philosoraptor42

So, here I have a blockbuster which received fairly lacklustre reviews (Salt), a thriller from a director who I'd rather was in prison (The Ghost), a recently released Russell Crowe movie about a guy who considers breaking his wife out of prison (The Next Three Days) and a little indie flick about inspectors who literally go into closets to find people's hidden secrets (Skeletons). Which ones do I like and which am I less keen on?

The Ghost has a larger image because most google image matches use the stupid American title. Look, the movie is an adaptation of a novel called "The Ghost" by Robert Harris. Why change the title for the movie? Were people watching "Salt" surprised when it wasn't an arthouse movie about food seasonings?

Salt (2010)
Okay, let's face it, no one looked at the trailer of this movie and went "that's going to win all the Oscars". It's written by Kurt Wimmer: he of "Equilibrium" and "Ultraviolet" fame. I really liked the beginning of Equilibrium and the second half is still great fun, but nevertheless the whole thing is utterly ridiculous from beginning to end. Ultraviolet is blooming awful, but yet I find it strangely captivating. Kurt Wimmer has a tendency to write ridiculously over-the-top action movies.

The trailer seems particularly awful if you happen to understand Russian.

sabrina_il was particularly pissed off, when watching the trailer, to hear a Russian spy fail to pronounce his own name. She is absolutely right about the movie being filled with a lot of "SOVIET SPIES OMG!" stuff, but she also worried about the movie having gender fail. This was because the role was originally intended for Tom Cruise and she was concerned that alterations would have been made because "zomg you can't portray women like that". As it is, they don't seem to have made that error. This really is pretty much exactly how the film would have been with a male character as the lead.

The actual movie? Well it is, admittedly, very daft. Still, not to a level that wouldn't be tolerated in a Bond movie. Picking up the role of "the love interest" is German actor August Diehl who played a major part in "The Counterfeiters". He was also the SS officer in the bar scene in Tarantino's "Inglourious Basterds" (by far the best scene in the movie). Liev Schreiber plays a co-worker with Salt in the CIA and I'm surprised to find he hasn't really been in anything terribly good before. Nevertheless Liev has been particularly good in the things I have seen him in e.g. "The Manchurian Candidate" (remake) and "Origins: Wolverine" (where he played Sabretooth). The best thing I'd probably seen Liev in previously was "The Painted Veil", but that was a while back so I cannot remember specifically what I thought of his performance. Salt also stars Chiwetel Ejiofor whose highlights include "Dirty Pretty Things", "Serenity", "Children Of Men" and he was also the best thing in "Kinky Boots". It always seems weird to see Chiwetel with an American accent, but I guess that's just something I'm going to have to get used to.

So with this range of talent involved, they do a really good job at making us buy into what appears to be an intentionally ridiculous premise. As the narrative twists and turns, inventive action sequences and quality performances keep us involved. I wonder whether people are reading this and going "but when I watched Salt I didn't feel that way at all". It seems that on the DVD there are three versions of the movie. There's the theatrical one, the director's cut and the extended cut. Bizarrely the director's cut is longer than the extended cut, so I went for that. Since watching, I have checked out the differences on wikipedia and some of the things they claim are missing from the theatrical version seem like very strange things to remove. They would seem to mean that certain events lose their emotional force, that at least one character turns up out of nowhere without a proper background and even cause unnecessary holes in the internal logic of the movie.

At the end of the director's cut there's sound from a television broadcast which leaves the movie with a sense of fun and makes the ending feel very satisfying. Endings matter a lot and perhaps just this change could have made a huge difference to audience appreciation of the movie. I'd actually be really excited about a sequel to this. It'd actually be pretty awesome to have a successful movie franchise with a female action hero. (Funnily enough, it'd probably be best if Kurt Wimmer continued to imagine he was writing a male character and then rewrote it afterwards.)

So yeah, if you watched this in the cinema and didn't like it, far be it for me to suggest you watch a different version all over again. However, if you do get the chance to watch the DVD, choose the director's cut and you're in for a treat!

5/5

The Next Three Days (2010)
There was free preview screening of this movie, but I was a little apprehensive because

fabfunk placed this on his worst movies of the year list. Then again, he also put Monsters on the same list, so I figured I could probably risk it.

Anyway, there's a rather awesome cameo from Liam Neeson, playing an ex-convict who had successfully broken out of prison in the past (though he turned himself in again and finished his sentence). He explains precisely what hurdles are in the way once you escape from a prison. He also emphasises what kind of person you have to become in order to achieve this goal. It's on this point where I think the movie lets itself down in the second half.

In the first half we see Liam Neeson's advice coming to fruition in every way. Not only is Russell Crowe's character working out a careful and somewhat plausible plan of how to bust someone out of jail, but he's having to become a pretty dodgy figure too. And that seemed to be an inevitable part of the plot, that this process would turn him into someone different. Apparently he's doing this for love, but will his imprisoned wife still recognised the man she married when she escaped?

Sadly this question is not addressed. While the first half seemed to expect us to question whether Crowe is a hero or an anti-hero, the second half appears to try to gloss over these issues. It's worth noting that "Salt" (review above) is prepared to deal with moral ambiguity while this movie strangely shys away from it. Now, The Next Three Days is actually a remake of a French movie titled "Pour Elle" and it might well be that this is a saccherine Hollywood version of a much more gritty plot. I'll have to get back to you on that though.

Still even with the lack of grit, I might still consider this a solid movie (worthy of 4/5), but there's another problem. At the end, there was one piece of moral ambiguity keeping me from being entirely p***ed off with it. However, that was one piece of moral ambiguity too many, so to finish we have an entirely superfluous and unnecessary scene to clear the ambiguity away. I don't want to say too much about what happens because I try to keep my reviews free of spoilers, but those perhaps those who've seen this movie can answer me this question: Are they awful parents, or is it just me?

I'm not a big Russell Crowe fan. I hated Gladiator and I still hadn't quite forgiven him for State Of Play (remake of a fantastic BBC TV mini-series which, to be fair, it was never going to live up to). Still, I cannot fault him for his performance in this movie. His wife is played by Elizabeth Banks, who some may recognise from Scrubs. She was also in the movie Slither (a horror/comedy which was somewhat lacking on the comedy side). It's probably unfair of me to say this, but watching Elizabeth Banks in this, I couldn't help but think of her comedy roles and had trouble taking her seriously. That may be more to do with her successful performances in the past than because of a lack of suitability for drama. (Heck, no wonder actors get typecast.) I've already mentioned that Liam Neeson only has a cameo but is, nevertheless, f***ing awesome! One other person who stood out for me is someone who I'd seen before in a number of British tv parts (and he's also in "Snatch"): Lennie James plays the main police figure investigating and, once again, it feels really weird to hear him doing an American accent all of a sudden (but hopefully he'll get more parts after this, so I guess I'll have to get used to it).

I can't help but feel that this movie had a great deal more potential. If it turns out that "Pour Elle" is already the gritty movie "The Next Three Days" failed to be, I think this score probably ought to be lowered. In any case my score indicates that this was above average, but missing elements required to be a solidly good movie.

3.5/5

The Ghost (2010)
This is actually a bit awkward since I'm of the opinion that this movie should never really have been made. I've already been asserting that the whole failure to expedite Roman Polanski was an utter farce. (Also, at the beginning of this post I link to some Filmdrunk articles where he writes some amusing stuff on the issue. Oh and also this quote. And this from Chris Rock.)

In my defence, I didn't pay to see it. I didn't see it at the cinema, I didn't buy a DVD and I didn't rent it. A relative received the movie on DVD for Christmas and it ended up being watched by everyone. Also, let's not forget that this isn't the sole work of the director. In this film we have Pierce Brosnan (James Bond!) and Olivia Williams (An Education, Sex & Drugs & Rock & Roll, Dollhouse), who essentially play Tony and Cherie Blair. Yeah sure, they play Mr. and Mrs. Lang, however Mr. Lang is an ex-prime minister under suspicion for complicity with illegal torture flights... Sound familiar? We also have Ewan McGregor (who sounds weird with an English accent, though less weird than his American accent and neither of those are quite as weird as his Alec Guiness impression) as the protagonist.

So yeah, sometimes really good stuff is made with the help of utter bastards. And this really is quite good (not that I actually want you to pay money for it and give the criminal even more royalties). Probably not up to the level of "The Pianist" (which finally gave schools something to show instead of Schindler's List to illustrate the holocaust), but still very well put together. It's interesting that I should be reviewing this alongside Salt because the biggest criticisms are, admittedly, along the lines that it is too far-fetched. The very final ending does feel a bit Da Vinci Code, but it just about works.

The best thing about the movie is knowing that it's blatantly referring to Tony Blair. There are a large number of people now for whom the idea of Tony Blair getting his just desserts is a fairly exciting prospect, so getting to watch the ex-Prime Minister squirm under scrutiny is an oddly sadistic pleasure (not least since he does such a great job of sounding unmoved by it all when he talks to the media).

So all in all this was a good fun movie, well performed, well written (it's adapted from a book by Robert Harris) and pretty satisfying. I'm just not sure anyone can justify paying money for it while Roman Polanski's still alive to collect the royalties. You can wait, right?

5/5

Skeletons (2010)
It all started so well. This is a sweet little British indie flick with a neat little premise. A couple of guys with briefcases wander into someone's home offering their services. They then find a cupboard in the house and using special equipment they venture inside and discover all their hidden secrets. They then explain what they've found and then leave never to return.

I'm not going to be very annoying and use "An Inspector Calls" as an analogy here. If you haven't seen it look it up (or read it, though watching a performance would be best). Imagine that the Inspector actually goes to all sorts of households to reveal their secrets and that, instead of looking at the reactions of the families, we instead looked at the life of the Inspector as he goes from place to place revealing secrets and then having no choice but to leave others to pick up the pieces. How would anyone handle that kind of life?

Sadly that's the first quarter of an hour at most. After that, the rules behind the cupboard-searching mechanisms get rather hazy, the family they are looking into start to appear even more surreal than the secret-finding stuff, and while Jason Isaacs is great as their boss, I just couldn't suss out what the deal with his character was supposed to be. Oddly the ending is pretty sweet, but the middle is ridiculously mixed up and unsatisfying.

Also there's some weird chanting music that gets used. It's okay the first few times, but after a while it just gets irritating and it ends up feeling like it's detracting from scenes rather than adding to them. Skeletons is a whole bunch of very good ideas, but the way they've been put together is a real mess. The really alienating thing isn't so much the surrealism (which really is quite dodgy), but more the failure on the world-building side. If the ranks above The Colonel (Jason Isaacs) are supposed to remain a mystery, why does criticism of their workings appear to be a major part of the plot? We are told fairly early on that the closet-searching stuff has nothing in common with new age stuff, so how come someone unrelated to this mysterious profession is able to muck stuff up for them (seemingly with new age stuff)? What are the stones supposed to be used for? In the end, the problem isn't that the movie is too surreal, but that the non-surreal stuff isn't consistent and that rules keep getting made up on the spot for how the fantasy stuff works.

A fantastic premise which seemed pretty cleverly realised at the very start ended up thoroughly squandered. It's not too difficult to watch, not least because the actual characters have a fair amount of depth. Paul Dallison does a great job with his part as Marcus. Sadly, the world these characters inhabit is poorly formed and, since the details are woolly, the narrative as a whole ends up feeling rather shallow. In the end, the movie was rather twee and annoying, albeit pretty watchable thanks to a good cast.

2.5/5

...

So all in all, I've given 5 stars to the widely maligned action movie (albeit the director's cut). 5 stars to the movie I don't really think Roman Polanski should ever have been free to make. 3.5 stars to the Russell Crowe vehicle. And just 2.5 stars to the creative little indie movie. It's just all wrong, isn't it?