DVD REVIEW: BABYCALL

BABYCALL (15)

Starring: Noomi Rapace, Kristoffer Joner, Vetle Qvenild Werring

Director: Pal Sletaune

Released Out Now

Released by: SODA

In many ways, psychological thrillers are much better than all-out action blockbusters. The latter tend to tilt towards outrageous situations and over-the-top visual effects, sometimes relying on those in place of genuine character-building and plot. Such blockbusters are delicious eye-candy, but the real thriller gives you a more substantial meal in their tales of suspense.

In the intriguing Scandanavian import Babycall, Noomi Rapace (the original Girl with the Dragon Tattoo and currently playing the astronaut who played with fire in Prometheus) is Anna, a mother looking over her shoulder, frightened that an abusive relationship will catch up with her and her son, Anders (Vetle Qvenild Werring). She's damaged, frightened, but with a stoic determination to do anything she has to for the love of her child. Sheltered in protective housing, she keeps the lock on the door, an eye on escape routes and often sleeps alongside Anders every night.

On one of her brief forays to the shops, she decides to invest in a 'Babycall' monitor-device, normally of use for listening to infants, but which will enable her to hear Anders if he sleeps in a separate room. The shop's sales assistant Helge (Kristoffer Joner) takes a shine to her, but she is not in the mood for flirting.  Using the device later, she hears a mournful cry, only to rush to Anders's room to find him safely asleep. The device seems to be picking up the sounds from another apartment in the block of flats - a child that sounds very much in pain.

Anna returns to the shop to get some technical advice and agrees to meet up with Helge socially - realising she could do with one person who seems to have her interest at heart... but when the Babycall cries continue, Anders finds a new silent friend who comes and goes as he pleases and a blood-stained drawing appears on the fridge-door, Anna begins to wonder if someone, or something supernatural is conspiring against her.

There's no doubt that Rapace, for very good reasons,  is rapidly becoming the go-to European actress for dynamic parts - she certainly imbues Anna with a mix of bruised psyche and steely determination, walking the fine-line between making us want the best for the character without always wholly sympathising Anna everything she does.  The film is a strong mood piece, chilling and spookily suspenseful throughout, keeping the audience as much on-their-toes as Anna herself, never letting either get too comfortable. We know Anna feels genuinely threatened, but we're never quite sure where the real dangers lie.

Such movies always pivot on their final acts, as the audience move towards reveals and answers, but after achieving a slow-burn momentum, Babycall stumbles just a little as we reach its climax. It's still powerful and intense and well-executed by director Pal Sletaune and feels like an early Brian de Palma film albeit it with a more muted pallete. But it's one of those rare times when you feel the story has somewhat overplayed the set-up of an otherwise stylish last hand.

One suspects your opinion of the movie will ultimately be coloured by that resolution, but the journey in getting there is an interesting one, securing Rapace another excellent entry in her résumé and Scandanavia another cinematic feather in its cap...

4/5

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DVD REVIEW: MAN ON A LEDGE

MAN ON A LEDGE (12A)

Starring: Sam Worthington, Elisabeth Banks, Ed Harris, Ed Burns, Jamie Bell, Genesis Rodriguez, Anthony Mackie, Kyra Sedgwick

Director: Asger Leth

Released by: Entertainment One UK
Released: Out Now

It’s quite clear that, some movie tricks aside, Sam Worthington (the ‘Man’ of the title) does not suffer from vertigo. 

The Avatar/Clash of the Titans actor plays Nick Cassidy, an ex-cop in jail for the apparent theft of a nearly priceless diamond owned by mogul David Englander (Harris). With ‘Fugitive’ like flair, Cassidy escapes from custody while attending his father’s funeral and makes his way to New York City. More accurately, he makes his way to a hotel room many floors up... and then leaves the room, not via the door, but the window. As a crowd gathers below and a range of cops (Banks, Burns, Mackie) fret within, everyone tries to work out why he’s decided to end it all and how they can get him back inside (the room AND prison) from that pesky ledge.  The problem is that Cassidy has no interest in either returning to the room or hitting the side-walk... the real drama is happening a block away and is part of a long-established plan of revenge.

One problem with ‘Ledge’ is that the trailer gives away several major ‘twists’ and the film itself plays some of its stacked deck far too early. Audiences like intrigue, yet a third of the way in, we know most of the conceits. The plot gamely plays out, with fun, thrills and spills but equally starts to shamelessly mine the clichés, each somewhat weakening internal logic. Unlike, say, Phone Booth (which genuinely took a singular, everyday location and made it thrillingly pivotal to its story) ‘Ledge’ constantly strains at its own restrictions, not quite confident enough to make the most of its marked territory. 

Harris does his best Mr Burns impression, Bell and Rodriguez  as Cassidy’s family accomplices provide the high-up heist fun, but Sedgwick’s caricatured reporter, segueing like a cable harpy on the street below, is an inexcusable waste of her talents and feels like a day-player.

Another film where the third act fails to quite live up to a potentially interesting premise, ‘Ledge’ is an enjoyably silly thriller that has just a little weight but no specific gravity.

3/5

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DVD REVIEW: J.EDGAR

J. EDGAR (15)

Directed by Clint Eastwood

Starring: Leonardo DiCaprio, Judi Dench, Armie Hammer, Naomi Watts

Released by: Warner Home Video.

Out: Now

After Margaret Thatcher got biopic'd earlier this year, it’s time to turn our heads across the Atlantic to a movie that tracks the life of J Edgar Hoover, the man who effectively created the FBI and also put the fear of God and government into any who dared to cross him.

We meet Hoover (DiCaprio) as a young man, determined and driven from the very start and fully encouraged and stifled in equal measure by his mother (Dench). It is a pattern that will continue through most of his life, but it is a life that will impact a lot of people and make his name notable as a truly notable historical figure – if not always for the right reasons.  We see him start the first real criminal database, start to hold various government officials to account... but we also see him re-inventing himself as the person his mother always wanted him to be, often by embroidering his exploits in the retelling. His main confidant is fellow agent Clyde Tolson (Hammer – soon to be cinema’s new Lone Ranger), who he instantly takes a personal and professional shine to. However this is the 1950s an era where even the merest hint of the love that dare not speak its name would echo loudly through the halls that Hoover wants to make his own. Besides, Hoover’s ever-loving mother makes it clear she will brook no such ‘unmanly’ thoughts from her boy.  As Hoover’s powerbase grows, his inner-conflicts multiply, providing the fodder for the legends and legacies that will eventually outlive him.

Eastwood retains his position as an A-List director, but his recent efforts have lacked some of the dynamic momentum of his previous outings. This story, like its lead character, wants to be profound and important and stand for something but the reality is that it tends to meander, addressing cause and effect but not always sure which is which. It feels less thin and weak than The Iron Lady ( though we once again keep moving backwards and forwards through time to frame events), but though the script and cinematography are more substantial, it feels like reading a dry book that never fully holds your attention despite its subject-matter. What makes J Edgar tick? Is he overly-obsessed with details? Well, clearly. Does he organise and revolutionise law enforcement in the US? Definitely. Does his blinkered, clinical and abrasive demeanour, coupled with a lack of tact and diplomacy, win more enemies than friends? That’s well documented.

Is Hoover gay? Ah, like some Freudian couch analysis, but with a better furnished closet, that becomes a central pillar of the story and clearly that’s the conclusion – Hoover being a powerful personality crippled by his upbringing, singular drive and, ultimatey, hypocrisy. But even in the most overtly tender scenes between Hoover and Tolson, Eastwood seems to feel the need to give Hoover an ‘out’, with moments suggesting this could still all be a product of over-mothering and simply deeply profound brotherly affection rather than anything physical – at least from Hoover’s side. It almost feels as if Eastwood is acting as shrink himself with a ‘It’s not important what I think, how do YOU feel?’ position.  J Edgar is all about Hoover as a troubled soul, but by the time Eastwood and Hoover feels ready to commit to the inevitable truths, the film is almost over and forever chaste. Ultimately we’re witnessing a hand-wringing of psycho-analytical proportions but the most interesting aspects remain as buttoned up as Hoover.

Leonardo DiCaprio is a solid actor who has been taking some interesting roles of late and this follows the like of playing Howard Hughes (The Aviator) and  Frank Abagnale (Catch me if You Can) in other biopics, but it’s quite unnerving that for a good half of the movie he is encased in age-increasing prosthetics that make it look as if the role could have been a shoe-in for Philip Seymour Hoffman.   Hammer as the more comfortable-in-his-own-skin Tolson is every bit as good as DiCaprio and Watts’ Helen Gandy (the closest thing Hoover ever has to a female companion in his life) makes much of a role that is not so much under-written as deliberately low-key.

J Edgar is an interesting look at a US legend, but in the end it feels like a film that is so much about frustration that it becomes frustrating itself: ‘worthy’ but less revealing than it might have been.

RATING:  3/5

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DVD REVIEW: HAYWIRE

HAYWIRE (15)

Directed by Steven Soderbergh

Starring: Gina Carano, Ewan McGregor, Michael Fassbender, Michael Douglas, Antonio Banderas

Released by Momentum Pictures

Out: 18^th January 2012

A bruised and battered woman sits in a rural diner waiting for a friend to pick her up. But Mallory (Gina Carano) is no wallflower and she soon begins to suspect that the man she is meeting, Aaron (Channing Tatum), may be no friend. Before the coffee cup is refilled or the over-easy eggs arrive, things begin to fall apart even further... leaving the capable Aaron in a pile of smashed cafe furniture and Mallory hijacking the car (and driver) of another customer. Needless to say, there's going to be collateral damage a'plenty in the story to come...

She is a black-ops agent with a history of training, secrets and split-second decision-making and a trail of dead bodies behind her: because Mallory has been betrayed by the very people who hired her, framed for an extraction gone wrong and with almost no-one to turn to. Now she wants to know how and why she’s been set-up to take the fall for her duplicitous bosses. The trouble is, she is causing no end of trouble for the likes of Ewan McGregor, Michael Douglas, Michael Fassbender and Antonio Banderas  - some of whom would gladly have seen her terminated with extreme prejudice as quickly as possible.  As Mallory heads towards her childhood home and father (Bill Paxton) the forces against her are beginning to rally, but she’s not going down quietly.

"McGregor is capable of the slimy, duplicitous sneak we quickly see his character to be, but when called on to be physically threatening or any match for Carano’s honed technique, he flounders unconvincingly. It’s like watching Nick Clegg getting bitch-slapped by an Aliens-era Sigourney Weaver..."

The problem of stripping down a story to its basic elements is that you sometimes see the joins and Haywire loses some points for clearly demonstrating where parts of the familiar revenge tale were stitched together. Flashbacks are a familiar way of telling a story – jump in immediately and then bring the audience up to date to see how you got there – but it’s something of a bizarre choice to have Mallory relating her super-secret life and job to a stranger she’s just met. The execution itself is fine, but the notion feels contrived on a distracting level.

However, all that aside, Haywire is a great showcase for actress and former MMA (Mixed Martial Arts) champion Gina Carano. She acquits herself well on both counts – avoiding the heavy footfall of some performers who can’t pull off convincing action and some fighters who simply can’t pull off coherent sentences. Carano is a natural fighter, feminine yet deadly and more than equal to the task of following in the stilleto’d path of Luc Besson’s Nikita (whether that be the Anne Parrilaud, Peta Wilson or Maggie Q incarnations).  In the hands of a respected film-maker like Steven Soderbergh, this is no straight-to-video style retread of an 1980s release. Familiar and formula this may be, but there IS a basic story here, confidently delivered and complimented by strong cinematography that balances the need for up-close fighting but also never wasting a great backdrop – a worldwide tour that might make Bourne and Bond break out in a cold sweat.

Ewan McGregor is wholly miscast as Mallory’s immediate boss and ‘manager’, the person actively targeting her for execution. McGregor is capable of the slimy, duplicitous sneak we quickly see his character to be, but when called on to be physically threatening or any match for Carano’s honed technique, he flounders unconvincingly. It’s like watching Nick Clegg getting bitch-slapped by an Aliens-era Sigourney Weaver.

The supporting cast sees a raft of A-List actors in minor roles that their agents normally possibly turn down as little more than cameos. Douglas and Banderas look to be there as a favour to Soderbergh and while clearly having the time of their lives and delivering the requisite goods, there’s only so much they can do with fairly two-dimensional roles.  Fassbender, rapidly becoming THE actor to watch in the industry, fares much  better as a fellow agent who teamed up with Mallory on her last job. He exudes genuine, cold menace and charm in the same breath and a fight scene between his character and Mallory is brutal and unforgiving.

A decent entry in the modern action output – where modern audiences are demanding more – this is reminiscent in style and execution of the best of Luc Besson’s  femme fatale back-catalogue. Haywire has its faults and limitations, but it should more than suit those who want some panache with their punches. Carano, quite obviously an ideal candidate for Wonder Woman should a) it ever get out of Development Hell and b) she even want it, has a strong film future ahead. On the strength of this, she’ll probably deliver.


RATING:  4/5

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FILM REVIEW - THE IRON LADY

THE IRON LADY

Directed by Phyllida Lloyd

Starring: Meryl Streep, Jim Broadbent, Olivia Colman, Anthony Head

Released by Film 4

Out: 6^th January

There are those people in history for whom an impartial judgement cannot be reached  – the effect they had on a situation, moment or era, so sharp and divisive that the term ‘love or loathe’ seems invented for them. There can be little doubt that Margaret Thatcher, Prime Minster of the United Kingdom from 1983 to 1992 is the dictionary-definition of such. She was either the needed steely back-boned matriarch of a sexist fairweather cabinet or the shrill-voiced, blinkered harpy who decimated an entire generation and caused an historic divide between rich and poor.  Good fodder then for a screen biography?

Dramatic-bait aside, the actual pragmatic problem of telling such a life-story is that the waiting masses will already have sharpened their quills. Too loving and it’s a whitewash, too vitriolic, it’s a hatchet-job. However if you aren’t careful then any attempt to be wholly objective comes across as sitting on the proverbial fence, merely paying  lip-service to a succession of vignettes and cliff-notes.

"...audiences drawn by the Thatcher legacy aren’t there to watch a film more comfortable in dwelling on the nuances of senile dementia (however compelling that would be elsewhere) at the expense of the advertised character-study of the main character. It’s like getting Hollywood A-List to do the Hitler story and then noting that his teenage years as a frustrated painter are really fascinating, aren’t they? "


I recently asked the film’s director Phyllida Lloyd about that, suggesting whatever the intentions, the project could be seen as Holy Grail or poisoned chalice – a film where you’ll please no-one

“We’re not doing a bio-pic. Eventually people will find that out, that it’s a film about something else. I think of it more in epic terms. You wouldn’t think ‘Oh, we have to be careful about this Hamlet, or this Macbeth, we better make him nice enough, but on the other hand selfish’... we wanted to play every moment as if you’re showing her flaws are the same things as her strengths. Her passionate conviction is the flipside of her inability to listen. We weren’t thinking that we had to tread this really carefully...” she shrugs, almost puzzled by the question.

All well and good – if somewhat bizarrely at odds with the finished result and the marketing - but the truth is audiences drawn by the Thatcher legacy aren’t there to watch a film more comfortable in dwelling on the nuances of senile dementia (however compelling that would be elsewhere) at the expense of the advertised character-study of the main character. It’s like getting Hollywood A-List to do the Hitler story and then noting that his teenage years as a frustrated painter are really fascinating, aren’t they?  

Sadly, The Iron Lady - not the first attempt to cram the massive persona of the Conservative leader into a moving frame, nor, sadly, the best, despite front-loading the project with one of the finest actresses of her generation – misses much of the potential meat.  Streep is one of those truly gifted actresses, who can disappear into great roles and let the performance speak for itself, but here Lloyd gives her leading lady a scrapbook rather than a tome to work from. If Spitting Image skewered the persona, The Iron Lady just prods it gently and then goes off with a perturbed look on its face, as if it’s just eaten a brussell sprout and can’t decide whether they liked it. Revenge may be a dish best served cold, but not this soufflé.

Streep gets able support from Jim Broadbent as husband Denis and Olivia Colman (currently much-praised for Tyrannosaur) dons an hypnoticallylarge prosthetic nose to play daughter Carol. Familiar faces Anthony Head, John Sessions, Nicholas Farrell and Richard E Grant populate the thespian equivalent of a fantasy-football cabinet and each have their moment in the spotlight, though none of it feels particularly impassioned. We already know the story and here we don’t even get the legend.

Streep will not only survive this experience but is already being lauded for a season of awards and nominations and it’s hard to begrudge her such notices given her abilities. However, director Lloyd, previously best known for the big-screen Mamma Mia!, may wish to decide if she wants to go loud and proud or quiet and nuanced. In The Iron Lady, she attempts to do both and loses the film’s entire focus, ultimately failing to achieve either.

2/5

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