Movie Review: The Front Runner (2018)

A political drama, The Front Runner tracks the rapid fall of a star candidate who seemed to have it all.

In 1984, charismatic Colorado Senator Gary Hart (Hugh Jackman) loses the race to secure the Democratic nomination for President, but increases his name recognition. In the lead-up to the 1988 election, Hart is the acknowledged front runner not only to secure the Democratic nomination, but also to win the Presidency. Bill Dixon (J.K. Simmons) leads the energized campaign team, and Hart focuses his messaging on big inspiring policy ideas.

But his marriage to Lee (Vera Farmiga) has been wobbly, and in Miami, Hart meets Donna Rice (Sara Paxton) and they start an affair. He bristles at any press questions about his personal life, and in an interview with A.J. Parker (Mamoudou Athie) of the Washington Post, challenges the media to follow him around. Acting on a tip, Steve Zissis of the Miami Herald surveills Hart's Washington DC townhouse and spots the candidate liaising with Rice. The story explodes, but Hart remains oblivious to the public's unforgiving mood. Lee is understandably furious while Dixon scrambles to salvage the campaign.

Based on a true story, The Front Runner is an inside look at a political campaign initially riding unstoppable momentum, then crashing to a halt when the wheels fall off. Good looking, young and idealistic, Gary Hart galvanized the public and appeared to have a straight shot at the White House. But he failed to grasp the shifting public mood expecting candidates to adhere to strict moral behaviour, and stumbled badly by first entering into an extramarital affair and then fumbling the management of the story.

Director Jason Reitman also co-wrote the script, and derives energy by plugging into the organized chaos of a national campaign driven by young, dedicated, snappy and witty staffers crisscrossing the country, living on fast food in cheap motels. But while sharp and irreverent humour permeates through the film, Reitman does occasionally overplay the glib overlapping sidebar conversations.

Evolving public tolerance levels and critical character flaws emerge as the twin themes combining to knock Hart out of his winning trajectory. While former Presidents enjoyed extramarital liaisons with no press harassment, by 1988 politics and entertainment were converging under the gaze of insatiable television coverage and the rise of gotcha! gutter journalism. Hugh Jackman captures Hart's dour idealism and dogged belief that only his intellect and policy ideas should matter, bristling at suggestions that nebulous definitions of family values could have any bearing on political ambitions. 

With J.K. Simons nailing the unflappable, seen-it-all-before Dixon, Molly Ephraim as Irene Kelly emerges as the most prominent campaign team member, and plays a crucial role in a small but welcome subplot tracking the overlooked fallout on Donna Rice. Vera Farmiga shines in a couple of scenes as the long-suffering and wronged-yet-again wife. The rich cast also includes Alfred Molina as The Washington Post's Ben Bradlee and Kaitlyn Dever as Hart's daughter Andrea.

Crackling with the electricity of doomed expectations, The Front Runner enjoys scandalous smarts.



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Movie Review: The Boy In The Striped Pyjamas (2008)

A view of the holocaust from the perspective of the young German son of a concentration camp commander, The Boy In The Striped Pyjamas is a drama of tragic awakening.

In Berlin during World War Two, Ralf (David Thewlis) is a senior army commander, and receives a promotion to oversee a concentration camp in a secluded rural area. He relocates his family, consisting of wife Elsa (Vera Farmiga), 12 year old daughter Gretel (Amber Beattie) and 8 year old son Bruno (Asa Butterfield), to a large mansion near the camp. The move is tough on Bruno, who has to give up all his friends.

After encountering a Jewish former doctor now forced into slave labour, Bruno still has limited understanding of what is going on and believes the camp to be a farm. He eventually ventures out to explore and reaches the camp's outer perimeter, where across the security fence he befriends a prisoner his age named Shmuel (Jack Scanlon). Meanwhile the atrocities at the camp drive a wedge between Elsa and Ralf, while Gretel is indoctrinated in Nazi propaganda and buys into the hateful ideology.

The Boy In The Striped Pyjamas explores the lack of awareness and divisions among Germans relative to the holocaust. Director Mark Herman adapted the 2006 book by John Boyne, and follows young Bruno, a naturally curious and playful 8 year old, as he is yanked from his familiar Berlin surroundings and into the docile countryside. There he fights boredom and strings clues together about the "farm" next door, but still has difficulty understanding the magnitude of the horror being perpetuated.

The film runs an efficient 94 minutes, and while little time is created for meaningful character arcs, Herman also avoids dawdling and melodrama. This is a clear-headed, schmaltz free stance, presenting facts within and outside the family as discovered by a child. The flickers of protest start with Bruno's grandma, who disapproves of Nazi ideology and is not afraid to speak her mind. Later an officer reporting to dad Ralf reveals his family secret, and finally mom Elsa reaches the breaking point where Nationalism yields to abhorrence.

Bruno's sister Gretel is young enough to be brainwashed and represents the ease with which a virulent ideology can spread. Books full of hate taught by a scrupulous instructor soon transform her into a loyal young advocate for the regime. Bruno is not immune: Herman offers a stark reminder of the power of propaganda films on immature minds.

Meanwhile Bruno is also exposed to helpful farmers who used to be doctors, chimney stacks belching black smoke at regular intervals, and a young boy like himself but always wearing pyjamas and confined to the other side of the fence. The world is what it is, and Bruno tries to make sense of it the only way a child knows, by exploring, making new play friends, and displaying natural human kindness not yet stifled by hatred.

In keeping with the film's tone, Herman works his way to a grounded resolution. In one of the darkest chapters of human history, one child's story is but a fragile ray of light.

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Movie Review: The Commuter (2018)

An action thriller, The Commuter offers an initially intriguing premise but quickly falls through the large gaps of an outlandish plot.

In New York, Michael MacCauley is a 60 year old insurance salesman and ex-cop, buckling under growing family financial pressures. He commutes daily on the train from his suburban home to downtown Manhattan. On the same day he is laid off, a shocked Michael meets his buddy Detective Alex Murphy (Patrick Wilson) for drinks, then on the train is approached by the mysterious Joanna (Vera Farmiga).

She seems to know a lot about Michael and offers him a compelling hypothetical proposition: identify a person known only as Prynne from amongst all the passengers on the train in exchange for $100,000, of which the initial $25,000 is hidden in the train's washroom. Joanna quickly departs the train after hinting the offer is not hypothetical after all. Michael finds the $25,000, and also finds himself trapped: he has to identify Prynne, otherwise his family will be killed.

Director Jaume Collet-Serra and star Liam Neeson re-team and essentially remake 2014's Non-Stop, shifting the action from plane to train, along with borrowing some ideas from 2005's Red Eye. In The Commuter, the reassembly of the over-familiar components maintains only limited interest, and as usual in this particular sub-genre, as the plot reveals more of itself, logic and pragmatism are left further and further behind.

Collet-Serra deserves credit for knowing how to create energy and some tension in tight spaces, and The Commuter always looks slick. The cameras move with remarkable fluidity in, around and through the cramped multi-car train quarters, the setting just as important as the characters and events. Which is just as well, because the events immediately strain all credibility, and the characters, including MacCauley, are wafer thin.

Neeson can now knock off these roles in his sleep, and this is what he does, essentially sleepwalking through another damaged reluctant hero role. Joanna, the purported antagonist who sets the whole plot in motion, is for most of the film an intermittent voice over the phone.

Short bursts of action arrive at regular intervals, mostly in the form of sharp verbal sparring or physical tussles. Towards the end The Commuter turns into a clumsy sort-of hostage drama, the bad guys finding new ways to make their objective as hard as possible. This is a thriller where the evildoers have the remarkable capacity to do whatever they want, whenever they want, except when it matters most. In the process, the original would-be crime is overcomplicated purely for the sake of justifying a third-rate movie script.

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Movie Review: The Manchurian Candidate (2004)

A remake of the 1962 classic, the 2004 version of The Manchurian Candidate updates the story and adds glossy treatment and star power, but loses some soul and grit in the process.

During the 1991 Gulf War to liberate Kuwait, a small US army reconnaissance unit under the command of Major Bennett Marco (Denzel Washington) engages the enemy in a fierce fire fight. Marco is knocked out, and Sergeant Raymond Shaw (Liev Schreiber) takes charge. Although two soldiers are consequently killed and the unit is lost in the desert for three days, after the ordeal Shaw is awarded the Medal Of Honor for his bravery and leadership in battle, based on the testimony of Marco and all the surviving men.

Years later, the US is involved on multiple fronts in the war against terrorism. Shaw is a respected Congressman but very much under the influence of his domineering mother Senator Eleanor Prentiss Shaw (Meryl Streep). He is also in the running to be named as the Vice Presidential candidate on his party's ticket for the upcoming election. Meanwhile, Marco is struggling with vivid dreams that suggest the story of the Kuwait firefight is more manufactured than real, and that all the unit members may have been subjected to mind control techniques. Risking his reputation and his life, Marco digs into the story and uncovers the involvement of Manchurian Global, a private equity conglomerate heavily invested in arms deals, funding politicians and dangerous science. Marco reaches out to Shaw, but uncovering truth from fiction and the real motives at play will not be easy.

Directed by Jonathan Demme and with an all-star cast, this remake is not as needless as most. The story is updated to the present day, with the Gulf War and the war on terrorism replacing the Korean War and the war on communism respectively. Wisely not competing with the grim aesthetic of the original, Demme applies a thorough shine to this version, with electoral machines in full swing, corporate chicanery operating behind the scenes and the media cycle reporting on every detail.

The Manchurian Candidate offers a pleasing mix of conspiracy, back-room politics, a personal quest for the truth, frazzled flashbacks, wicked science, police work and a rush against time to a satisfying climax. Demme keeps the pace moving, and the 130 minutes zoom by fairly effortlessly. The film works hard to establish a fledgling bond between the high-flying Raymond Shaw and his forgotten former commander Bennett Marco, and the investment pays off as the resolution unfolds.

But the script can't shake a couple of significant problems. In modern day politics organizations like Manchurian Global easily buy and sell high ranking politicians with good old fashioned graft. Resorting to an elaborate and dangerous plot to brainwash soldiers in the middle of the desert to serve a political purpose seems disingenuous in the extreme. Another gaping logic hole opens up when Raymond Shaw, Vice Presidential candidate, is activated to personally do the dirty work once the conspiracy is threatened, another highly implausible and self-defeating tactic from evil plotters with supposedly every angle covered.

The performances from a host of familiar faces are adequate. Denzel Washington comfortably occupies the space of the increasingly troubled veteran soldier on a quest to uncover an alternative truth when his version of reality stops being plausible. Schreiber maintains a suitable facade of tortured coldness, while Streep is, for once, relatively perfunctory. Kimberly Elise makes a good impression in the second half of the film as Eugenie Rose, Marco's potential love interest and possibly hiding her own secrets.

Jon Voight has a few scenes as Shaw's political rival, and Vera Farmiga gets even fewer minutes in an underdeveloped sub-story as Voight's daughter and Shaw's lost love interest. Jeffrey Wright, Anthony Mackie, Dean Stockwell and Charles Napier show up in brief roles.

The Manchurian Candidate 2004 edition is a reasonable effort, a classic story modernized but not fully reinvented.

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Movie Review: Henry's Crime (2010)

A quirky heist movie wrapped into an unlikely love story, Henry's Crime adopts a low key approach and serves up a fine mixture of drama, comedy and romance.

In Buffalo, Henry Torne (Keanu Reeves) is a highway toll booth attendant, very much at an emotional dead end. His soulless life is disconnected from any dreams or ambitions, and he is oblivious to his wife Debbie (Judy Greer) wanting to start a family. When old high school friends Eddie Vibes (Fisher Stevens) and Joe (Danny Hoch) come calling, Henry almost sleepwalks his way into being the getaway driver for a botched bank hold up. He is caught and sentenced to three years.

His cell mate is long-term prisoner Max (James Caan), a grizzled con man now much more comfortable behind bars than in the real world, and the two men become friends. Debbie leaves Henry, who serves his time and decides to do something with his life. When he revisits the scene of the attempted bank robbery, Henry is accidentally struck by a vehicle driven by Julie (Vera Farmiga), an actress rehearsing for Chekov's The Cherry Orchard in a theatre across the street. From an old newspaper article Henry discovers that a prohibition-era tunnel connects the theatre and the bank, leading straight into the vault. He decides to rob the bank in a plan that will involve Max, Julie, Joe, plenty of digging, amateur theatrics and some unwanted plot crashers.

An independent film directed by Malcolm Venville and co-produced by Reeves, Henry's Crime is an elegant story of transformation. The ending may be a bit contrived and the attempts at some comic farce come across as forced. But Venville taps into a rich vein of cool serenity, and lovingly places at the heart of his film three characters who are well worth knowing.

The script by Sacha Gervasi and David N. White zooms into the lives of Henry, Max and Julie, and finds three sympathetic people ready for a change. Henry's life was at a standstill before he went to prison, and having served the time and lost his wife, he finally decides that he may as well enjoy the thrill of committing the crime. Henry's slow paced thought process is perfectly suited to Reeves' deliberate method of almost non-acting.

Max injects the animation as the confidence man now short of confidence and happy to spend the rest of his life behind bars, despite being eligible for release. Henry offers Max a no-lose proposition: get out, commit a crime, get caught and go back to prison, where Max wants to be anyway, or evade capture and make it rich. James Caan rolls back the years and delivers a cleverly engaging performance, giving Max plenty of sarcastic wisdom from the school of hard knocks.

And Julie also wants out, in her case out of Buffalo towards Hollywood. Julie is cold and her acting talent is limited at best, but she at least talks the good talk about seeking a bigger dream. In Henry she finds a man who may light the flame in her heart, but as luggage goes, Henry, a convict planning a heist, is carrying plenty. Vera Farmiga delivers a lively performance befitting a stage actress labouring to please an imperious director (played with panache by Peter Stormare).

The three characters provide Henry's Crime with softly glowing core, and they play off each other with wacky humour. The film never takes itself too seriously, and thrives off an undercurrent of character-driven wit. Meanwhile life works hard at imitating art, The Cherry Orchard rehearsals providing an apt backdrop for unfolding modern day weirdness. The dreary Buffalo setting encourages thoughts of new beginnings anywhere else, while a bouncy soundtrack and music score by Blake Ley rounds out the movie's relaxed vibe. Henry's Crime may not be perfect, but it's an enjoyable frolic.

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Movie Review: Safe House (2012)

A fast-paced action thriller with substantial star power, Safe House does most things right but contributes little that is new to the Bourne-inspired ex-agent-on-the-run sub-genre.

In Cape Town, South Africa, inexperienced CIA agent Matt Weston (Ryan Reynolds) has little to do as the keeper for a seldom-used safe house, and keeps his real job a secret from French girlfriend Ana (Nora Arnezeder). But Cape Town is about to become a lot more exciting. Rogue ex-CIA agent Tobin Frost (Denzel Washington), a most wanted man, purchases a microchip with international state secrets from disgruntled MI6 agent Alec Wade (Liam Cunningham). Wade is immediately assassinated and Frost is targeted by the ruthless Vargas (Fares Fares) and his men. Frost is forced to take refuge at the US consulate.

At CIA headquarters in Langley, supervisors David Barlow (Brendan Gleeson) and Catherine Linklater (Vera Farmiga) and director Harlan Whitford (Sam Shepard) are immediately alerted to Frost's sudden appearance at a US facility. They decide to move him to Weston's safe house for interrogation. A squad headed by agent Kiefer (Robert Patrick) extracts Frost from the consulate and transfers him to the safe house, and Frost is subjected to waterboarding. But Vargas and his men invade the safe house, forcing Weston to flee with Frost, and initiating a prolonged chase as the untried Weston is suddenly plunged into a high-stakes game of brutal, take-no-prisoners international spy deception.

Directed by Daniel Espinosa, Safe House is a slick-enough thriller. The action is frequent, there are sufficient reflective scenes to grow the characters, and the presence of Washington and Reynolds with a strong supporting cast ensures a consistent level of quality. The South African setting, a relative backwater in the global spy game, introduces a fresh perspective and justifies some of the agency stumbling. But the McGuffin at the centre of the film, in the form of an abstract database of intelligence agency wrongdoings, is rather stale.

This is a post-Bourne secret agent film, and so Espinosa adopts the shaky-camera and micro-editing techniques as his defacto style to jazz up most of the action scenes. He also frequently mixes in tiny flash-backs and flash-forwards to inject a sense of energy into the quietest interludes. There are some undeniably exciting moments and even a few relatively original set-pieces, including an expertly filmed rooftop chase at a Langa shantytown.

All the flashy touches teeter on the edge of overstaying their welcome, particularly with a running length of close to two hours. In the final 40 minutes it becomes evident that every shoot-out will be followed by a brutal hand-to-hand combat showdown which will be quickly followed by another shoot-out, but Espinosa maintains just enough control to deliver a taut chase movie with more good moments than bad.

As is usually the case, the strongest scenes feature the actors actually acting rather than dodging bullets or throttling each other. Washington and Reynolds never descend into trite buddy territory, and the tension between the jaded ex-agent and the bright-eyed wannabe hero underpins the film. Farmiga, Gleeson, Shepard and Patrick have less to do, but do it well. Safe House may be riddled with a few too many bullets, but it is well worth a visit.

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The Movies Of Vera Farmiga

All movies starring Vera Farmiga and reviewed on the Ace Black Blog are linked below:

The Manchurian Candidate (2004)

The Departed (2006)

The Boy In The Striped Pyjamas (2008)

Up In The Air (2009)

Henry's Crime (2010)

Source Code (2011)

Safe House (2012)

The Judge (2014)

The Commuter (2018)

The Front Runner (2018)

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The Index of Movie Stars is here.

Movie Review: The Judge (2014)

A coming home father - son character drama, The Judge achieves impressive heights of emotion and boasts two excellent central performances from Robert Duvall and Robert Downey Jr.. The story ultimately packs itself into too neat a package, but is never less than mesmeric.

When his mother dies, celebrated Chicago defence lawyer Hank Palmer (Downey Jr.) travels home to the small town of Carlinville, Indiana to attend the funeral. Hank has a deeply strained relationship with his father Joseph (Duvall), the long-serving and well respected judge in the community. Joseph is getting on in years and Hank notices that his father is struggling to recall names and events. The evening of the funeral, Joseph's car hits and kills a local ex-convict, and he is arrested for the hit and run murder.

Despite the rift between them, Hank insists on defending his father, and gets reaquainted with his brothers Glen (Vincent D'Onofrio) and Dale (Jeremy Strong). Glen had a promising baseball career truncated by a car crash, while Dale is functional but has a mental impairment. Hank also reconnects with old flame Samantha (Vera Farmiga), who now owns the local restaurant and has a fiery daughter (Leighton Meester). With the prosecution team of Dwight Dickham (Billy Bob Thornton) uncovering evidence that appears to prove the judge's intent to kill, Hank has to delve into his painful personal history to try and rescue his father's reputation.

Directed by David Dobkin, The Judge is forceful drama about the present pausing to address unresolved issues from the past. With rich characters, strong emotions and the bubbling stream of family history unexpectedly converging into the headlines of today, the film is an intriguing examination of two men forced to re-examine their relationship. The film creates variety by alternating between the court case and Hank's re-engagement with family, Samantha and his past foibles, providing two narrative streams that nourish each other.

Despite the prevailing tension both in the personal dynamics and the court proceedings, the script by Nick Schenk and Bill Dubuque is also peppered by well placed doses of humour. The strategically deployed light touch flows naturally from Hank's big city life clashing with small town sensibilities, and the merging of the past and present sparking whimsy as well as strain.

The two Roberts deliver dedicated performances. Duvall captures the judge as a rightfully proud man not yet ready to accept the creeping damage of failing health. It's an intense, tightly coiled performance, and Duvall demands full attention whenever he is on the screen. Downey keeps up, conveying the bittersweetness of a big city success story confronting the many ghosts of his small town past.

The Judge does wrap up all its story elements into too neat a package. By the time the court case reaches its climax, the reasons for Hank's estrangement from his father have been anchored into every character and event in their common history, in a case where everything is explained, printed on glossy paper, bound in a shiny cover and tidily placed on the coffee table. It's all just a bit too satisfying and detached from the unresolved loose ends commonly cluttering real life. But despite the impeccably precise resolution, The Judge delivers a fulfilling verdict.

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Movie Review: The Departed (2006)

The film that finally delivered the Best Director Academy Award to Martin Scorsese, The Departed is a slick police drama centred on an epic battle to wrest control of Boston's underworld away from an entrenched mobster lord. A stellar cast helps to balance the film's more overwrought elements.

Frank Costello (Jack Nicholson) is the head of Boston's largest criminal syndicate, brutally engaged in grand scale extortion, trafficking and wanton violence. Police Captain Queenan (Martin Sheen) and his deputy Staff Sergeant Dignam (Mark Wahlberg) spot an opportunity to infiltrate Costello's empire by inserting new police graduate Billy Costigan (Leonardo DiCaprio) as an undercover mole. Billy is from the wrong side of town, and a manufactured criminal record as well as his chequered family history eventually gain him entry into Frank's inner circle.

Costello: I don't want to be a product of my environment. I want my environment to be a product of me.

But Frank has his own agent working inside the police department. Staff Sergeant Colin Sullivan (Matt Damon) is considered by his boss Captain Ellerbyone (Alec Baldwin) to be of the brightest officers on the force, but Sullivan is on the criminal payroll and ensures that Frank stays one step ahead of enforcement efforts to nab him. First Sullivan and then Costigan get romantically involved with psychologist Dr. Madolyn Madden (Vera Farmiga). With Costigan beginning to buckle under the tension of his double life, both Costello and Queenan come to the realization that there are moles within their organizations, leading to a ferocious settling of the scores.

FBI Agent Lazio: Do you have anyone in with Costello presently?
Dignam: Maybe. Maybe not. Maybe fuck yourself. My theory on Feds is, they're like mushrooms: feed them shit and keep them in the dark.

Written by William Monahan as an adaptation of the 2002 Hong Kong film Internal Affairs, The Departed is hard-hitting, loud and drenched in testosterone. At 151 minutes the film is probably a good half hour too long, and the second half bogs down in a seemingly endless find-the-mole pursuit driven by justified paranoia. But The Departed overcomes its weaker points thanks to a grim attitude of survival at all costs, with the characters of Costello, Costigan and Sullivan playing dangerous games of deception to further their careers in an uncaring world.

Costello: One of us had to die. With me, it tends to be the other guy.

Scorsese creates a world where men rule with incessant shouting, intimidation and cursing, and proceed to create spectacular messes. The police department is a cesspool of competing agendas and mistrust, and Frank Costello's criminal empire is barely held together by the iron will of one man who sees enemies everywhere. The agencies on both sides of the law appear equally dysfunctional and distasteful. Dr. Madden is the only woman of relevance in the cast, and she seems off-centre and out of place, getting in the way of the men's ruinous agendas.

The script is a treasure of caustic one liners. Before the guns are drawn (and eventually they are, in large numbers), the characters of The Departed fire ballistic words at each other. No calm sentence will do when it can be replaced by a fine-tuned verbal barrage, and Monahan excels at creating enduring quotable exchanges. In the hands of an exceptional cast, The Departed becomes an intellectual sparring match, a multi-pronged battle of wits where the acts are always violent, but not anymore so that the fierce thoughts that precede them.

(a police surveillance operation is not going well; there are blind spots, and officers are losing their sight lines and losing their cool).
Dignam: This is incredible. Who put the fucking cameras in this place?
Surveillance Guy: Who the fuck are you?
Dignam: I'm the guy who does his job. You must be the other guy.

The Departed basks in the glow of the current generation of superstar actors in the form of DiCaprio, Damon and Wahlberg rubbing shoulders with elder statesmen Nicholson, Sheen and Baldwin. DiCaprio and Damon deliver the requisite intensity as the men taking the highest risks to prove themselves and alter the outcome of the battle for street control. In terms of balance among the stars, the film probably has too much of Nicholson and too little of Wahlberg, Sheen and Baldwin.

The Departed reaches a climax of brutal bloodletting that delivers the requisite shock and gore, but also undermines a lot of the build up. When killing suddenly becomes too easy and everyone is a target, the careful game of cat-and-mouse that unfolded over several years is inevitably diminished.

There is no question that Scorsese has crafted better gems. Taxi Driver, Raging Bull and Goodfellas, among others, are greater artistic achievements and more deserving of Academy Award recognition. The Departed proved to be the opportunity to correct past oversights in recognizing one of Hollywood's greatest ever directors; fortunately, it is also a provocative story of conflicted men pushing their fate into dangerous territory, where Scorsese happens to be most comfortable.

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Movie Review: Source Code (2011)

A reasonably clever amalgamation of concepts from Avatar, Groundhog Day and Inception, Source Code deploys science fiction to counter a terrorism plot, and sneaks in an unlikely romance as a bonus. Jake Gyllenhaal and Michelle Monaghan are attractive leads, and Vera Farmiga infuses unexpected emotion into a talking head role.

Decorated army helicopter pilot Colter Stevens (Gyllenhaal) is on a most unusual mission: locked into a claustrophobic chamber, he is transported via a program called Source Code to repeatedly re-live the final eight minutes of the life of Sean Fentress, a commuter on a Chicago train that was blown up earlier that morning. Source Code was developed by scientist Dr. Rutledge (Jeffrey Wright), who has almost perfected the neat trick of transporting one brain into another across time and space. From within his chamber Stevens communicates with the outside world via monitor, and his handler in the Source Code control centre is Colleen Goodwin (Farmiga), who must keep Stevens sane and functional as he re-lives the final moments on the train prior to the explosion.

Embodying the brain of Sean Fentress, Stevens gets to re-live the same pre-bombing events on the train over and over, and he gets to know the other passengers including fellow-commuter Christina (Monaghan). But the real purpose of the mission is to identify the bomber within the eight available minutes for each of his trips. Another, deadlier radioactive bomb is about to be detonated in Chicago, and the only hope of stopping the carnage is for Stevens to figure who planted the train bomb and how he can be stopped.

The journey of Colter Stevens also turns inwards as he begins to discover the reality of his condition, including how he came to be selected for this mission and how he may be able to communicate with his estranged father while helping to stop a mad bomber intent on spreading mayhem.

Source Code gets better as it progresses and reveals the depth of its complexities. Gyllenhaal effectively portrays a helicopter pilot dealing with a situation way outside the normal scope of his experience, and having to willingly endure the jarring trauma of a fatal explosion on a recurring basis, not just kicking him out of the Source Code but also killing all the people that he was attempting to interact with.

Director Duncan Jones makes excellent use of the limited number of sets, the film practically taking place in just three locations: the chamber, the Source Code control centre and the train. The script by Ben Ripley quickly develops the story into much more than a techno whodunnit, with the internal voyage undertaken by Stevens to discover who and where he is taking on ever increasing prominence.

For all its clever ideas and good performances, Source Code is badly let down in its final twist, with a Hollywood happy ending appended clumsily, where a brilliantly poignant earlier denouement was there to be embraced. It's an unfortunately poor, but not unexpected, choice.

Source Code is a compact thriller, carrying a hard-drive filled with good ideas. It's not perfect, but it is pleasingly thought-provoking.

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Movie Review: Up In The Air (2009)

Up In The Air is a touching exploration of human relationships and the meaning of caring. Set against the backdrop of a deep recession and the job losses that tear apart the security blanket of families, director Jason Reitman captures both the agony of economic hardship among white collar workers, and the layered complexity of human interaction.

Ryan Bingham (George Clooney) is ruthlessly efficient at the most heartless of jobs: he flies around the country as a consultant hired to professionally terminate the employment of workers at companies in the midst of large-scale downsizing. And in a recession, business is good.

In addition to being brilliant at his job, Bingham loves the time that he spends at airports and on-board airplanes, and dreads being at his bland hotel-like apartment. He has organized his world to enjoy the life of the road warrior, and this includes absolute detachment from any meaningful personal human interaction. His main goal in life is to maximize the collection of frequent flier miles.

Natalie Keener (Anna Kendrick) is a young graduate who joins Bingham's firm, and is assigned to shadow him on termination trips to gain field experience before implementing a radical on-line remote termination system that would spell the end of Bingham's cherished non-stop travel lifestyle.

Bingham reluctantly but effectively mentors Keener while developing a seemingly casual relationship with Alex (Vera Farmiga), another road warrior and his female mirror image.

Up In The Air draws its strength from contrasting Bingham's apparent lack of human warmth with his insistence on face-to-face meetings with the people that he's about to fire, and his stunning ability to comfort terminated employees at their moment of worst vulnerability. Keener represents the young generation, hopelessly devoted to the technology that adds distance to essential human interaction yet much more vulnerable and open to the pitfalls of emotional investments. Alex is one last emotional risk that Bingham is willing to take, to either confirm or properly question his lifestyle choice.

The three characters are well rounded by screenwriter Reitman and Sheldon Turner, working from Walter Kirn's book. Clooney was born to play Bingham, perfectly mixing icy coldness with searing sensitivity. Kendrick is his perfect foil as the young and idealistic Natalie Keener, all wide eyes, misguided overconfidence and good intentions. Farmiga is perfect as the female version of Bingham, offering him a tantalizing yet dangerous departure from the emotionally blank personal life that he has so carefully cultivated.

Up In The Air is also populated with interesting, multi-dimensional secondary characters revolving around Bingham and dealing with their own relationship issues. Jason Bateman is his boss, Amy Morton is the older sister, Melanie Lynskey is Bingham's younger sister Julie, and Danny McBride is excellent as Julie's husband-to-be.

The film maintains a firm grip on characters and events as it confidently flies towards an appropriate resolution. Up In The Air tenderly captures a slice of life and wraps it with clever deference to the complexity of personal relationships.







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