Mixed Feelings Review of the Week: 'Primer' (2004)

There's no doubting Shane Carruth is a smart man. To truly understand what's going on in Primer you'd have to watch it, rewatch it, then put it straight back on because you should really have been making notes that time; then maybe watch it again just to be sure you've got it right. Unlike most films of the twisty-turn-y variety Primer doesn't reveal all at the end just so you can go back and see how well the twist matches up with the story you thought you were watching. Primer is a puzzle piece, more like Lynch's Mulholland Drive or Nolan's russian doll-like Inception, but it's a film that keeps its distance not only in the way it offers up only parts of the plot, but also in how it approaches its characters.

Aaron (played by Shane Carruth himself) and Abe (David Sullivan), the accidental inventors of time travel - it's a byproduct of an entirely different experiment - are a cold and distant pair. Which is accentuated by having half their dialogue in the early going delivered as dense technobabble; very well written, very believable technobabble, which, when fired back and forth, has a strange lyricism to it, but technobabble nonetheless. It's there to confuse, to obfuscate, and to distance you. It tells you, rather pointedly, that none of this is going to be simple, and you'd better sit up and pay attention.

Years back I went to a talk about scriptwriting in which the speaker talked about how a script is built like a house (I'll keep this short and pithy, I promise), the foundations have to be solid before you start adding on the walls, ceiling, roof, decorations... etc. For some writers the story's the foundation, for others it's the characters, whilst some settle on a theme and work from there. There's no doubt that Carruth's focus is on plot: the house he's created coming across like that of an MC Escher, but it's devoid of decorations. It's not that Abe and Arron don't have an arc - their characters go to some very dark places - but you'll be indifferent to it. I'm not saying you have to love the protagonist to go with them on their journey, but if you don't care, in any way, then something's gone wrong.

Cerebral films are a rare thing, and worth lauding, but if they don't engage (forgive me for writing this) your heart, then you won't come back to watch it that third, fourth, fifth time, to unravel its secrets. You'll just accept them, and move on.

Overall: 6.5/10
     or
Plot: 10/10
Character: 2.5/10
Cinematography: 7.5/10

Overlooked Gem of the Week: 'Before Sunrise/Sunset/Midnight'

The Before films are hard to pitch. I know so because I've lost the last two hours of my life trying to work out how to do it. Celine (Julie Delpy) and Jesse (Ethan Hawke) walk mile after mile through beautiful European cities and talk of everything and anything. At least when the West Wing did 'the walk and talk' the characters were discussing how to fix the world because it was their job to fix the world; plus they walked really REALLY fast. In Before Sunrise (film number one) the pair talk about fixing the world because they're young, naive, and a tiny bit pretentious. They also don't walk fast. Theirs is a leisurely walk. Up until now, to get friends and family to watch the films, I've had to do sit them down one by one, in-front of them. At which point they're hooked. The easy conversation, the humour, the chemistry, are such that you wish you were with the pair in Vienna, Paris and the Greek peninsula.

Before Midnight (film number three) was released last week, so I'm using that as an excuse to try and talk (/write) anyone and everyone into seeing them so that I can stop inviting people to my house to watch them. (I'm a misanthrope at heart.)

Before Sunrise was a slight film, but an easy one to love. Celine and Jesse meet on a train and disembark in Vienna, where they spend the night walking around the city and getting to know each other. They talk about themselves, their aspirations, and most everything else covered under the fairly expansive: life, the universe and everything. Which sounds like it'd be trying - yet it's not. The characters are so well drawn that they reel you in. (This becomes truer with each film, as Hawke and Delpy were co-writers on both the sequels, and added parts of their own lives to their characters history.) The film ends on an ambiguous note; it's up to the viewer to decide whether they ever meet again. The optimists and romantics believe they do, the realists are unsure but want to believe it'll work out, and the pessimists believe that distance and circumstance will be more than enough to keep them apart. Each film ends in similar fashion, leaving the viewer to decide whether the pair will make it.

Filmed and set nine years later, Before Sunset is structured just like the first, this time set over a single afternoon spent walking and talking in Paris. To say more about the plot of Sunset or Midnight (set yet another nine years further down the line) would be to give away too much.

The joy of the films is in the minutiae, the way Jesse and Celine talk and maneuver: a loaded question meant to catch the other off-guard, or simply set them up for a lose-lose situation; a minor remark that will come back to haunt them as the meaning gets changed or twisted, or is assumed to carry a passive aggressive charge. When, in the third film, the two characters argue and try to hurt each other it's genuinely affecting.You understand them so well by the last film, and know that they both ultimately want the same thing, but they can't get out of their own way. Midnight certainly has the hardest challenge: the first two films could, for the most part, skip past the realities a couple has to deal with in life; Midnight tackles them head on, and it makes for the most gripping and well realised film of the series. If you like meeting new people, going to new places, chatting about nonsense, you'll like these films. If you don't like any of that... You'll still like these films. In fact take what I've written above, then imagine a group of films that are twice as good as what I've described, as I don't think I know how to do them justice.

Overall:
Before Sunrise - 7.5/10
Before Sunset - 9/10
Before Midnight - 10/10

New Release Review: 'World War Z'

World War Z has had a troubled production: the book it's based on - which follows dozens of different characters giving surprisingly moving accounts about their attempts to survive a zombie apocalypse - has been so heavily streamlined that we follow just one character: and it's one that doesn't actually exist in the book; the ending was completely reshot after test screenings went... not well; and the trailers had bad CGI and a dearth of story. So it's surprising to find the film's kinda/almost/mostly okay.

It's well directed and moves at pace, diving straight into the story. The ropey effects have been tidied up. The plot is decent enough, following - like the book - attempts to trace the infection back to its source, and in so doing, find a cure. The zombies (or 'ish-zombies as they don't eat flesh, they just pass on the infection) are scary, with unsettling jerky movements reminiscent of the Japanese horror films from a decade ago. They're fast zombies, which ruins the metaphor of them as death: slow but inevitable. On the bright side speed does make them a more credible threat.

The problem with the film, and it's not the one I was expecting, is that Brad Pitt is cast as 'The Everyman', a Harrison Ford/Jimmy Stewart-type. Which is fine when you cast ever-haggard Ford, but not so much when you cast the first man to advertise Chanel n.5. (That he's working the exact same look from that ad doesn't help. I kept expecting him to turn to camera and whisper pseudo-poetic nonsense.) Pitt is an okay actor, but he's neither charismatic nor funny; directors have long been in the habit of pairing him up with actors that are, and can hide Pitt's lack thereof (see: Tom Cruise in 'Interview with a Vampire', Morgan Freeman in 'Seven' and even Angelina Jolie in 'Mr & Mrs Smith'). In World War Z he's all on his own, most of the cast are either completely forgettable or will obviously be dead four to five minutes after we meet them. Tasked with carrying the film, Pitt never out and out fails, thanks to the films pace, but a bland lead is almost worse than a bad lead.

Overall: 6/10

SPOILERS!:
(Highlight to read)
Despite (or because of) a huge rewrite, the ending makes very little sense. Pitt infects himself with a terminal disease, is ignored by the zombies because they need healthy hosts, then cures himself when he's out of danger. Does he have to keep infecting himself with different diseases when he goes out for milk, or, despite being cured, do they keep seeing him as an unhealthy host? Also: wouldn't someone have noticed that the zombies don't go near hospices or, one would imagine, a fair proportion of the elderly? The way Pitt works it out is also problematic. He sees three different people being avoided, all of them very different (a soldier with a dodgy leg, an old-ish man, and a boy with no hair - the last of which he was looking at from a quarter of a mile away) and concludes: "They're all suffering from terminal illness! I know it because that's what my gut tells me! That and the rewrite we spent all of 10-minutes hashing out."

MINOR NOTE: In the W.H.O. scenes we see the same corridors over and over (a la early Doctor Who), when it wouldn't make geographical sense. Which means one of two things: 1) They were shooting on a teeny tiny budget and were dressing up the same corridor as different corridors with the cunning use of numbers, or 2) The editor messed up.

TV Review: Arrested Development, season 4, episodes 7-15

After a fair bit of stop and start I've finally reached the end of Arrested Development's fourth season. There were moments where it resembled the show I remembered and I just sat back and enjoyed it, but more often than not I found myself drumming my fingers wishing I was doing something else: checking emails, putting on a wash, calling that friend that I meant to get back to ages back, and so on. It did become more assured in its second half, the Maeby and George Michael episodes worked particularly well (and, to a lesser extent, so did Gob's), but this probably has less to do with Hurwitz and co. finding their groove than the fact that after episode 8 we don't have to suffer through anymore Lindsay or George Snr. solo episodes.

Although I marvelled at the way Hurwitz juggled the different individual storylines over numerous timelines - clearly the only way he was going to get his cast together - it was in much the same way that I often marvel at Christopher Nolan's approach to complex story structure (most notably Inception): I'd be thoroughly impressed but ultimately unmoved. Of all the pieces of plotting which were set-up to be revisited and re-contextualised, the only joke that landed for me was finding out the sex-offenders were George Michael's neighbours. When one sex offender meets an oblivious GM he turns to his fellow pedophiles and yells "He's 22 but looks 16! He's 22 but looks 16!" It was also the only time over the 15 episodes that I laughed out loud. Any other time Hurwitz showed a situation from a different perspective and made me reevaluate I just nodded and thought: oh, that's rather ingenious. Which is how I felt about this season as a whole; a cursory nod, appreciating the smarts behind it all, but no laughter.

With the jumps back and forth, covering a seven-year period, I was often hazy on what-had-happened-to-who, and when. Hurwitz is clearly having fun layering the jokes, but I would have sooner seen the characters get standalone stories set in one time period. Catching up with them over seven years, changing nothing about the aesthetic of the show to help us gauge where we are in the timeline, left me frustrated - but more than that, it left me not caring.

Arrested Development is an ensemble show. Unfortunately that's not what we got this go round, and unless the main cast are all simultaneously fired from their other recurring roles it's not likely to ever happen. I say leave it be. You shouldn't always get six seasons and a movie.

Overall: 5/10

Overlooked Gem of the Week: 'Cloud Atlas' (2012)

Right at the start of Cloud Atlas we're give a piece of advice from one of the characters, who talks about his "disdain for flashbacks and flashforwards and all such tricksy gimmicks," but he believes that "if you extend your patience for just a moment you will find there is a method to this tale of madness."

Even with patience this film is going to be divise. It's just shy of three-hours long, has a dozen cast members who each play up to six different characters (often times changing gender and race) over six intertwining timelines, it's directed by three different people, and is based on a book that is regarded by most everyone as unfilmable. So why watch it? Because it might just be a work of genius.

Despite all the characters and complex timelines, the editing is so intuitive, so elegantly done, that you won't question the leap from a ship in the south pacific in 1849, to a fast food joint in Korea in 2144, and then backwards to the steeples of Edinburgh in 1936. Some stories do work better than others, but the way they all build together and are linked by a common goal - the desire to effect change, and to do and be better - gives the weaker stories more momentum than they would if we'd seen each story separately, as is (sort of) the case with the book.


The two best pieces of advise I can offer anyone that finds themselves intrigued enough to check it out, are:

1) Even though Tom Hanks, Hugh Grant et al play a vast array of characters, instead of finding this jarring - particularly early on as you try and work out who's who under all the prosthetics - embrace it. You're supposed to recognise them. Tom Hanks is playing the same person throughout, and so are all the others. Each new character Hanks plays is imbued with the same soul. Their names change, as do most other things about them and around them, but who they are at heart is still the same. When the story moves forward 30, 40, 50 years and more, the question is: will they learn from their past mistakes? Some take a step back, some forward. Even with the above advice, you will find the prosthetics distracting, at least initially, but understanding why the same actors crop up definitely eases the way.

2) A small note this one. Watch it with subtitles. In the final storyline (in terms of the year in which it's set) you will struggle to work out what-in-the-who-why-where unless you have them on. The film's true to the language used in David Mitchell's novel, but you have time to get to grips with it on the page, you don't get that opportunity with a film. Subtitles does solve this, but the directors (the Wachowskis and Tom Tkywer) should have clocked how much of a problem it would be.

Long story short: it is batshit crazy; but it has a plan.

Overall: 9/10

New Release Review: 'Man of Steel'

Let's see if I can start the review on a positive note... Give me a minute...

(225 seconds later)

It wasn't hateful. Suckerpunch, Zack Snyder's last film, was hateful. Man of Steel is merely boring. Actually that doesn't quite get it across. It's soporifically boring. It's so boring that there was more tension in whether or not the rain would keep away (I saw it at a drive-in).

I think I've gotten off track. Back to the positives:

I can appreciate the decision to tweak Superman's backstory, even if it doesn't work. Instead of the split persona of Superman/Clark Kent, Henry Cavill only plays Clark. In previous films Clark was the disguise and Superman is who he really was. In this version, although he hides the truth about himself, there is only Clark. It's a different way of humanising him. Instead of empathising with him when he's pretending to be Clark Kent, an alien playing at being human, here he sees himself as human; but he understands he's different, alone, adrift. It's not a bad idea, and it would have worked, except that Clark doesn't have a single meaningful relationship with anyone during the entire film. For two thirds of its running time it leans heavily on his connection with Lois Lane (Amy Adams, who comes across as a non-entity due to a seriously underwritten part). We're expected to care about them and believe that they care about each other. Only there is no attempt made to make us care. We just should because... Because... We should.

For most people, their first and last question about Man of Steel will be: 'Yeah but was the action any good?' Snyder isn't much of a storyteller but he has plenty of experience crafting huge set pieces (Watchmen, 300, Suckerpunch). In Man of Steel he does a credible job. The effects are near perfect, the pacing is decent, the actors seem committed. The problem, as with everything else, is you won't care. In one sequence Clark (he only gets called 'Superman' once during the entire film) fights a seven-foot 'thing' for ten-minutes. We have no idea who he's fighting. Is it a Kryptonian? A robot? Something else entirely? (My best guess is he's supposed to be fighting Snyder's version of Non from Richard Donner's Superman II. But who knows?) He also fights a tentacle-thing which is even less interesting, and even more ill-defined. There's no reason to invest in any of it. The planet will be destroyed if he doesn't yada yada, whatever. The planet is always on the verge of destruction in superhero films. You need a reason to invest in it. You need a personal stake. All Snyder knows is bombast. Despite the intentions of its writers Man of Steel is the opposite of what they intended: utterly devoid of humanity.

Overall: 3/10

SPOILERS!:
(Highlight to read)

I could write page after page on its plot holes. So, for brevity, I'm just going to focus on its worst offences:

THE CODEX
Possibly the most obvious MacGuffin in the history of MacGuffins (for the layman: a MacGuffin is what drives the plot. They ought to be subtly integrated, but often feel superfluous - such as Mission Impossible 3's 'Rabbit Foot'). Jor-El (Russell Crowe) steals it, for ethical reasons (obviously) and sends it to Earth to keep it out of the hands of General Zod (Michael Shannon). Now that's all well and good, but stealing the Codex is akin to stealing the Internet:

1) If you could actually steal it from one location, that would be a pretty well guarded location. Jor-El steals it by going for a swim and plucking it off a vine. The most important data device on his world and he steals it by going for a swim.

2) It wouldn't be in just one location! Do Kryptonian's not have back-up drives? What happens when their writers are doing op-ed pieces and their computer dies on them? Wouldn't they have invented back-up drives thousands of years ago?

THE WORLD ENGINE
Why is Zod hellbent on turning Earth into Krypton? If he has the Codex - with all its DNA sequences - then he can build another Kryptonian society. He doesn't need Earth to actually have the same atmosphere as Krypton. Especially since the Earth's atmosphere gives them abilities that make them close to God-like. (Occasionally they say it's the sun that gives them the powers they have, but they go back and forth on this during the film, and seem a touch unsure about which way round it is.) All the World Engine would do is turn Earth's atmosphere into a Kryptonian one; making them average schlubs. WORST. PLAN. EVER.

THE OUTPOSTS
The Kryptonian's use up all their resources setting up outposts on habitable planets, and terraform the planets that are not so habitable. Question: How is it ALL the outposts have withered and died? What happened to the outpost/ship that landed on Earth 20,000 years ago? As far as I can tell everyone died because it's convenient for the script. Having this information delivered so offhand makes you think that something else must have happened. One possible answer is that the outposts had to rely on the Codex, as natural births had been outlawed. (At least that's what was intimated.) If all the births are regulated using the Codex and its DNA sequences the outposts would have to rely on Krypton, where the Codex is kept, for new crew; but this brings us back to: Why the hell is there just the one Codex? Why would you send your people to the other side of the Universe, to set up an outpost, without any way to sustain the population you're sending? They're all still capable of having children. Wouldn't you just tell them that maybe they should give the whole sex-thing a go again? Wouldn't a survival instinct drive them to do it without prompting? Wouldn't... You know what? I give up.

Disappointing Supposed Classic of the Week: 'Lady Snowblood' (1973)

Random fact of the day: Lady Snowblood's mother wasn't really called Doris. It's just funnier this way.

With a title like Lady Snowblood you’d figure you’re definitely onto a cult classic. I’d heard that it heavily influenced Tarantino’s Kill Bill, but made little note of it at the time beyond registering that it had a fantastically pulp-y title. So when American author Michael Chabon mentioned it over and over in his most recent novel I took it as a second vote of confidence and promptly hunted it down.

Its structure is the twin of Kill Bill’s (what with Tarantino stealing it wholesale): it’s a revenge tale following a striking young woman (Meiko Kaji) who’s after the four people that killed her father and brother, and raped her mother. During her journey she keeps her sword ever at hand, promising bloodletting.

It’s an often beautiful film, but rarely an engaging one. If only Toshiya Fujita (he that directed it) had invested some money in the fight choreography rather then investing it all in the set design. A man runs at Kaji’s Lady Snowblood! She turns! SWISH! Bit of blood. Then death. A man runs at Kaji! SWISH! Bit of blood, etc, etc, repeat ad nauseum. If the story had some nuance, if the dialogue wasn’t just 97-minutes of exposition, if it had one decent fight sequence, then I could understand its cult classic status. Instead it has immaculately designed sets.

As for the lead, Meiko Kaji, she’s certainly striking, but she conveys nothing. She’s supposed to play like a female version of the Man with No Name-type seen in practically every Clint Eastwood western (most notably in the Dollars Trilogy). But the reason he works so well is because we know nothing of his past and where he comes from, making him rather more enigmatic than Kaji; plus: Eastwood had charisma to burn. Kaji is neither enigmatic nor charismatic.

Despite having a plot that’s simplicity itself, Fujita still manages to overcomplicate things, jumping backwards and forwards in time for no reason, and adding little details here and there, convincing you that they’ll pay off down the line; making you believe there’s a masterplan we’re not picking up on. But no. There isn’t. Instead what we get is: SWISH! Instant death. SWISH! More death. 

Overall: 2/10 

Overlooked Gem of the Week: 'Unbreakable' (2000)

'FROM THE MIND OF M. NIGHT SHYAMALAN'. When that flashed up on the screen during the trailer for Devil, the entire cinema I was in burst out laughing. That was three years ago, and things haven't changed much. At the time Devil was released Shyamalan had just taken a critical kicking for the one-two of The Lady in the Water and The Happening. Since then we've had The Last Airbender (6% on Rotten Tomatoes) and, as of last week, After Earth (11% on RT). So now seems as good a time as any to light a candle for the writer-director that once was. He really did used to know what he was doing.

After The Sixth Sense everyone went into Unbreakable prepared for a twist. It was expected, and no one wanted to be caught out. That's not the way to watch a film. Or, rather, its not the way to appreciate a film. It didn't help that it was marketed as a psychological thriller, when its actually a superhero flick; albeit one in disguise.

The opening ten-minutes are immaculately written and staged. Everything we need to know about Bruce Willis's forlorn security guard is woven in subtly as he tries to chat-up a young woman on the train. Nothing is obviously wrong during this scene, but there's a tension to it all. Something's going to happen. Something bad.

One of the best scenes in the film, and the best I saw that year, saw Samuel L. Jackson's character Mr. Glass in a foot chase in which he was moving at the rather stately pace of three miles an hour, having to hobble along with his glass cane. That Shyamalan could make that scene edge of your seat stuff really is impressive.

If you haven't seen it: its a better film that you've heard it is. If you have seen it: its a better film than you thought it was. Give it another look.

Overall: 8/10

New Release Review: 'Behind the Candelabra'

If this is Steven Soderbergh's last film, as he claims, but most disbelieve, then it's not a bad one for him to go out on. Having directed just about every type of film under the sun, he now genre hops into romantic-drama-biopic. Behind the Candelabra (which is based on the book of the same name) follows a babe in the woods, Scott Thorson (writer of said book, and played by Matt Damon), as he gets caught up in the bright bright world of piano virtuoso Liberace (played by a never better Michael Douglas).

It's a little predictable in the early going: Scott catches Liberace's eye, is slowly seduced, and is then smothered with fine things to keep him from thinking of going elsewhere. It's a twist of sorts, since it'd usually be an innocent young femme being seduced; but the story beats are still too familiar. It's only when the couple settle into routine as they grow content (and plump) that the film connects. Maybe because, for the briefest of moments, the two were relatable in their rotund happiness. This contentment doesn't last long though.

Ultimately, even with some of the fascinatingly strange turns the film takes - particularly with the extreme plastic surgery subplot, where Scott's identity is practically erased - neither character is interesting enough to warrant two hours of screen time. The defining characteristics of the two are: Liberace is utterly self-involved, and Scott is quite handsome. Which is fine, but it hardly makes them worth investing in.

Despite that, I was entertained. The cameos from Dan Aykroyd and Rob Lowe are fantastic, and Michael Douglas would easily have been an Oscar contender if the film had been release in theatres in the US (it was broadcast on HBO - who were the only ones willing to produce it). It's not an easy part, playing someone who was so staggeringly flamboyant, yet was never (or rarely) suspected of being gay. It's a performance that could easily turn into a caricature, but somehow he stays just on the right side of that line.

Overall: 6.5/10

New Release Review: 'Byzantium'

Byzantium follows Gemma Arterton and Saoirse Ronan's two-hundred-year-old *kind-of-vampires (*they have no fangs and instead use odd extendable talons; they're fine in daylight; and they have reflections) as they take shelter in a decrepit hotel after almost being caught by a mysterious man, who Arterton leaves burnt and dismembered.

There's an interesting film somewhere under the heavily overcast, annoyingly self-involved, and highly contradictory, script. Arterton and Ronan, as mother and child, kill a plentiful amount of people during the film, but never dispose of a body (bar one); and yet the big issue for Arterton's vampire (or 'succruent', as they're referred to here), the code that she and Ronan must live by, is that they must never tell anyone their true story. If a person finds out, they have to die. Now that's all well and good, but if you're already exsanguinating most everyone that you come across, you'll probably be found pretty sharp-ish. Sam Riley, the next mysterious man tasked with hunting down the pair, has absolutely no trouble following the trail of bodies, which are better and more frequently set down than breadcrumbs. Realistically he should have found Arterton and Ronan some time around the twenty-minute mark.

Then there's Ronan's whole dalliance with college. They're on the run but somehow Ronan inrolls and attends classes, UNDER HER OWN NAME. She also kindly provides an address. This wouldn't usually bother me, but every other sentence Arterton utters is about them staying out of the public eye, and keeping to the code: "Gotta keep to the code. Can't break the code. What do you think I'm going to say next? A good guess would be something code-based." I'm paraphrasing a tad, but that's the the gist.

The one thing in Byzantium's favour (besides the ever-awesome Saoirse Ronan) are the regular flashbacks in which Neil Jordan (the director) goes all out: lurching the film from mopey melodrama to bloody operatic bombast - or something close to it. His tweaking of the vampire mythology: having a vampire create itself, makes for a strong image (although it's problematic in a 'How-does-Back-To-The-Future-make-any-sense' sort of way, but it's not a big sticking point); the rivers of blood that then run, as a consequence of being 'turned', is almost as striking. But strong imagery does not a good film make.

The only stand out sequence of the film has Ronan starkly explaining just what it would take for a person to believe she's the vampire she claims to be. Its a strong scene, touching upon ageing and deathlessness in a way that the rest of the film clearly wants to, but constantly falls short. Its a scene that indicates that there was a good idea in there at one point, but it got lost in a stuttering grating romance, that's only believable for ten-second stretches.

Overall: 4/10

Overlooked Gem of the Week: 'Dredd' (2012)

The first Judge Dredd film came out in 1995. Rob Schneider was cast as the comic relief. An idea only fractionally worse than casting Stallone as Dredd. The film was so bad that almost 20 years later audiences instinctively steered clear of director Pete Travis's new take on the character.

If you grew up reading the original strip in 2000AD, you'll like the movie. If you like lean pacy action thrillers, you'll like the movie. If you enjoyed the strangely artful bloodletting in Takeshi Kitano's Zatoichi: You'll. Like. The. Movie. It's as bloody as you'd imagine; smarter than you'd expect; and, every so often, just when the violence edges towards a tad too much, its undercut with some very dark humour.

Besides the above, the reason Travis nails the film is because he gets the details right: Cape Town is a surprisingly good stand in for Megacity 1, Karl Urban as Dredd is note perfect (he growls his lines, always deadpan, as Clint Eastwood circa. 1985 - which is just as it should be), and Lena Headey as Ma-Ma plays like an unhinged Cersei Lannister. Which is fun. And that's the best way to describe the film as a whole: fun. It was never going to sweep the awards ceremonies, but it should have had more of an impact than just being a blip on the radar. 

Go enjoy the bloodletting.

Overall: 7/10

Disappointing Would-be Pulp Classic of the Week: 'I Saw The Devil' (2010)

The setup for I Saw The Devil couldn't be more pulpy, or more promising. A secret agent takes slow bloody revenge on a serial killer after his fiancee becomes the latest victim of the madman; as he exacts his revenge he finds himself becoming ever more like his prey.

The problem is that the film doesn't really want to explore what this would really do to Byung-hun Lee's secret agent. It's not like Kim Jee-Woon, the director (best known for the chilling K-horror A Tale of Two Sisters), doesn't have time to delve into it. At 2 hours and 21 minutes it's almost a good hour longer than its Roger Corman-esque premise needs, but it only alludes to Lee's journey to the dark side when it suits it. 

Instead the film plays out as a series of contrivances (one example (and there are many) is in the sketch above) strung together by fairly regular over-the-top moments of bloody mayhem. These sequences are fun enough, but you won't care whether anyone comes out of them alive. 

The sole redeeming factor is Min-sik Choi's serial killer. (Why is he a serial killer? It's best not to start asking questions; you'll just get annoyed.) Choi seems to be tapping into his inner Lecter, which, in a film this problematic, is a blessed distraction. It's that, or fall asleep.

Overall: 3/10

New Posts

I'll be posting reviews (+ doodles!) on Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays. More often than not it'll just be one a day - lest I find myself suffering from doodle fatigue - but on occasion I might put together two or three.

The results of doodle fatigue