Tag Archives: Thrillers

Argo  (2012)    31/100

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Rating :   31/100                                                                     120 Min        15

The sheer and unequivocal arrogance of this film is grotesque and abhorrent to say the least, as the filmmakers rewrite a now well documented piece of history giving the American authorities credit for other people’s bravery and work, and making cheap political digs at Iran’s expense in the process.

Leaving aside the factual debacle for the moment, the film follows the events surrounding the storming of the American embassy, and subsequent hostage taking of the diplomats, in Tehran in 1979 by a mob of angry Iranians (many of them students) over Jimmy Carter’s decision to allow sanctuary in the States to the deposed Iranian Shah. During the panic a small group of Americans managed to get away and find secret refuge with Canadian diplomats elsewhere in the city. CIA exfiltration expert Tony Mendes (Ben Affleck – also the director of the film) is hired to think of a way to get them out of the country, and comes up with the notion of passing them off as a Canadian film crew, location scouting for a new, fake, Sci-Fi film entitled ‘Argo’. The rest of the film follows that escape attempt.

The style and feel of the film is accessible and noteworthy, with a lot of attention being paid to the fashion and trends of the day, and a decent amount of humour has been sewn into the script for the first half of the film. The direction is also well paced and involving for the first half, music is well used throughout, and there exist a lot of nice touches, especially with the fake Sci-Fi movie, even if some of them feel a little too modern, such as the robot they create for it. It is perhaps easy to see why people in the industry love this film, as we get a glimpse of the behind the scenes world of Hollywood via Oscar winning makeup artist and CIA helper John Chambers (John Goodman) who aids the set up of Argo to look authentic, one of the few things it gets historically correct. There are more than one or two digs at Hollywood as an industry, and nods in the Academy’s direction with mention of multiple Oscar winners ‘Network’ and ‘Kramer versus Kramer’ (‘Argo’ itself is nominated for seven Academy Awards, including best picture).

The film suffers a severe problem with its marketing, in that if you’ve seen the trailer, you can pretty safely infer several key things about the film. With that in mind, a lot of the tension that Affleck tries to create feels entirely artificial. This is taken to the point of lunacy as, despite the fact they have been in hiding for seventy nine days, about four or five things converge at pretty much the exact moment in time in order to try and escalate the tension as much as possible, but to say it’s unbelievable would be like saying it’s a little chillier in space than it is here on Earth. At one point an Iranian guard has a huge rant in Farsi at a befuddled Affleck and co even though we’ve already been told these members of the military were likely educated in the west, and sure enough we later hear him speaking in English, all purely so the situation seems more extreme. It ends up being much the same as watching an action film where the hero escapes by always being one second faster than the hail of bullets and explosions dogging his shadow, and by the lack of any real intelligence in the bad guys.

Purely viewed as entertainment and ignoring history completely, I would rate this somewhere in the lower sixties. However, what this film has done with history simply cannot be ignored. Jimmy Carter has said himself in interview with Piers Morgan (something showing in itself a lack of political savvy) that ninety percent of the entire rescue operation was Canadian, whereas ‘Argo’ would have us believe that statistic belonged wholesale to the U.S. administration. A secondary great evil is that in the film it is stated very clearly that both New Zealand and The United Kingdom refused to give sanctuary to the American diplomats, something which is an outright disgraceful lie, both countries actively helped – one of those involved in the events, Bob Anders, said after seeing the film “They put their lives on the line for us. We were all at risk. I hope no one in Britain will be offended by what’s said in the film. The British were good to us and we’re forever grateful.” How in the name of hell do George Clooney and co. (he is one of the producers) think it is ok to rewrite history as they see fit? I mean, they have actually stated the very polar opposite of what actually happened, both here and generally (although Tony Mendez did come up with the Argo idea and did work for the CIA). Affleck has said that he lied about the other countries involvement as he wanted to show that these people had nowhere else to go, but since they ended up with the Canadians eventually, because everyone agreed it was becoming too dangerous everywhere else anyway, why in the name of bloody hell don’t they just tell the truth!!! The Red Dragon watches a good many films, and when it comes to history in the movies you learn to always take it with a pinch of salt, however even I, though I thought it strange, was inclined to believe them when they said sanctuary was denied because it is presented as fact, and it’s the sort of thing that you think well surely they wouldn’t make that up?

This is just the beginning of the gross make believe that was put into the film, indeed, almost everything in the second half is a complete fabrication. Including the Iranians forcing children in a sweat shop at gun point to reassemble shredded mug shots of the consulate staff – there were no mug shots, and consular documents were reassembled by the Iranian students who could read English. There are several ironies here too, one being when Alan Arkin’s character (another fiction by the way) bemoans the Canadians taking the credit for the operation, and another the efforts taken to make the actors playing those in hiding look like their real life counterparts as they show during the end credits – if they are going to go to those lengths for cosmetic details which do not matter ultimately why in the name of God not make the actual story accurate, or for that matter cast Affleck as Mendez who is in fact Mexican? Indeed, in reality it seems Mr Mendez, come the day of the actual exfiltration, slept in by half an hour, and had to actually be woken up by one of the New Zealand diplomats that the film claims turned the Americans away! See the Guardian article here for more details.

Another outrageous lie is delivered via a sinister choice of quote from Jimmy Carter, also as the end credits play, as he states “Eventually we got every hostage back home safe and sound, and we upheld the integrity of our country and we did it peacefully” – this is with regard to the remaining hostages who were the ones actually seized by the Iranians and properly held captive, whose fate ‘Argo’ makes no other reference too. Well, in reality the Americans attempted a military rescue which was a complete and unmitigated disaster, resulting in abortion half way through and the death of several American service men and one innocent Iranian civilian. It is generally thought to have been a major factor in Carter losing the presidency later that year, and indeed literally minutes after he had left office, Iran released all the hostages.

This film is an absolute disgrace, and it deserves to be lambasted, not rewarded as, unfortunately, it is in danger of being at the upcoming Oscars. Even its inclusion of a dilapidated Hollywood sign on Lee Hill is ironic as it had actually been repaired by the time of the events depicted, and the film itself represents Hollywood at its most careless. On the back of this we can look forward to Affleck’s next project about the Americans who invented ice hockey, and then his piece on the beginnings of the industrial revolution, in Philadelphia. His last two films (‘The Town’, ‘Gone Baby Gone’) were both great, but if you can’t make the truth work on film, to the point where you’re advocating and propagating a lie, then you have no right to be working in the medium.

Argo fuck yourself Ben Affleck.


Quotes

“’Hmm let’s see. Well, this one’s got an MA in English, she should be your screenwriter. Sometimes they go along on scouts, because they want their free meals. Here’s your director.’ {Chambers}
‘You can teach someone to be a director in a day?’ {Mendez}
‘You can teach a rhesus monkey to be a director in a day.’ {Chambers}” John Goodman/John Chambers and Ben Affleck/Tony Mendez

“So you want to come to Hollywood, and act like a big shot, without actually doing anything? You’ll fit right in.” John Goodman/John Chambers

“If he could act he wouldn’t be playing the minotaur” John Goodman/John Chambers

“Ok, you got six people hiding out in a town of what, four million people all of whom chant death to America all the live long day, you want to set up a movie in a week, you want to lie to Hollywood, a town where everybody lies for a living, then you’re gonna sneak 007 over here into a country that wants CIA blood on their breakfast cereal, and you’re going to walk the Brady Bunch out of the most watched city in the world…. Right. Look, I, I gotta tell you, we did suicide missions in the army that had better odds than this.” Alan Arkin/Lester Siegel

“Hi, I only got a couple of minutes, I’m getting a lifetime achievement award… I’d rather stay home and count the wrinkles on my dog’s balls.” Alan Arkin/Lester Siegel

“If I’m doing a fake movie, it’s going to be a fake hit” Alan Arkin/Lester Siegel

“Well, what can I say. Congratulations. But see, it kinda worries me when you say that, and let me tell you why. Couple of weeks ago I was sitting at Trader Vic’s enjoying a Mai Tai, when my pal Warren Beatty comes in, he wishes me well, we have a little chat. Seems he was attached to star in Zulu Empire, which was going to anchor that MGM slate, but Warren confided in me that the picture’s gone over budget because the Zulu extras want to unionise. They may be cannibals, but they want health and dental so the movie’s kaput, which means that the MGM deal ain’t gonna happen, and your script ain’t worth the buffalo shit on a nickel. So, the way it looks to me, through the cataracts I grant you, is that you can either sign here, and take ten thousand dollars for your toilet paper script, or you can go fuck yourself. With all due respect.” Alan Arkin/Lester Siegel

“Bad news, bad news. Even when it’s good news it’s bad news. John Wayne’s in the ground six months, this is what’s left of America.” Alan Arkin/Lester Siegel

“Fade in on a star ship landing. An exotic middle-Eastern vibe. Women gather offering ecstatic libations to the sky gods. Argo, science fantasy adventure.” Ben Affleck/Tony Mendez

“Hi, my name’s Kevin Harkins and, I’m going to get you home.” Ben Affleck/Tony Mendez

“This is what I do. I get people out. And I’ve never left anyone behind… My name is Tony Mendez, I’m from New York, my father worked construction, my mother teaches elementary school, I have a wife and a ten year old son. You play along with me today I promise you I will get you out tomorrow.” Ben Affleck/Tony Mendez

“Brace yourself, it’s like talking to those two old fucks on the Muppets.” Bryan Cranston/Jack O’Donnell

“This is the best bad idea we have sir, by far.” Bryan Cranston/Jack O’Donnell

A Good Day to Die Hard  (2013)    65/100

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Rating :   65/100                                                                       98 Min        12A

Bruce Willis reprises the role of John McClane that made him officially a movie star way back in 1988 with the original ‘Die Hard’, a movie that set the benchmark for every action film made ever since and became a Christmas/family tradition to watch every year (partly because it’s set at, and aired, every Christmas, and also partly due to a similar tradition set by Joey and Chandler in ‘Friends’).  The original film was followed by ‘Die Hard 2: Die Harder’ 1990, ‘Die Hard with a Vengeance’ 95, and ‘Die Hard 4.0/Live Free or Die Hard’ (also the state motto of New Hampshire incidentally – minus the ‘Hard’ part of course) 07.  All four of the previous films were worthy additions to the canon, featuring the world’s hardest cop vs. money grabbing pseudo terrorists, but what of the fifth one?  Well, it’s a lot more action focused than even its predecessors, and with a relatively short running time a lot of that action is extremely tightly cut, making it quite fast paced but also at times difficult to make out what’s going on.  Perhaps especially true during a huge car chase sequence which is otherwise packed full of impressive stunts, but is mostly reduced to a visual blur and a series of loud metallic crunches.  For a sequence that took weeks of filming, all the effort put into it deserved a better final product.  Similarly there’s a scene where Bruce Willis’ hands go from being tied to being free to beat the hell out of the bad guy, and I guess you’re supposed to assume he unties himself offscreen somehow, but there’s a constant thread of unbelievability throughout the action sequences, and one of the things that made the previous films a success was that even though they were, quite literally, over the top, efforts were made to make it seem plausible.

A plot does exist here, but so much emphasis is placed on the action that it’s been degraded in the process.  John McClane’s kids are alluded to in ‘Die Hard’, but whereas the introduction of his daughter worked with the great story in the fourth instalment, here the appearance of his son, played by Australian actor Jai Courtney (the bad guy in ‘Jack Reacher’), feels a little tawdry and allows for more than one overly cheesy moment, and although the always lovely Mary Elizabeth Winstead appears briefly as the daughter again, she only has about thirty seconds or less screen time.  If they are grooming Jai to take over the franchise they may be in for trouble as although he has the physique of an action star, he is so far lacking the onscreen charisma that would be needed for the role, in a similar way to the general reception of Indy’s son Mutt in the last Indiana Jones film.  The action all takes place in Russia, the latest in a list of Hollywood films to do so (‘Mission Impossible: Ghost Protocol’, ‘Chernobyl Diaries’, ‘The Darkest Hour’, a tiny bit of the last Transformers movie), although it was filmed in Hungary, and anyone who has played ‘Call of Duty’ will see some very familiar scenes in Chernobyl.  Indeed, one can easily imagine the filmmakers sitting playing the game and having a ‘brainwave’, “Hey I know, let’s put John McClane in Chernobyl and have him blow the shit out of it!”.  Hmm.  The game is actually more realistic than the film, with radiation treated as a minor irritation to fitting Chernobyl into the story.

Despite all this, The Red Dragon still gained some nostalgic pleasure from investing in another Die Hard film, but alas it is a mar on a franchise that had thus far put paid to the widely, and falsely, held notion that sequels only dilute the original.  It was a great idea to release the film on Valentine’s Day, but an extremely questionable one to pick a director and a writer (John Moore and Skip Woods respectively) with only a small number of ok-ish films under their belt, including video game adaptations for each of them.  It seems that British audiences have been treated with the disdain of being given a heavily cut version so that the film can have a 12A rating (it’s rated R in the states), which is absolutely disgraceful.  The fact that the director has already started working on his director’s cut suggests he is far from happy with the released version on either side of the Atlantic, and we can hopefully expect to see a better one appearing on dvd in the future.  Good to see the continuation of some of the music from the other films, and indeed a classy Rolling Stones song play over the credits at the end, one knew to The Red Dragon, and one that you can see the video for, featuring Noomi Rapace, below.  If Bruce Willis and company can make number six something special, then all will be forgiven.

Bullet to the head  (2012)    65/100

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Rating :   65/100                                                                       92 Min        15

It is impossible not to think of Rage Against the Machine when reading the title of this film, but unfortunately it misses a trick by not having their song of the same name play at any point. Nonetheless, based on the French graphic novel by Alexis Nolent, this is a fun, no nonsense action flick from director Walter Hill (of ‘The Warriors’, 1979, fame) with the sound effects heavily augmented for extra brutality. Sylvester Stallone is the wronged hitman (with a conscience of course) forced to buddy up with Korean cop Sung Kang to take on the bad guys, primarily in the guise of ‘Conan the Barbarian’ (11) and ‘Game of Thrones’ star Jason Momoa, who stalks around like a solid, skulking chunk of evil (he really is much better suited to play the baddie). Expect stylised violence and one-liners. Good stuff.

Zero Dark Thirty  (2012)    79/100

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Rating :   79/100                                                                     157 Min        15

‘Zero Dark Thirty’ tells the story of how American intelligence operatives tracked down Osama Bin Laden hiding in Abbottabad, Pakistan, in 2011. Or does it? As it deals with the shadowy world of intelligence, we will never quite know unless the official documents are made public (which in Britain happens thirty years after the fact, as per the ‘Thirty Years Rule’). The film is from director Kathryn Bigelow (the first female winner of the best director Oscar for 2008’s ‘The Hurt Locker’) and writer Mark Boal. Originally, the pair had been working on a project surrounding the Battle of Tora Bora in Afghanistan in 2001, which had been a previous military attempt to capture Bin Laden, but when they heard the news of the Abbottabad raid they decided to shelve that project but still use their intelligence contacts and information to form the basis of ‘Zero Dark Thirty’, perhaps sensing they had a foot in the door advantage over anyone else thinking to do the inevitable and dramatise the event on film.

The exact nature of the real intelligence they had access to, and its accuracy, is still a very hot topic of debate in America, with the filmmakers to undergo yet more investigations by the government as confirmed this month and with the Republicans during the last presidential campaign claiming that they breached security protocols and put the intelligence services at risk. Even more contentious is the film’s depiction of the use of torture on suspected terrorist prisoners and the fact that it could be argued that real necessary intel was garnered this way, and indeed whether or not the movie actually promotes torture.

However, this misses the real question. Is it accurate? If the torture and what came from it is entirely true to actual events, then the filmmakers have done their job. If those events are knowingly fictionalised and yet are presented to us as fact, then they have some very serious questions to answer. This is the only point that really matters, but to touch on the debate very slightly, despite the fact some information does get obtained from torture which eventually leads to closing in on the target, it takes the better part of a decade to do so, it’s not exactly displayed as the most effective or efficient method of gathering information by the film, all moral questions aside.

The film walks, successfully, a curious line – keeping us both emotionally distant but involved in the beginning, and slowly reeling us in until cold barrenness finally gives way with the emotion of the main character in the final scene, and quite emotively so after almost three hours of harsh reality. It doesn’t take much more than a simple nod in the right direction for us to invest throughout, as the subject matter is so familiar to everyone. We largely see events through the perspective of female CIA agent Maya, played by Jessica Chastain, a fictional agent but one reportedly based on a real person. Up for an Oscar for the role, she convinces throughout, as do all the supports, though the one scene when the film very consciously tries to ramp up the tension was way too obvious and could have been done much more effectively.

For some real pathos, the cinema I watched this in made a special effort, which was good to see, for a severely disabled man, requiring a machine to breathe, to watch the screening. It was impossible not to consider that he himself may have been involved in the conflict. Provided this is an accurate depiction of real events, it becomes an extremely important film to see as it is an effective and debate provoking reminder of both the capacity for bloodshed in the world, and the difficulties of modern civilisations trying to keep that bloodshed at bay without unduly causing more. Timely with Britain’s announcement over the last couple of days that she is to send troops into Mali: is it part of a larger sensible strategy, or an ego and hopeful ratings boost for one of the most unpopular Prime Ministers the country has ever had (perhaps just as Margaret Thatcher’s public appeal soared with the tides of war {who’s son ran an arms company incidentally})?

Zero dark thirty refers to the military term for half past midnight, and, although I don’t think it’s mentioned in the film, the Abbottabad operation was code-named Operation Neptune Spear, for those of you who like to know mission names. For another film, one which largely flew under the radar, that deals with similar themes of torture and national security see ‘Unthinkable’ (2010) with Samuel L. Jackson and Michael Sheen.

The Last Stand  (2013)    50/100

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Rating :   50/100                                                                     107 Min        15

This has been touted as Arnold Schwarzenegger’s return to the big-screen after his two term, eight year stint as governor of the state of California. Of course, it’s not entirely accurate, as he also appeared in ‘The Expendables’ (2010) and its more action stars per bullet sequel ‘The Expendables 2’. Nevertheless, here he is the main character, the sheriff of a small American town near the Mexican border; a semi-retirement from the horrors of solving crime in Los Angeles. Cue entry of one on-the-run criminal looking to escape south of the border (from the clutches of FBI agent Forest Whitaker), and no second guesses over where he decides to cross.

The film opens with a shot of a police officer in his car eating donuts, from which we can infer it’s either going to be full of stereotypes, or something that perhaps turns those stereotypes into satire. Sadly it’s mostly the former. This really is a step in the wrong direction for Arnie, harking back to films in his early career such as ‘Commando’ (85) rather than classics like ‘Predator’ (87) and the Terminator series (though it has been confirmed he will return to that franchise as per his catchphrase {which, incidentally, was actually a botched line – he was meant to say ‘I’ll come back’}, whether they’ll be able to pull it from the depths of ‘Terminator Salvation’ 09 is another matter).

The film features some unbelievably bad tactics by both the criminal gang orchestrating the escape attempt and also the cops led by the big man himself. Though it is good to see him on the big-screen again, as his acting creaks into gear like a huge, rusty, ahem, machine before he eventually gets into a rhythm and delivers some of the one-liners we would expect, but never with full conviction. I’m pretty sure he shoots one of the bad guys in the head at point-blank range at one point, and then launches himself of a roof with the, presumably, deceased for company. Most amusing.

The film also stars Johnny Knoxville of Jackass fame, who seems to be relaunching his movie career too with a spate of films made in 2012. Perhaps his main selling point is being able to save on stunt man costs, as in at least three of those films, including this one, he performs some ridiculous stunt for no reason other than he wants to remind everyone he is as far removed from a character actor as you can get. This is the first American film for South Korean director Jee-woon Kim, who has a critically and commercially successful backlog of films, but unusually he didn’t write the screenplay for this project (no less than three people are credited with that glory), a story which could have worked, but ultimately, really doesn’t.

Ends with a painfully unbelievable final fight sequence too.


Quotes

“I’m the sheriff.”   Arnold Schwarzenegger/Ray Owens

Gangster Squad  (2013)    66/100

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Rating :   66/100                                                                      113 Min       15

A fairly OK gangster film, but one with nothing to really make it stand out and too little in the way of invention when it comes to shootouts and characters. Based very loosely on real life LAPD cop John O’Mara, the gangster squad themselves consist of an off-the-books undercover police operation to harass and attack the illegal shenanigans of one Mickey Cohen (who had a different fate in real life to that in the film) in late 1940’s Los Angeles. The squad are brought to life by Josh Brolin as O’Mara, Ryan Gosling playing Jerry Wooters (the other real character of the group) with a somewhat effeminate voice that takes a bit of getting used too, Robert Patrick, Anthony Mackie, Giovanni Ribisi, and Micheal Peña. Sean Penn plays Cohen, with Emma Stone as the bit of skirt who sleeps around and generally acts as a 2D plot device, albeit one in the occasional sexy dress. It starts off promisingly, but it’s just not very involving or particularly convincing. There is enough of the traditional gangster film in there to hold interest to the end though.

Texas Chainsaw 3D  (2013)    60/100

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Rating :   60/100                                                                       92 Min        18

This is the latest offering in ‘The Texas Chainsaw Massacre’ franchise. In fact, it’s the seventh film of the lot after the original from 1974, then ‘The Texas Chainsaw Massacre 2’ (86), ‘Leatherface: The Texas Chainsaw Massacre 3’ (90), ‘Texas Chainsaw Massacre: The Next Generation’ (94), ‘The Texas Chainsaw Massacre’ a 2003 remake of the original starring Jessica Biel, and ‘The Texas Chainsaw Massacre: The Beginning’ (06) a prequel to that remake. This version goes all the way back to the original film and follows on with the immediate aftermath to the events that unfolded in the town of Newt, Texas. There’s been a little more of an effort made with the story here, certainly compared to the other two modern instalments, and a degree of sympathy has been put into the narrative which is new. You can be sure though, that the owners of the franchise were not going to miss out on the money making machine 3D has gifted producers with, and they are far from the first horror filmmakers to be milking the new tech with its higher cinema ticket prices.

With that in mind a lot of what follows in the film is true to previous form, with a group of ridiculously good looking teens throwing themselves into every obstacle in their path in order to satisfy the audience’s gore fetish, including the rather phallic weapon of choice of everyone’s favourite country bumpkin: ‘Leatherface’. Lead actress Alexandra Daddario (‘Percy Jackson and the Lightning Thief’ 10) certainly has a body to die for, and the camera has no qualms about showing it off as much as possible. Scott Eastwood, Clint Eastwood’s son, also stars as the local town sheriff. Very much an example of horror porn rather than torture porn (the likes of ‘Hostel’ 05 and so on where the emphasis is on the intricacies of the actual mutilation) and not too bad for what it is, decent enough if you’re just in the mood for a late night slasher.

Jack Reacher  (2012)    73/100

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Rating :   73/100                                                                     130 Min        15

Tom Cruise stars as the titular character in this detective style thriller: a highly decorated ex-military drifter mysteriously called in to help solve a high profile, brutal crime at the bequest of one of the suspects. The character is the central one in a whole line of novels by British writer Lee Child (real name, Jim Grant), and this is his first venture onto the big-screen, courtesy of screenwriter and director Christopher McQuarrie (winner of the best original screenplay Oscar for 1995’s ‘The Usual Suspects’), and, based on the success of this, it’s likely not to be his last. The film stays satisfyingly true to the genre whilst at the same time turning a number of clichés on their head, often to comical effect. All of the cast are good, from the very beautiful Rosamund Pike as the defence attorney working with Reacher, to renowned auteur Werner Herzog (‘Aguirre, Wrath of God’ 72, ‘Stroszek’ 77, ‘Rescue Dawn’ 06, ‘Bad Lieutenant : Port of Call New Orleans’ 09) as one of the bad guys, and a smaller role for Robert Duvall. It’s a little obvious what’s going on, but at the same time not everything is put on display and Reacher’s sarcastic wit is pleasant countermeasure to the ruthlessness of his enemies.


Quotes

“You think I’m a hero? I am not a hero. I’m a drifter with nothing to lose. You killed that girl to put me in a frame. I mean to beat you to death, and drink your blood from a boot. Now this is how it’s going to work, you’re going to give me the address and I’ll be along when I am damn good and ready, if she doesn’t answer the phone when I call this number, if I even think you’ve hurt her, I disappear. And if you’re smart that scares you. Because I’m in your blind spot. And I have nothing better to do.”   Tom Cruise/Jack Reacher

End of Watch  (2012)    59/100

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Rating :   59/100                                                                     109 Min        15

From writer/director David Ayer, this is very much the opposite of his 2005 flick ‘Harsh Times’, and stars Jake Gyllenhaal and Michael Pena as two LAPD patrol men buddying up and busting crime in downtown Los Angeles, ‘district 13′, and it opens with a pretty awesome rallying call in the form of a voice-over from Gyllenhaal as their squad car hones in on a couple of gangbangers. Initially, the whole film is shot as a largely handheld camera piece, with our view switching between pinhole cameras on the officers’ uniforms, Gyllenhall’s handheld, and the camera on their vehicle. This creates a major problem with the film, as with others in the genre, as the beginning quickly becomes ‘end of ability to watch’ with shaky cam taken to extremes and time wasted justifying and talking about the various cameras. It’s not necessary to contain the footage of these films within the confines of the characters’ own photography equipment, the viewer should be in mind at all times and there is no reason at all not to switch between the handhelds and more traditional views. Eventually, the director seems to come to the same conclusion and ditches some of the handheld footage, which actually makes all the shaky use from before fairly pointless.

As the action begins to ramp up things get much more interesting. It’s where this style of filmmaking can be really effective, as we experience first hand the thrills and horrors of their occupation from their own point of view, and we really root for them as they deal with all manner of undesirables. These events are interspersed with ‘chum time’ as we get more insights into their private lives and their camaraderie. It’s unfortunately a little obvious and hackneyed, and initially slightly awkward to boot, though the actors seem to settle more into it as the film progresses, possibly as they become more familiar with each other in their roles. Some wonderful tension is created, but the flaws continually diffuse what could have been a much more intense and acute thriller.

The handheld filmmaking style, which really began to filter into the mainstream after the success of ‘The Blair Witch Project’ in 99, seems almost to be allowing ‘Realism’ into Hollywood via the back door. It has largely been confined to horror, where it continues to be refined by the likes of ‘Paranormal Activity’ 07 (featuring security cameras rather than handheld ones), in which series numbers 2 & 3 were arguably the best, and the actually pretty darn scary ‘Insidious’ (10). It could be that with this style of horror movie it has run its course – ‘Paranormal Activity 4’ (12), and the very similarly styled ‘Sinister’ (12) with Ethan Hawke were both very predictable in terms of when the scare was coming and in what form it would take, as well as how everything would end up. However, as evinced at times by ‘End of Watch’, Hollywood filmmakers still have a lot of unexplored territory to put to good effect with the technique, so long as they don’t shoot themselves in the foot by obsessing over it unnecessarily. For a couple of good uses of handhelds see horror film ‘Quarantine’ (08 – itself a remake of the also very good Spanish film ‘Rec’ 07), ‘Project X’ (12) which was kind of a feel good film done in an unexpected way, and ‘Troll Hunter’ (10), a Norwegian film which was beautifully shot and put together.

Seraphim Falls  (2006)    45/100

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Rating :   45/100                                                                     115 Min        15

‘Seraphim Falls’ is a western that pits Liam Neeson against Pierce Brosnan. This is a winning premise, but it is misleading. The film opens with Neeson and his posse wounding and then hunting a desperate Brosnan through the Ruby mountains in Nevada, a few years after the Civil War. We have no idea why, and the chase continues leading to what we soon realise will be the inevitable confrontation in order for us to learn about the back story. It’s fairly dull, and nothing we haven’t seen many times before. Pierce Brosnan comes off least worst from this, and there are a few nice touches and shots of the both beautiful and oppressive landscapes (by director of photography John Toll, Oscar winner for ‘Legends of the Fall’ 94 and ‘Braveheart’ 95) but the acting isn’t at fault here, it’s the screenwriting and direction that are fully to blame for allowing what could have been a decent modern western descend into nothing more than a humdrum TV movie. At one point Brosnan gives a particularly convincing performance of removing a bullet from his arm with a knife he’s heated in a fire, but then drops it and noticeably rolls the flesh of his arm onto it with no effect, which pretty much sums up the attention given to detail throughout the whole film. Angelica Huston and Wes Studi make random appearances toward the end too.