The Hurt Locker

The Hurt Locker

Director Kathryn Bigelow, screenwriter Mark Boal, starring Jeremy Renner (William James), JT Sanborn (Anthony Mackie) and Owen Eldridge (Brian Geraghty)

The title credits roll leaving a quote “war is a drug” fading into a scene where a robot is laying a charge to create a controlled explosion of an improvised explosive device (IED) when it fails. The sergeant suits up and goes in, just getting to the kill zone when one of the company spot a civilian with a cell phone who can’t understand their shouts for him to drop it. It triggers the IED, and bomb disposal team have lost a sergeant.

His replacement is staff sergeant William James with a fondness for Ministry, particularly “Fear (Is Big Business)” and “Palestina”. Contrast the latter’s opening “Palestina was a very nice girl/ She liked to travel and sample the world…” with the second verse’s “Palestina told her family and friends/ She’d be back, to take her revenge/ Palestina made her mind up to die/ Palestina had a belt of death/ She had explosives strapped to her chest/ Palestina is a martyr now in the sky” and the way the chorus fits both Palestina and James’s lives “My life will be short and sweet.”

JT Sanborn’s first reaction is “He’s reckless”. Eldridge is inclined to agree. However, both have to work with him. On their first trip out together, James doesn’t bother sending in the robot first, but suits up. Finding Sanborn’s constant questioning irritating, James takes off his headphones and mike, so his concentration is solely focused on the IED, which he finds is connected to four more devices. Luckily he manages to isolate the charge so the task is reduced to wire cutting. The scene stretches credibility but sets up James as a risk-taker, Sanborn and Eldridge as resigned to working with him and implicates wider questions. The implication is James prefers to recon a suspect device himself rather than rely on a robot that can only see and report, not read a scene or establish the difference between a curious civilian and one who’s carrying a detonator.

A second incident sees the bomb disposal team turn up as an area is evacuated. A suspect device is in a car. James suits up and goes in whilst Sanborn and Eldridge are delegated to watch for snipers and potential remote detonators. Eldridge spies a civilian with a video camera and complains he doesn’t want to end up on You Tube. Sanborn sees three guys in a minaret apparently communicating with the cameraman. James has abandoned the suit so that he can climb in and out of the car and rip up the seat easier. The charge is found and IED isolated. Later that day a colonel asks James how many bombs he’s disarmed. James responds that he can’t remember but the colonel insists on an answer. Clearly thinking off the top of his head, James says “Eight hundred and seventy-three,” which would equate to three IEDs a day. That the colonel is amazed rather than incredulous non didactically illustrates the gap between those in command and those on the ground.

The rotation continues. Searching for an IED, the team find a hastily-left temporary camp and a dead boy left lying in blood-soaked clothes: the one gory scene in the film. Bigelow doesn’t shy away from death and injury but the focus is towards the people left behind, the people still fighting to survive today, whether civilian or soldier. Sanborn’s reaction is to get inexperienced Eldridge out but James hesitates as his instinct tells him there’s something the boy’s hiding. He’s proved right. That evening he phones his ex-wife who’s trying to put their toddler son to bed but can’t find anything to say.

But the team aren’t just about disposing of found unexploded devices but also investigating post-explosion. An apparent suicide bomb is detonated and the team are sent in to establish whether it was a suicide bomb or remotely detonated. Sanborn thinks the latter and recommends leaving it to the infantry to search for snipers. James decides it’s the former and commands them to carry out a brief search that almost results in Eldridge’s capture. Yet, in another incident James recognises that even he can’t detonate a bomb in time and clears the area before it explodes. So the recklessness is underlined by a self-preservation instinct.

At the end of the rotation, Sanborn reckons he’s done. Realistically the rotation is shown as a series of incidents with no story or narrative behind it. There’s no pattern behind where the devices are left. Some are clearly the product of organised groups attempting to terrorise people into fighting, others are left behind after an evacuation and seemingly forgotten, others are used by suicide bombers. This is a country where goat herders carry guns, young boys throw stones at American armoured vehicles and people are suspicious; perhaps damaged beyond rebuilding in any semblance of peace. Like a poem, the film focuses on one team of bomb disposal experts to tell a wider story.

James returns to his home, his ex-wife rescuing him in a supermarket by suggesting he come for dinner as he’s completely flummoxed by the choice of cereals. He casually mentions Iraq is short of bomb disposal experts. It’s no surprise when the next scene shows him returning to Iraq and suiting up before approaching another suspected IED, soundtracked by Ministry’s “Khyber Pass”, “Where’s Bin Laden/ Where’s Bin Laden/ He’s probably runnin’/ Probably hidin’/ Some say he’s livin’ at the Khyber Pass/ Others say he’s at the Bushes’ ranch.” The unspoken last word is that opening quote.

The Day the Earth Stood Still – movie review

Director Scott Derrickson, Keanu Reeves (Klaatu), Jennifer Connelly (Dr Helen Benson), Jaden Smith (Jacob Benson), Kathy Bates (US Defense Secretary Regina Jackson)

I’ve not seen the original so am taking this remake on its own merits.  The US military track a “natural object” heading towards earth, but it’s not following a meteor trajectory and is heading for Manhattan and therefore is not a natural object.  A group of scientists is gathered by the military, including astrobiologist Dr Helen Benson, to deal with the aftermath.  A giant sphere lands and is immediately surrounded by the military.  The scientists, in protective suits, approach, a being emerges and is shot by a trigger-happy soldier.  In hospital the being enters a nascent state and is reborn as human or something like it.  The US Defense Secretary wants the being sedated and transferred to a military unit so it can be interrogated.  The scientists don’t.  But the US Defense Secretary, knowing that military satellites were disabled so the sphere could land, knows the being is more intelligent than humans and whenever a more intelligent life form invades, the less intelligent residents tend to get annihilated.  Dr Helen Benson offers to sedate and accompany the being, however, swaps the sedation dose for a harmless saline.  The being, Klaatu, escapes, naturally having the advantage of a few special powers and joins up with Dr Helen Benson who thinks she’s helping especially when Klaatu claims to be saving the earth, failing to realise he means the planet, not the people on it.  It’s then a race for Dr Helen Benson and stepson Jacob to persuade Klaatu to stop the destruction of the human race.

Others have accused Keanu Reeves of woodenness but they’ve fallen for the cliché.  Klaatu is necessarily dispassionate: he’s observing a race that’s about to be obliterated to save the planet.  He can’t afford to connect.  But he discovers he likes Bach, so there’s room for manoeuvre, right?  Jennifer Connelly does well initially to move from bafflement to scientific curiosity but then seems stuck.  Klaatu notices a change in Dr Helen Benson but that change isn’t obvious to the audience.  Jaden Smith starts out as a typically annoying child thwarting his stepmother’s efforts, but then we see he’s still grieving for his late father and doesn’t see things the way she does.  The change Klaatu notices comes when Jacob accepts his father’s death and finally sees his stepmother as his adult protector and stops being annoying.  Kathy Bates deserves a meatier role then being forced to follow orders she doesn’t agree with.  The special effects are well done too: from the scale of the spheres to the detail of the swarms. 

But the film’s weakness lies in its pedestrian pace.  It feels like a series of scenes that hasn’t quite cohered into a whole.  It lacks a sense of danger.  Even though we see cities evacuating – large scale tailbacks of cars, not individual families packing and leaving – and we know Klaatu could stop the destruction, there’s no sense of foreboding.  Just a sense of the inevitable.  The ending peters out as if the director decided “Hey, we better stop here.”  An average film that could have been better, but that’s not the fault of the actors.

Street Kings

Director David Ayer, starring Keanu Reeves (Detective Tom Ludlow), Forest Whittaker (Captain Jack Wander), Hugh Laurie (Captain James Briggs), Terry Crews (Detective Terrance Washington).

Tom Ludlow is a rule-bending cop who nonetheless gets results because he kids himself he’s past caring and regularly tops himself up with vodka. His wife died after a brain haemorrhage but was in another man’s bed at the time. Ludlow only has a job because his captain’s prepared to keep the line and defines the truth as how you look at it. Familiar territory to James Ellroy, who co-wrote the script. His mark is also all over the staccato pace and macho dialogue that’s spat rather than said.

Ludlow’s ex-partner, Detective Washington, has reported him to Internal Affairs. Following Washington into a store, Ludlow becomes involved in a shoot out with two local thugs. The thugs are identified as Fremont and Coates but drugs were found in Washington’s car, implying he was selling on drugs taken as evidence. Off-duty Ludlow finds the bodies of Fremont and Coates, the state of the bodies mean they were clearly murdered long before Detective Washington was fatally shot. His captain, Wander, urges Ludlow to “turn the page and close the book” but Ludlow’s girlfriend says he shouldn’t turn his back on Washington. Giving a man who believes he has nothing to lose a sense of purpose is dangerous if you want to keep the status quo. Doesn’t take Ludlow long to work out he’s a pawn, but the question is whose and will it corrupt him in the process?

Keanu Reeves is credible as a grieving man fighting a losing battle with the chaos around him who knows he can’t trust anyone. Forest Whitaker as the politically ambitious captain, who regards knowing the dirt on everyone including his own unit as an insurance policy, is manic, slightly over-played now and then. Hugh Laurie reprises House albeit less grumpily but it’s a way of signalling to a British audience that he’s serious here. Terry Crews’ Washington is well-judged, a man who thought that the means didn’t matter if the end result was desirable but becomes sickened by the stench of corruption and coverts to an evangelist for Internal Affairs and at the same time can’t understand why his fellow cops don’t follow him.

The pace is intense. The action nonstop. And it stays that way as the plot twists and turns through the multi-ethnic mayhem and macho angst. It questions whether when you’re dealing with corruption and law-breaking on a daily basis don’t you become tainted too? Where corruption is rife, who’s the good guy? And just how wide a line separates police from criminal? Where are the women? Washington’s widow believes he was a good man but is packing for a new life elsewhere. Ludlow’s girlfriend is a slightly-drawn character who chides him for only seeing her when he gets shot. No surprise she’s also a nurse and hence knows her role in his life only too well. Frenetic but worth sticking with.

Control

Control

Director Anton Corbjn, starring Sam Riley (Ian Curtis) and Samantha Morton (Deborah Curtis)

I’d put off watching (and reviewing) this movie because I was wary of how a familiar story would be told and whether I’d recognise the characters portrayed on screen.  I never met Joy Division but have read Deborah Curtis’s “Touching from a Distance” on which the film was based.  I needn’t have worried.

A film fills a finite time: it cannot portray every single event in 23 years. What it can do is capture and convey aspects of the subject: pictures that may have to bend small truths to tell a greater one.  “Control”, atmospherically shot in monochrome, starts with school boy Ian dating Deborah and joining Warsaw, a band in search of a singer.  It ends with his death.  It’s not a cheerful story, although there is humour on the way.  Ian Curtis’s black humour isn’t captured here: Anton Corbjn prefers a moody, brooding Curtis.  Manager Rob Gretton (played by Toby Kebbell) is used as light relief.

Sam Riley catches Curtis’s persona well – the on-stage jerks and twitches, his confusion developing into despair as he sinks into inertia.  Curtis didn’t know he was epileptic until he had a grand mal attack after a gig.  One of the side-effects of the medication he was on to control his seizures was mental confusion.  Sam Riley creates that both believably, with empathy and without self-pity. 

Samantha Morton is the Deborah of “Touching from a Distance”.  Her consistent support and love for Ian are shown.  Ian couldn’t cope with a day job and playing gigs at night so Deborah took on a job so Ian could stop working.  Deborah accepted she would effectively be a single parent to their daughter Natalie as Ian toured with the band while she was left at home.  The film touches on that too: how she as a wife was excluded from gigs and from being with the band because it was thought she would be detrimental to the band’s image.  She turns up at one gig whilst heavily pregnant and even her husband asks if she should be there “in her condition”.  The question isn’t directly asked, but if Deborah had been allowed on tour, would Ian have had an affair with Belgian fanzine writing, Annik?  Ian develops two lives, a home life with Deborah and Natalie and a touring life with lover Annik.  He oscillates between the two women.  He drops out of a tour, too confused to continue.

There’s a dichotomy at the heart of every suicide.  It’s both a selfless act and a selfish one.  The suicide thinks he’s ridding others of a burden, yet those left behind have lost a loved one.  Deborah screams.  Annik collapses.  The film’s closing shot focuses on a crematorium chimney: tall, clothed in grey, jerking out smoke against clouds.

Naturally, the soundtrack’s brilliant.  The film seeks to tell its story, but not tell viewers how to think.  Ian may have behaved immaturely, but he was only 23.  If you don’t know his story, “Control” is a good starting point.  But don’t forget to check out the music.

“The Dark Knight” – Movie Review

Directed by Christopher Nolan. Starring Christian Bale (Batman/Bruce Wayne), Heath Ledger (Joker), Maggie Gyllenhaal (Rachel Dawes), Aaron Eckhart (Harvey Dent/Two Face), Michael Caine (Alfred)

 

Dark indeed, Gotham is in the grip of the mob, Gordon knows his own police officers are corrupt, Batman’s inspired bat-suited vigilantes and now there’s a Joker in the pack.

Joker was always Batman’s nemesis. Joker never had a plan but was an intelligent opportunist who aimed to cause mayhem. He didn’t want money or power so couldn’t be corrected. The only option was to dump him in the Arkham Asylum until his next escape. Practically the opposite of Batman who never had a plan but was an intelligent opportunist intent on cleaning up Gotham. He didn’t want money or power so couldn’t be corrupted. Batman feared Joker the most because he was the only criminal who made Batman question what he was doing, whether he was helping or hindering Gotham’s efforts to clean up.

Hence much being made of Harvey Dent, the new DA, being Gotham’s White Knight. A man Gotham could really believe in. A man who didn’t hide behind a mask, but was highly visible, his face all over news broadcasts and papers. Aaron Eckhart balances the surface, cocky, ambitious lawyer and the deeper desire to make Gotham a place where love can flourish, where he and Rachel can create a family like the Gordons.

It’s Gordon (promoted during the film to Commissioner) who gets to explain that Gotham gets the hero it deserves. Christian Bale captures Batman’s duality: the millionaire playboy and noctural crime-fighter; the outlaw who upholds the law. An Academy Award nomination for Heath Ledger may in part be motivated by sympathy, but it shouldn’t detract from a fine-judged performance. Heath Ledger’s Joker is no cartoon buffoon, but carries a dark intelligence, the instinct for self-preservation and the inability to take responsibility for everything he does. He points out to Harvey Dent that he was in prison when Rachel was captured so it’s not his fault (although it was his plan). Joker blames Batman for making him who he is and argues the deaths he causes are Batman’s fault (akin to a bomber arguing deaths were the fault of the police for failing to decode the bomb’s location and disarm it in time).

It is a violent film and the violence is mainly hidden by explosions, but not a gory one. Joker does carry a knife and does menace people with it. He always did: guns are too quick and don’t give him time to explain how he got his scars that make him look as if he’s always smiling. And it’s never the same story twice. Joker’s hollow laugh is the theme of “The Dark Knight”. Worth watching, but it’s not a children’s film. It was rated PG-13 in the US, but a 12A here when a 12 would have made more sense.

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1408

The Lake House

1408

Director Mikael Håfström, John Cusack (Mike Enslin), Mary McCormack (Lily Enslin), Samuel L Jackson (Gerald Olin, hotel manager).  Rating: US PG-13 / UK 15

Mike Enslin told his wife he was “goin’ out for some cigarettes”. He didn’t come back. Instead he gave up smoking and embarked on a book, “Ten Nights in Ten Haunted Hotel Rooms”, beginning each night by placing an unlit cigarette in the ashtray before rendering another dull night in sparklingly cynical prose. So a hotel room that’s seen 56 paranormally-induced deaths since 1912 – excluding deaths from natural causes, ie strokes and heart attacks – sounds like an ideal final chapter.

So far John Cusack plays to type, selfish, wisecracking loser, but then the alarm clock radio bursts into The Carpenters’ “We’ve only just begun” and starts counting down from 60 minutes. “No guest lasts more than an hour,” Mike Enslin helpfully repeats the hotel manager’s warning. The tension racks up as escape routes are closed off and we’re left with the claustrophobic room of Mike Enslin’s headspace. If you prefer blood and gore, wait for Rob Zombie’s remake of “Hallowe’en”. If you like being scared, check into room 1408. John Cusack makes it watchable as he moves from cynicism, being startled, scared, grief-stricken to almost relief as the hour counts down towards its close (of course there’s a twist, but I’m giving it away). The horrors aren’t random. Mike Enslin thoughtfully packs a night-vision Luma-lite which reveals blood-splatters from previous guests and we get to see how some of them used the “express check out service”. But we also learn why he left his wife. Anyone familiar with Stephen King’s work may guess the ending, but John Cusack makes you root for him as 1408 imposes its final choice.

The tension does dissipate as Mikael Håfström takes us out of the room on a red herring, conveniently signalled by the colour red. But John Cusack, who once commented that a good film stays with him “like a fever dream for a long time afterwards”, would be justified in feeling that fever dream. A welcome addition to the horror oeuvre.

The Lake House

Director: Alejandro Agresti, starring Sandra Bullock (as Kate) and Keanu Reeves (as Alex).

The key is Kate’s casual mention that her favourite book is “Persuasion”. Jane Austen’s plot has young Anne Elliott persuaded to break off her engagement to a man with few apparent prospects. Years later their paths cross. He is now a successful man. She is still single and taking a chief role in nursing sick friends and soothing familial troubles. Both still carry a flame for each other, but can they be persuaded to rekindle their romance?

Kate moves out of the Lake House having transferred in her job to a new hospital, leaving a note for the next tenant. Alex moves in, being the architect overseeing a new local housing development. He finds Kate’s references to non existent paw prints and a box in the attic that’s not there baffling. Kate’s forwarding address is a building site. He’s living in 2004 but Kate’s letter is dated 2006.

Alex sticks a reply in the mail box and gets a reply from Kate, who’s driven out to an empty Lake House to check the mail box. Thus begins a correspondence. Kate follows Alex’s instructions for a tour of the key architectural features of their town. Alex begins reading Kate’s favourite books (Jane Austen’s Anne Elliott also makes literary recommendations). Kate confides to her mother and co-worker she’s corresponding to a boyfriend to ward off pressure not to be single. Alex confides to his brother that Kate feels more real to him than any other woman he’s been with.

Eventually they figure they had met before. Kate’s then boyfriend threw a party attended by Alex. Kate and Alex shared a kiss but went their separate ways. Both had met the right person but at the wrong time. Now’s the right time, but can they find a way of getting together?

The film relies heavily on its charm. The correspondence device seems quaint. Kate’s reading and letter writing in contrast to her hectic hospital work are credible. But Alex is more a Blackberry man yet beguiled by her letters. The film feels lengthy as the pacing is slow, yet, after most over-long films it’s clear which scenes should have been cut, but here it’s difficult to decide. It’s strange then that the only hurried section is the crucial scenes where Kate and Alex finally work out how to get together as if the director doesn’t quite trust the plot.

Otherwise each scene fits seamlessly with the others. The film’s a slow-burner: a contrast with the ‘notice me’ demands of a star vehicle or a technology budget greater than the actors’ salaries. Hence guaranteed to draw a mixed reaction from critics who focused on reinforcing their prejudices of the actors.

But the film’s charm is Jane Austen’s. She lets her characters meander around their daily lives. Anne Elliott’s resignation and jadedness is captured well in Sandra Bullock’s moody mid-distance stares and wan face. Pity she doesn’t reanimate as Anne Elliott did when around her ex-fiancé. Keanu Reeves does all the work here, chasing, rekindling, fanning the flames of a slow burning fire. Read “Persuasion” and watch “The Lake House” again.