Only God Forgives (2013)

Danish director Nicholas Winding Refn has spent years making movies about taciturn, emotionally stunted men with a penchant for ultra-violence and garnered something of a cult following in the process. However a couple of years ago something surprising happened – he had a genuine hit. Thanks to its slick retro style, modish synth-pop soundtrack and the presence of Ryan Gosling in the lead, Drive was by some distance the biggest commercial success of the director’s career, making back six times its relatively meagre budget. Now Refn finds himself in an unusual position, with a burden of expectation he’s never faced before. In a sound business move, he’s re-teamed  with one man meme-machine Gosling for Only God Forgives, a typically bloody tale of revenge set in a fantasy version of Bangkok. True to form though, this arch agitator has seen the middle of the road coming and swerved for the ditch.

Whatever its problems (and they are legion) you can’t fault Only God Forgives for lacking the director’s personal stamp. This is pure, uncut Refn, a nightmarish distillation of his fears and fetishes brought to flickering neon-lit life. The plot, such as it is, involves Gosling’s Julian seeking to avenge his psychopathic brother’s death at the hands of a crusading cop but the meagre storyline is merely a framework to hang some, admittedly spectacular, visuals on. Scene after scene, our inscrutable hero stares dreamily into the distance while horrible things happen around him. Occasionally he looks at his hands and clenches his fists. After about an hour of this you’ll be clenching your fists too. The movie sparks somewhat to life with the arrival of Julian’s mother, a demonic figure played by Kristin Scott Thomas with an inventively foul vocabulary and a distinct lack of respect for traditional parental boundaries. Refn cleverly cast Albert Brooks against type as a ruthless mobster in Drive and he’s attempting a similar trick here, but while Thomas clearly enjoyed the chance to cut lose a little, and her campy exuberance is a welcome contrast to the cast of showroom dummies she surrounded by, ultimately her character is more panto dame than a truly disturbing figure.

Make no mistake, this is a very weird movie. While the marketing for Only God Forgives has done its best to portray it as an east meets west revenge thriller, anyone expecting thrills and spills from this film will be sorely disappointed. Refn clearly has the skill to put together a brilliant action sequence (witness Drive’s opening car chase) but this obviously isn’t what interests him. He makes inaction movies, genre pictures without any of the things that make those genres exciting. He is undoubtedly a gifted stylist but he lacks the unhinged imagination and originality of his heroes David Lynch and Alexander Jodorowsky, both alluded to heavily here. With its paper-thin characters, scant dialogue, and halfhearted gestures towards surrealism, the film feels more a collection of visual ideas that were rattling around the director’s brain than a fully thought out film. Only God Forgives is both pretentious and rather juvenile but it’s  biggest sin is that It’s just boring. In Refn’s neon dreamscape the lights are on but no one’s home.

White House Down (2013)

White House Down just edged out Olympus Has Fallen as my favourite of the two movies about terrorists crashing the president’s gaff last year, even if writing this review was more fun than watching either of them.

In one of those strange moments of psychic confluence that sweep across Hollywood every few years (see also Inferno/Dante’s Peak and Armageddon/Deep Impact) it seems 2013 has been decreed the year of the White House in peril movie. Following the release of Olympus Has Fallen a few months ago, director Roland Emmerich delivers the pithily titled White House Down, which sees Jamie Foxx’s suave president teaming up with Channing Tatum’s wannabe secret service agent to kick a bunch of nasty terrorists off his lawn. Emmerich has always displayed a certain panache for destroying national monuments but he undoubtedly has a special thing for the house at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue. After vaporising it in Independence Day and obliterating it in 2012 he clearly doesn’t think America’s most famous private residence has had enough, so he’s dedicated a movie specifically to kicking the crap out of it. There will be explosions.

Sadly there will also be a plot, of sorts. Foxx’s President James Sawyer is about to put into motion an ambitious plan to withdraw all US troops from the Middle East when a group of heavily-armed terrorists disguised as maintenance men take over the White House with alarming ease. Luckily Tatum’s John Cale (At one point I drifted into a reverie about an alternative universe version of this film in which the character’s rock legend namesake teams up with erstwhile Velvet Underground partner Lou Reed to take down a bad guy played by Andy Warhol. Throw in a 20 minute action sequence set to “Sister Ray” and you’ve got a potential classic on your hands. Call it…White House/White Heat.) and his precocious daughter with a head full of presidential history are taking the tour at the time.  Tatum surprised many with his amusing turns in 21 Jump Street and Magic Mike last year but he’s in straight-ahead action lead mode here and unfortunately the boilerplate script gives neither of the stars much room to exercise their comic gifts. There are other characters too – Maggie Gyllenhall furrows her brow a lot, Richard Jenkins does ‘harassed’ as well as always, James Woods…man he got old – but really you’re just waiting around for the next bit of scenery to detonate.

White House Down is not a good movie, but it’s not entirely a bad one. Hell, when it got to the scene with the presidential limo doing doughnuts on the White House Lawn while the Commander-in-Chief hangs out the window with a rocket launcher I realised I was almost enjoying myself. A couple of decent action sequences can only do so much though, and like most blockbusters these days it’s far too long.  After two hours of the White House being shot, smashed, burned and generally disrespected the audience were practically begging for mercy. It has about three endings. After the third such, one of the characters solemnly intoned “This isn’t over yet…” and the guy sitting in front of me made a break for the exit. Only my undying professionalism kept me from doing the same. The fact is Emmerich wastes far too much time trying to give his characters emotional depth. Do we really need to know about Tatum’s troubled relationship with his daughter or the President’s thoughts on his place in history? No, we want to see the Capitol building go up in a giant ball of flame. In future I’d like to see the director dispense with outmoded conceits like character and plot and just go with a lean 80 minutes of big famous stuff getting blown up good. Maybe lay off the White House next time though. Hasn’t it suffered enough?

Ender’s Game

For a certain generation of sci-fi fans, Orson Scott-Card’s 1985 novel Ender’s game is a key text. With its child genius protagonist, mysterious alien enemy, and a plot which sees intergalactic warfare played out via video game, the appeal to the average geeky adolescent is obvious (and yes, this author was one of them). Like many cult books, it has resisted film adaptation but after a number of aborted attempts South African Gavin Hood has finally managed to shepherd it to the big screen. The director, rebounding from the disastrous superhero spinoff X-Men Origins: Wolverine, faces a number of challenges. Not only does he have to satisfy fans of the novel, he also has to supply an expectant studio with a potential franchise to rival the likes of The Hunger Games, and as an added difficulty duck the storm of bad publicity that has arisen over author Card’s increasingly outre political views, which have included some well publicised diatribes against the legitimacy of gay marriage.

The film begins when our young hero Andrew “Ender” Wiggin (Asa Butterfield) is recruited by Harrison Ford’s Colonel Graff (because Colonel Gruff was too obvious) to join an elite academy which trains the next generation of child soldiers to combat the threat of an insectoid alien race who devastated Earth some fifty years before. Ender’s emotional conflicts are briefly sketched – he’s got an older sister he loves, an older brother he hates, and an inferiority complex about being his family’s third child in an world where population controls are strictly enforced – and we blast off to the orbital Battle School, where the youthful recruits engage in a grueling training regime which includes staged warfare in a zero-g environment. Think quidditch…in space, but cooler than that sounds. The film briefly promises to take off in these scenes, with Hood conveying the wonder of weightlessness to good effect, but we’re rapidly brought back to earth in the third act, which largely consists of Ender and his team playing through a series of computer simulations, and is about as thrilling as that sounds.

Ender’s Game hits all the major beats of the book efficiently enough and the actors all acquit themselves fairly capably (with Ben Kingsley just about getting away with a dodgy New Zealand accent and Maori face tattoo) but Asa Butterfield, in what is admittedly a difficult role, struggles to convey the inner life of our main character. We never really understand why this kid has been anointed as the savior of humanity and it doesn’t help that the action of the novel, which takes place over a number of years, is condensed here to what seems like months. The film also suffers from the decision to cast Moisés Arias (last seen as the annoying sidekick in The Kings of Summer) as Ender’s primary antagonist, with the pint-sized actor possessing all the menace of a cranky chihuahua. It’s not a disaster by any means, but its truncated timeline is unlikely to satisfy fans of the novel and its downbeat ending and relative lack of action will make it a difficult sell to a wider audience.

Philomena

After bowing to great acclaim at the Venice and Toronto and film festivals, Stephen Frears’ Philomena has already proved a big hit with international audiences but will be of particular interest to Irish viewers thanks to its examination of one of the more shameful aspects of our recent history. Based on the non-fiction book by Martin Sixmith (Steve Coogan) the film begins when the author loses his job as a government advisor. Compelled by necessity to return to his former profession as a journalist, he stumbles across the story of Philomena Lee (Judi Dench) who was forced to give up her son for adoption fifty years earlier. While he initially sneers at what he deems a mere “human interest” story, he reluctantly agrees to accompany Philomena on her journey to find out what became of her lost child and his cynicism is gradually eroded by her seemingly limitless capacity for forgiveness.

Coogan, whose movie career has stuttered when straying from his tried and tested partnership with director Michael Winterbottom (The Trip, 24 Hour Party People) penned the screenplay with writing partner Jeff Pope, and he’s well suited to the role of the world weary Sixmith. This is really Dench’s film though, and she brings great sensitivity and surprising steel to the role of Philomena, a woman who, despite the hardships she has endured, has not allowed herself to become bitter.

With such a harrowing story at the heart of the film, the injection of some levity is to be welcomed but the script’s broader elements don’t always convince.  When the pair’s quest takes them to America, we’re suddenly in a fish out of water comedy, with Coogan playing the exasperated straight man to Dench’s loveable innocent. At times there’s a hint of condescension in the depiction of Philomena. We are invited to laugh at her wide-eyed wonderment in the face of American culture, her fondness for custard creams, and her utter obliviousness as she recounts the plot of a series of trashy romantic novels in excruciating detail. However, these occasionally ham-fisted attempts at humour are undercut by the less stereotypical aspects of her character. Despite spending years being harangued by the nuns of Roscrea for her supposed sins, she’s not motivated by revenge and refuses to feel guilt for enjoying sex or having a child out of wedlock.

Given the film’s subject matter, it’s difficult not to be moved by Philomena. The barbaric treatment that unwed mothers and their children endured in the Magadalene laundries has left an indelible stain on this country and any film that brings wider attention to this inglorious aspect of our past is to be applauded. If it occasionally stumbles in trying to mix tragedy and comedy, it’s still an admirable attempt to make a crowd pleasing film that takes on such harrowing subject matter. While it sometimes comes across as a cuddlier version of Peter Mullan’s The Magadalene Sisters it also benefits from assured performances from the two leads and Dench in particular is a shoo-in for recognition come awards season.