The Ace Black Movie Blog

Showing posts with label Jeremy Piven. Show all posts

Saturday, 30 June 2018

Movie Review: The Kingdom (2007)

An anti-terrorism investigative thriller, The Kingdom is inspired by real events and features solid action scenes, but treats its subject matter with condescending simplicity.

In Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, a coordinated terrorist attack featuring shooters, a suicide bomber and a large car bomb hits an American compound and causes massive casualties. Suspicions immediately fall on the cell commanded by Abu Hamza, an Al-Qaeda follower. The Saudi government initially refuses to grant entry to foreign investigators, but in Washington DC, FBI Special Agent Ronald Fleury (Jamie Foxx) pulls the necessary levers to permit his team a brief visit.

Fleury arrives in Riyadh along with agents Mayes (Jennifer Garner), Leavitt (Jason Bateman) and Sykes (Chris Cooper). They are greeted by Saudi State Police Colonel Al-Ghazi (Ashraf Bahrom) and Sergeant Haytham (Ali Suliman), who had attempted to thwart the attack. Al-Ghazi is initially unhelpful and keeps the FBI team on a short leash. But gradually Fleury builds up a level of trust, and the investigators start to make progress collecting evidence and identifying the terrorists.

Inspired by the 1996 and 2003 Khobar and Riyadh bombings, The Kingdom tackles the scourge of extremist Islamic terrorism targeting American interests. Directed by Peter Berg and written by Matthew Michael Carnahan, the film is slick, fast-paced and vivid. But for a story that purports to peel away the complexities of Saudi Arabia's social history and its unintended role in incubating and exporting extremism, the narrative quickly defaults to jingoistic American cheerleading.

Compared to much more thoughtful post-September 11, 2001 films like Rendition and Syriana, The Kingdom is lightweight. The FBI team can do no wrong, except for Al-Ghazi the local Saudis are incompetent obstructionists, and all it takes to track down a terrorist mastermind is a bit of on-site investigative work and a handful of agents storming a heavily-fortified neighbourhood.

But when it comes to delivering action scenes, Berg is in his element. The opening terrorist attack, a carnage-on-the-highway showdown and the final climactic battle are well-handled, and despite some jerky camera movement and obsessive editing, the chaotic grit of close quarters urban warfare jumps off the screen.

The investigative elements are orderly but settle in below television CSI-levels of linear simplicity. Sykes is the only one to think of diving into the blast hole to retrieve the identifying marks of the terrorists' car. Mayes extracts marble shrapnel fragments from victims' bodies, and these end-up being key clues to identifying the bombers. And Fleury looks up and immediately spots the building where the bad guys congregated to film the attack.

The cast is strong, but features some odd choices. Jennifer Garner and Jason Bateman are not the first names to jump out as candidates for the roles of hardened FBI agents. Foxx and Cooper are more in their element, but overall Carnahan's script seems to go out of its way to highlight the boorish and insensitive behaviours that tend to give Americans abroad a bad name. Jeremy Piven is the harried on-the-ground State Department official, and back in Washington DC Richard Jenkins and Danny Huston are the suits embroiled in battles of careerism.

The Kingdom is a modestly useful addition to the influx of post-9/11 films exploring the complexities of the Middle East, but is more interested in brawn than brains.

All Ace Black Blog Movie Reviews are here.

Sunday, 8 May 2016

Movie Review: Black Hawk Down (2001)

Based on real events, Black Hawk Down is a stellar war movie. The depiction of the Battle of Mogadishu is a stirring story of a mission gone wrong, and the men who had to subsequently rescue each other and limit the damage.

It's October 1993, and US forces including Army Rangers and elite Delta Force troops are stationed in Mogadishu, Somalia. Initially deployed on a famine relief mission, the US military is getting embroiled in a local civil war among squabbling warlords who do not hesitate to use starvation as a weapon. Powerful militia leader Mohamed Farrah Aidid is designated as the worst of the bad guys. Delta Force operators do capture arms dealer Osman Ali Atto (George Harris), but are no closer to shutting down Aidid's operation.

Based on sketchy intelligence, Major William Garrison (Sam Shepard) hurriedly cobbles together a mission to try and capture Aidid and his top aides while they meet at a safe house. American troops backed by helicopters leave the safety of their airport headquarters and delve into the dense Aidid stronghold of Bakaara Market within the labyrinthine confines of Mogadishu. Intended to last less than an hour, everything that can go wrong on the mission does go wrong, with thousands of militiamen taking up arms against the small American extraction team and shooting down two Black Hawk helicopters. The American forces get caught in a nightlong quagmire, incurring heavy losses while they try to rescue fallen soldiers and escape from a city filled with countless enemies.

Directed by Ridley Scott and based on the best-selling book by Mark Bowden, Black Hawk Down is an exhilarating war movie. After a slowish start to establish the premise, the film explodes into an unrelenting two hours of non-stop intensity as the battle is covered from several angles. As far as representing the grim agony of street warfare in third world cities against overwhelming opposing forces, the film stands a class apart. Scott and cinematographer Sławomir Idziak capture the chaos, confusion and danger-around-every-corner that characterizes modern urban warfare.

Soldiers are separated from each other, seemingly straightforward tasks like getting to the crash sites and rescuing the pilots turn into cascading disasters, with the rescuers needing rescue. Every block is a battleground, every window, doorway and rooftop a source of danger. Soldiers perform impromptu surgery, while others push ahead despite wounds and exposure to comrades killed under horrific circumstances. The film rams home both the insanity of war and the courage of the men who make it their profession.

Black Hawk Down does get a few things wrong. The Somalis are all faceless hordes, the definition of a blood thirsty enemy presented with no context. Back in the early 1950s Hollywood started to humanize natives in Westerns and then Germans in World War II movies. To produce a 2001 film without a modicum of perspective on what the other side is willing to die for is quite myopic.

Also relatively poor is the lack of distinction among the American fighting men. Josh Harnett, Tom Sizemore and Eric Bana emerge as individuals due to defined character traits, but the rest of the men are effectively interchangeable, and once bulked up in equipment and helmets, they all look the same. The large cast includes Orlando Bloom, Ewan McGregor, Tom Hardy, Jeremy Piven and William Fichtner.

But the objective of the film is to celebrate the armed forces, and to snatch a moral victory out of an astounding defeat which carried huge local tactical and overall strategic resonance. After the Mogadishu humiliation the US was seen as weak, defeatable, and quick to cut and run. But at the level of the fighting men, Black Hawk Down does reinforce the one-for-all and all-for-one ethos of the military, the heroic sacrifices, and no-man-left-behind principles. Against overwhelming odds the street battles feature countless examples of men risking their lives to help others, a band of brothers mentality that turns individuals into an army.

Loud, severe and imperfect, Black Hawk Down passionately captures the ugly realities of war as waged in hostile cities.

All Ace Black Blog Movie Reviews are here.

Tuesday, 27 October 2015

Movie Review: Serendipity (2001)

A sweet romance, Serendipity fully commits to a single premise and makes the most of it. John Cusack and Kate Beckinsale find excellent chemistry and are extremely appealing as star-struck would-be lovers, their future guided by the quirky side of fate.

In New York City at Christmas time, Jonathan (Cusack) and Sara (Beckinsale) reach for the same pair of gloves at a department store. Although she has a boyfriend and he has a girlfriend, they are instantly smitten with each other and spend a few hours together, including sharing desert at an ice cream bar called Serendipity, and ice skating under the stars at Central Park. The magical evening is ruined by a devilish kid pushing all the elevator buttons at the Waldorf Astoria Hotel, and the couple are separated. Jonathan only knows Sara's first name, and is unable to locate her.

Years later, Jonathan is engaged to Halley (Bridget Moynahan) and Sara has relocated to San Francisco and is engaged to musician Lars (John Corbett). But both are suddenly unsure of their chosen partners, and small clues prompt them to start looking for each other again. Jonathan recruits his best friend Dean (Jeremy Piven), a New York Times obituary writer, for a final quest to track down Sara, while Sara tricks her best friend Eve (Molly Shannon) to join on her on a trip to New York. With Jonathan and Halley's wedding day fast approaching, it's a race against time for the separated lovers to try and find each other again.

Directed by Peter Chelsom as a piece of whimsy with a dash of humour sprinkled on destiny's mischievousness, Serendipity announces its intentions in the title and never wavers from playing with the theme of fate dropping little hints at all the forks in the road of life. With the final outcome never in doubt, the film is playfully built on the little coincidences and seemingly random happenstances that may be harmless trivia or a grand indication of what decision is next needed.

An old Paul Newman film poster, a signed book given as a gift, an engagement ring that doesn't quite fit, a store receipt found inside a glove years after the purchase, a signed five dollar bill, a storefront converted to a bridal shop: little events could just be little events, or life-altering signposts urging a dramatic change in direction. The Marc Klein script cleverly keeps Jonathan and Sara in charge of all that they do in life. Fate is not imposed on them, but rather it provides them with what they need to reach their destination, or not, depending on how they interpret the available clues.

The lovers spend most of the film apart, an often troublesome plot device. And the two central characters are barely rounded, with their occupations and lives outside the romance context barely probed. But John Cusack and Kate Beckinsale overcome the separation with dedicated performances that convey genuine longing and a profound belief that the few hours Jonathan and Sara spent together were an introduction to something much more meaningful.

In support, Jeremy Piven and Molly Shannon do well to fill the void, providing Cusack and Beckinsale with foils to play against. Eugene Levy lets loose as a hilariously annoying store clerk who is both infuriating and helpful as Jonathan desperately tries to track down Sara.

New York City at Christmas time and a soundtrack of romantic songs add to the film's charm. Serendipity never threatens to tax the intellect, but it does brighten up the heart with a satisfyingly warm glow.