New Release Review: 'Calvary'

With John Michael McDonagh's latest, Calvary (which I have called 'Calgary', 'Cavalry' and 'What film are we going to see again?', and I apologise to Mr. McDonagh for my ineptitude in this matter), he proves he's just as capable a writer as his brother (Martin, In Bruges), but perhaps not quite as capable a director.

Getting its first act over and done with in a single scene, Calvary opens with Father James Lavelle (Brendan Gleeson) in the confession box, listening to a parishioner tell him that he's going to kill him because he's a good man. Why kill a good man? Because who would notice the death of a bad one? Odd as this sounds, in the end it turns out there's a strange sanity to the plan's seeming insanity. But that's for the end, which is a good seven days away: the amount of time given to Father James to 'put his house in order'. And it's a rather cluttered house: his daughter (Kelly Reilly) has returned home after an attempted suicide, an older member of the congregation has been ruminating on doing the same, another parishioner is thinking of doing it to others, whilst a previous member of the flock (Domhnall Gleeson) has done it already (several times in fact), and that's just the first few troubled souls. There's also a misanthropic millionaire (Dylan Moran), a cuckolded husband (Chris O'Dowd), a nihilistic doctor (Aidan Gillen), and a cretinous back-up priest. As Father James attempts to offer guidance to his wayward flock we're trying to guess which is his would-be murderer. Something the Father doesn't need to do. He already knows.

Calvary is so very close to being spectacular. Most will probably find it out and out spectacular, and with good reason; and truth be told the issues I have with it are minor, and mostly due to my being particular (see: awkward). So don't take the following to seriously. First minor irksomeness: it's shot on digital. The format has the capacity to look majestic, as it does here during the grand sweep of the exterior shots, but when McDonagh shifts inside the look suddenly becomes muted and oddly framed. At times the film looks like it's the best acted, best written episode that Coronation Street never saw. Second irksomeness: it feels like theatre. It's almost pure dialogue, the characters (as described above) wouldn't sound out of place in a farce or a comedy of errors, and the few times the film goes meta it's almost as if it thinks it's a play. Now I like theatre, I'm all for theatre, but a film that feels like it (yes, whilst also feeling like TV) can seem like it's at war with its medium. On the flip side, the dialogue is a thing of beauty. Which makes for a pretty good flip side.

Since I've started with the hyperbole I might as well continue. Brendan Gleeson does his best work since In Bruges, Reilly is quietly affecting, O'Dowd and Moran show they're capable of playing far darker shades then they'd previously hinted at, Domhnall Gleeson (Brendan's son) gets a single scene, but it's a killer one (pun possibly intended), and the rest of the cast all get their big moments too. So many of them initially seem like stereotypes, but the truth is they're wearing their extravagant roles as masks. Over the course of Calvary's running time those masks get gently pulled back, and it's hypnotic to watch.

Ignore my quibbles. All told, it's rather spectacular.

Overall: 8/10

New Release Review: 'Captain America: The Winter Soldier'

During the lead up to Captain America: The Winter Soldier's release everyone's being noticing that Robert Redford is in it, and that it has a conspiracy at its centre; from which they've concluded that the film must be a 70s style conspiracy thriller. Which makes the genre sound like a rather simple construct: Redford + conspiracies = 70s conspiracy thriller. Now everyone is seeing the connection. But like most conspiracy theorists they’re seeing something that isn’t really there. 

Picking up a little while after Avengers Assemble, Rogers (Chris Evans) is still adjusting to life in the modern day. He spends his nights handling missions for SHIELD, although any morally grey tasks get passed on to the less ethically stringent Natasha (Scarlett Johansson) since her boss, Nick Fury (played by the ever present Samuel Jackson), believes his all-American boy scout has a blinkered and idealised view of the world. Nick's boss, Alexander Pierce (Redford), is even more of a pragmatist, and is intent on shoring up the world’s defenses so that all the really bad world-ending stuff stops happening. The slight knock on effect of his plan is that the Free World’s idea of freedom might constrict a tad. Throwing a spanner in the works of all this is our other titular character: The Winter Soldier, a mysterious masked menace. 

Despite Rogers being one of Marvel’s least interesting characters the setup is interesting. Rogers is the embodiment of everything America can be but that image doesn’t fit well with SHIELD’s foreign (or domestic) policy. Seeing him deal with that would have been more than just engaging, it would have given Evans something to do for once; but there's little to the setup beyond the tagline. The Russos are more interested in slightly above average bombast. On the odd occasion when the film achieves comfortably above average bombast it’s hard to care. There's a certain irony that for Captain America to work, the henchmen of yore (particularly the early-Bond era iteration) have had to go from never hitting their target to always hitting their target. Every shot is either a headshot or body shot, and every one of them ricochets off the Cap's shield. Why no one aims for his legs is one of the Marvel Universe's greatest Mysteries. 

As for the other characters, Jackson is really just a glorified extra; The Winter Soldier feels like an afterthought who might have amounted to something if he weren't played by a charisma vacuum; and Johansson’s still-not-interesting-enough Natasha is used as a half-hearted love interest. A subplot that's scuppered by the fact that Evans has more chemistry with a bearded Apple Store Genius. (No, really). 

If Captain America: TWS really wanted to work as a 70s-inflected conspiracy thriller than it would need a conspiracy that couldn’t be unravelled at a glance. Instead, in a story where we're told to trust no one and that nothing is at it seems, you'll mistrust exactly the right people and know exactly what is and is not as it seems. The film has more in common with later decades: taking the 80s indifferent attitude to felled henchmen, some of the action set pieces from the 90s (the opening feels like Under Siege if it were condensed to just 6-minutes), and from the 00s and 10s the Russos borrow the big bombast (most notably the money shot of huge-ship-crashing-into-big-city, which is a particular favourite right now). 

Cap 2 briefly aspires to the touchstones of the 70s, but too quickly gives in to the often overblown stylings of the years that followed.

Overall: 5/10