jamesn-4 Reviews

Outlaw (2007)

Doesn't deliver on its promise

[6/10 · 26 February 2007]

As a big fan of Nick Love, I'm always looking forward to new films of his. And I looked forward even more to the idea that the film was going to serve as an indictment of the dire state of the British justice system. So it was quite a let down to see that the resulting film descends into half-formed, slightly-incoherent statements - almost as if the director himself doesn't truly believe in the subject matter, but is assuming his core audience does. Maybe they do, but what we have here is a potentially very important film (and I would argue on some level that it still is) becoming like a whisper in a thunderstorm. Rather than show the vigilantes cleaning up the streets, they are instead set upon underlings of a mute local gangster, with mere lip-service paid to the pre-release hype. It's all very well to moan about the state of the country, but for characters who make big noise about 'standing up and fighting' to instead go through (what feels like) rushed story motions, there is a deflating sense that neither character nor writer is really walking the walk.

That being said, the individual sequences are very good. Nick Love's visual flair is present and correct, and the film is shot through with the kind of energy that only he can muster. It is oddly structured - a curious dream/premonition sequence opens things up, and only the talent of his cast - in particular Sean Bean, Danny Dyer and Lenny James - holds it together in the early stages. Bean's intensity is great, and he really should have been the focus of the film, to give the narrative better drive.

What might have also helped is if the director acquired himself a writing partner, someone to rein in his disparate, brilliant ideas into a coherent stories about characters in whom the audience can invest.

Stylish, then, and never boring, but the faux-passion is too much to get past. I don't believe Mr. Love was truly invested in the 'message' of this film, and as such the experience is much more hollow than Charlie Bright or The Football Factory. I read an interview with Mr. Love around the time of The Business' cinematic release, where he said he had an idea centred around a screwed up, rich family. This is the kind of film I'd like to see from him now, for - on the evidence of this - he has truly exhausted the inner-city urban milieu.

The Departed (2006)

Sheer Genius

[10/10 · 10 October 2006]

The Departed fuses Scorsese's cine-literate panache with a gleeful lack of pretension that is certain to give him the most commercially-successful film of his career. The Departed is the most full-on, story-driven film that Scorsese has made since his last re-make, Cape Fear, in 1991. Does this signal a dumbing down of the sensibilities of a director now so finally exasperated at his inexplicable inability to garner a Best Director Oscar? Absolutely not, for Scorsese tells stories better than any director in Hollywood. And while the exasperation may be true, this is not a dumbed-down movie. In fact, it may well be the smartest and most engaging film you'll see all year. That it manages to be so while still containing all of Scorsese's staple themes - guilt, redemption, the precariousness of modern masculinity, and the bonds between men - makes it damn near a miraculous piece of work.

The Departed follows two young men in the Massecheusetts (sic) State Police - fast-rising, cocky Sullivan, and wrong-side-of-the-tracks Costigan. Each is picked to be a covert spy, but for opposite sides of the law. Billy is recruited to be an undercover cop with a mission to infiltrate the ring of Boston kingpin Frank Costello; meanwhile, Costello himself has earmarked Sullivan to be his eyes and eyes in the PD since childhood.

The film spans two tumultuous years in their lives as both begin to wilt and crack under the weight of their daily deceptions. When each side is made aware of the other's existence, the race is on for both young men to find the other first...

Such a flimsy summary of the film's premise really doesn't do justice to William Monahan's script, which has taken a taut Cantonese film, Infernal Affairs, and beefed it up so that every character (save the muddle that is Vera Farmiga's police psychiatrist, dating Sullivan, counselling Billy) has quirks, mannerisms, and the suggestion of a third dimension so lacking in most Hollywood films. By adding the element of an ingrained Catholicism of the Boston Irish, Monahan promotes The Departed from the 'competent thriller' to something approaching a modern tragedy.

Damon plays superbly against type as a cocky, near-weasel-like detective who is slowly realising he has been in over his head since the day Jack Nicholson's crime lord first picked him out in a convenience store. Nicholson has never been more enjoyable as a completely racist, misogynistic, thoroughly evil gangland kingpin - such is the glee with which he spouts his (presumably oft-improvised) dialogue that he recalls his performance in such signature films as One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest, or The Shining. (Indeed, the film is so dismissive of the current constraints of Hollywood's liberal, PC brigade, that it at times seems a hark-back to the glorious decade in which directors like Scorsese, Coppola, DePalma, Friedkin and Cimino thought big, shot bigger and cared little for box office).

The supporting cast is superb - special mention goes to Alec Baldwin, who continues to prove that he is still one of the most reliable of supporting players in America. British acting living legend Ray Winstone also cuts a memorably fearsome figure as Costello's right hand man, Mr French; although his accent is a little hit and miss, Winstone's undoubted natural hardness make you believe him. As mentioned, Vera Farmiga is a bit lost in the field of Y chromosomes, but Monahan has amalgamated, essentially, THREE female characters from the original film into one, multi-functional, and very questionable female presence. Scorsese doesn't often get women right in his films, and one of the ways he tries to compensate for this is to make them the sort of 'moral anchor' in the film. Farmiga serves this role.

But this film belongs to Leonardo DiCaprio, who has finally found a Scorsese role that plays perfectly to his appearance and strengths. Here, DiCaprio gets to make use of his natural, near-infuriating boyishness, and he has just the right amount of presence now to play young buck in the crime outfit, dominated by heavyweights like Nicholson and Winstone. And, throughout the film, his Billy Costigan is on a downward slope to paranoia and breakdown, a decline that DiCaprio charts with a subtlety that so few of his contemporaries can manage.

But, as with any Scorsese film, the discussion will always centre around him. Not even Spielberg works under the weight of expectation that Scorsese does; and it's a testament to the fact that Coppola has made nothing by rubbish for the last twenty-odd years, and DePalma too, has lost his way, that film lovers still get passionate about his work. I can't imagine too many devotees being disappointed by this film. After two Oscar hunting films, he has finally said, F*** it, and threw his considerable talents behind a balls-to-the-wall thriller that is by turns, Scrosese-esquire and Hitchockian, with bags of mass appeal. Spielberg could have made a 4-star movie of this; David Fincher could have done the script proud. But only Scorsese could walk the commercial and artistic line so deftly, so brilliantly, and leave his peers and pretenders standing.

The Departed is the film of the year, no question. And film lovers everywhere should rejoice at having Martin Scorsese back at the top of his game.

2046 (2004)

Anticlimactic

[6/10 · 27 April 2006]

I am a great fan of not only Hong Kong cinema, but Wong Kar-wai in particular. And since this was a follow-up to his marvellous film "In the Mood for Love", which ties into the world founded in his elliptical, perplexing 1990 masterpiece "Days of Being Wild", the anticipation was high...

Unfortunately, "2046" represents a kind of self-implosion for Wong, whose films have always been stubborn in cutting their own path in the face of audience needs and expectations. Now, when he was making films like "Chungking Express", which is a film purely for film lovers, he alienated the mainstream while hitting chords with the cine-literate folk who had not had their pretentiousness fed in such ways since the heights of Godard. But "2046" sees the man who was once the most exciting film-maker in the world stray into David Lynch territory - not in terms of style, but the fact that he has finally fallen into making a pretentious film for pretentious people.

"2046" carries the familiar meditations on lost love and emotional masochism and detachment that are the staples of all of Wong's previous films, but the deliberately confusing structure make this blend of period drama and surreal sci-fi more frustrating than the joyous puzzles he usually presents. In distancing the audience so profoundly, Wong draws attention to the fact that his film is glorifying in its own triumph and importance.

It not only leaves you cold, but furthermore, it results in a film that fades from the memory extremely quickly - not a charge to be aimed at any previous Wong Kar-wai film.

Visually stunning as always, with scenes of real power and poetic insight, "2046" is well worth seeing, but does not compare to the other films this director has made.

Nil by Mouth (1997)

Britfilm at its absolute peak

[10/10 · 12 March 2006]

Nil by Mouth would be an important film if only for the fact that it reminded the good British public that Ray Winstone isn't just an asset to a film, but a resource all on his own! However, Gary Oldman's directorial debut is so much more than that - a searing, affecting film that leaves a lasting impression.

Exceptionally foul-mouthed, Nil by Mouth is a slice-of-life drama in the style of Mike Leigh or Alan Clarke (directors Oldman was very familiar with from having worked with them as a young actor); there is no classic Hollywood structure, no safety-net of a clear-plot through which we discover the characters. The cast of this film are never introduced, we are just thrown into the middle of their world and expected to adjust, treat them like people we have known for years. Because of this, the film's tale of domestic violence, alcoholism, heroin abuse and father-son relationship attains the kind of power lacking in most films. It helps that writer-director Oldman is writing about the world in which he grew up, and has populated it with real-looking (read: unattractive) actors.

Winstone is, of course, magnificent in the role of Ray, a marauding south London man on the brink of mental collapse, who takes out his unarticulated frustrations on his helpless wife Valerie, played with equal brilliance by Kathy Burke, who proves that she is far more than just a comic actress. Charlie Creed-Miles, Jamie Foreman and Laila Morse (now on TV as 'Big Mo' in EastEnders) provide sterling support.

It is a difficult film to watch, but not just because of its often-disturbing scenes of domestic violence. Oldman's commitment to realism means that all dialogue is extremely south London specific (almost incomprehensible to non-London viewers), and un-coordinated in that characters often speak over each other, making some of the dialogue inaudible. It takes a while to get used to, but it becomes an ingenious way of tricking the audience into believing that what they see is the result of a hidden camera in someone's living room/pub/car/garage.

Nil by Mouth is definitely worth seeing, more than once. It has hidden depths and sensitivity that become more apparent with repeated viewings. It is a genuine masterpiece of 'cinema verite' - the only question is: why hasn't Gary Oldman directed another film?