In 1979, hundreds of student activists stormed the United States Embassy in Tehran, Iran, due to outrage over the fact that the United States was coddling their deposed, murderous dictator. They took hostage the embassy's staff, save for a handful of staff who managed, in the chaos, to sneak out the back door and take refuge at the Canadian Ambassador's house. Director Ben Affleck's Argo is the dramatization of the remarkable true story behind the effort to rescue these individuals from what was, at the time, the most hostile territory on earth, for American citizens.
Having found out about the six escapees from the embassy, the U.S. government works overtime trying to figure out how to get them out of Iran, with their schemes ranging from having the six pose as teachers to the harebrained idea of having them ride bicycles out of the country. When the government brings aboard Tony Mendez (Affleck, in a wonderfully understated performance) an exfiltration expert from the Central Intelligence Agency, on board, he is initially as stumped as everyone else in the room, but when a phone conversation with his ten-year-old son later that night prompts Mendez to switch onto a science fiction movie Mendez seizes upon a scheme which, as the cliche goes, is so crazy it might actually work: Mendez would go to Iran and have the six Americans pose as a Canadian film crew scouting locations for a science fiction film in the vein of Star Wars in Iran.
The ruse requires that an actual production be staged, and for this purpose Mendez recruits Oscar-winning makeup artist John Chambers (John Goodman) who has used his skill with prosthetics many times in the past to help Mendez in his operations, who in turn recruits over-the-hill Hollywood producer Lester Siegel (Alan Arkin), and together, the three of them acquire a forgotten script titled "Argo" and then create a great deal of hype for a production that doesn't actually exist. Mendez's scheme, described as "the best bad idea" among all of the stinkers concocted by the government to rescue the embassy staffers, gets the green light from the C.I.A. and he travels to Iran with six fake passports in the hope of making it work. In the meantime, the revolutionary government is closing in on the six escapees, with sweatshop kids piecing together shredded documents, determining the identities of who actually worked in the embassy.
Mendez meets up with the six refugees at the Canadian ambassador's house, and apart from the chaos just outside the walls of the house he must also grapple with their collective fear at what could happen to them if the escape plan goes south. The clock is ticking.
Atmosphere and period authenticity are everything in this handsomely-crafted thriller, and Affleck and crew crank both of them up to 11 as early as the opening billboard, which features the Warner Brothers logo used in the 1970s as opposed to the current one. It's not the first time such a technique has been used in a period film but it is extremely effective here, especially when followed with a judiciously-edited and narrated sequence of historical events that led to that fateful day in 1979 and an extremely grainy texture that strongly contrasts with the slick digital imagery of most contemporary films.
I purposely avoided reading any historical accounts on what has been dubbed as "the Canadian Caper" before watching the movie because, quite simply, I didn't want to know if all the embassy workers made it out all right, and to my mind it was a good call as it allowed me to live very much in the moment that Affleck, his cast and crew captured. What followed was some genuine, nail-biting tension.
For all of his skill in weaving dramatic tension, though, Affleck's real narrative coup in this film, was juxtaposing the tension in Iran with the glitz of tinseltown; as reel and real Hollywood veterans, Goodman and Arkin clearly enjoy sniping at the hypocrisy of the entertainment world and its hype machine, and they are an absolute delight to watch, particularly Arkin as his Lester Siegel outfoxes a representative of the Writers' Guild of America trying to hustle him for a better offer for the previously ignored "Argo" script. Siegel also has the distinction of coining what is likely to be the film's most quoted phrase: "Argo f**k yourself." The surprisingly rich streak of humor that permeates the film sets this film apart from standard, dead-serious spy fare.
Much as I'd love to hail this film as perfect, though, there are a couple of somewhat "Hollywood" touches (ironically enough) throughout and towards the climax of the movie which felt a little bit jarring. The climactic parts I will not discuss so as not to spoil anything, but throughout the film I couldn't help but notice the shifty-eyed Iranian sitting behind desks skimming through reassembled photographs of the embassy staff, and I was particularly struck by the wild-eyed revolutionary army soldier constantly yelling at the characters during a pivotal scene. These weren't exactly mustache-twirling villains but something about their depiction kind of yelled Hollywood cliche, in contrast to the portrayal of the militants at other points in the film which did a far better job of conveying the Iranian's palpable and arguably justifiable rage against the U.S. In a movie which, for the most part, quite effectively captured the real-life plight of a handful of scared Americans, these caricatures, who feature prominently throughout the film, seemed a tad out of place and do not do its overall credibility too many favors.
All told, though, I think Affleck and crew can definitely hold their heads up high, having woven an utterly compelling if sometimes flawed storytelling tapestry. This is flaws notwithstanding, easily one of the best spy-thrillers I've seen in a while.
4.5/5
Tuesday, October 23, 2012
Tuesday, October 9, 2012
Not so Taken: A Review of Taken 2
In 2009, the film Taken proved to be a surprise hit at the box-office, drawing in audiences with its simple premise of a former Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) operative Bryan Mills, played by Liam Neeson, ripping up Paris in search of his daughter Kim (Maggie Grace), who has been kidnapped by a human trafficking ring run by a bunch of Albanians.
Using Hollywood logic, therefore, this was a film that was ripe for a sequel, no matter how thin the plot of the first film was.
The sequel, simply titled Taken 2, picks up where its predecessor left off. At the very beginning of the film, Murad Krasniqi (Rade Serbedzija) the father of the deceased head of the trafficking operation, vows at the very graves of his son and his dead cohorts to exact revenge on Mills and his loved ones.
Mills invites his daughter Kim and his ex-wife Lenore (Famke Janssen) to spend some time with him in Istanbul, where he has a brief job providing security for a Sheik, after he learns that Lenore's somewhat rocky marriage to her new husband has taken a turn for the worse, with him having cancelled a planned trip to China.
The Albanians track the Mills family down to Instanbul while they are on their holiday, and pretty much all hell breaks loose as they seek to exact their revenge.
The first film was a reasonably entertaining experience, but not something I thought would support a sequel. Truth be told the only reason I caught the second was that I'm a sucker for films with exotic locations, and in that aspect this film does not disappoint with its sweeping, panoramic shots of what is arguably one of Eastern Europe's most famous cities. Particularly striking for me were the shots of the world-renowned Hagia Sophia.
In almost every other respect, however, the film, for me, was utterly forgettable. The action choreography, from the fist fights to rooftop chases to car chases, all felt like poor copies of action sequences in other, far superior films. I did enjoy the bits of the film showing Mills' craftiness, letting audiences know he's got as much brains as he does brawn. These are the scenes in which he basically talks Kim through the process of locating him and Lenore, though the fact that this involves throwing live grenades around a populated city just so Mills can hear the explosions is more than a little off-putting. Apart from that, there really wasn't anything about this film that made it look like anything other than the cash grab that it is. As an action film, this has been done, and done much, much better.
Some people have talked about how the first film established Neeson as a "thinking man's action hero." Well, all I see in this film is a poor man's Jason Bourne, and that's even AFTER the Bourne franchise itself has been somewhat impoverished by a lackluster spinoff.
1.5/5
Using Hollywood logic, therefore, this was a film that was ripe for a sequel, no matter how thin the plot of the first film was.
The sequel, simply titled Taken 2, picks up where its predecessor left off. At the very beginning of the film, Murad Krasniqi (Rade Serbedzija) the father of the deceased head of the trafficking operation, vows at the very graves of his son and his dead cohorts to exact revenge on Mills and his loved ones.
Mills invites his daughter Kim and his ex-wife Lenore (Famke Janssen) to spend some time with him in Istanbul, where he has a brief job providing security for a Sheik, after he learns that Lenore's somewhat rocky marriage to her new husband has taken a turn for the worse, with him having cancelled a planned trip to China.
The Albanians track the Mills family down to Instanbul while they are on their holiday, and pretty much all hell breaks loose as they seek to exact their revenge.
The first film was a reasonably entertaining experience, but not something I thought would support a sequel. Truth be told the only reason I caught the second was that I'm a sucker for films with exotic locations, and in that aspect this film does not disappoint with its sweeping, panoramic shots of what is arguably one of Eastern Europe's most famous cities. Particularly striking for me were the shots of the world-renowned Hagia Sophia.
In almost every other respect, however, the film, for me, was utterly forgettable. The action choreography, from the fist fights to rooftop chases to car chases, all felt like poor copies of action sequences in other, far superior films. I did enjoy the bits of the film showing Mills' craftiness, letting audiences know he's got as much brains as he does brawn. These are the scenes in which he basically talks Kim through the process of locating him and Lenore, though the fact that this involves throwing live grenades around a populated city just so Mills can hear the explosions is more than a little off-putting. Apart from that, there really wasn't anything about this film that made it look like anything other than the cash grab that it is. As an action film, this has been done, and done much, much better.
Some people have talked about how the first film established Neeson as a "thinking man's action hero." Well, all I see in this film is a poor man's Jason Bourne, and that's even AFTER the Bourne franchise itself has been somewhat impoverished by a lackluster spinoff.
1.5/5
Hotel Transylvania
The idea of monsters being more afraid of people than people are of monsters has already been done in Pixar's 2001 Monsters, Inc., but Sony Pictures Animation revisits the concept with Hotel Transylvania, and the results, while a little mixed, are still reasonably pleasant. This is the studio's first fully-animated film since 2009's Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs, and like that film, it is a pretty rich visual experience.
The titular hotel was created by Count Dracula (Adam Sandler) as a refuge for himself and his daughter Mavis (Selena Gomez) as well as all other monsters, from the evils of humankind. Dracula is protective of Mavis because her mother, his wife, died when an angry mob of humans torched his castle when she was still a baby. Things go well, with the hotel regularly being visited by guests like Frankenstein (Kevin James), Wayne the Werewolf (Steve Buscemi), their spouses (Fran Drescher and Molly Shannon, respectively), the Mummy (CeeLo Green), and the Invisible Man (David Spade) among many others. Staffed by zombies, witches, and haunted suits of armor, it's a veritable monster paradise. For years, therefore, Dracula is able to keep his friends, and his daughter, close, and therefore shielded from the outside world.
Things go awry for Dracula, however, when Mavis, around the time of her 118th birthday (which makes her a teenager in vampire years) expresses her desire to see the world. Dracula has anticipated this period in her life and has prepared for it; he has an elaborate ruse set up designed to scare Mavis out of her desire to see the outside world. His ruse, involving zombies dressing up as humans and erecting a fake village, works in scaring Mavis back home, but as an unintended consequence, a most unwanted visitor follows the unwitting zombies, several of whom have caught fire, back to the hotel: a human named Jonathan (Andy Samberg).
Dracula, the first to discover Jonathan, is quick to conceal him by disguising him. He is unable to get him out of the hotel for one reason or another, but his real problem begins when Mavis meets the human and is almost instantly attracted to him.
This movie, saddled with narrative cliches and crude humor, is certainly not among the finest animated films I've ever seen, but it had enough going for it, like the interesting visual touch of Genndy Tartakovsky (Star Wars: The Clone Wars, Samurai Jack, Dexter's Laboratory) and some pretty funny visual jokes and one-liners, to keep me and my kids entertained for an hour and a half.
The crew's wonderfully stylized ode to Hollywood's classic monsters is certainly worth looking at, and to their credit Sandler and his "bros," James, Buscemi and Spade, are pretty good at transposing their live-action chemistry to their animated film. It's almost a shame they couldn't find a role for Sandler mainstay Rob Schneider.
The Sandler humor, however, is all too evident in some scenes, and often feels out of place in what is basically a family movie. Not only that, but the movie ends as most of Sandler's live-action films do, with realizations about growing up and an overly maudlin resolution.
The difference between a movie like this and a masterpiece like, say, Finding Nemo is all too evident when Dracula gives a long, schmaltzy speech at the end of the movie about children growing up and his having to accept that, which contrasts quite sharply with with minimalist, but infinitely more effective bit of dialogue from Ellen deGeneres' Dory: "You can't never let anything happen to him. Then nothing would ever happen to him."
Not only that, but there's a pretty fair-sized hole in the film's internal logic, but one which I suspect won't matter much to younger viewers. In any case, I won't spoil it here.
Still, the film definitely has a wonderful sense of whimsy and some truly laugh-out-loud moments, such as the "human attack" on Mavis at the beginning of the film. It's a rather flawed film, but an enjoyable one nonetheless, though I can say that there is nothing about this film that I feel is compelling enough to merit the 3-D premiums, so my advice to the parents taking their kids to see this is to skip the 3-D format altogether.
3/5
The titular hotel was created by Count Dracula (Adam Sandler) as a refuge for himself and his daughter Mavis (Selena Gomez) as well as all other monsters, from the evils of humankind. Dracula is protective of Mavis because her mother, his wife, died when an angry mob of humans torched his castle when she was still a baby. Things go well, with the hotel regularly being visited by guests like Frankenstein (Kevin James), Wayne the Werewolf (Steve Buscemi), their spouses (Fran Drescher and Molly Shannon, respectively), the Mummy (CeeLo Green), and the Invisible Man (David Spade) among many others. Staffed by zombies, witches, and haunted suits of armor, it's a veritable monster paradise. For years, therefore, Dracula is able to keep his friends, and his daughter, close, and therefore shielded from the outside world.
Things go awry for Dracula, however, when Mavis, around the time of her 118th birthday (which makes her a teenager in vampire years) expresses her desire to see the world. Dracula has anticipated this period in her life and has prepared for it; he has an elaborate ruse set up designed to scare Mavis out of her desire to see the outside world. His ruse, involving zombies dressing up as humans and erecting a fake village, works in scaring Mavis back home, but as an unintended consequence, a most unwanted visitor follows the unwitting zombies, several of whom have caught fire, back to the hotel: a human named Jonathan (Andy Samberg).
Dracula, the first to discover Jonathan, is quick to conceal him by disguising him. He is unable to get him out of the hotel for one reason or another, but his real problem begins when Mavis meets the human and is almost instantly attracted to him.
This movie, saddled with narrative cliches and crude humor, is certainly not among the finest animated films I've ever seen, but it had enough going for it, like the interesting visual touch of Genndy Tartakovsky (Star Wars: The Clone Wars, Samurai Jack, Dexter's Laboratory) and some pretty funny visual jokes and one-liners, to keep me and my kids entertained for an hour and a half.
The crew's wonderfully stylized ode to Hollywood's classic monsters is certainly worth looking at, and to their credit Sandler and his "bros," James, Buscemi and Spade, are pretty good at transposing their live-action chemistry to their animated film. It's almost a shame they couldn't find a role for Sandler mainstay Rob Schneider.
The Sandler humor, however, is all too evident in some scenes, and often feels out of place in what is basically a family movie. Not only that, but the movie ends as most of Sandler's live-action films do, with realizations about growing up and an overly maudlin resolution.
The difference between a movie like this and a masterpiece like, say, Finding Nemo is all too evident when Dracula gives a long, schmaltzy speech at the end of the movie about children growing up and his having to accept that, which contrasts quite sharply with with minimalist, but infinitely more effective bit of dialogue from Ellen deGeneres' Dory: "You can't never let anything happen to him. Then nothing would ever happen to him."
Not only that, but there's a pretty fair-sized hole in the film's internal logic, but one which I suspect won't matter much to younger viewers. In any case, I won't spoil it here.
Still, the film definitely has a wonderful sense of whimsy and some truly laugh-out-loud moments, such as the "human attack" on Mavis at the beginning of the film. It's a rather flawed film, but an enjoyable one nonetheless, though I can say that there is nothing about this film that I feel is compelling enough to merit the 3-D premiums, so my advice to the parents taking their kids to see this is to skip the 3-D format altogether.
3/5
Wednesday, September 26, 2012
200 Floors of Hardcore Brutality: A Review of Dredd
Growing up during the Cold War, I became a fan of many of the post-apocalyptic pop culture works it spawned, like the Mad Max and Terminator films. I often imagined myself moving down to a bomb shelter and living under the Earth for years after a nuclear holocaust (which, now that I think about it, would actually compel me to live underground for the remainder of my natural life).
The new film Dredd, which apart from the British comic book series it adapted bears no relation whatsoever to the 1995 fiasco Judge Dredd starring Sylvester Stallone as the title character, hearkened back to those years and was actually a pretty fun experience for me.
This new film, in which New Zealand-born actor Karl Urban (The Lord of the Rings films, Star Trek) dons the helmet and padded uniform of the British pop-culture icon, is set in a dystopian, but not entirely implausible future in which most of humanity lives in Mega Cities littered with high-rise slums and steeped in crime and chaos. In the midst of this chaos the Justice Department is the only source of order, and its agents, known as judges, serve as policemen, juries, judges and executioners all rolled into one. This is not a society that puts much stock in due process of law, in short.
In one such city, Mega City One, of particular concern is the spread of a new narcotic known as Slo-Mo, which causes the user's perception of reality to slow down to 1% of its normal speed. When the drug lord responsible for the manufacture and sale of this drug, former prostitute Madeline Madrigal (Lena Headey), or Ma-Ma for short, orders the brutal execution of three double-crossing pushers,Judge Dredd, the most feared of all judges, is called onto the scene, and he brings with him a judge-in-training, Cassandra Anderson (Olivia Thirlby). Anderson has only just failed her exams but the Justice Department is keen on giving her a second chance because of her psychic abilities, and Dredd is given the task of evaluating her. While they're in the area, Dredd and Anderson make a drug bust, with Anderson's abilities detecting the killer Kay (Wood Harris) among the perps. Rather than execute him on the spot, though, Dredd decides to take Kay, who happens to be one of Ma-Ma's top lieutenants, back to the department for questioning.
Because she has eyes and ears almost everywhere in the towering tenement, Ma-Ma, whose entire operation could be compromised if Kay talks, has the entire building shut down by sealing it with blast doors and gives the occupants of the entire building the order to kill the two judges. What ensues is about an hour of unbridled mayhem and gore as Dredd and Anderson fight for their very lives.
Presumably due to the terrible impression left by Stallone's 1995 flop, this movie has failed to light up the box-office in every market it's been released with the exception of Dredd's birthplace, the United Kingdom, and to me that's a shame because as action films go, this one was surprisingly intelligent. Director Pete Travis (Vantage Point), in my opinion, has plenty to be proud of, whatever the final receipts of this film may be.
It does call for a bit of viewer discretion because of the somewhat extreme nature of the violence depicted. The three murder victims in the beginning, for example, are skinned before they are flung to their deaths from near the top of the 200-storey building to the concrete below, and much of the violence is so brutal it's been quite noticeably cut by the distributor, acting presumably at the behest of the local review board. The violence isn't only visually extreme but thematically so as well; to show her resolve to kill the judges, Ma-Ma unleashes two miniguns on an entire row of apartments, showing no hesitation to blow away the innocent residents living there. It has to be said, though, that the violence feels oddly fitting in a story where the world has descended so far into madness that such lofty concepts as presumption of innocence and trial by jury are mere relics consigned to history.
It's in these themes that the film fascinated me most; the satirical, often humorous notion of a world where cops and judges were rolled into one, a world not actually very far removed from our own in terms of rampant criminality, was interesting to see onscreen, especially considering my experience as a lawyer with how slowly the wheels of justice often grind. Of course, none of the excesses of the Cursed Earth (which is how the world is referred to) would be permissible in any truly civilized society, but to those of us who have grown cynical watching powerful people exploit the intricacies of the justice system, watching this drastically simplified version of justice is intriguing in the most escapist sense. I laughed out loud when, before Dredd executed a rather heinous perpetrator after reading aloud the "charges," the perp blew smoke in his face, to which Dredd responded "defense noted." It's little gems like this that make screenwriter Alex Garland's script engaging enough to elevate this beyond standard shoot-'em-up fare.
Of course, Garland's script and Pete Travis' direction would have been for naught if they did not have a solid performance from their lead actor, and Urban, who, notably, never removes his helmet, delivers on this front. He channels Clint Eastwood and sounds a lot more intimidating than Christian Bale did as Batman. It's a pretty difficult performance considering something like sixty percent of his face is obscured, and while I don't see Urban hoisting up any Oscars or Golden Globes because of it, he certainly deserves the accolades reviewers have heaped on him for what he's managed to do. Olivia Thirlby, looking a little less jail-baity here than she did in her breakout movie Juno, brings some much needed humanity to the proceedings and shows pretty clearly that it's not easy to have absolute power over who lives and who dies.
On an artistic level the film's grungy, unrelentingly dark look is a perfect fit for the story, and nods to cinematographer Anthony Dod Mantle (Slumdog Millionaire) and production designer Mark Digby and his crew are definitely in order. Seeing the characters standing in the Peach Trees slum one really feels as if one is among the dregs of humanity.
It must be said, however, that by and large the filmmakers waste the 3-D format in which they reportedly shot the film. Apart from the visualization of the effects of "Slo-Mo" and a couple of scenes involving bullets, broken glass and drops of blood flying around, there is very little benefit offered by the format. The fact that there were plenty of shots of the dizzying heights of the Peach Trees tenement only highlights this shortcoming; there was plenty of opportunity for vertigo-inducing shots involving the building's atrium that could have played with depth perception, but they were quite simply never used. Even the post-production-converted Avengers, which featured an elevator descending, bothered to showcase a depth illusion. One consolation I took was that, at least, there was no unusual darkening of the image due to the 3-D. That much, at least, they got right.
There was also a story gaffe which I feel was never adequately explained; because he is engaged in a firefight with dozens of armed men Dredd finds himself running low on ammunition. The simple question that then arises is: why on earth doesn't Dredd pick up the guns of any of the dozens of men he wipes out in the course of the movie? Anderson picks up and uses a thug's gun late in the movie and this decision doesn't seem to have any ill effect on her. The notion that Dredd would only fight with his standard-issue firearm seems a little silly when weighed against a basic need to survive a highly dangerous situation.
Flaws notwithstanding, this was actually a rather solid movie, though not one I'd recommend spending a premium on for a 3-D screening. I had not actually intended to watch it in any format, but I had time to kill, and the 3-D presentation was the only one available where I was. Good thing, then, that 3-D screenings are a lot cheaper in SM Davao than they are in SM Manila (P250 as opposed to about P300). For anyone with a little time on their hands and a stomach for extreme violence, this is actually worth a look.
4/5
The new film Dredd, which apart from the British comic book series it adapted bears no relation whatsoever to the 1995 fiasco Judge Dredd starring Sylvester Stallone as the title character, hearkened back to those years and was actually a pretty fun experience for me.
This new film, in which New Zealand-born actor Karl Urban (The Lord of the Rings films, Star Trek) dons the helmet and padded uniform of the British pop-culture icon, is set in a dystopian, but not entirely implausible future in which most of humanity lives in Mega Cities littered with high-rise slums and steeped in crime and chaos. In the midst of this chaos the Justice Department is the only source of order, and its agents, known as judges, serve as policemen, juries, judges and executioners all rolled into one. This is not a society that puts much stock in due process of law, in short.
In one such city, Mega City One, of particular concern is the spread of a new narcotic known as Slo-Mo, which causes the user's perception of reality to slow down to 1% of its normal speed. When the drug lord responsible for the manufacture and sale of this drug, former prostitute Madeline Madrigal (Lena Headey), or Ma-Ma for short, orders the brutal execution of three double-crossing pushers,Judge Dredd, the most feared of all judges, is called onto the scene, and he brings with him a judge-in-training, Cassandra Anderson (Olivia Thirlby). Anderson has only just failed her exams but the Justice Department is keen on giving her a second chance because of her psychic abilities, and Dredd is given the task of evaluating her. While they're in the area, Dredd and Anderson make a drug bust, with Anderson's abilities detecting the killer Kay (Wood Harris) among the perps. Rather than execute him on the spot, though, Dredd decides to take Kay, who happens to be one of Ma-Ma's top lieutenants, back to the department for questioning.
Because she has eyes and ears almost everywhere in the towering tenement, Ma-Ma, whose entire operation could be compromised if Kay talks, has the entire building shut down by sealing it with blast doors and gives the occupants of the entire building the order to kill the two judges. What ensues is about an hour of unbridled mayhem and gore as Dredd and Anderson fight for their very lives.
Presumably due to the terrible impression left by Stallone's 1995 flop, this movie has failed to light up the box-office in every market it's been released with the exception of Dredd's birthplace, the United Kingdom, and to me that's a shame because as action films go, this one was surprisingly intelligent. Director Pete Travis (Vantage Point), in my opinion, has plenty to be proud of, whatever the final receipts of this film may be.
It does call for a bit of viewer discretion because of the somewhat extreme nature of the violence depicted. The three murder victims in the beginning, for example, are skinned before they are flung to their deaths from near the top of the 200-storey building to the concrete below, and much of the violence is so brutal it's been quite noticeably cut by the distributor, acting presumably at the behest of the local review board. The violence isn't only visually extreme but thematically so as well; to show her resolve to kill the judges, Ma-Ma unleashes two miniguns on an entire row of apartments, showing no hesitation to blow away the innocent residents living there. It has to be said, though, that the violence feels oddly fitting in a story where the world has descended so far into madness that such lofty concepts as presumption of innocence and trial by jury are mere relics consigned to history.
It's in these themes that the film fascinated me most; the satirical, often humorous notion of a world where cops and judges were rolled into one, a world not actually very far removed from our own in terms of rampant criminality, was interesting to see onscreen, especially considering my experience as a lawyer with how slowly the wheels of justice often grind. Of course, none of the excesses of the Cursed Earth (which is how the world is referred to) would be permissible in any truly civilized society, but to those of us who have grown cynical watching powerful people exploit the intricacies of the justice system, watching this drastically simplified version of justice is intriguing in the most escapist sense. I laughed out loud when, before Dredd executed a rather heinous perpetrator after reading aloud the "charges," the perp blew smoke in his face, to which Dredd responded "defense noted." It's little gems like this that make screenwriter Alex Garland's script engaging enough to elevate this beyond standard shoot-'em-up fare.
Of course, Garland's script and Pete Travis' direction would have been for naught if they did not have a solid performance from their lead actor, and Urban, who, notably, never removes his helmet, delivers on this front. He channels Clint Eastwood and sounds a lot more intimidating than Christian Bale did as Batman. It's a pretty difficult performance considering something like sixty percent of his face is obscured, and while I don't see Urban hoisting up any Oscars or Golden Globes because of it, he certainly deserves the accolades reviewers have heaped on him for what he's managed to do. Olivia Thirlby, looking a little less jail-baity here than she did in her breakout movie Juno, brings some much needed humanity to the proceedings and shows pretty clearly that it's not easy to have absolute power over who lives and who dies.
On an artistic level the film's grungy, unrelentingly dark look is a perfect fit for the story, and nods to cinematographer Anthony Dod Mantle (Slumdog Millionaire) and production designer Mark Digby and his crew are definitely in order. Seeing the characters standing in the Peach Trees slum one really feels as if one is among the dregs of humanity.
It must be said, however, that by and large the filmmakers waste the 3-D format in which they reportedly shot the film. Apart from the visualization of the effects of "Slo-Mo" and a couple of scenes involving bullets, broken glass and drops of blood flying around, there is very little benefit offered by the format. The fact that there were plenty of shots of the dizzying heights of the Peach Trees tenement only highlights this shortcoming; there was plenty of opportunity for vertigo-inducing shots involving the building's atrium that could have played with depth perception, but they were quite simply never used. Even the post-production-converted Avengers, which featured an elevator descending, bothered to showcase a depth illusion. One consolation I took was that, at least, there was no unusual darkening of the image due to the 3-D. That much, at least, they got right.
There was also a story gaffe which I feel was never adequately explained; because he is engaged in a firefight with dozens of armed men Dredd finds himself running low on ammunition. The simple question that then arises is: why on earth doesn't Dredd pick up the guns of any of the dozens of men he wipes out in the course of the movie? Anderson picks up and uses a thug's gun late in the movie and this decision doesn't seem to have any ill effect on her. The notion that Dredd would only fight with his standard-issue firearm seems a little silly when weighed against a basic need to survive a highly dangerous situation.
Flaws notwithstanding, this was actually a rather solid movie, though not one I'd recommend spending a premium on for a 3-D screening. I had not actually intended to watch it in any format, but I had time to kill, and the 3-D presentation was the only one available where I was. Good thing, then, that 3-D screenings are a lot cheaper in SM Davao than they are in SM Manila (P250 as opposed to about P300). For anyone with a little time on their hands and a stomach for extreme violence, this is actually worth a look.
4/5
Tuesday, September 4, 2012
Movie Politics Makes Hilarious Bedfellows: A Review of The Campaign
I have enjoyed watching comedian Will Ferrell make a fool of himself since 1998, when I first saw him and Chris Kattan bobbing their heads to rave music in A Night at the Roxbury. In fact, when I watched Ben Stiller's sendup of male models, Zoolander in 2001, it irked me that Ferrell, the film's bad guy, did not get as much screen time as I would have wanted him to have. As it turns out, I needn't have waited very long for Ferrell's star to take off; two years later he made quite a splash in Old School, and later that year starred in his first bona fide blockbuster, Jon Favreau's Elf.
Nine years later, Will Ferrell has treated moviegoers to dollops of his deliciously irreverent, sometimes borderline distasteful humor in several movies, such as Anchorman: The Legend of Ron Burgundy, Talladega Nights: The Ballad of Ricky Bobby, and Blades of Glory, among others, and this year, he's at it again with the political farce The Campaign. This time, he's brought Zach Galifianikis ( of The Hangover movies) along for the ride.
Ferrell plays Cam Brady, the Congressman of a district in North Carolina who has been in office for so long he is about to enter his fifth term unopposed. When he leaves a somewhat salacious phone message intended for his mistress on the wrong answering machine his popularity plummets, prompting corrupt power brokers Glen and Wade Motch (played by John Lithgow and Dan Aykroyd) to move to replace him with a new candidate, one they feel they can bend to their will, especially for the purpose of approving legislation involving the illegal sale of the district to China. They end up choosing Marty Huggins (Galifianikis) the effeminate son of one of their associates Raymond Huggins (Brian Cox). Marty runs a tour of his small town and is excited to run for Congress as he feels he has a lot to offer his district, which he describes as "a mess." Unfortunately, however, seasoned politician that Brady is, he is not about to make it easy for Marty. The Motch brothers, to give Marty a bit of an edge, hire a campaign manager every bit as unethical and ruthless as they are named Tim Wattley (Dylan McDermott), and the game, as they say, is on.
For me the funniest thing about Will Ferrell movies, especially the R-rated ones, is how the jokes, while they sometimes push the envelope of bad taste, are uniquely outrageous and sometimes totally random, like the unusual sexual request made by one of the characters in a pivotal scene as well as the infamous baby-punching scene which, thanks to the magic of computer-generated imagery, was actually shown. Some scenes are certainly funnier than others, but it's the willingness of Ferrell and his collaborators to go out on a creative limb in the name of their art that makes me willing to reward them time and again. Galifianikis seems to recycle the effeminate, annoying character he played in Todd Phillips' Due Date (alongside Robert Downey, Jr.) here, but he works well with Ferrell and with the comic material he's been given. Film trivia buffs may be interested to know that this film, by the way, marks Ferrell's first collaboration with director Jay Roach since the Austin Powers movies, in which Ferrell had a minor bad guy role.
I was a little disappointed to see comedian Jason Sudeikis, who played Brady's campaign manager, basically playing what is essentially a "straight man" role or a foil to Ferrell's zany Brady, but McDermott's hilariously over-the-top Tim Wattley more than made up for wasting Sudeikis' comic talent. The supporting actors bring a lot to the table, too; I loved Karen Murayama as the Asian housekeeper paid by Raymond Huggins to speak with a Southern accent, and was happy to see Jack McBrayer of 30 Rock in a cameo appearance as the father of the family whose answering machine receives Brady's obscene phone call by mistake.
This isn't quite up there with my favorite Ferrell films Blades of Glory and Old School, but for me it's definitely a worthy addition to his library of outrageously rude comedies.
4/5
Nine years later, Will Ferrell has treated moviegoers to dollops of his deliciously irreverent, sometimes borderline distasteful humor in several movies, such as Anchorman: The Legend of Ron Burgundy, Talladega Nights: The Ballad of Ricky Bobby, and Blades of Glory, among others, and this year, he's at it again with the political farce The Campaign. This time, he's brought Zach Galifianikis ( of The Hangover movies) along for the ride.
Ferrell plays Cam Brady, the Congressman of a district in North Carolina who has been in office for so long he is about to enter his fifth term unopposed. When he leaves a somewhat salacious phone message intended for his mistress on the wrong answering machine his popularity plummets, prompting corrupt power brokers Glen and Wade Motch (played by John Lithgow and Dan Aykroyd) to move to replace him with a new candidate, one they feel they can bend to their will, especially for the purpose of approving legislation involving the illegal sale of the district to China. They end up choosing Marty Huggins (Galifianikis) the effeminate son of one of their associates Raymond Huggins (Brian Cox). Marty runs a tour of his small town and is excited to run for Congress as he feels he has a lot to offer his district, which he describes as "a mess." Unfortunately, however, seasoned politician that Brady is, he is not about to make it easy for Marty. The Motch brothers, to give Marty a bit of an edge, hire a campaign manager every bit as unethical and ruthless as they are named Tim Wattley (Dylan McDermott), and the game, as they say, is on.
For me the funniest thing about Will Ferrell movies, especially the R-rated ones, is how the jokes, while they sometimes push the envelope of bad taste, are uniquely outrageous and sometimes totally random, like the unusual sexual request made by one of the characters in a pivotal scene as well as the infamous baby-punching scene which, thanks to the magic of computer-generated imagery, was actually shown. Some scenes are certainly funnier than others, but it's the willingness of Ferrell and his collaborators to go out on a creative limb in the name of their art that makes me willing to reward them time and again. Galifianikis seems to recycle the effeminate, annoying character he played in Todd Phillips' Due Date (alongside Robert Downey, Jr.) here, but he works well with Ferrell and with the comic material he's been given. Film trivia buffs may be interested to know that this film, by the way, marks Ferrell's first collaboration with director Jay Roach since the Austin Powers movies, in which Ferrell had a minor bad guy role.
I was a little disappointed to see comedian Jason Sudeikis, who played Brady's campaign manager, basically playing what is essentially a "straight man" role or a foil to Ferrell's zany Brady, but McDermott's hilariously over-the-top Tim Wattley more than made up for wasting Sudeikis' comic talent. The supporting actors bring a lot to the table, too; I loved Karen Murayama as the Asian housekeeper paid by Raymond Huggins to speak with a Southern accent, and was happy to see Jack McBrayer of 30 Rock in a cameo appearance as the father of the family whose answering machine receives Brady's obscene phone call by mistake.
This isn't quite up there with my favorite Ferrell films Blades of Glory and Old School, but for me it's definitely a worthy addition to his library of outrageously rude comedies.
4/5
Sunday, September 2, 2012
Brave
After disappointing critics and audiences with last year's sequel Cars 2 (which holds the dubious distinction of being the only Pixar movie snubbed by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences when they nominated films for Best Animated Feature earlier this year), Pixar Studios has bounced back nicely with the fairy tale Brave.
Set in medieval Scotland, Brave is the story of Princess Merida (Kelly MacDonald) a free-spirited princess who is doted on by her father King Fergus (Billy Connolly) and kept on a very short leash by her mother Queen Elinore(Emma Thompson). It is Merida's relationship with the latter that primarily drives the story.
The story begins during Merida's childhood, when the King, the Queen, and their very young princess are on a picnic, during which the young Merida encounters a will o' the wisp, and during which a monstrous bear attacks them, leaving King Fergus without one of his legs.
As she grows older, Merida finds herself annoyed by her mother's constant attention to her, which consists mostly of lessons on what a princess should be or do. Considering that pretty much all she wants to do is ride around the countryside and shoot her bow, which she has had since childhood and with which she is quite handy, she is basically in complete opposition to what her mother wants for her. When Queen Elinore arranges for Merida's betrothal to any of the princes of the neighboring Scottish clans, this proves to be the last straw for Merida, and after outshining her various suitors in the archery competition in which they were supposed to win her hand in marriage (by virtue of which she wins "her own hand") she engages in extensive verbal sparring with her mother and runs off into the forest, where she meets a witch who, she comes to believe, holds the answer to her problems.
She then asks the witch to concoct a potion that will change her mother, and what she gets is something completely unlike anything she expected.
Like Merida, I found myself watching something I had not expected.
My curiosity was not particularly piqued by the trailers; the "independent girl" theme they seemed to suggest seemed a little quaint by Pixar standards, especially considering the recent film by rival Dreamworks, How to Train Your Dragon, featured highly empowered female characters. I was willing to forego that, but when the early reviews seemed unusually negative for a Pixar film I feared that they still had not snapped out of the funk they had fallen into with the disastrous Cars 2.
Upon watching the movie, though, I confess I found myself disagreeing with the haters. Apart from a little crude humor involving male nudity that looked more like it belonged in a movie by one of Pixar's rivals than one of theirs, it displayed a good deal of Pixar's signature charm, and the heart that has distinguished Pixar as the gold standard in animated filmmaking today.
Plucky Merida, for example, is as memorable as any of the characters that have trotted out of the studio that John Lasseter and Steve Jobs founded, and it's easy to relate to her, especially when the film turns out to be about how parent-child relationships can often be. Apart from Queen Elinore, though, the supporting characters, while not nearly as engaging as Pixar's cast of characters usually are, such as the fish in the dentist's fish tank in Finding Nemo, or The Incredibles' Edna Mode, were good for a lot of laughs, especially Merida's three younger brothers who might as well have been named Huey, Dewey and Louie.
The visuals, as can be expected from Pixar, are breathtaking, especially with the Scottish Highlands are the film's backdrop. I skipped the 3-D presentation, having been badly burned on my first and only 3-D experience from Pixar (Toy Story 3), but I'm glad to have enjoyed such vibrant colors on the screen. There were also a few missed opportunities, in my opinion, as the magical aspect of the storytelling was limited to the will o' the wisps, and a little witchcraft, though the latter proved to be transformative in more ways than one. Still, the story proceeded at just the right pace.
Though Brave does not rate among my favorite Pixar films, it's memorable in its own right and is a worthy addition to their library. It may have played a little more like a Dreamworks movie than Pixar's usual fare, but it was still something I think I managed to enjoy as much as my kids did, and something I will happily recommend, though by now people will have to wait to catch it on DVD.
4/5
Set in medieval Scotland, Brave is the story of Princess Merida (Kelly MacDonald) a free-spirited princess who is doted on by her father King Fergus (Billy Connolly) and kept on a very short leash by her mother Queen Elinore(Emma Thompson). It is Merida's relationship with the latter that primarily drives the story.
The story begins during Merida's childhood, when the King, the Queen, and their very young princess are on a picnic, during which the young Merida encounters a will o' the wisp, and during which a monstrous bear attacks them, leaving King Fergus without one of his legs.
As she grows older, Merida finds herself annoyed by her mother's constant attention to her, which consists mostly of lessons on what a princess should be or do. Considering that pretty much all she wants to do is ride around the countryside and shoot her bow, which she has had since childhood and with which she is quite handy, she is basically in complete opposition to what her mother wants for her. When Queen Elinore arranges for Merida's betrothal to any of the princes of the neighboring Scottish clans, this proves to be the last straw for Merida, and after outshining her various suitors in the archery competition in which they were supposed to win her hand in marriage (by virtue of which she wins "her own hand") she engages in extensive verbal sparring with her mother and runs off into the forest, where she meets a witch who, she comes to believe, holds the answer to her problems.
She then asks the witch to concoct a potion that will change her mother, and what she gets is something completely unlike anything she expected.
Like Merida, I found myself watching something I had not expected.
My curiosity was not particularly piqued by the trailers; the "independent girl" theme they seemed to suggest seemed a little quaint by Pixar standards, especially considering the recent film by rival Dreamworks, How to Train Your Dragon, featured highly empowered female characters. I was willing to forego that, but when the early reviews seemed unusually negative for a Pixar film I feared that they still had not snapped out of the funk they had fallen into with the disastrous Cars 2.
Upon watching the movie, though, I confess I found myself disagreeing with the haters. Apart from a little crude humor involving male nudity that looked more like it belonged in a movie by one of Pixar's rivals than one of theirs, it displayed a good deal of Pixar's signature charm, and the heart that has distinguished Pixar as the gold standard in animated filmmaking today.
Plucky Merida, for example, is as memorable as any of the characters that have trotted out of the studio that John Lasseter and Steve Jobs founded, and it's easy to relate to her, especially when the film turns out to be about how parent-child relationships can often be. Apart from Queen Elinore, though, the supporting characters, while not nearly as engaging as Pixar's cast of characters usually are, such as the fish in the dentist's fish tank in Finding Nemo, or The Incredibles' Edna Mode, were good for a lot of laughs, especially Merida's three younger brothers who might as well have been named Huey, Dewey and Louie.
The visuals, as can be expected from Pixar, are breathtaking, especially with the Scottish Highlands are the film's backdrop. I skipped the 3-D presentation, having been badly burned on my first and only 3-D experience from Pixar (Toy Story 3), but I'm glad to have enjoyed such vibrant colors on the screen. There were also a few missed opportunities, in my opinion, as the magical aspect of the storytelling was limited to the will o' the wisps, and a little witchcraft, though the latter proved to be transformative in more ways than one. Still, the story proceeded at just the right pace.
Though Brave does not rate among my favorite Pixar films, it's memorable in its own right and is a worthy addition to their library. It may have played a little more like a Dreamworks movie than Pixar's usual fare, but it was still something I think I managed to enjoy as much as my kids did, and something I will happily recommend, though by now people will have to wait to catch it on DVD.
4/5
Sunday, August 12, 2012
The Bourne Legacy
I would love to tell everyone reading this, especially my fellow Filipinos, that Tony Gilroy's Bourne franchise sequel/spinoff, The Bourne Legacy, the last act of which takes place in Metro Manila, is a worthy addition to the franchise. Unfortunately, that simply isn't the case.
Understand, The Bourne Legacy is not what I consider a terrible movie; it's not even necessarily a bad one, but it comes in the wake of three movies with quality that ranged, in my opinion, from very good to excellent. The Bourne trilogy is one of those rare cinematic animals that got better as it went along, with each new movie in the trilogy getting better reviews and earning bigger box-office bucks, in the United States and everywhere else, as it went along. They were all taut, intelligent thrillers, even though all three of them followed distinctive story beats (several fist-fights, including one with an enhanced agent, at least one car chase, and a final confrontation, all laced with shadowy political intrigue) with The Bourne Ultimatum, in particular, providing such spectacular entertainment that, even today, I can watch it over and over again. Those three movies are among my very favorites in my DVD collection. Not only that, but they ended on an absolutely perfect note, much like the Indiana Jones trilogy before a fourth, entirely superfluous film was tacked onto the franchise. All loose ends were tied up and Matt Damon's Jason Bourne basically came full circle.
Ironically enough it was because the first three Bourne movies worked so well, individually and taken together, as a single, cohesive narrative, that it was actually more sensible to take the story, if it had to continue at all, in a new direction. The spinoff, had it been handled properly, could actually have captured a good deal of what made the trilogy as compelling as it was. From a storytelling point of view, this is actually what director/screenwriter Tony Gilroy, who wrote all three of the first three movies, has attempted, and I must credit him for that, but he seriously fumbles the execution.
The film begins at around the same time the last film ended, with Jason Bourne's expose of the government's enhanced-assassin programs threatening a whole lot of people in high places, prompting Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) director Ezra Kramer (Scott Glenn) to pay a visit to Admiral Mark Turso (Stacy Keach) regarding the problem. Turso then approaches Colonel Eric Byer (Edward Norton), who is overseeing the latest iteration of this program, dubbed Outcome, which involves chemically-enhanced agents.
One such agent, Aaron Cross (Jeremy Renner), meanwhile is thousands of kilometers away, at a training ground in the Alaskan wilderness. He is constantly popping green and blue pills which, we later learn, are critical not only to his physical and mental enhancements, but to his ability to function. When he runs low , he looks up another agent in the field, known only as Number Three (Oscar Isaac) and stays for a while in the same cabin where he's holed up.
Meanwhile, the shady government types decide to close down the Outcome program altogether, which involves giving the chemically dependent operatives out in the field a yellow pill that takes them out, sending a drone to dispose of Number Three and Cross (which in the case of the latter doesn't quite take), and killing the scientists responsible for the chemical process of enhancement, one of whom is Marta Shearing (Rachel Weisz). Fortunately for Shearing, Cross reaches her in time to save her from the spooks out to kill her. Shearing needs Cross to stay alive, and Cross needs Shearing's expertise, which could be the key to getting him off his "chems" once and for all. Of course, Turso and Byer will do everything in their power to make sure that they do not reach their destination, or any other for that matter.
The film's single biggest problem is its pacing; at two hours and fifteen minutes it feels half an hour too long, especially considering how much of that running time is devoted to some laborious exposition. There are action scenes aplenty, and quite impressively staged at that, but Gilroy simply fails to build tension in the first half of the film, something his predecessors Doug Liman, who directed the first film, and Paul Greengrass, who directed the second and third ones, did quite handily. Gilroy devotes in inordinate amount of time to explaining everything, apparently forgetting one of the cardinal rules of storytelling: show, not tell.
The exchanges between Cross and Number Three, for example, feel like they could have been at least five minutes shorter. There seems a vague attempt on Gilroy's part to suggest tension between the two of them, like they could erupt into a fight to the death at any moment, but to my mind Gilroy simply doesn't pull it off. Cross could have been sitting in Number Three's cabin by himself, looking for the much-needed "chems" and it would have had the same effect.
The most egregious lapses in narrative judgment, however, involve the "command center" moments featuring Turso, Byer and their team. Each and every film in the series has had such "command center" scenes, first involving Chris Cooper's Alexander Conklin, then later involving Joan Allen's Pamela Landy and David Strathairn's Noah Vosen, and all of them involved terrific amounts of tension even if it was basically just people in a room talking. For some reason, even though he's actually recreated scenes from The Bourne Ultimatum, Gilroy is unable to replicate with any real conviction the excitement of these moments. The dialogue about the horrible repercussions of Jason Bourne's actions seems, quite honestly, interminable, and as capable an actor as Edward Norton is, even he can't mask the fact that Gilroy's endlessly expository dialogue slows the film down to a snail's pace. It was astonishing to see how Gilroy could incorporate some of the most exciting scenes from the last film, including the death of a pivotal character, and still come up with something as boring as many of his scenes were to me. I was thoroughly perplexed by the fact that Gilroy made so much of the narrative of this film dependent on the events of the previous films, but was unable to transmit any of the thrills from those films to this one. Not only that, but each and every one of the previous Bourne films could stand on its own as well as being part of a bigger storytelling tapestry. This film is deliberately, infuriatingly written as something incomplete; it requires both a working knowledge of what has come before and leaves a great deal hanging, even after the more than two hours of running time are over.
The painful irony at work here is that one of the few memorable lines from the film, Turso's utterance, "I gave you a Ferrari and you treated it like a lawnmower," is the perfect way to describe Gilroy's script in relation to the rest of the franchise, especially the last film.
The good news is that when the action begins in earnest, it pretty much does not stop. The film's first major action sequence pits Cross against a drone and a wolf, but for me, it's only when he unleashes his fighting skills and smarts against a team of black-ops agents that the action really begins. Accomplished second unit director/stunt guru Dan Bradley and his various stunt crew members truly deliver the goods, especially when the action shifts to Manila. There's a rooftop chase to rival the one that took place in Tangiers in the last film, and a motorcycle chase that's easily on par with any of the other car chases that have featured in the series so far, though it ends on a bit of an anticlimactic note and with some pretty silly-looking computer-generated imagery (CGI).
I should make clear that I don't have any beef with Jeremy Renner taking over this franchise, and to be frank his performance was the only thing that made this film worth watching while I was waiting for the action to actually start. Rachel Weisz makes a welcome addition to the series as well, though now that she's actually performed what was needed of her I can't help but wonder, somewhat cynically, how much longer her character will last in future films, should there be any. Edward Norton does the best he can with a poorly-scripted role, but if nothing else he sets himself up to be a primo bad guy in future installments. Stacy Keach looks imposing, but his Turso isn't nearly as engaging a bad guy as Cooper's Conklin, Brian Cox's Ward Abbott of the second film, or Strathairn's Vosen were.
I should also point out that Metro Manila, in all its overcrowded, grimy glory, is not to blame for Tony Gilroy's shortcomings; to me it is more alive than any of the cities that came before it, where people were, by and large, just part of the background. The Filipino actors led by John Arcilla, Lou Veloso and Cecilia Montes really threw themselves into their brief but fairly substantial roles (Arcilla's in particular) and it filled me with pride to watch them strut their stuff for what I'm sure will be a wider audience than any of them have ever known.
For all of my love for my home country, I cannot for the life of me give this movie the ringing endorsement I would have wanted to because frankly the scenes that do not take place in the Philippines are, by and large, rather laborious to sit through.
Given that he wrote all three of this film's predecessors, Tony Gilroy's huge role in making the first three Bourne movies as riveting as they were cannot be denied, but now that he has occupied the director's chair as well it has become clear to me that the series needs the sure-handed direction of someone who knows when it's time to focus on dialogue and when it's time to focus on adrenaline-pumping action. Now that he's gotten all of the lengthy explanation of the Outcome program out of the way, maybe Gilroy can craft a script that hews more closely to the brilliantly-paced stories of the first three films, and maybe he can hire a decent action director while he's at it. To be honest I wouldn't mind if Dan Bradley took over next time.
3/5
Understand, The Bourne Legacy is not what I consider a terrible movie; it's not even necessarily a bad one, but it comes in the wake of three movies with quality that ranged, in my opinion, from very good to excellent. The Bourne trilogy is one of those rare cinematic animals that got better as it went along, with each new movie in the trilogy getting better reviews and earning bigger box-office bucks, in the United States and everywhere else, as it went along. They were all taut, intelligent thrillers, even though all three of them followed distinctive story beats (several fist-fights, including one with an enhanced agent, at least one car chase, and a final confrontation, all laced with shadowy political intrigue) with The Bourne Ultimatum, in particular, providing such spectacular entertainment that, even today, I can watch it over and over again. Those three movies are among my very favorites in my DVD collection. Not only that, but they ended on an absolutely perfect note, much like the Indiana Jones trilogy before a fourth, entirely superfluous film was tacked onto the franchise. All loose ends were tied up and Matt Damon's Jason Bourne basically came full circle.
Ironically enough it was because the first three Bourne movies worked so well, individually and taken together, as a single, cohesive narrative, that it was actually more sensible to take the story, if it had to continue at all, in a new direction. The spinoff, had it been handled properly, could actually have captured a good deal of what made the trilogy as compelling as it was. From a storytelling point of view, this is actually what director/screenwriter Tony Gilroy, who wrote all three of the first three movies, has attempted, and I must credit him for that, but he seriously fumbles the execution.
The film begins at around the same time the last film ended, with Jason Bourne's expose of the government's enhanced-assassin programs threatening a whole lot of people in high places, prompting Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) director Ezra Kramer (Scott Glenn) to pay a visit to Admiral Mark Turso (Stacy Keach) regarding the problem. Turso then approaches Colonel Eric Byer (Edward Norton), who is overseeing the latest iteration of this program, dubbed Outcome, which involves chemically-enhanced agents.
One such agent, Aaron Cross (Jeremy Renner), meanwhile is thousands of kilometers away, at a training ground in the Alaskan wilderness. He is constantly popping green and blue pills which, we later learn, are critical not only to his physical and mental enhancements, but to his ability to function. When he runs low , he looks up another agent in the field, known only as Number Three (Oscar Isaac) and stays for a while in the same cabin where he's holed up.
Meanwhile, the shady government types decide to close down the Outcome program altogether, which involves giving the chemically dependent operatives out in the field a yellow pill that takes them out, sending a drone to dispose of Number Three and Cross (which in the case of the latter doesn't quite take), and killing the scientists responsible for the chemical process of enhancement, one of whom is Marta Shearing (Rachel Weisz). Fortunately for Shearing, Cross reaches her in time to save her from the spooks out to kill her. Shearing needs Cross to stay alive, and Cross needs Shearing's expertise, which could be the key to getting him off his "chems" once and for all. Of course, Turso and Byer will do everything in their power to make sure that they do not reach their destination, or any other for that matter.
The film's single biggest problem is its pacing; at two hours and fifteen minutes it feels half an hour too long, especially considering how much of that running time is devoted to some laborious exposition. There are action scenes aplenty, and quite impressively staged at that, but Gilroy simply fails to build tension in the first half of the film, something his predecessors Doug Liman, who directed the first film, and Paul Greengrass, who directed the second and third ones, did quite handily. Gilroy devotes in inordinate amount of time to explaining everything, apparently forgetting one of the cardinal rules of storytelling: show, not tell.
The exchanges between Cross and Number Three, for example, feel like they could have been at least five minutes shorter. There seems a vague attempt on Gilroy's part to suggest tension between the two of them, like they could erupt into a fight to the death at any moment, but to my mind Gilroy simply doesn't pull it off. Cross could have been sitting in Number Three's cabin by himself, looking for the much-needed "chems" and it would have had the same effect.
The most egregious lapses in narrative judgment, however, involve the "command center" moments featuring Turso, Byer and their team. Each and every film in the series has had such "command center" scenes, first involving Chris Cooper's Alexander Conklin, then later involving Joan Allen's Pamela Landy and David Strathairn's Noah Vosen, and all of them involved terrific amounts of tension even if it was basically just people in a room talking. For some reason, even though he's actually recreated scenes from The Bourne Ultimatum, Gilroy is unable to replicate with any real conviction the excitement of these moments. The dialogue about the horrible repercussions of Jason Bourne's actions seems, quite honestly, interminable, and as capable an actor as Edward Norton is, even he can't mask the fact that Gilroy's endlessly expository dialogue slows the film down to a snail's pace. It was astonishing to see how Gilroy could incorporate some of the most exciting scenes from the last film, including the death of a pivotal character, and still come up with something as boring as many of his scenes were to me. I was thoroughly perplexed by the fact that Gilroy made so much of the narrative of this film dependent on the events of the previous films, but was unable to transmit any of the thrills from those films to this one. Not only that, but each and every one of the previous Bourne films could stand on its own as well as being part of a bigger storytelling tapestry. This film is deliberately, infuriatingly written as something incomplete; it requires both a working knowledge of what has come before and leaves a great deal hanging, even after the more than two hours of running time are over.
The painful irony at work here is that one of the few memorable lines from the film, Turso's utterance, "I gave you a Ferrari and you treated it like a lawnmower," is the perfect way to describe Gilroy's script in relation to the rest of the franchise, especially the last film.
The good news is that when the action begins in earnest, it pretty much does not stop. The film's first major action sequence pits Cross against a drone and a wolf, but for me, it's only when he unleashes his fighting skills and smarts against a team of black-ops agents that the action really begins. Accomplished second unit director/stunt guru Dan Bradley and his various stunt crew members truly deliver the goods, especially when the action shifts to Manila. There's a rooftop chase to rival the one that took place in Tangiers in the last film, and a motorcycle chase that's easily on par with any of the other car chases that have featured in the series so far, though it ends on a bit of an anticlimactic note and with some pretty silly-looking computer-generated imagery (CGI).
I should make clear that I don't have any beef with Jeremy Renner taking over this franchise, and to be frank his performance was the only thing that made this film worth watching while I was waiting for the action to actually start. Rachel Weisz makes a welcome addition to the series as well, though now that she's actually performed what was needed of her I can't help but wonder, somewhat cynically, how much longer her character will last in future films, should there be any. Edward Norton does the best he can with a poorly-scripted role, but if nothing else he sets himself up to be a primo bad guy in future installments. Stacy Keach looks imposing, but his Turso isn't nearly as engaging a bad guy as Cooper's Conklin, Brian Cox's Ward Abbott of the second film, or Strathairn's Vosen were.
I should also point out that Metro Manila, in all its overcrowded, grimy glory, is not to blame for Tony Gilroy's shortcomings; to me it is more alive than any of the cities that came before it, where people were, by and large, just part of the background. The Filipino actors led by John Arcilla, Lou Veloso and Cecilia Montes really threw themselves into their brief but fairly substantial roles (Arcilla's in particular) and it filled me with pride to watch them strut their stuff for what I'm sure will be a wider audience than any of them have ever known.
For all of my love for my home country, I cannot for the life of me give this movie the ringing endorsement I would have wanted to because frankly the scenes that do not take place in the Philippines are, by and large, rather laborious to sit through.
Given that he wrote all three of this film's predecessors, Tony Gilroy's huge role in making the first three Bourne movies as riveting as they were cannot be denied, but now that he has occupied the director's chair as well it has become clear to me that the series needs the sure-handed direction of someone who knows when it's time to focus on dialogue and when it's time to focus on adrenaline-pumping action. Now that he's gotten all of the lengthy explanation of the Outcome program out of the way, maybe Gilroy can craft a script that hews more closely to the brilliantly-paced stories of the first three films, and maybe he can hire a decent action director while he's at it. To be honest I wouldn't mind if Dan Bradley took over next time.
3/5
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