, explosions, and roaring engines, No Time To Die also keeps an eye on the people. A rare undercurrent of poignancy flows through Bond's connections to Felix and Madeleine, while one monumental character-driven twist succeeds in deepening Bond's legacy. 

Now in his early fifties, Daniel Craig bows out at the right time. He is at his best in the more expressive scenes where a history of doling out death casts a long dark shadow. Bond may have no time to die, but he finally appreciates all the time in the world.



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Movie Review: The Invasion (2007)

A science fiction thriller, The Invasion features a good if familiar build-up but falls victim to tired hide-and-seek trivialities.

Debris from a space shuttle disaster carries a fungus-like organism to Earth. When infected victims fall asleep, they are transformed to emotionless beings devoid of any passion but still eager to hunt down and spread the infection to others. Tucker Kaufman (Jeremy Northam) is a Director at the Center for Disease Control and among the first to be infected. He uses his position of authority to quickly spread the disease.

In Washington DC, psychiatrist Dr. Carol Bennell (Nicole Kidman) is Tucker's ex-wife with primary custody of their young son Oliver. She is friends with Dr. Ben Driscoll (Daniel Craig) but reluctant to evolve the relationship. Her patient Wendy Lenk (Veronica Cartwright) starts to describe her husband's weirdly emotionless behaviour, and gradually Carol notices increasing numbers of impassive people. Along with Ben and his colleague Dr. Stephen Galeano (Jeffrey Wright), Carol has to keep Oliver safe and figure out how to stop the infections while fending off hordes of pursuers.

Another iteration of the Invasion Of The Body Snatchers story, this version introduces peace-on-earth as an added bonus of a uniformly conformist society. But the David Kajganich script carries little conviction to push towards any valid intellectual debate. Instead a limp denouement undermines any pretense of cerebral intentions, and what remains is a largely forgettable chase thriller.

Which is unfortunate for Nicole Kidman. Her performance as a resilient doctor and mother coping with the unfolding horror is much better than the material. Director Oliver Hirschbiegel is rarely able to surround her with worthwhile plot elements, and the film's prolonged climax has all the freshness of a leftover 1980s Steven Seagal guns cars and helicopter flick. As Kidman does her best to wring drama out of the must-stay-awake imperative, the horror elements remain half-hearted and meld into warmed-over chase action.

In contrast the first 40 minutes are better as tension builds in measured doses and Carol is introduced as a well-rounded smart and caring character worth knowing. Veronica Cartwright provides welcome linkage back to the 1978 version, but Daniel Craig, Jeffrey Wright and Jeremy Northam barely register in underwritten roles. The Invasion is a story told once too often, now truncated in both title and depth.

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Movie Review: Road To Perdition (2002)

A gritty gangster drama, Road To Perdition is a visually stunning story of redemption, revenge and fatherhood.

In rural Illinois of 1931, Michael Sullivan (Tom Hanks) works as a mob enforcer for local Al Capone affiliate John Rooney (Paul Newman). He keeps the details of his work private and is aloof towards his family, including wife Annie (Jennifer Jason Leigh) and two sons Michael Jr. (Tyler Hoechlin) and Peter. Rooney treats Michael likes a son, much to the resentment of his unstable real son Connor (Daniel Craig).

When the curious Michael Jr. witnesses the killing of one of Rooney's rivals, Connor decides to wipe out the entire Sullivan family. Michael flees to Chicago with Jr. and connects with Capone's second-in-command Frank Nitti (Stanley Tucci), offering his services in exchange for being allowed to hunt down Conner. But Rooney stands by his real son, placing Connor in hiding and reluctantly unleashing hired killer and crime photographer Harlen Maguire (Jude Law) to finish off the Sullivans.

A richly textured exploration of mobster life focusing on the sins of the father, Road To Perdition is a lyrical ode to generational change among career criminals. The graphic novel by Max Allan Collins and Richard Piers Rayner is translated to the screen by director Sam Mendes and cinematographer Conrad L. Hall, and the film's rich style adds a captivating dimension, at once emphasizing emotional resonance and evoking a bygone era.

The film adopts the perspective of Michael Jr. remembering a seminal six weeks on the run with his father, the only time he got to know his dad. Previously Michael was a cold and distant figure involved in shadowy and undefined business for Mr. Rooney. When Jr. surreptitiously snoops into the business of adults, suddenly the reality of his father's murderous assignments comes into relief and the two are forced together just to survive. A lifetime of bonding is compressed into one road trip, and Jr. finally penetrates his father's veneer and by extension learns about himself.

Multiple father-son dynamics nurture the film's layered background. Rooney treats Michael as a son, and Mendes uses one scene at the piano to expressively colour-in the strength of their connection. But this is at the expense of Connor, slightly psychotic but fully aware that Michael has displaced him and occupies pride of place in Rooney's emotional bank.

However, Connor holds the trump card of bloodline and status as natural successor to his father's empire, and is quick to seize the opportunity to eliminate the Sullivan threat, forcing Rooney into the ultimate unwanted dilemma of having to choose between his biological and chosen sons.

The sprawling drama unfolds in a compact format at under two hours, and screenwriter David Self respects the visual essence of the source material by economizing on dialogue. The action scenes are plentiful, sharp and exquisitely staged. Thomas Newman's music complements Hall's cinematography to create masterpiece arrangements, the framing, compositions and lighting often breathtaking. Water is a frequent theme, whether through rain, melting ice or in bathtubs, reflecting the inherent fluidity of mobster life.

In one of his most unique performances Tom Hanks finds a much more dangerous screen presence while maintaining his core humanity. Hanks thrives in defining Michael's separated duality as a killer and family man, and convincingly fills the yawning gap of fatherhood with compassionate yet steely determination to protect his son. Paul Newman, Daniel Craig, Stanley Tucci and Jude Law form a dazzling supporting cast.

A pathway to retribution, atonement, and awakening, Road To Perdition offers a sublime journey.

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Movie Review: Knives Out (2019)

A whodunnit crime mystery spiced with humour, Knives Out features an ensemble cast having fun in a convoluted Clue-like milieu.

In Massachusetts, celebrated and wealthy crime mystery author Harlan Thrombey (Christopher Plummer) is found dead by apparent suicide, after the family had gathered at his mansion to celebrate his 85th birthday. Police detectives interrogate the family members, while private investigator Benoit Blanc (Daniel Craig) is anonymously hired to investigate whether a murder was committed.

Potential motives for murder are soon revealed. Harlan was about to expose the extramarital affair of his son-in-law Richard Drysdale (Don Johnson), husband of Harlan's daughter Linda (Jamie Lee Curtis). He was also terminating financial support for daughter-in-law Joni (Toni Collette); cutting entitled grandson Ransom (Chris Evans) out of his will; and firing his son Walt (Michael Shannon) as head of his publishing company.

But Benoit takes greatest interest in Harlan's quiet nurse and close confidant Marta Cabrera (Ana de Armas). The daughter of an illegal immigrant, she is well liked by all the family members and incapable of lying, and Benoit trusts her to help connect the dots.

A throwback to old-fashioned Agatha Christie-type mysteries, Knives Out presents a rich cast of characters, plenty of reasons to suspect everyone, layers of lying, and clever detective work. Writer and director Rian Johnson assembles the puzzle with a light touch, the film never taking itself too seriously. A few good pinches of well-placed humour help to keep the mood airy.

The first two thirds of the film, mostly confined to the mansion, are excellent. Johnson expeditiously introduces all the characters, gives most of them reasons to kill, and recreates snippets of the evening before the death when Harlan was clearly cleaning house and putting his affairs in order, threatening the economic future of many heirs in the process.

The final act unravels with the late introduction of Chris Evans' Ransom characters followed by an ill-advised and poorly executed blackmail sub-plot, the film hitting the road and losing its assured footing in the process.

Within the labyrinth of greed and backstabbing fueling the mystery, Johnson does include snide contemporary social commentary. Marta is an immigrant and the one seemingly pure soul, her work ethic placing her at the center of the family and yet outside it. Harlan's will upturns everyone's expectations, forcing a fundamental reassessment of the economic power dynamic.

With a star name is almost every role each performer gets the one scene to shine, and they are all adequate with a hint of theatricality. Daniel Craig works hard with limited success at an exotic accent to project a vaguely foreign detective. Ana de Armas delivers by far the film's best performance as the conscientious nurse Marta, combining sly panicked comic timing with an ability to say plenty by not saying anything at all. When everyone else is busy revealing sordid secrets, it's wise to listen more and talk less.

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Movie Review: Cowboys And Aliens (2011)

A wild blend of western and science fiction, Cowboys And Aliens successfully pays homage to both genres with an engrossing story and plenty of spirited characters.

A man later identified to be outlaw Jake Lonergan (Daniel Craig) wakes up in the middle of the desert, wounded, with total memory loss and a strange metal gauntlet affixed to his wrist. He makes his way to the town of Absolution, where he meets the preacher Meacham (Clancy Brown), Doc (Sam Rockwell) and his wife Maria (Ana de la Reguera).

Jake also tangles with the no-good Percy Dolarhyde (Paul Dano), attracting the attention of Sheriff John Taggart (Keith Carradine) and Percy's father Colonel Woodrow Dolarhyde (Harrison Ford), a powerful cattleman who control the town. Also hanging around Absolution is the mysterious Ella (Olivia Wilde), who seems to take a special interest in Jake and his gauntlet.

Just as Taggart is bundling off Jake and Percy into a prisoner wagon, Absolution is attacked by alien spacecraft that bomb the town and snaggle victims, with Taggart, Maria and Percy among those abducted. Jake's gauntlet turns into an energy weapon and he is able to shoot down one of the jets. The alien pilot escapes on foot, prompting Jake, Woodrow, Doc and Ella to set off in pursuit. Meanwhile Jake starts to have flashbacks to his story, involving stolen gold, the love of his life Alice (Abigail Spencer), and being tortured by the aliens.

An adaptation of the graphic novel by Scott Mitchell Rosenberg directed by Jon Favreau, Cowboys And Aliens delivers exactly what the title promises: a raucous adventure featuring all the traditional elements of both old-school westerns and invaders-from-space sci-fi movies. Mushing the two genres was never going to be easy, and with the premise defined and limited by the title and an army of five screenwriters involved in conjuring up a script, the potential for a disaster was high.

But Favreau gets most things right. While the plot is creaky in some areas, particularly in confining the aliens to pure evil and barely explaining their motives, there is more than enough story depth to maintain interest. The film plays with some eternal western themes including greed, atonement, new starts and the individual search for salvation, and starting with the loner-on-a-mission ethos, builds up momentum towards a stronger-together human stand against the invaders.

The film is rich with characters, and a blend of stars and characters actors (many with western pedigrees) help bring the story to life. Daniel Craig effortlessly slips into the mysterious and dangerous quiet stranger persona, and holds the centre of the film together. Harrison Ford is surprisingly effective as the morally suspect cattle baron with a lot to learn. Olivia Wilde's Ella is initially out of place until she proves to exceptionally out of place, stitching the story together.

Favreau captures traditional western vistas in gorgeous colours, and the alien effects are generally good and seamlessly integrated, despite some choppiness creeping in during the more frantic action scenes. The tone is straight-faced and largely serious. For all the temptations to play Cowboys And Aliens as an irony-infused self-aware semi-comedy, the film offers only the slightest undercurrent of humour, mainly derived from the strength of the characters. The respectful attitude is on target: Cowboys And Aliens is a surprisingly straight shooter.

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Movie Review: Logan Lucky (2017)

A redneck heist movie, Logan Lucky offers some laughs but is too clunky and cluttered to succeed.

In North Carolina, Jimmy Logan (Channing Tatum) is fired from his construction job at the Charlotte Motor Speedway, but not before hatching up a robbery plan targeting the subsurface cash-carrying pneumatic tubes. Jimmy teams up with his brother Clyde (Adam Driver), a bar owner who lost an arm in the Iraq war, and they recruit imprisoned safecracker Joe Bang (Daniel Craig) and his two dimwit brothers Sam (Brian Gleeson) and Fish (Jack Quaid).

Clyde intentionally gets himself imprisoned in the same facility as Joe, and they spark a mini-riot as a diversion while they temporarily break out of jail and join Jimmy and the others under the Speedway on the day of the Coca Cola 600. Not much seems to go according to plan, and it's up to FBI agent Sarah Grayson (Hilary Swank) to try to clean up the post-heist mess.

Director Steven Soderbergh came out of a short-lived retirement to direct Logan Lucky, and maybe he need not have bothered. A lowbrow Ocean's Eleven set amongst the ignoramus set, it's never clear if the film is making fun of or celebrating its protagonists, and in any case, it barely matters. While there may have been some merit in exploring unsophisticated thievery among the unwashed, the film is disjointed, uneven, and overstuffed with incidental secondary and tertiary characters.

In addition to Jimmy, Clyde, Joe, Sam and Fish, Mellie (Riley Keough) is the sister of Jimmy and Clyde; Bobbie Jo (Katie Holmes) is Jimmy's ex-wife, and Moody (David Denman) is her current husband; Max (Seth MacFarlane) is an insufferable Nascar team owner; Dayton (Sebastian Stan) believes himself to be a finely tuned driver, and Dwight Yoakam plays prison warden Burns. All are barely developed characters poking in and out of the movie at regular intervals, tripping over each other and contributing little.

Channing Tatum and Adam Driver do their best to elevate the material, and the exchanges between the brothers, with Driver particularly effective as the sombre sibling fully convinced a curse hangs over the Logans, is the best thing going for the film.

Otherwise, the heist logistics and details are never explained, Soderbergh creating narrative chaos by clarifying nothing. Once some light is shed on what everyone was running around doing, the film's logic, already strained, falls apart, the heist details too far-fetched and ambitious for any one of the nitwits on display to cobble together.

Rarely funny and never exciting nor clever, Logan Lucky sputters off the start line, does one slow lap and retires into the pits.

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Movie Review: Spectre (2015)

The twenty-fourth installment in the James Bond franchise, Spectre is tired, bloated and devoid of ideas and enthusiasm.

On a rogue mission in Mexico City, Bond (Daniel Craig) destroys a city block but eliminates terrorist leader Marco Sciarra (Alessandro Cremona). With the entirety of the 007 program threatened with closure due to the bureaucratic careerism of the Joint Intelligence Service head C (Andrew Scott), M (Ralph Fiennes) grounds Bond. But he anyway gets assistance from Q (Ben Whishaw) and Moneypenny (Naomie Harris) to continue his investigation.

In Rome Bond seduces Sciarra's widow Lucia (Monica Bellucci), and infiltrates a meeting of a secret terrorist organization chaired by mastermind Franz Oberhauser (Christoph Waltz), who was thought dead and knows Bond since childhood. Bond tracks down Mr. White (Jesper Christensen), who broke away from Oberhauser, and then White's daughter Dr. Madeleine Swann (Léa Seydoux). She reveals that Oberhauser is the head of Spectre, a consortium of criminals looking to control the world through terrorist acts and the massive harvesting of information from all the world's leading intelligence agencies.

The second outing for Sam Mendes as Bond director, Spectre finds the series sinking to another unfortunate low point. Despite the usual location hopping and well-staged action set-pieces, the film never kicks into gear, and ambles along with a long yawn. At the heart of the many problems is Daniel Craig exuding stony faced boredom and contributing to an emotionless core. But Spectre's  troubles extend well beyond a disinterested star.

The running time of 148 minutes is inexcusable. There simply is nowhere near enough plot to justify two and half hours of screen time, and the bloat is painfully obvious from the first pre-credit scene. Bond's tussle with Sciarra on board a helicopter takes forever, the two men punching it out for long minutes, sucking the energy out of the sequence. The pattern continues throughout, every chase and every fight prolonged to conceal the scarcity of meaningful content.

Worse still is the lack of any tension, drama or sense of genuine urgency. The worst that the bad guys come up with is sitting around a dark table discussing data breaches. Terrorist explosions take place on background television screens, while Christoph Waltz, first revealed as Oberhauser and then Blofeld, is a toothless bystander under both incarnations, his elaborate base in the desert used for...what, exactly? The shared history of Oberhauser and Bond is a muddled backstory, Mendes committing the cardinal sin of telling rather than showing what is supposed to be the emotional apex of the film.

Monica Belluci is wasted in a couple of scenes, while the sparkling Léa Seydoux emerges as one of the film's few sources of energy, almost overcoming the 18 year age difference between her and Craig. The Sam Smith moany and falsetto-hampered theme song Writing's on the Wall is one of the worst in the history of the franchise.

What remains is Bond on an unsanctioned mission to chase down information, his next destination and target barely explained as the film jettisons basic narrative exposition in favour of snazzy visuals. With the evil British intelligence desk jockeys angling to kill the 007 program, Spectre appears to give them a good reason to do so.

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Movie Review: The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo (2011)

The Hollywood adaptation of Stieg Larsson's The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo is filled with ambiance but otherwise cannot fully justify its existence.

In Stockholm, Millennium magazine investigative journalist Mikael Blomkvist (Daniel Craig) is found guilty of libel for wrongfully accusing wealthy industrialist Hans-Erik Wennerström of fraud. Mikael is carrying on an affair with his editor-in-chief Erika Berger (Robin Wright), but leaves her behind to accept an assignment from elderly business tycoon Henrik Vanger (Christopher Plummer), living in the remote northern island community of Hedeby.

Mikael in unaware that his background had been thoroughly checked by young hacker Lisbeth Salander (Rooney Mara) on behalf of Henrik and his lawyer Dirch Frode (Steven Berkoff). Lisbeth is an extremely intelligent but deeply troubled ward of the state, waging a battle for survival against Nils Bjurman, her horrifically abusive state-appointed guardian.

Henrik wants Mikael to investigate the disappearance 40 years prior of his great niece Harriet. In return, Henrik promises to reveal the real dirt on Wennerström. Henrik also warns Mikael that the extended Vanger family includes plenty of squabbling relatives, long-held grudges, vendettas and a sprinkling of Nazi sympathizers. The Vanger clan includes Henrik's deceased brother Gottfried (Harriet's father) and Gottfried's son Martin (Stellan Skarsgaard), who now runs the business, while Henrik's other brother Harald is ailing but still clinging to his fascist views.

Mikael sets up shop in a cold cabin and starts delving into family archives, police records and old newspaper reports. He finds a cryptic code in Harriet's Bible, and Frode connects him with Lisbeth to help advance the research. Mikael and Lisbeth join forces, start a passionate affair, and gradually uncover a horrific trail of crime much more complex than they ever expected.

Directed by David Fincher and arriving two years after the Swedish version, this Girl With The Dragon Tattoo exists in the name of avoiding subtitles. It's otherwise difficult to understand the artistic logic of imposing Swedish accents onto Anglo actors and recreating the same movie. Michael Nyqvist as Blomqvist, Noomi Rapace as Salander and director Niels Arden Oplev did a terrific job the first time around. Fincher adds a bit more style, subtracts some heart and plot comprehension, and lands in the same place with less authenticity.

Nevertheless, plenty of impressive visuals are on display. From the Bond-inspired opening credit sequence to the stark, frigid landscape of Sweden's remote north, Fincher creates an environment where things happen at the speed of creeping ice, and secrets lurk beneath a family's dominant blanket of power and wealth. Back in Stockholm Lisbeth dances on the edge of madness, her survival instincts kicking into overdrive in her morbid battle of excessive brutality with Bjurman. The material is strong, and Fincher extracts a stunning punk performance from Mara, Lisbeth Salander a brilliant source of coiled and angry energy.

Fincher does however bungle the central mystery of Harriet's disappearance. Too many names and locations are thrown at the screen far too quickly, and Fincher moves on to capture the next frozen pond instead of allowing the plot and supporting characters to breathe and mature.

The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo does convey the layered impact of individuals victimized by power brokers, personal tragedies covered up by a veneer of civility. But despite the professional treatment, this remains a wholly unnecessary remake.

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Movie Review: Munich (2005)

A brilliantly pessimistic action drama centering on the Middle East conflict between Israel and the Palestinians in the aftermath of the 1972 Olympics, Munich is about the limits of bitter bloodlust.

At the 1972 Munich Olympic Games, Palestinian terrorists belonging to the Black September group storm the Olympic Village, shoot and kill two Israeli athletes and take nine more as hostages. A botched rescue attempt by German authorities ends in tragedy: all the hostages are killed, as well as five of the attackers. Three are taken alive.

In response, Israel activates a death squad to find and eliminate Europe-based Palestinians connected with the Munich plot. Mossad agent Avner Kaufman (Eric Bana), married to a very pregnant Daphna (Ayelet Zurer), is selected to lead the black ops mission, and is given the names of eleven Palestinians to kill. Avner's handler and only subsequent link to the Israeli government is Ephraim (Geoffrey Rush), while his fellow squad members are the supposed explosives expert Robert (Mathieu Kassovitz), the South African Steve (Daniel Craig), the self-designated "cleaner" Carl (Ciarán Hinds), and document forger Hans (Hanns Zischler).

In Paris they connect with the mysterious Louis (Mathieu Amalric), who runs a private syndicate specializing in selling information about agents who do not want to be found, but only to non-governmental buyers. Avner and his group get to work, and start finding and killing their Palestinian targets, although none of the killings are easy, and there are many messes and near misses involving civilians and faulty explosives. Palestinian reprisal killings also escalate, and Avner realizes that his mission is only creating more killers and more victims.

When the killings escalate to a full scale Israeli Defense Forces commando raid on Beirut to eliminate three key targets, Louis' "Papa" (Michael Lonsdale) gets involved, and Avner's cover as an Israeli agent is blown. Every successive mission becomes more difficult, and Avner and his men are soon both the hunters and the hunted.

Adapting the book Vengeance by George Jonas, Steven Spielberg wades into the Middle East conflict, and calls what he sees: a series of revenge and counter-revenge killings that achieve exactly nothing for either side. Every death generates more hurt, more pain, more victims, and more avengers, and moves the conflict further away from any resolution. The hunters become the hunted, the killers are also killed, and the blood-letting only begets more blood-letting, with innocent casualties strewn across history for good measure.

These truths can be difficult to accept for both the Israeli and Palestinian side, and Munich has detractors from every corner. It's easier to lash out and add to the violence rather than sit at the negotiating table and hammer out a peace, and Munich is meant to show both the senselessness of the war path, and the pain inflicted on the foot soldiers who are superficially successful in their missions.

At over 160 minutes, Munich is a relentlessly grim masterpiece about a dirty secret war played out on the sidewalks of Europe's capitals. The film aches with the tension of events and the intense pressure on men one misstep away from death. Spielberg captures the shadowy underworld of Europe in the 1970s, gripped by acts of terror and filled with Israeli and Palestinian agents intermingling among Cold War spies. Deadly games are played across the spectrum from regional to global, enemies making surprising friends with allies of their enemies for geopolitical gains, the double cross as close as the next street corner.

The deeper he goes into his mission, the more certain Avner is that the killings do not come with victory or jubilation. Rather, dread and reprisals accompany his transformation into a soulless death machine, and whether he finally physically dies at the hands of his enemies does not matter: he is dead inside, his life transformed into a living nightmare.

Munich ends with a painfully intense sex scene intercut with the raw, brutal horror of terrorism, the circle of life becoming the circle of death, waiting in vain for the courage required to break the cycle of violence. More than anyone, the soldiers of war know that it is the diplomats who have to win the peace, otherwise the abominations will just continue across the generations. And to make the point, in the final image Spielberg's camera lingers, for a long time, on the twin towers of the World Trade Centre.

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The Movies Of Daniel Craig

All movies starring Daniel Craig and reviewed on the Ace Black Movie Blog are linked below:

Elizabeth (1998)

Road To Perdition (2002)

Munich (2005)

Casino Royale (2006)

The Invasion (2007)

Quantum Of Solace (2008)

Cowboys And Aliens (2011)

Dream House (2011)

The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo (2011)

Skyfall (2012)

Spectre (2015)

Star Wars Episode VII: The Force Awakens (2015, uncredited cameo)

Logan Lucky (2017)

Knives Out (2019)

No Time To Die (2021)

Glass Onion: A Knives Out Mystery (2022)

Wake Up Dead Man (2025)

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The Movie Star Index is here.