| DEC. ROUNDUP 3 : We Own the Night [8/10]; Silent Light [5/10]; I Am Legend [4/10], etc |
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| Tuesday, 18 December 2007 | |
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seen at AMC, Manchester, 15th (public show : paid £5.75) Intense crime-drama We Own the Night arrives on British multiplex screens with nary a fraction of the noisy hype and inescapable fanfare which accompanied, say, The Departed, American Gangster or Eastern Promises. This is ironic, because while writer-director Gray's belated follow-up to The Yards (2000) - reuniting stars Joaquin Phoenix and Mark Wahlberg - often comes across like a combination of all three movies, it's ultimately much more impressive and satisfying than any of them. Set in 1988, the story follows two New York brothers: cop Joe (Wahlberg) and nightclub-manager Bobby (Phoenix), their very different career-paths converging via the machinations of an encroaching Russian mafia. Action set-pieces - including a terrific, rain-soaked car-chase - are handled with aplomb, punctuating a no-nonsense narrative that grips from start to finish. An old-fashioned genre piece, perhaps, but by any standard We Own the Night is a superior example of the form. {{ more on We Own the Night }} SILENT LIGHT : [5/10] : Stellet licht aka Luz silenciosa : Mex (Mex/Fr/Neth/Ger) 07 : Carlos REYGADAS : 137m (BBFC) seen at Cornerhouse, Manchester, 15th December (public show : paid £4.60) While not quite as painful as his meretricious, Tarkovsky-hommaging 2002 debut Japon, Silent Light provides copious further evidence that - while he's probably not untalented - Reygadas is one of the more overrated and pretentious of current world cinema's pseudo-auteurs. Now nodding ever-so-energetically towards Danish maestro Carl Theodor Dreyer (specifically 1955's The Word), Reygadas crafts a grindingly slow, self-indulgent, and overlong tale of infidelity, guilt and forgiveness set in rural Mexico - specifically, a god-fearing, Mennonite farming-community where an old Dutch/German derived dialect is spoken. But the transgressive passions of priapic protagonist Johan (Cornelio Wall) don't result in the ostracism we expect - just a ticking-off from his pastor father - so it's tempting to conclude that the picture's linguistic oddity is merely another example of Reygadas's affectation. Alexis Zabe's cinematography is pretty phenomenal - but pretty pictures, even piercingly beautiful ones, do not themselves a work-of-art make. I AM LEGEND : [4/10] : US 07 : Francis LAWRENCE : 100m (BBFC) seen at Empire, Newcastle, 18th December (press show) Of course, nobody seriously expected Hollywood to deliver anything like a faithful adaptation of Richard Matheson's seminal 1954 horror-novel - a superbly grim tale of the last human on earth and his ongoing war against a rampaging, vampirised population - which culminates in a genuinely nightmarish and chilling 'downer'. But that doesn't mean we should accept this rickety travesty. Relocating events from Los Angeles to New York is fair enough: proceedings obtain instant post-9/11 gravitas ("ground zero" is mentioned not once but twice, just in case we're somehow missing the parallels), while the elaborate recreation of a plague-ravaged, deserted, nature-reclaimed Manhattan is brilliantly done. And, while Lawrence (Constantine) and his scriptwriters (this project has been intermittently - and painfully - gestating since 1994) seldom pay more than lip-service to Matheson's lean template, for over half its length the picture works just fine as a serviceable high-concept sci-fi/action-thriller. Our soldier/scientist/superman hero Robert Neville (a committed, if narcissistic and rather blatantly Oscar-chasing turn from Will Smith) and his loyal Alsatian Sam battle legions of CGI-rendered, light-fearing quasi-zombies, in what comes across as a super-slick, megabudget redo of 28 Days Later - or a more respectable variation on the Resident Evil franchise. But at the hour mark the wheels go flying messily off the wagon. After suffering one shattering personal tragedy too many, a now-suicidal Neville is rescued from certain death by what's explicitly presented (blinding light, prominently-placed crucifix) as a miraculous intervention. The picture then diverges increasingly sharply from Matheson's template (so much so that his wonderfully apt and clever title becomes nonsensical bombast) and gloopifies into frustratingly religiose schmaltz - including what's perhaps 2007's single most embarrassing scene as Neville, watching Shrek on DVD, talks aloud along with the dialogue for what seems like an eternity. Even viewers totally unfamiliar with the book will notice something there's something badly amiss here: at each supposedly tear-jerking moment we're distracted by one of the many gaping plot-holes, some baffling non sequitur revelation (who cares if the dog is male or female?), a glaring implausibility and/or a clunky bit of dialogue ("Thank you - for my leg.") Emma Thompson has the right idea: in the picture's loopy prologue she cameos as a scientist ('Dr Krippin', if you please) who claims to have cured cancer, deadpans her way through the scene as though she's appearing in some kind of Shaun of the Dead spoof, and then promptly scarpers, pocketing what one sincerely hopes was a hefty remuneration. WHEN IS TOMORROW : [7/10] : US 07 : Kevin FORD : 80m (approx) seen on DVD in Sunderland, 19th December "The best movie I've seen lately is When Is Tomorrow... It's a buddy film gone wrong, set in Austin, Texas. Made for no money, without big stars, computer-generated animation, aliens, explosions, or a single Transformer, it's a reminder that with some intelligence and skill you can make a simple story entertaining." - Eric Schlosser, 'Cultural Life', The Independent (London) 3rd August, 2007. Hats off to Schlosser for showcasing such a deserving, underexposed picture - a notably well-observed comedy of unease about two former best mates who meet up, after a five-year hiatus in their friendship, the day before one of them is to be married. But the Fast Food Nation author isn't quite right in one respect: the film does actually feature a 'transformer' - i.e. an individual who has undergone a kind of significant change or two. This is Ron (Eddie Steeples), who's achieved renown in Manhattan as a poet under the name 'Duke Eloquent', and in the process clearly grown up much more than his stoner-slacker pal Jake (writer-director Ford, in what emerges as a daringly unsympathetic turn). With married life imminent, stringy nogoodnik Jake is keen to have one last night of wild fun - and ropes a reluctant Ron/Duke into 'partying' around town. Complications, predictably, ensue. An unashamedly dialogue heavy-affair which, boisterous party-sequence aside, is largely a claustrophobic two-hander about two men who realise they now have very little in common, When Is Tomorrow features a pair of smart, naturalistic performances from the two leads, their frictions revealing much about the (ahem) explosive dynamics of friendship. It is, if you like, a funnier suburban variation on Kelly Reichardt's much-lauded Old Joy - looser, sadder and, in the end, perhaps wiser. Neil Young  21st December, 2007 NB 1. all films seen in the UK, and all timings approximate, unless stated otherwise 2. timings taken from the BBFC website are rounded to the nearest minute (i.e. 100min 29sec = 100min, but 100min 30sec = 101min) 3. an asterisk [*] in the rating indicates that film is not a feature (i.e. 0-39m = short; 40m-63m = medium-length; 64m+ = feature)
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