Movie Review: Saltburn (2023)

Genre: Drama  

Director: Emerald Fennell  

Starring: Barry Keoghan, Jacob Elordi, Rosamund Pike, Carey Mulligan, Richard E. Grant  

Running Time: 131 minutes  

Synopsis: At Oxford University in 2006, student Oliver Quick (Barry Keoghan) is from a modest background and struggles to fit in. He develops an infatuation with popular fellow student Felix (Jacob Elordi), who comes from a wealthy family. They develop a friendship despite the reservations of Felix's cousin Farleigh (Archie Madekwe). Felix invites Oliver to spend the summer at his family's Saltburn estate, where Oliver meets Felix's parents Elspeth and James (Rosamund Pike and Richard E. Grant), sister Venetia (Alison Oliver), and Elspeth's troubled friend Pamela (Carey Mulligan). However, all is not what it seems.

What Works Well: The reimagining of The Talented Mr. Ripley protects its intentions until the context is carefully introduced. The Oxford scenes establish the poor-kid-in-a-rich-milieu tension, and the early interactions at Saltburn welcome some humour, courtesy of the acidic butler Duncan (Paul Rhys), Rosamund Pike's on-edge spikiness, the estate's stuffy grandeur, and Pamela's unstated multiple agonies.

What Does Not Work As Well: None of the characters are remotely sympathetic, and they all act according to the whims of the script and to the detriment of organic consistency. The second half suffers a steep quality descent propelled by three ridiculously disgusting scenes conceived by writer and director Emerald Fennell for pure shock value. The evil happenings at an upper class estate are beyond far-fetched and appear to generate little to no serious investigation. While Rosamund Pike almost salvages her afterthought of a role, Carey Mulligan is thoroughly wasted.

Conclusion: Superficially clever but substantively hollow.



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Movie Review: I Care A Lot (2020)

A crime drama with a dark sense of humour, I Care A Lot presents a compelling premise but gets trapped in an unsavoury den of crooks.

Marla Grayson (Rosamund Pike) runs a seemingly respectable guardianship business. But she is actually a cutthroat con artist, obsessed with getting rich by bilking fortunes from vulnerable elderly people. With her business partner and lover Fran (Eiza Gonzalez), Marla conspires with corrupt doctor Karen Amos (Alicia Witt) to target her next victim, the wealthy Jennifer Peterson (Dianne Wiest). Marla obtains a court order, commits Jennifer to a care home, and takes control of all her possessions.

In Jennifer's safe deposit box, Marla finds a bag full of diamonds with no receipts. She starts to suspect the old woman is not as defenceless as she seems. Sure enough, Jennifer is the mother of Russian mob boss Roman Lunyov (Peter Dinklage). He dispatches lawyer Dean Ericson (Chris Messina) to buy-off Marla, but she senses the opportunity of a lifetime and digs in her heels, leading to an epic showdown with Roman.

Within a milieu of slick visuals and the occasional flash of acidic humour, I Care A Lot intentionally creates a dynamic with no sympathetic characters to cheer for. Writer and director J Blakeson introduces Marla as a purely despicable predator, then Roman as a cut-throat gangster, and allows them to crash into each other, two bad people engaged in warfare. From a pure morality standpoint, the best outcome is for both of them to get comprehensively trounced.

It's a risky edge to balance on. Marla's pure tenacity to never give an inch, especially to a low-life male, should be admirable, but her heartlessness reduces her to a contemptible villain. Rosamund Pike deserves plaudits for fully investing in a steely woman who, somewhere along the pathway to riches, detoured to an astounding level of narcissism. To an extent, she is let down by Blakeson's script, especially in the second half. Once Roman's goons start to demonstrate laughable ineptness, the film loses the oblique advantage earned during the sparkling build-up.

Marla turns into an action heroine to escape death and save Fran, as the narrative spirals from a battle of wits to routine action nonsense, the sense of cerebral sly ruthlessness all but lost. Very briefly, Dianne Wiest as the underestimated victim Jennifer Peterson threatens to emerge as the one person worth caring for. But the brief opportunity passes, I Care A Lot relatively unique in presenting a collection of scoundrels who may be smart, but are definitely not worth caring about.



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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: Devil You Know (2013)

A mystery drama about a simmering conflict between a mother-daughter pair of actresses, Devil You Know is hysterically botched. 

Glamorous movie actress Kathryn Vale (Lena Olin) has not appeared on film for 10 years, ever since her husband Maximilian was shot dead. His murderer was never found and rumours swirled that Kathryn was somehow involved. Now her daughter Zoe Hughes (Rosamund Pike) is embarking on a movie acting career, while Kathryn publishes an autobiography and launches a comeback.

Her current husband is screenwriter Jake Kelly (Dean Winters), and he is carrying on an affair with Zoe. Meanwhile Kathryn's personal assistant Edie (Molly Price) resents Kathryn's attempted return to the spotlight. When threatening letters accusing Kathryn of murder start to arrive, her comeback plans are threatened and sordid secrets from the past are revealed.

Filmed in 2005, shelved, then unleashed on an unsuspecting world in 2013, Devil You Know was probably only released because Jennifer Lawrence achieved fame in Winter's Bone (2010), The Hunger Games (2012) and Silver Linings Playbook (2012). Here she appears in brief flashback snippets as the young version of Rosamund Pike's character, and has no spoken lines.

The film is a misguided attempt at a neo-noir thriller vaguely inspired by the Johnny Stompanato homicide. Written by Alex Michaelides and directed by James Oakley, Devil You Know has the plastic production values and wooden dialogue delivery of a daytime soap opera. The choppy editing, some out-of-focus frames, and a running time of just 76 minutes suggest an incomplete project, but padded with bewildering shots fetishizing women's legs.

The available budget was spent on wardrobe to dress Olin and Pike in 1940s-inspired outfits. Otherwise the set designs and dialogue exchanges emit the whiff of locations rented by the hour and one-take expediency. Despite Olin and Pike wrestling as best as they can with the material, the characters never come to life, and the plot disintegrates into a stagy and cheap Agatha Christie-like small collection of suspects staring at each other and wondering what to do next.

Devil You Know is best left unknown.



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Movie Review: The Informer (2019)

A gritty drama and thriller, The Informer maintains low key intensity but is hampered by loose plotting and some disinterested performances.

In New York City, ex-convict Pete Koslow (Joel Kinnaman) is working as a mole for FBI Agent Erica Wilcox (Rosamund Pike) to infiltrate the fentanyl empire of Polish mobster The General (Eugene Lipinski). Erica's boss Keith Montgomery (Clive Owen) gives the go-ahead for a sting operation to arrest The General, but it all goes wrong and undercover New York police detective Gomez is killed.

To clean up the mess, The General wants Pete to serve time and seize control of the drug trade from within the prison system. Erica and Keith pressure Pete into accepting the deal, and he is forced to leave his wife Sofia (Ana de Armas) and young daughter and head back behind bars. Meanwhile NYPD detective Grens (Common) is oblivious to the FBI operation and just wants to know who killed his partner Gomez. Pete is soon facing dangers and betrayals from all sides.

A thriller that dares to forgo routine car chases and shoot-outs, The Informer deserves credit for adopting a reticent approach to the conundrums of one man caught in the grey world between hardened criminals and heartless government agencies. But Italian director and co-writer Andrea Di Stefano can only take the material so far: the script is both short of depth and too happy to gloss over essentials, while all the supporting roles are underwritten and performed with bored blankness by actors who should know better.

In the lead role Joel Kinnaman as Pete Koslow is eminently watchable and fully invested, bringing plenty of intensity and humanity to the drama. But Rosamund Pike, Clive Owen and Common have much less to work with and go through the motions, their level of engagement scrambling towards television levels. Ana de Armas is only marginally better.

Regardless of performances, The Informer's fundamental weaknesses reside in a gap-filled and pacing-challenged script that barely sketches out what the General wants Pete to do in prison, much less how agents Wilcox and Montgomery co-opt that plan for their own purpose. Once behind bars Pete is sidetracked into a squished prison drama with all the usual cliches, including racially segregated cabals, corrupt guards, inmate-on-inmate violence, and bad guys doling out their brand of vengeance. Some drugs and scribbled lists change hands to usher in a much less than convincing climax.

Despite decent ambition, The Informer is an eager mole betrayed by substantive holes.



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Movie Review: An Education (2009)

A coming of age romance, An Education enjoys a bright central performance and an excellent sense of time and place, but suffers from internal inconsistency and abrupt shifts in focus.

The setting is suburban London in 1961. Jenny Mellor (Carey Mulligan) is almost 17 years old and in her final school year, striving to secure a coveted admission to Oxford. She meets the much older and exceptionally charismatic David Goldman (Peter Sarsgaard), who introduces her to his glamorous friends Danny (Dominic Cooper) and Helen (Rosamund Pike). David sweet talks Jenny's parents (Alfred Molina and Cara Seymour) into allowing their daughter to join him on trips, first to Oxford then to Paris.

Jenny is dazzled by the good life of swanky restaurants, classical music concerts, luxury hotels and cool jazz clubs, although she is also exposed to David and Danny's questionable morals. Her increasingly serious romance with David starts to impact her school performance, much to the disappointment of teacher Miss Stubbs (Olivia Williams) and headmistress Miss Walters (Emma Thompson).

Based on Lynn Barber's memoirs and directed by Lone Scherfig from an eloquent Nick Hornby script, An Education sparkles with wit and charm. Capturing a society on the cusp of revolutionary change as the war generation of Jenny's parents hands the baton to their more adventurous offspring, the story of first love is mostly familiar but enlivened by the cultural buzz of a new decade's gateway.

But Hornby and Scherfig also adopt a passive and rather bewildering non-judgemental stance on what is also a troublesome story of grooming. Although Jenny at 16 has reached Britain's age of consent, David's actions are the definition of creepy manipulation of an impressionable young woman as he toys with her emotions and plays her parents for fools, lies and embellishments the fake currency he freely hands out. That David transparently exposes Jenny to some of his shady business practices and may actually fall in love with her is flimsy justification. 

At 24 but passing for 17, Carey Mulligan is a revelation, expressing with understated and patient elegance the frustrations, joys and responsibilities of emerging adulthood. But she does fall foul of an internal lack of consistency: Jenny is portrayed as smart, articulate and possessing phenomenal self-awareness and the ability to calmly debate with adults. In short, exactly the type of young woman who should have seen right through David's sleazy antics. Peter Sarsgaard does his part, shielding a predator behind a seducer's easy smile and jet-set lifestyle.

The final chapter grinds the gears with a jerky shift away from romance and the school-of-life towards the value of a traditional education, Miss Stubbs and Miss Waters suddenly gaining prominence. An Education is full of lessons learned, some more smoothly delivered than others.



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Movie Review: Beirut (2018)

An espionage and terrorism drama thriller, Beirut probes the morass of deadly Middle East power games playing out in Lebanon. Despite decent ambiance, the film flounders on cliches and disingenuity.

In 1972, American diplomat Mason Skiles (Jon Hamm) is living the good life in Beirut, married to Nadia (Leïla Bekhti) and hosting cocktail parties for the country's elites and visiting dignitaries. The Skiles are good friends with the CIA's Cal Riley (Mark Pellegrino) and his wife Alice (Kate Fleetwood). But Mason's life is upturned when Karim, a 13-year old Palestinian boy who is almost part of Mason's family, is revealed as the brother of a terrorist involved in the attack on Israeli athletes at the Munich Olympics.

Ten years later Mason is an alcoholic working as a labour negotiator in Boston. The CIA calls him back to Beirut, now destroyed by a civil war. Field officer Sandy (Rosamund Pike) and Ambassador Whalen (Larry Pine) reveal Cal has been abducted and the kidnappers have specifically requested Mason's involvement to negotiate a prisoner swap. Mason is soon embroiled in a dangerous game involving terrorists, the Palestinian Liberation Organization, and ghosts from his past, with the integrity of America's regional spy network at stake and Israel itching to invade Lebanon and drive out the PLO.

As a 1980s city lying in ruins but still home to numerous local, regional and international armed factions engaged in endless conflict, Beirut provides fertile terrain for drama. The film (actually shot in Morocco) does take advantage of the context, and director Brad Anderson, working from an occasionally cutting Tony Gilroy script, captures the chaos and danger of armed thugs roaming the streets and manning checkpoints, every neighbourhood controlled by a different militia and the threat of death residing around every corner. Streaking fighter jets and the dull thuds of explosions - distant and sometimes not so distant - provide a suitable soundtrack.

The plot basics are promising and grounded in actual events, including the impenetrable complexities of the civil war, the Palestinian cause, notorious acts of terror, Israel's ambitions to invade the country, American bumbling, and the foreign hostage-taking crisis. But the specifics disappoint, including the utterly exhausted alcoholism angle, an unfortunate camels-on-the-beach shot, and dreadfully misplaced accents. The negotiations to free Riley start strong with a nimble side trip to Israel, but with the clock running down Gilroy and Anderson default to muddled short-cuts and under-developed contrivances.

Jon Hamm allows Mason's perpetual five o'clock shadow and frumpled clothes carrying the stale stench of alcohol to dominate. Rosamund Pike never quite gets a handle on her character, while the rest of the cast stick to basic agitated spy / more agitated militiaman stereotypes. Beirut provides a rich canvass, but the picture fades.

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Movie Review: Hostiles (2017)

A soulful western, Hostiles combines the traditions of the arduous journey with a lyrical exploration of troubled relations between whites and natives.

In 1892 at Fort Berringer in New Mexico, Captain Joseph Blocker (Christian Bale) is selected to escort ailing Cheyenne Chief Yellow Hawk (Wes Studi) to his ancestral lands in Montana. Blocker is close to retirement, and has built a fearsome reputation as a merciless fighter and killer of natives. He resents having to be civil to Yellow Hawk, who has a similar record of brutal killing, including scalping several of Blocker's colleagues.

Blocker recruits a few trusted soldiers for the mission, including long-term friends Sergeant Metz (Rory Cochrane), who is also nearing retirement, and Corporal Woodson (Jonathan Majors), as well as West Point graduate Lieutenant Kidder (Jesse Plemons) and raw recruit Private Dejardin (Timothée Chalamet). Yellow Hawk is accompanied by his son Black Hawk (Adam Beach), daughter, daughter-in-law and grand-daughter.

Soon after embarking on the trip they encounter settler Rosalee Quaid (Rosamund Pike) in shock having just lost her entire family, including three children, to a vicious raid by a Cherokee war party. Rosalee joins Blocker's group, with many dangers to come on the long trail to Montana.

With chapters of brutal violence committed by all sides, some shown on screen and others described in hushed tones, Hostiles stares at the blood-drenched legacy of the west. After each bout of blood-letting director and writer Scott Cooper takes the time to include reverent burials, settlers, soldiers, natives, adults and children laid to rest in mounting numbers, often in unmarked graves, the hard soil of a nation-in-progress nourished by death. 

At 133 minutes, the film is long but Cooper sustains the intensity. Having established the barbarous context, Hostiles searches for what may emerge after the visceral need to kill subsides. Men like Blocker, Metz and Yellow Hawk are retiring or dying and understand they are too damaged to evolve. The next generation, personified by Lieutenant Kidder and Black Hawk and his family, may be a lot less blood thirsty, with fewer scores to settle and more capacity to achieve reconciliation, but only if they survive to forge a better future.

And Cooper ensures the moral dilemmas leave no room for black and white resolutions, only gray choices. Some horrific killings are justified as part of the job, other rampages are denounced as murder and punished by hanging. Violence in the name of protecting land is either noble or ignominious, depending on who is making the claim, and when. On such vagaries men live, die and judge themselves and others.

Although some chapters stumble and hints of repetitiveness set in, the film weaves an always unsettling sombre mood. Max Richter's music score adds poignant tones, and often stunning Masanobu Takayanagi cinematography captures majestic landscapes of untamed and unforgiving terrain.

Christian Bale delivers a performance of sometimes frightening intensity and stoic masculinity, conveying with his eyes the horrors of a life spent killing etched firmly on his psyche. But Bale also captures the irresistible forces of change in his humane approach to helping Mrs. Quaid and a gradual willingness to understand Yellow Hawk's world. The rest of the cast is suitably detached, and includes Ben Foster as an army soldier turned prisoner and Scott Wilson as an uncompromising landowner.

Dark, humourless and thought-provoking, Hostiles confronts all enemies, especially those lurking within.



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Movie Review: Jack Reacher (2012)

A clever action thriller, Jack Reacher unleashes an irresistible crime investigator onto a convoluted conspiracy.

In Pittsburgh, five innocent civilians are killed in a seemingly random sniper attack. Physical evidence leads Detective Emerson (David Oyelowo) to ex-army sniper and Iraq war veteran Barr (Joseph Sikora), who is summarily arrested. A stunned Barr requests help from Jack Reacher (Tom Cruise), a crime investigator who served with him in the army and now lives a nomadic off-the-grid existence.

Jack teams up with Barr's lawyer Helen (Rosamund Pike), who is also the daughter of District Attorney Rodin (Richard Jenkins). Jack is aware of Barr's unhinged behaviour in the army, but his investigation into the Pittsburgh killings suggests Barr was the fall guy for a larger conspiracy. Both Jack and Helen are soon targets of the ruthless criminal enterprise behind a sinister plot.

An adaptation of the book One Shot by Lee Child, Jack Reacher is a slick and relatively grounded crime thriller. Director Christopher McQuarrie and star Tom Cruise combine to deliver quick paced and special effects-free action with a dash of biting humour. Rational editing, glistening night-time cinematography, an involving plot, and a cheeky attitude elevate the entertainment value.

Of course with Reacher quickly established as the epitome of cool heroism, some suspension of disbelief is required to ride out his antics. Reacher can outfight any number of goons, even when he literally finds himself with only a knife in the middle of a gunfight. He out-thinks friends and enemies alike, connecting barely visible conspiracy dots with remarkable prescience. And on close inspection, the central evil plot carries the whiff of bad guys choosing the most complicated route towards achieving their objective.

But the highlights are plenty. McQuarrie stages a one-against-many street fight with panache, and follows it up with a hilarious confined quarters brawl. The car chase scene is an epic two-chases-in-one combo delivered with exceptional control. And the final showdown is suitably orchestrated at an isolated quarry, with caustic humour sustained to the bitter end.

In addition to his radiant charisma, Cruise adds to the sense of realism by performing all his own stunts, and struts through the film with brilliant arrogance. Pike struggles to match him in a marginally frantic performance. Robert Duvall rolls back the years in a crusty role as the operator of a shooting range reluctantly drawn into the mayhem, while Jenkins and Oyelowo contribute robust support. Celebrated director Werner Herzog adds cold menace in a small acting role.

Discarding gadgets and over-the-top imagery in favour of polished grit, Jack Reacher is a welcome embrace of brainy basics.



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Movie Review: What We Did On Our Holiday (2014)

A family comedy and drama, What We Did On Our Holiday packs in the laughs while exploring themes of divorce, life, death and tolerance.

In London, Abi and Doug McLeod (Rosamund Pike and David Tennant) are a separated couple heading towards an ugly divorce. They have three young kids: Lottie is the eldest, tired of her parents' continuous bickering and lying. Middle child Mickey is obsessed with Viking culture. Youngest daughter Jess talks to rocks, steals keys and is an expert at holding her breath until she gets what she wants.

Abi and Doug put on a fake happy front as they pack up the kids and drive to rural Scotland to celebrate the 75th birthday of Doug's ailing dad Gordie (Billy Connolly), who is suffering from terminal cancer. Once there they connect with Doug's rich brother Gavin (Ben Miller), his frazzled wife Margaret (Amelia Bullmore) and their gangly son Kenneth. With Doug and Gavin constantly clashing, Gordie escapes the mounting craziness by taking his grandkids to the beach ahead of the big party being planned for his birthday.

In addition to the expected bonding between a perceptive grandfather and his grandkids, a lot happens on that beach and afterwards, but nothing that can be revealed without spoiling the film's sly sense of fun. Featuring a wry, dark and often biting sense of humour, What We Did On Our Holiday starts with a perfectly imperfect family and piles on lessons in life delivered in macabre packaging.

Written and directed by the duo of Andy Hamilton and Guy Jenkin, the script takes pleasure in rubbing death against humour, the certainty of the end used to bring into focus life's precious fragility and the joy of individual peculiarities. Set against beautiful Scottish waterfront landscapes, bitter divorce, hidden depression, brotherly conflict, and the wisdom accumulated over the years are just some the serious topics woven into the film's fabric.

While the adult characters are funny, Hamilton and Jenkin excel at creating three kids with pointy individual personalities and an absolute immunity to the rules and logic of the adult world. Lottie (Emilia Jones) is knocking on the door of puberty and now uses a notebook to keep track of factoids and the lies told by adults. The observant Mickey (Bobby Smalldridge) is fully invested in Viking culture and particularly the god Odin, helping forge an unlikely connection with Grandpa.

And finally young Jess (Harriet Turnbull) has the world wrapped around her little finger, from the wisdom of rocks to the hold-my-breath trick and finally a fantastic ability to slow time down when confronted by an immediacy to recount crucial events.

With just a touch of British theatricality, the adult actors buy into the mounting level of panic as the events of the day spiral in unexpected directions. What We Did On Our Holiday works its way to an ending that is perhaps too tidy, but the journey towards patched-up family cohesion rides a boatload of fun.

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Movie Review: Made In Dagenham (2010)

A labour conflict drama, Made In Dagenham celebrates a small group of women who fought for gender pay equity. The film is well-intentioned but altogether too obvious.

It's 1968 in unfashionable Dagenham, England, where the Ford motor company employs tens of thousands of workers at a car manufacturing plant. Less than 200 of them are women, and they mostly operate sewing machines to stitch together seat fabrics. Encouraged by supervisor Albert (Bob Hoskins), the women organize labour action to demand better pay and recognition as skilled workers.

Feisty machinist Rita O'Grady (Sally Hawkins) supplants the more frazzled Connie (Geraldine James) as leader and spokesperson, and shocks Ford's management by demanding equal pay for equal work regardless of gender. The women go on a full strike, eventually shutting down the factory. As the community starts to struggle financially, Rita learns not everyone appreciates her hardline stance. Ford's Detroit leadership wades into the conflict, as does Britain's Employment Secretary Barbara Castle (Miranda Richardson).

Based on a true story but featuring mostly made-up characters, Made In Dagenham is as British as its title, drawing inspiration from suburban working class housing estates and the spirit of unlikely activists standing up for an idealistic principle against a profit-driven heartless corporation. The story carries inherent power, but writer William Ivory and director Nigel Cole cannot do much with it except mechanically tick the expected boxes.

As it goes through the motions, the film is comfortably and annoyingly familiar. Rita is the local hero emerging as an inspirational leader; her family life suffers as she is preoccupied with the cause; the community turns against her when the men are forced out of work; and she has to persist and fight for what is right, staring down not just the company but also the broader male-dominated union movement, unimpressed with women making their voices heard.

When it's not reverberating with strong echoes of Norma Rae, Made In Dagenham not infrequently threatens to descend to television movie-of-the-week fare, complete with a trite call to ignite the British spirit of World War Two. Other than the empathetic Albert, the men are uniformly portrayed as dolts, and all the Ford management types may as well be labeled "evil corporate type" on their foreheads.

Cole introduces the character of Lisa Hopkins (Rosamund Pike) as the wife of a Ford executive. She crosses paths with Rita at the school attended by both their kids, and what promises to be an interesting across-the-divide relationship between the women becomes a missed opportunity, settled in the most bland way possible.

Ivory's script leaves out notions of depth and background, most of the characters quick-fried into cliches. Sally Hawkins single-handedly drags the film towards respectability as she fights gamely against the material, but she barely bridges the credibility gap in Rita's evolution from sewing machinist to articulate, passionate and fearless leader.

Some highlight moments are provided by Miranda Richardson as a Labour Party cabinet minister caught between crass political realities, genuine economic imperatives and sympathy to the cause of her fellow women. Made In Dagenham starts on the shop floor but ends at the policy table, where a better story may have resided all along.

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Movie Review: Fracture (2007)

A legal crime drama, Fracture boasts an intriguing mystery and two worthy opponents squaring off on opposite sides of the law, although the plot is not as smart as it wants to be.

In Los Angeles, aeronautical safety expert Ted Crawford (Anthony Hopkins) is aware that his wife Jennifer (Embeth Davidtz) is having an affair with police detective Rob Nunally (Billy Burke). He waits for her to return home, shoots her in the head, and calmly surrenders to Nunally, confessing to being the shooter.

Hotshot deputy district attorney Willy Beachum (Ryan Gosling) is assigned the case by his boss Joe Lobruto (David Strathairn). Beachum is about to make a big money career move into the private sector to practice corporate law, and is already flirting with his boss-to-be Nikki Gardner (Rosamund Pike). The Crawford shooting appears to be a straightforward conviction, but Ted has meticulously planned his crime, and Willy will get sucked into a much more complicated case than he bargained for.

A cerebral chess game between a humiliated husband out for blood and a cocky prosecutor with one eye firmly on careerism, Fracture is a sharp and polished duel, benefitting enormously from the two lead actors. The showdown between veteran Anthony Hopkins and upstart Ryan Gosling is epic, and they are both at the top of their game. Hopkins is all about almost imperceptible eyebrow movements, knowing glances and shadows of smiles. Gosling is the confident steel of youth, riding his record of courtroom victories towards the dangerous land of arrogance.

But unfortunately the Daniel Pyne script cannot rise to the quality of the actors. Once Crawford's crime is committed and his intention to engage in a battle of wits revealed, Fracture stalls. Willy is quickly placed into a corner by Crawford's pre-planning, and director Gregory Hoblit is left stranded outside the courtroom and having to consume about 45 minutes of screen time without many plot developments. The lazy interval is half-heatedly invested in a side quest relationship between Willy and Nikki that sucks energy out of the main story without adding much relevant content.

The mechanisms available for Willy to eventually try and turn the tables are not difficult to guess, and the film's late reveals are not as clever as Pyne wishes them to be. However, there is some character depth along the way, particularly for Willy. Through his humbling encounter with a twisted but ingenious man, the deputy district attorney is provided the opportunity to reassess the legend in his own mind and redefine what matters most.

Although the acting aces the writing, Fracture is nevertheless an enjoyably discerning joust.

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Movie Review: The World's End (2013)

A wayward invaders-amongst-us comedy, The World's End offers some fun but is hampered by a painful lack of ideas and weak execution.

In England, Gary King (Simon Pegg) is solidly in middle age and has wasted his life away. He still reminisces about the college night in Newton Haven when his group of friends attempted an epic pub crawl but only made it through nine of the twelve pubs before quitting. Gary reconnects with Andy (Nick Frost), Steven (Paddy Considine), Oliver (Martin Freeman), and Peter (Eddie Marsan) to convince them to try again and this time make it to all twelve establishments, ending at the appropriately named The World's End.

Other than Gary all the men have settled down into various careers and none are thrilled to see him, especially teetotaller Andy, but they humour their old friend mostly out of pity. They start the crawl again and bump into Oliver's sister Sam (Rosamund Pike), who had a quickie in the bathroom with Gary on that fateful college night. But more worrisome is the gentrified new look of the pubs, and the weird behaviour of the locals, soon exposed as robots with dark blue blood.

Combining routine middle aged male angst and overly-familiar something-strange-is-going-on-around-here into a comedy bowl, director and co-writer (with Pegg) Edgar Wright tries to wring a good time out of a tired premise. The success is patchy at best, as The World's End desperately searches for meaningful content, overreaching wildly in its climax towards explaining the entire human condition through an argument with a set of lights.

Despite plenty of fun to be had in the combat scenes between the easily fragmentable, blue ink spewing robots and the guys, Wright and Pegg falter in building their film on a shallow character base. Gary is a prototypical fast-talking (and mostly lying) drunk loser stuck in the glories of high school, and is not provided with any redeeming character arc. His four friends are generally blank slates, and The World's End trawls within a level of interchangeable disinterest.

Rosamund Pike as Sam suffers most of all, and it's not certain anyone knew why she was in the movie. Pierce Brosnan offers a glorified cameo as the college professor who makes an appearance during the second attempt at pub crawl completionism.

As for themes Wright and Pegg may be loosely aiming for, choose from the bland freedom-is-all-that-matters to friendship-is-forever hokum, with a pit stop at it's-better-to-be-a-down-and-out-bum-than-a-generic-robot revelation. It's all drowned in repetitive drinking and fighting scenes until the utterly unconvincing finale. The guys are trying to make it to the final pub, but neither the journey nor the destination are worthwhile.

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Movie Review: A Private War (2018)

A biographical drama, A Private War covers chapters from the career of war correspondent Marie Colvin.

The film opens in 2012 in the devastated Syrian city of Homs, reduced to rubble as part of the raging civil war. In flashback, Colvin's prior assignments for the British Sunday Times newspaper are recalled. In 2001, she covers the conflict in Sri Lanka and loses her left eye during a battle between the army and Tamil rebels. In 2003 she is in Iraq, pursuing the location of a mass grave of civilians to uncover one of Saddam Hussein's atrocities against his own people. She witnesses the horrific outcomes of an improvised explosive device.

In 2011 she is in the midst of the Arab Spring uprising, and enters a war-torn Libya to interview besieged and delusional leader Muammar Gaddafi. Despite accolades and recognition throughout the  journalism world, the hard-drinking and chain-smoking Marie's constant exposure to war and its impact on civilians induces post-traumatic stress disorder, and she spends time in rehabilitation. But she is inexorably drawn to conflict zones, and enters Homs at the height of the Syrian conflict.

Written by Arash Amel and based on the Marie Brenner magazine article, A Private War combines the biography of a troubled and courageous journalist with a horrors-of-war exposition. The film is episodic by nature, and hampered by a singular focus on Marie. Her in-field colleagues Paul Conroy (Jamie Dornan) and Norm Coburn (Corey Johnson) barely register as individuals, and in her private life lover Tony Shaw (Stanley Tucci) is presented as nothing other than a convenience.

With Rosamund Pike in fine form, some of these shortcomings are overcome by director Matthew Heineman as he delves into the soul of a woman pulled to the site of the world's worst inhumane corners to record the often covered-up indiscriminate violence against defenceless civilians. She visits hellholes so that others don't have to, and to try and nudge the soul of an often uncaring world into action. That the brutality cycle repeats only in different settings undoubtedly contributes to Marie's emotional disintegration.

The film's final chapter is a harrowing recreation of Homs reduced to rubble, with reporters and civilians trapped and barely surviving as death rains from above. Marie transmits to the outside world to once again try and poke public consciousness towards witnessing the uncomfortable. Large scale atrocities are nourished by indifference, and Marie Colvin dedicated her life to turn apathy into empathy.

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Movie Review: Pride And Prejudice (2005)

A romantic drama, Pride And Prejudice explores classism, the social role of women, and the often thin line between love and hate.

In the late 18th century, the Bennets are a lower-middle class family in rural England, fretting about marrying-off their five daughters. Mr. and Mrs. Bennet (Donald Sutherland and Brenda Blethyn) try to maintain order in the household, where their daughter Jane (Rosamund Pike) is the most beautiful among the girls, while Lizzie (Keira Knightley) is spirited and independent minded.

The village goes abuzz when news filters in that wealthy and jovial bachelor Mr. Bingley (Simon Woods) has moved into a nearby estate, along with his equally eligible good friend Mr. Darcy (Matthew Macfadyen). In a series of balls and social interactions Bingley and Jane appear to be falling in love, while Lizzie and the arrogant Darcy immediately clash and repulse each other. Class divisions and plenty of interference from others will get in the way of happiness for the Bennet girls.

Joe Wright's feature film directorial debut is also, surprisingly, the first big screen adaptation of Jane Austen's classic novel since 1940. The 2005 version features lush production values, a pragmatic, muddy and cluttered aesthetic celebrating the Bennet's working class status (although no character in the story ever seems to worry about work) and admirable use of outside locations and filtered sunshine. Regardless, this remains a remake of a well-worn story, and the fresh ingredients carry limited effectiveness.

Pride And Prejudice is a reminder of how recently women were primarily treated as burdensome creatures to be married off to the first available man and at the earliest opportunity. Within the quiet wisdom of Mr. Bennett and Lizzie's fiery independence the film hints at changes to come, but overall this is world where men are a coveted prize and a woman's status is defined by the male that she can attract.

Other than the sparring between Lizzie and Darcy, falling in love consists of a couple of dances together, here beautifully constructed by Wright using remarkably fluid camerawork. Meaningful conversations between men and women do not exist, and this may be a good thing. In the world of Pride And Prejudice, the men are various combinations of shifty, manipulative, ugly, opportunistic and dishonorable, or as in the case of Bingley, happily vacuous. The wealthy but charmless Mr. Collins (Tom Hollander) and the dashing but vaguely disconcerting Wickham (Rupert Friend) contribute to the shallow pool.

The performances are bright and stay on the right side of the cinematic divide. Wright tones down Austen's over-elaborate prose, giving the characters welcome grounding and allowing his actors room to manoeuver. Keira Knightley benefits from Lizzie's modern sensibilities to shine as a woman who shall speak her mind and never compromise her values.

The other characters are more opaque and less singular, with Rosamund Pike and Matthew Macfadyen erring on the side of too sedate. Judi Dench is over-the-top (in terms of makeup, hair, and performance) in a couple of scenes as Lady Catherine de Bourgh, helping to keep the Bennet girls in their place.

Pride And Prejudice is lovely to look at but stuck in time and place, with little to excite modern sensibilities.

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Movie Review: A United Kingdom (2016)

A biographical romance and historical drama based on a true story, A United Kingdom couples a story of deep love with colonial geopolitical intrigue.

It's 1947, and Seretse Khama (David Oyelowo) is studying law in London, as part of his preparation to take over as King of Bechuanaland, the tiny landlocked British protectorate bordering South Africa. Bechuanaland is being ruled by Seretse's uncle Tshekedi (Vusi Kunene) as Regent until Seretse comes of age. At a dance event Seretse meets Ruth Williams (Rosamund Pike), a humble office assistant. After a whirlwind courtship they fall deeply in love and decide to get married.

He is black, she is white, and this represents a big problem for the South African government, which is embarking on the abhorrent policy of apartheid. Britain needs natural resources from South Africa, and is therefore pressured to scupper the marriage. Alistair Canning (Jack Davenport), the British government representative in Southern Africa, delivers the message to Seretse and Ruth that they are not to wed. But the young lovers are as stubborn as they are in love, and indeed do head off to Bechuanaland as a married couple, setting off a diplomatic crisis that would last for years.

Directed by Amma Asante and written by Guy Hibbert, A United Kingdom is an inspirational story of nation building. While the film is almost too reverential towards the central couple, who are portrayed as essentially without any faults, Asante succeeds in constructing a remarkably gripping tale of love and idealism holding firm against dirty games of global economic convenience.

The film clocks in at 10 minutes under two hours, and Asante packs an exceptional amount of content into the efficient running time. With uniformly brisk pacing, A United Kingdom gallops through the romance, introduces the ominous diplomatic forces lining up against the mixed marriage, follows the couple through their difficult early days in Africa, and delves into the power struggle between Seretse and his uncle. And that's just the first half.

Still to come is a dramatic escalation of British muscle flexing, a heartbreaking separation, a broken  promise that exposes that futility of ever trusting politicians, and invigorating machinations involving natural resource exploration and misrepresentations of government inquiry findings. The film never stands still, and if anything can be accused of all too rarely pausing for reflection. A clever use of contrasting colours maintains the energy level: the African scenes burst with yellows and oranges; the London scenes are more staid and grey.

David Oyelowo owns the film with a domineering performance, whether quietly expressing his resolve or emotionally rallying his countrymen. Rosamund Pike gets relatively fewer scenes to shine, holding steady as the stoically resilient woman and supportive wife.

A United Kingdom deserves plenty of credit for allowing the romance to underpin the story rather than dominate the narrative, and for not shying away from often underrepresented issues of disreputable international diplomacy as practiced by fading colonial powers. A good love is hard to find, but better still is devotion to the land and an unwavering commitment to justice.

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The Movies Of Rosamund Pike

All movies starring Rosamund Pike and reviewed on the Ace Black Movie Blog are linked below:

Die Another Day (2002)

Pride And Prejudice (2005)

Doom (2005)

Fracture (2007)

An Education (2009)

Barney's Version (2010)

Made In Dagenham (2010)

Jack Reacher (2012)

Devil You Know (2013)

The World's End (2013)

Gone Girl (2014)

What We Did On Our Holiday (2014)

A United Kingdom (2016)

Hostiles (2017)

Beirut (2018)

7 Days In Entebbe (2018)

A Private War (2018)

The Informer (2019)

I Care A Lot (2020)

Saltburn (2023)

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The Movie Star Index is here.