Tag Archives: Crime

Renaissance  (2006)    61/100

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Rating :   61/100                                                                     105 Min        15

The most striking aspect of this animation is its austere use of black and white contrasts, which initially made it a little painful to watch (lights had to be turned off as a necessity) but come the end I was thoroughly enjoying its unique style. If you were to imagine a beautifully inked noir graphic novel suddenly come to life as a series of moving pictures before you, this is exactly what you would see. The title refers to the literal meaning of the French word, rebirth, and the story takes place in Paris in the year 2054, where we see a young woman being kidnapped and a hard boiled cop enjoined to track her down.

Daniel Craig voices the lead, and as always with animation there is the inherent distraction of time spent thinking ‘I know that voice! Who is it, hmm…’ and the satisfaction of finally getting there (or the irritation of not), to help everyone along, there is a connection linking the hero to the villain, and again from the villain to the guy in the middle. The plot revolves around the disappearance of the girl and the cosmetics company she works for, unfolding in very traditional film noir style. Enter the role of the disappeared’s sister, and the worst elements of the film are revealed, as suddenly both the dialogue and its delivery, along with the concepts, nose dive into a corny and ill developed pastiche of the genre.

It’s not gripping, but it does have a lot of credible artistry to it. Fans of different styles of animation (a combination of motion capture and 3D computer graphics were used here) will probably get more out of it than followers of film noir will, but it’s probably still worth a look in for both.

Kick-Ass 2  (2013)    65/100

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Rating :   65/100                                                                     103 Min        15

The sequel to ‘Kick-Ass’, one of the most popular films of 2010, sees a return of the cast, but not director Matthew Vaughn, who instead personally selected the relatively inexperienced Jeff Wadlow to step behind the cameras and also write the screenplay. Oddly, the change in director isn’t particularly noticeable, a testimony to Wadlow and his adherence to both the previous film and the comic book source material, from Scottish writer Mark Miller.

For the series Miller has openly stated that the story is autobiographical, primarily in that when he was young, he and his pals decided to actually train to become superheroes. Eventually, reality kicked in and they changed their minds, but when writing the comics his desire to play with this concept together with his founding love of the genre produced a curious, violent, blend – central character ‘Kick-Ass’ with no powers whatsoever, trying to fight crime and often being brutalised in the process, and other characters like ‘Hit-Girl’, a schoolgirl with deadly fighting skills and an unparalleled eloquence for one-liners, who is for all intents and purposes a real superhero. Therein lies the founding problem with the series on the big screen – it’s a fun blend, but one constantly compromised by the need to get the balance spot on, an all but impossible task that sucks the heart out of the story, leaving the supporting characters, like Hit-Girl, a lot more interesting than the fraudulently motivated central one.

‘Kick-Ass 2’ sees a raft of people don capes and spandex and take to the streets to fight crime, all after being inspired by the exploits in the first movie, and Kick-Ass finds himself in a sort of very low-key Avengers style gang. Here, the aforementioned balance is constantly rattled around, with severe and dire consequences applied via a layer of gloss. A scene involving the killing of a dog was removed from the film, as was a rape scene – although the footage left in the film suggests the only reason the rape doesn’t happen is because the villain can’t get it up at the time. It’s all a little too much – sensible deletions for the sake of trying to focus on a fun, comedy comic book film, and yet it leaves the feeling of something sinister that isn’t quite being given the serious treatment it needs.

Jim Carrey has a fantastic cameo (much like he did in ‘The Incredible Burt Wonderstone’) as Colonel Stars and Stripes, but has since distanced himself from the film in the wake of the Sandy Hook shootings. This is the statement he released;

“I did Kick-Ass a month before Sandy Hook and now in all good conscience I cannot support that level of violence. My apologies to others involved with the film. I am not ashamed of it but recent events have caused a change in my heart.”

And the response from Chloë Grace Moretz (who plays Hit-Girl);

“It’s a movie. If you are going to believe and be affected by an action film, you shouldn’t go to see ‘Pocahontas’ because you are going to think you are a Disney princess. If you are that easily swayed, you might see ‘The Silence of the Lambs’ and think you are a serial killer. It’s a movie and it’s fake, and I’ve known that since I was a kid… I don’t want to run around trying to kill people and cuss. If anything, these movies teach you what not to do. Each to their own. I respect [Carrey’s] decision.”                Source : Huffington Post

Interestingly, the penciller for the comics, John Romita Jr, has talked about the violence he has to depict, saying he morally never thought he would be drawing the stuff, but he frankly loves the characters and the fact that it has become a movie – it’s now a guilty pleasure for him. That sort of encapsulates the difficult duality of the thing. Personally I love Hit-Girl arriving and dicing the bad guys (this film is just as gory as the first one) but there’s a definite conceit, an uneasiness to everything. Kick-Ass decides to go back to crime fighting simply because he’s bored, for example, which is a little too convenient after the events of the first film, and here the police seem a little too relaxed about allowing several teams of costumed vigilantes roam the streets – not to mention the fact real superheroes regardless of their costume would make every effort not to be noticed by the public, not withstanding the likes of Iron Man.

Aaron Taylor-Johnson returns as the titular hero, with Christopher Mintz-Plasse, as was hinted at the end of part one, becoming the bad guy – ‘The Motherfucker’. There’s a host of other bad guys who aren’t given enough screen time and barely get one line each, and indeed the climax is nowhere near as good as in its predescessor. Ultimately, it’s wayward but enjoyable, and it still left me in the mood to watch Batman again, which is no bad thing. Part three is being written as the finale. I suspect there will not be much of a happy ending.

2 Guns  (2013)    63/100

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Rating :   63/100                                                                     109 Min        15

Mark Wahlberg teams up again with his Icelandic ‘Contraband’ (10) director Baltasar Kormákur, starring opposite Denzel Washington in a film adaptation of Steven Grant’s comic book series, that also hails back to Hollywood’s perhaps excessive history of crime/cop ‘buddy’ films. Here, Wahlberg’s Stig is the undercover Naval intelligence officer foil to Washington’s Bobby, an undercover DEA (Drug Enforcement Administration) agent, and only after they rob a bank together at the beginning does each begin to realise who the other really is, but by this point one particularly interested and rather pissed off bank customer (Bill Paxton) would really like his money back.

Some of the editing is a little ropey, and likewise some of the action explodes perfunctorily, but it is reasonably good fun, largely thanks to the charisma of the two leading men and their obvious ease with, and enjoyment of, each others company. James Marsden, Edward James Olmos and Paula Patton (‘Mission: Impossible – Ghost Protocol’ 2011) appear in support, and the whole is a decent if perhaps unmemorable addition to the back catalogue of like examples, except for one scene that stands out featuring a bunch of Mexicans shooting at some chickens they’ve buried in the sand so that only their heads are sticking up. Stig’s dialogue briefly becomes the voice of the audience in outrage, and it’s not especially pleasant to watch. Poor things. Not sure if psychologically damaged chickens would, ahem, fall foul of the standard “No Animals Were Harmed” in the making of this motion picture, a phrase that American films using animals have run at the end of the credits (courtesy of American Humane Association legislation).

RED 2  (2013)    70/100

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Rating :   70/100                                                                     116 Min        12A

The sequel to 2010’s RED (which stands for retired and extremely dangerous) features the return of the stellar cast, most of whom you can probably identify from their silhouettes in the above picture (if you can’t, the answers from left to right are: Byung-hun Lee, John Malkovich, Catherine Zeta-Jones, Bruce Willis, Mary-Louise Parker, Anthony Hopkins, and Helen Mirren), and the revival of an old cold war project, together with the resultant attempts of various parties to assassinate principal characters, and ex CIA agents, Frank Moses (Willis) and Marvin Boggs (Malkovich).

An action comedy with the emphasis on the comedy – it’s good fun, I’d say more so than the first one even, and just like its predecessor it’s obvious the cast are enjoying themselves. Indeed, the scene I remember the most about the previous film (asides from Helen Mirren lasciviously firing some sort of Gatling gun – she gets a sniper rifle in this one and enjoys it just as much, in fact altogether she looks pretty damn hot for a women in her late sixties {see ‘Age of Consent‘ (69) if you are a fan of Dame Mirren}) was when Morgan Freeman and Bruce Willis’ characters meet for the first time, each sporting beaming smiles, like two giants of their industry respectfully acknowledging the other (I assume they have appeared onscreen before this, although I can’t off the top of my head think when, hmm …. seems there were two films, see if you can get them both {answers at the end}). The story serves its purpose just fine, but it’s already worth going to see just for the cast alone. Willis has expressed interest in a third installment (meanwhile he has not been rehired for The Expendables 3, after supposedly asking for $1m a day for his services  {but Harrison Ford is on board, along with Jackie Chan, Wesley Snipes and Nicolas Cage}), on the back of this The Red Dragon hopes that’s one sequel that will get the go ahead.

Films starring Morgan Freeman and Bruce Willis – RED 2010, Lucky Number Slevin 2006, Bonfire of the Vanities 1990

P.S. The next Die Hard film has been given a title – Die Hardest. Oh yes.

Only God Forgives  (2013)    61/100

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Rating :   61/100                                                                       90 Min        18

Danish writer/director Nicolas Winding Refn’s latest film comes exactly two years after his phenomenally successful ‘Drive’, and once again features Ryan Gosling in a central role, together with sharp ultra high resolution digital camera work (specifically, using the Arri Alexa), and more stylised and brutal violence. This is a lot more surrealist than Drive was, with the story set in Thailand and focusing on a pair of American brothers who run a boxing gym as their legitimate business enterprise, with all manner of things going on behind the scenes. When one of them commits a particularly heinous crime, it sets in motion a whirlwind of bloody acts, which also draws their mother, played by Kristin Scott Thomas, reluctantly from the States and into the fray.

It is the backstory of Gosling’s character Julian, one of the brothers, that really anchors the piece, and indeed the entire film could be viewed as the inevitable cosmic consequence of what he has done. Or, perhaps, what his psyche does to itself, as feeding into this, it is not always apparent whether what we are viewing is really happening, or is simply the visualisation of Julian’s thoughts, fears, and desires. With ‘Drive’, I really didn’t see what all the fuss was about, it was essentially a cinematic version of the video game ‘Grand Theft Auto : San Andreas’, and anyone familiar with the game would likely not find anything terribly original in the film. This time around, however, I am a fan of what I think the director was trying to achieve. He has certainly been successful with the stylisation of the local Thai police investigator Chang (Vithaya Pansringarm) who operates throughout like a nihilistic ninja, a personification of consequence enforcing the balance of nature via murder.

Unfortunately, the film does suffer from several over indulgences, and a heavy dose of gratuity when it comes to the violence – some of which is arguably necessary, but, as with several instances in Tarantino’s career (or, worse yet, Eli Roth), there will come moments that have you wonder whether their inclusion has more to do with childish bloodlust rather than story. The beginning suffers the most from that dreaded criticism of art house fare – laughability, as parts, in between the segments of gritty horror that this film depicts, just seem a bit silly. It reminds The Red Dragon of a version of Chekhov’s Three Sisters that he once seen onstage where the actors constantly stopped and stood still for ages in complete silence (this was supposed to be for reflection, but made the piece over three hours long, and when one is a dragon trapped in the centre of the Grand Circle for what seems like an eternity whilst absolutely nothing happens onstage at all, one very quickly gets HUNGRY, a state of being which my insatiable insides decided to announce to THE ENTIRE AUDITORIUM for the duration of the play. My stomach, in fact, became the narrator for Chekhov’s Three Sisters), something similar happens here – this is most definitely not a film to take lots of popcorn, or food in general, into.

These points aside, I am absolutely in love with the cameras they used, which show everything in pristine detail and manage to make what is probably otherwise an average grubby looking street, appear quite beautiful onscreen, a combined success of equipment and the strong and memorable choice of lighting used throughout. The acting is equally sharp, with Kristin Scott Thomas in particular giving a truly powerful and domineering performance, wielding her character with a crackling vehemence, one given extra gravitas and authority by a commanding American accent.

Worthy of note for what it attempts to do, though do be prepared for sanguine and despotic darkness from start to finish and it remains to be seen whether its misgivings will be bumps in the road for Nicolas Winding Refn, or will entrench themselves into stylistic trademarks. It also seems likely that the director may have delved into Thai cinema for research, certainly the feel of the editing and some of the shots used evoke memories of the work of Apichatpong Weerasethakul, and his Palme d’Or winner ‘Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall His Past Lives’ (10). Just like ‘Drive’ before it, the film is dedicated to the (still living) Chilean-French surrealist director Alejandro Jodorowsky, of whose work ‘El Topo’ (70) is absolutely recommended viewing.

The Heat  (2013)    69/100

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Rating :   69/100                                                                     117 Min        15

From Paul Feig, director of 2011’s ‘Bridesmaids’, and starring Melissa McCarthy and Sandra Bullock, ‘The Heat’ is a comedy arising from a very traditional good cop/bad cop buddy routine, with Bullock’s FBI agent Ashburn and McCarthy’s local hard ass Boston cop Mullins forced to combine their various talents to close in on an especially violent drugland boss. The focus is on the comedy throughout, and it constantly delivers the goods – usually by way of the foul mouthed and fierily on form McCarthy. The character of the too straight laced and socially awkward/professionally unliked Ashburn grates on more than one occasion, with very obvious gags such as Mullins trying to loosen her up and make her appear ‘sexy’ to seduce one of the bad guys, and with the general feel of the character evoking memories of several in Bullock’s back catalogue (her Razzie winning role in ‘All About Steve’ 09 for example {although it really wasn’t bad enough to merit a Razzie}).

McCarthy continues to go from comedic strength to strength, using her strong screen presence and her mischievous wit to memorably amusing effect. Should prove both enjoyable, and slightly irritating, in equal measure for both sexes.

The Frozen Ground  (2013)    68/100

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Rating : 68/100                                                                       105 Min        15

Based on the true story of Alaskan serial killer Robert Christian Hansen, and the police investigation to try and ensnare him before he can strike again. John Cusack plays Hansen, with Nicholas Cage as the lawman tasked with sowing the net of evidence against him, and Vanessa Hudgens appears as prostitute Cindy who narrowly survives becoming another homicide victim, but whose testimony is deemed questionable by the authorities due to her profession.

It’s a feature film debut from writer and director Scott Walker, and although it’s not as tense as it could be, it does deliver a successful amount of intrigue as to how they are actually going to manage to prove in a court of law that he is the man they are after (we the audience are left in little doubt as to his guilt from early on). Curiously, one of the worst moments of the film is during the end credits when we see photographs of the real life victims whilst what sounds like a cheery soft rock song plays, which comes across as somewhat disrespectful, though admittedly an understanding of the lyrics may have altered this perception, if it had actually been possible to make them out that is.

The film largely sticks to the real events, and it is at its least successful when deviating from them, certainly with the contrived relationship between Cage and Hudgens’ characters which borders on soap opera and partially necessitates the sidelined character of ‘the wife’, played by Radha Mitchell. Nevertheless, this is a good film for a greenhorn director, chillingly portraying an especially macabre series of killings. See the following documentary for details of the actual events (naturally, this will contain spoilers if you intend on seeing the film too).

Easy Money / Snabba Cash  (2010)    12/100

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Rating : 12/100                                                                       124 Min        15

A Swedish fictional thriller telling an all too familiar tale of rival criminal organisations, this time those of the Stockholm underground. The story focuses on the character of JW, a talented young student who is drawn deeper and deeper into one of the group’s employ, played well here by Joel Kinnaman. The problem is that it’s interminably dull, and there is absolutely nothing about any of the characters that is likely to be of interest to the audience, with the only exception those that are shown to have innocent family members that they care about, that being the case it feels like an entirely false inclusion and is far from an original hook in a film that otherwise substitutes violence for plot, and has little to no humanity. It’s filmed in an ultra modern style, showcasing how it’s possible to use many of the habits trending the world right now to bad effect – the insistence on using orange, blue and green lighting/colouring, the fast and out of sequence editing for no real reason, the unsteady camera, and indeed music that is badly misused and at one point noticeably seems to be stealing ideas from ‘The Dark Knight’ (08).

There are more than a couple of similarities with Tarantino’s work here too, with the kind of irrelevant stories the characters tell and the way we are inserted into them as a voyeur, and, one of the worst parts of the film, a plot device toward the end which is effectively straight from the pages of ‘Pulp Fiction’ (94). It’s from director Daniel Espinosa (‘Safe House’ 2012) and is based on the novel by Jens Lapidus, which became the first part of his ‘Stockholm Noir’ trilogy, and indeed the sequel to this will already be familiar to Swedish audiences, with part three due out later this year. Zac Effron is slated to appear in Hollywood’s upcoming remake. I’m sure it will be great.

The Bling Ring  (2013)    57/100

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Rating : 57/100                                                                         90 Min        15

A bunch of idiots rob another bunch of idiots, in an idiotic fashion, in Sofia Coppola’s latest indie satire on modern celebrity culture. But do we care? Well, it is difficult to. Based on the real story of a group of teenagers that went on a robbery spree in Beverly Hills, targeting their celebrity idols and using the press to find out when they would be out of town. We watch them repeat the same thing over and over again throughout the film, with them leaving a profiler’s dream worth of fingerprints each time and being caught on CCTV on several occasions, with the only male of the group repeatedly saying ‘C’mon guys, we should really get out of here, now!’ and being completely ignored each time resulting in him casually continuing with what they were doing. Too little effort has been made with characterisation, with an emphasis placed on drink, drugs, and music. Having said that though, a large part of this is necessary to illustrate the world they are a product of, indeed to show the only things that are deemed important to them, with fashion and celebrity taking a high precedence, but we know right from the beginning that they do end up in court, even though we only get the briefest glimpse of the aftermath of the criminal proceedings for one of the characters, giving the piece a decidedly flimsy feel to it.

The group of young larcenists represent one side of the symbiotic see-saw that bobs up and down with the vagaries of fame and celebrity. They most notably, and frequently, target the house of Paris Hilton, who allowed the film crew to use her actual house in the movie, effectively letting her use ‘The Bling Ring’ as another publicity vehicle, and no doubt making a nice profit from the shoot in the process. It’s a clever move for her, so long as it doesn’t result in copycat robberies, or a sort of rite of passage for young bratlings to break into her house. A great deal of irony in the film itself then, but overall it simply becomes very tedious watching the group do the same thing over and over again for the duration of the film, something which wasn’t overly interesting in the first place.

Now You See Me  (2013)    69/100

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Rating : 69/100                                                                       115 Min        12A

This film is a lot of fun, but it is let down by the trailer to a large degree, and the suspense it successfully builds begins to decidedly peter out toward the final act. Dave Franco (younger brother of James Franco), Jesse Eisenberg, Isla Fisher and Woody Harrelson all play magicians who come together to form an ensemble act, cumulatively, and bombastically, calling themselves the Four Horsemen. After one of their shows sees them use their powers to commit theft on a grand scale, the authorities are called in (here in the guise of Mark Ruffalo, joined by the sultry Melanie Laurent), but who is behind the group and what is their ultimate goal? Equally, how real, or how magic, is the magic? Well, I won’t ruin that element, but the film doesn’t take itself too seriously, and the twists and turns aren’t all that hidden – we’re given hints to what’s coming all the way through, but we’re also told that most magic is simply misdirection …. (also with Michael Caine and Morgan Freeman in support).