The Ace Black Movie Blog

Showing posts with label William Fichtner. Show all posts

Saturday, 13 April 2024

Movie Review: Hypnotic (2023)

Genre: Fantasy Mystery Thriller

Director: Robert Rodriguez

Starring: Ben Affleck, Alice Braga, William Fichtner

Running Time: 94 minutes

Synopsis: Austin Police Detective Danny Rourke (Ben Affleck) is still traumatized by the unsolved kidnapping of his young daughter. Danny and his partner Nicks (J.D. Pardo) respond to a tip about an impending bank robbery and experience the immense mind control powers of the evil Dellrayne (William Fichtner). Danny seeks the help of fortune teller Diana Cruz (Alice Braga), and starts to believe Dellrayne's crime spree is related to his daughter's disappearance.

What Works Well: Director and co-writer Robert Rodriguez creates a mélange of ideas borrowed from movies like The Matrix, Paycheck, Inception, and Firestarter. The outlandish episodes are initially layered with the emotions of a distraught father and quizzical enough to maintain some interest. The start of the third act briefly threatens a step-up in storytelling quality.

What Does Not Work As Well: The rules of engagement in a world of hypnotists capable of instant mental domination are too fragmented and inconsistent to ever make sense, exposing the first hour to an embarrassing volume of incredulousness. The flicker of hope that emerges with a premise reset is quickly extinguished with an avalanche of over-the-top antics, late character non-introductions, and the convenient piling-on of additional on-the-fly parameters.

Conclusion: Beware the foundation-free constructs.

All Ace Black Movie Blog reviews are here.

Tuesday, 23 March 2021

Movie Review: Elysium (2013)

A science fiction allegory of the global immigration crisis, Elysium offers an initially compelling vision but quickly unravels.

In the year 2154, Earth is in a decrepit and diseased state. The wealthy have fled to the Elysium space station where they enjoy a life of luxury with advanced health services. In Los Angeles, Max (Matt Damon) is an ex-convict trying to go straight and working at the Armadyne factory constructing security robots. On Elysium, power-hungry Defence Secretary Jessica Delacourt (Jodie Foster) colludes with Armadyne CEO John Carlyle (William Fichtner) to reprogram the space station's software and install her as President.

A workplace accident results in Max needing immediate advanced medical care available only on Elysium. He partners with human smuggler Spider (Wagner Moura) in a plot to kidnap Carlyle and use his knowledge as leverage to gain access to the space station. But Jessica activates Earth-based undercover agent Kruger (Sharlto Copley) to disrupt the plan. Max is soon on the run and in possession of information vital for the future of humanity.

Writer and director Neill Blomkamp does not try to camouflage his metaphorical references. Elysium is a straightforward extrapolation of current-day population movement tensions, with the disadvantaged willing to undergo hazardous journeys for the promise of better opportunities, and human smugglers happy to prey on the weak. The wealthy are mostly white and living in flawlessly idyllic homes, while the scrappy earthlings are predominantly brown and occupying shantytowns. Fashions and haircuts will apparently barely evolve in 150 years.

But despite good intentions, a willing Matt Damon and some slick visuals, Elysium (in Greek mythology, a paradise-like home of the blessed after death) is quickly perforated by too many self-defeating weaknesses. Jessica's coup d'état plot is hastily conceived and barely explained, Jodie Foster's robotic performance registering a career low. The main MacGuffin is world-altering software completed by one man in a matter of minutes then subjected to the complication of brain implantation instead of simple transmittal or uploading.

Blomkamp's short-cuts and internal inconsistencies are frequently exposed. Human smuggler Spider is somehow able to decipher massive amounts of arcane code without even looking at the screens displaying gibberish. Some illegal spaceships are allowed to land at Elysium while others are unceremoniously blown out of the sky. And somewhere along the line, a political power grab becomes a potential pathway to citizenship and medicare for one and all.

In a plastic attempt at a backstory, Max is provided with a friend-from-childhood Frey (Alice Braga) and her sick child, who both mostly exist to get in the way. With the more interesting and powerful villains exiting early, Max is left to tangle with Kruger and his henchmen to save humanity. He need not have bothered: this paradise is lost.

All Ace Black Movie Blog reviews are here.

Monday, 8 August 2016

Movie Review: Contact (1997)

A science drama, Contact is an intelligent story about the passion to search for a connection with alien beings, and the implications once the unthinkable becomes true.

As a young girl, Ellie Arroway (Jena Malone) was encouraged to pursue astronomy by her father Ted (David Morse). The grown up Ellie (Jodie Foster) graduated from MIT and developed a passion for seeking signals transmitted by aliens. While on assignment at an observatory in Puerto Rico, Ellie establishes a rapport with fellow scientist Kent Clark (William Fichtner), and has a brief but passionate affair with Christian philosopher Palmer Joss (Matthew McConaughey). The Puerto Rico assignment is eventually shut down by National Science Foundation Director David Drumlin (Tom Skerritt), who does not believe that searching for alien signals is worthwhile research.

Ellie finds private funding through the Hadden Corporation, led by the extremely rich but dying tycoon S.R. Hadden (John Hurt), and establishes her team at the Very Large Array (VLA) of massive listening satellite dishes in New Mexico. After months of effort Ellie stumbles onto a signal transmitted from the Vega star system. Her discovery unleashes a global frenzy, with the White House getting involved in the form of Chief of Staff Rachel Constantine (Angela Bassett) and National Security Advisor Michael Kitz (James Woods). Then Ellie's team uncovers more: the alien signal contains a coded message and reams of advanced data including the blueprints for an advanced, massive machine.

Directed by Robert Zemeckis and based on the novel by celebrated astronomer Carl Sagan, Contact is a spiritual successor to 2001: A Space Odyssey and Close Encounters Of The Third Kind. Although neither as fantastical as Kubrick's epic nor as fuzzy as Spielberg's opus, Contact brings its own attitude to the search for intelligent life: a science-first stance, a willingness to take a pragmatic look at how politics will interfere with any major discovery, and a deliberate eagerness to delve into the debate about the role of religion when the time comes for human interaction with another species.

The film excels at maintaining a clear-headed, science-based perspective through the eyes of Ellie, including the frustrating chase for funds, clashes with superiors, disappointing initiatives that lead to nothing, and long hours, days and years of research sustained only by hope and belief that a breakthrough must be just around the next frequency.

And when contact is made and Ellie shakes the world with her discovery, Zemeckis takes his time to capture the frenzied reaction. From President Clinton (masterfully weaved into the film) and his army of White House suits to religious zealots, and passing through the journalists and talking heads on the cable news networks and Chevrolet Vega enthusiasts, the world will react to alien communications in unpredictable ways, and Contact imagines the outpouring of emotion and insanity with plenty of colour.

Some parts of the film don't work as well. There is a serious sabotage incident that appears far-fetched and ultimately neither adds to nor deletes from the story. As the machine is being built at enormous cost, Zemeckis dials back the curiosity factor and does not even attempt to explain how it may be expected to work. And the personal scenes between Ellie and Palmer too conveniently and quickly devolve into a complicated relationship that mirrors the tension between her science and his religious philosophy.

Jodie Foster is at the core of the drama, and allows Ellie to not only be a bright and fiercely determined scientist, but also a human being with faults. She has to check her anger and attitude at meetings, and is too honest when it matters least. As Sagan intended, Ellie carries with her the struggle of women scientists to stand alongside the men, and more than once Ellie has to swallow her pride and plan a recovery after men brutishly shove their interests ahead of her rights. The supporting cast is adequate, but none of the men around Ellie achieve much depth.

The film ends with a journey sequence driven by spectacular special effects, and a conclusion built on sober reflection. The search for evidence finds belief and the intrinsically faithful find evidence. The quest to find answers will continue, built on advancements measured simultaneously in light years and milliseconds.

All Ace Black Blog Movie Reviews are here.

Sunday, 8 May 2016

Movie Review: Black Hawk Down (2001)

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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