Movie Review: Valkyrie (2008)

Genre: World War Two Drama Thriller  

Director: Bryan Singer  

Starring: Tom Cruise, Bill Nighy, Tom Wilkinson, Kenneth Branagh, Terence Stamp  

Running Time: 121 minutes  

Synopsis: Already disgruntled with the Nazi regime, the German army's Colonel Claus von Stauffenberg (Tom Cruise) loses an arm and an eye in a North Africa battle. He is subsequently recruited into a group of officers conspiring to overthrow Hitler, including General Olbricht (Bill Nighy), General Beck (Terence Stamp), and General von Tresckow (Kenneth Branagh). However, the crafty General Fromm (Tom Wilkinson) remains staunchly non-committal. Stauffenberg conceives a plan to assassinate the Führer, blame the SS for an attempted coup, and activate Operation Valkyrie, a contingency protocol to deploy the reserve army.

What Works Well: Based on actual events, this brisk historical thriller enjoys good pacing and ever increasing tension fueled by risk, courage, and a sense of duty. Director Bryan Singer stages the action within quality sets and hustles tactical details along with admirable efficiency, only pausing to enjoy a couple of preceding assassination attempts. The third act is dedicated to the centrepiece July 20, 1944 bombing-plus-coup, Tom Cruise's confident charisma enhancing a faithful recreation of a chaotically tumultuous day.

What Does Not Work As Well: Despite the efforts of a stellar supporting cast, too many men-in-uniforms jostle for limited screen time, devoid of any depth outside their peripheral plot involvement. Consequently, their vision for a new Germany is opaque.

Conclusion: A worthy tribute to the cause of thwarting evil.

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Movie Review: Death On The Nile (2022)

Genre: Crime Mystery

Director: Kenneth Branagh

Starring: Kenneth Branagh, Gal Gadot, Armie Hammer, Annette Bening, Russell Brand

Running Time: 127 minutes

Synopsis: In 1937, legendary detective Hercule Poirot (Kenneth Branagh) is invited to the Nile river honeymoon cruise of Simon Doyle (Armie Hammer) and his new bride, the wealthy Linnet Ridgeway (Gal Gadot). The newlyweds believe their lives are in danger. The large group of suspects includes Simon's vindictive ex-lover Jacqueline (Emma Mackey), as well as Linnet's business manager (Ali Fazal), heartbroken former lover (Russell Brand), and personal maid (Rose Leslie). 

What Works Well: A relaxed old-fashioned attitude permeates through this Agatha Christie adaptation, and the scenic settings are postcard perfect despite CGI fakery. Gal Gadot and Emma Mackey engage in a duel of fetching gowns, while director Kenneth Branagh and cinematographer Haris Zambarloukos complement the vacation vibe with long, fluid takes. Poirot is humanized with a backstory starting in the Great War trenches and encompassing a great love, and is even afforded the flicker of a new romance.

What Does Not Work As Well: Too many dead bodies pile up on the boat before Poirot uncovers the plot, and the sailing is cluttered with many plastic passengers along for the ride with little likelihood of meaningful contributions (Annette Bening, Tom Bateman, Dawn French, Jennifer Saunders, Sophie Okonedo, and Letitia Wright all meander onto the deck). Once finally revealed, the conspiracy is torpedoed by execution holes. While character diversity is forcibly wedged-in, local Egyptian culture is notably absent, and the 127 minutes of running time undermine crisp storytelling.

Conclusion: Despite pretty visuals, the boat lists under the weight of too many forgettable characters and far-fetched events.

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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: Murder On The Orient Express (2017)

An ensemble murder mystery set on board a train, Murder On The Orient Express assembles plenty of talented performers and strands them in the snow.

It's 1934, and after finishing an assignment in Jerusalem, celebrated Belgian detective Hercule Poirot (Kenneth Branagh) travels to Istanbul and boards the Orient Express on the way to London. Businessman Edward Ratchett (Johnny Depp) is also on the train, and tries to hire Poirot as a bodyguard, but the detective finds Ratchett distasteful and refuses. Ratchett is soon found dead in his compartment, stabbed multiple times. With the train stuck in the snow and awaiting a rescue crew, Poirot has to investigate and solve the murder.

The suspects from among the fellow passengers include the stern Princess Dragomiroff (Judi Dench) and her traveling companion Pilar (Penélope Cruz), society lady Caroline Hubbard (Michelle Pfeiffer), Doctor Arbuthnot (Leslie Odom Jr.), rude German Gerhard Hardman (Willem Dafoe) and governess Mary Debenham (Daisy Ridley). Poirot discovers that Ratchett is really the criminal known as Cassetti, who was involved in the shocking abduction and killing of the child Daisy Armstrong years prior, a murder that shocked America. Plenty of people want Cassetti dead, including many who happen to be on the train.

Directed by Branagh with a script by Michael Green, the adaptation of the celebrated Agatha Christie novel is old fashioned, out of touch and out of place. A far cry from the classic 1974 version, this unnecessary remake never finds a groove and stumbles around searching for the right platform. Devoid of drama, tension, mood or memorable characters, the film falls flat.

The large cast is remarkably underutilized, the actors and actresses reduced to glorified cameos. With too much time spent on Poirot's introspective angst, the plot details are often pulled from nowhere, the detective regularly making sweeping discoveries and conclusions based on very little. Too many facts and explanations are then crammed into an unsatisfying ending, any emotional impact behind the murder and the motive well and truly lost in the snowy Yugoslav mountains.

Branagh deploys fluid camera movement to try and break out of the train's confines, but the CGI for the external shots of the train snaking through the terrain is cheesy and overused.

Poirot’s over-elaborate moustache, featuring multiple waves on either end, is disconcerting, and wedges itself as an annoying traveling companion. Among the many crimes on display, the obtrusive facial hair is most deserving of painful plucking.

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Movie Review: Dunkirk (2017)

A stellar World War Two film, Dunkirk is the story of an army's survival, defeat salvaged from the jaws of catastrophe as seen through the eyes of the combatants.

Three separate but convergent stories related to the evacuation of the defeated British Army at Dunkirk, France in 1940 are recounted simultaneously. In the first story young British Army Private Tommy (Fionn Whitehead) barely survives patrol duties in the town and flees to the beach where he tries to find his way onto an evacuation ship. But with the beaches under fire from German guns and aircraft, the injured are being evacuated first. Over the course of a week Tommy teams up with Gibson (Aneurin Barnard), a soldier of few words. They rescue fellow soldier Alex (Harry Styles) from death by crushing and then attempt to smuggle themselves on-board any available outbound vessel.

The second story takes place over one day and features civilian Mr. Dawson (Mark Rylance) and his teenaged son Peter (Tom Glynn-Carney) responding to the British Navy's call for assistance. Without waiting for official help they set sail from England in Dawson's small boat with their eager helper George (Barry Keoghan). The Dawsons soon pluck a shell-shocked mariner out of the water, and doggedly continue on their way towards the hell of the Dunkirk beaches.

The final story takes place over one hour, and centers on Farrier (Tom Hardy), one of three Royal Air Force pilots flying towards the skies over Dunkirk to provide what support they can and counter the German air threat. Farrier engages in dogfights with Luftwaffe fighters and attempts to shoot down bombers targeting evacuation ships. Gradually Farrier becomes increasingly isolated and low on fuel.

Meanwhile, the Navy's Commander Bolton (Kenneth Branagh) is doing his best to organize an orderly withdrawal of more than 300,000 men in the face of hostile seas and incessant enemy pressure.

Written, directed and co-produced by Christopher Nolan, Dunkirk is a beautifully overwhelming and all-encompassing multi-sensory experience. Eschewing traditional narrative structures in favour of telling a story with barely any dialogue, no defined heroes and no venomous villains, Nolan allows the evacuation itself to take centre stage as a seminal event and pursues it from the land, the sea and the air.

Whereas Saving Private Ryan was about the ethos of a generation, Fury delved into the limits of sacrifice and Hacksaw Ridge focused on one individual's private war against war, Dunkirk is about a nation's psyche. As such Nolan is less interested in the mechanics of battle or individual actions; rather this is a film about collective character being forged through the mist of a stunned and stunning reaction to a devastating retreat.

Each of the three stories generates specific momentum and unrelenting tension. The fear, frustration, hunger and desperation of the massed soldiers builds up in the eyes of Tommy, Gibson, Alex and others, willing to try anything to get on a boat, despite the danger of being blown out of the water by the marauding German bombers. The stoic response of the civilian population is represented by Mr. Dawson and his son Peter, and their chapter most embodies the spirit of Dunkirk as a country comes together to rescue its sons. Meanwhile the dogfights and aerial duels in the sky are superbly choreographed, the pilot Farrier aware that his contribution can only be small but yet decisive in terms of morale and for the lives he may save.

To augment the impressive vistas of a gloomy beachfront war theatre, Hans Zimmer provides a soundtrack that is simultaneously filled with dread, anticipation and extreme anxiety, adding to jarringly loud sound effects that bring the horrors of war to the fore. Every bullet in Dunkirk registers as a transmittal of potential death, every bomb and torpedo an individual parcel of destruction. The few lines of dialogue suffer in comparison and are often drowned out or garbled.

In the absence of a focus on individuals, Nolan's cast is filled with newcomers and relative unknowns in most of the key roles. Mark Rylance as Mr. Dawson, Kenneth Branagh as the pier master Commander Bolton and Tom Hardy as the pilot Farrier share the most prominent acts of above-and-beyond valour. On the beach, the widescreen is filled with thousands of startled young men maintaining relative calm and some discipline in the face of enemy fire as they patiently await either rescue or death.

Dunkirk is war in its unspoken complexity, death, hope, bravery and astonishing selflessness coming together to define a nation and write a momentous chapter in a history-defining conflict.

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Movie Review: My Week With Marilyn (2011)

Another sacrifice at the altar of Marilyn Monroe obsession, My Week With Marilyn offers a captivating Michelle Williams performance, but not much else of interest.

It's 1957, and Marilyn Monroe (Williams), the biggest movie star in the world, arrives in London to film what would become The Prince And The Showgirl, a lightweight comedy with Laurence Olivier (Kenneth Branagh) and Sybil Thorndike (Judi Dench). Amidst the predictable media storm, young Colin Clark (Eddie Redmayne) lands a job as Third Assistant Director on the production, essentially an errand boy to satisfy Olivier's whims. Clark is eager and enthusiastic, and starts a tentative relationship with wardrobe assistant Lucy (Emma Watson). Meanwhile, his position on the set provides him with a front row seat as the production stutters to a start.

Monroe is with her newly minted third husband Arthur Miller (Dougray Scott), but their relationship appears cold. She is much more dependent on her acting coach Paula Strasberg (Zoë Wanamaker), whose role is to protect Monroe's fragile self esteem. Olivier's wife Vivien Leigh (Julia Ormond) is gracious enough but keeps a wary eye on her husband. With filming in turmoil and Monroe's frequent late arrivals to the set infuriating Olivier, Miller abruptly abandons his new wife and heads back to the US. Monroe turns to Clark for comfort, the superstar and the third assistant director raising eyebrows as they start to spend time together, despite the objections of Monroe's business partner Milton H. Greene (Dominic Cooper).

My Week With Marilyn is based on two (!) books by Colin Clark chronicling his limited interaction with Monroe, and the movie cannot shake the nagging sentiment that this is one temporarily starstruck man milking a short experience for all its worth. And while there may be an interesting story here about the ease with which hypercharisma can distort reality, director Simon Curtis does not help by portraying the time that Marilyn and Clark spent together as an almost mystical ideal romance.

This may have been how a mesmerised Clark remembered events; it simply comes across as one man emotionally drowning within the allure of an incredibly beautiful but deeply troubled woman, and mistaking her ability to influence all men for something resembling a whirlwind relationship. More pointedly exploring the difference between what Clark felt and what actually happened would have made for a much more interesting movie.

Instead we get a princess and the pauper fairy tale, complete with the prolonged montage sequence of the couple touring Windsor Castle and Eton College, and then skinny dipping. At best Monroe was furious that her husband abandoned her, desperate for company, irrational due to constant pill popping, and found the most naive sap to baby sit her ego. But the Adrian Hodges script treats the week as a magical coming together of two souls, and the saccharine taste just doesn't convince.

Stretching the shallow events of one week to a respectable movie length means that every detail is prolonged past its reasonable level of importance. Ironically, the scenes revealing the struggles of filming a movie with an erratic Marilyn are more interesting, Curtis capturing the continuous tension created by an unstable star, frequently late to the set and trying to pretend that the role requires great insight and preparation, while in fact she sleeps off her latest fistful of pills.

My Week With Marilyn does offer an affecting Michelle Williams turn as Monroe, or at least she nails the mannerisms of Monroe's public persona. Williams immediately erases the line between actress and subject, and dances along all the octaves of a highly strung, enormously talented, and incredibly famous woman, struggling with self confidence at one end of the scale and effortlessly deploying her irresistible sex-drenched charms at the other.

Branagh is less successful as Olivier, never appearing at ease in the role and unable to shed the act and find the actor. Judi Dench brings plenty of class as Sybil Thorndike, but she effectively disappears halfway through the film. Redmayne is firmly stuck in family theatre territory, where the fact that he is acting - almost always with a smile! - overshadows everything else that he is trying to convey.

Williams alone makes the film worth watching, and her performance raises the production from cheap television movie to a tolerable film experience. Never mind My Week With Marilyn; the 100 minutes with Michelle are what matter.

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