FILM REVIEW: FLIGHT

FLIGHT (15)
Starring: Denzel Washington, Don Cheadle, Kelly Reilly, Bruce Greenwood, John Goodman
Director: Bob Zemeckis
Running time: 138 minutes
Released by: Paramount Pictures
Out:1st February


William 'Whip' Whitaker (Denzel Washington), wakes up in a hotel room, reaches over a naked woman to finish one of many bottles of beer, sniffs a line of cocaine and heads off to the day-job... as pilot for a major air-line.  Secretly indulging in a couple more mini-bottles of whiskey before take-off, Whitaker assures his nervous and suspicious co-pilot that he and everything will be fine.

Everything... as it turns out, will NOT be fine as the plane ultimately hits the kind of turbulence that keeps you awake at night - especially if you're on the plane experiencing it. With what appears to be a major systems failure, the plane begins to plummet to the ground. There seems to be no chance of saving the aircraft or its passengers from certain death. However Whitaker has one desperate last-chance idea and executes a maneuver that will be talked about for years to come.  While his actions save all but two members of his crew, the scrutiny that comes with the resulting investigation into the downing of the plane brings an unwelcome spotlight on Whitaker's possible excesses. Those around him seek to shield him from the suspicions that follow, but while 'Whip' is a hero to many, he may also be his own worst enemy...

On its release in the US in November, the film got some rave reviews - critics employing  more 'soaring' and 'flying high' metaphors than you could shake a plane at and proclaiming that award nominations were simply a formality. Which leaves me a bit baffled, as, after enduring Flight's two-hour-plus running time, I came out thinking that when Denzel Washington can spectacularly save a plane full of passengers but not a motion picture, there's something very much amiss.

The problems are two-fold. Firstly, the secret of good drama - as someone very old and very wise once told me - is that you start small and build. You should build up to having the audience on the edge of their seat. Flight, on the other hand, downs a double-snifter and decides to START massively and then merely circle in a slowly descending holding-pattern of despair and pity until it's not only the Jack Daniels that's on the rocks. Secondly, this seems to be a film suffering not from alcoholism but split personality. It begins as an action film, becomes a character study of dependency, convinces you it may segue into a bittersweet romance and then decides it wants to be a comedy. It veers so suddenly and drastically from one to the other that the word 'turbulence' doesn't do it justice. Attach that to a distinct lack of actual story momentum and we're not watching a big-screen plane-crash, we're watching a cinematic car-crash.

Now... none of this should indicate that Denzel Washington isn't a solid actor. He has proven time and time again that if you give him a good role, he can make it a great performance. There are moments in Flight where he shines and if the film was marketed as a 'flawed hero's battle with the bottle' rather than a 'thriller' (which it clearly is not, or at least not in the way the kinetic trailer sought to convince us) then at least we'd be prepared to judge it on the correct merits. Washington plays a (sometimes) functioning drunk with aplomb, but we've signed up for that advertised thriller not a pro-celebrity AA-meeting... and after over an hour of passive-aggressive (and aggressive-aggressive) self-sabotage and ballistic benders, it's hard to feel much sympathy for a guy SO continuously bent on self-destruction and unable to take the help offered. Academy award voters clearly disagree - Washington got the nomination as predicted.

The supporting cast, good in their own right, wander in from those aforementioned disparate genres. Kelly Reilly (Me and Orson Welles, Sherlock Holmes, A for Andromeda) is great as Nicole, an ingenue addict trying to get her abused life back on track and helped and hampered by Whitaker in equal measure. Don Cheadle is an ever-pragmatic lawyer trying to keep Whitaker from being his own worst enemy and the often under-rated Bruce Greenwood ably supports as the company executive wanting to stand by his friend. John Goodman wanders in, presumes everyone's filming a slapstick Big Lebowski sequel, dispenses narcotics, cracks some jokes and leaves.

The film is directed by Rob Zemeckis, better known for his work on the likes of the Back to the Future franchise, Forrest Gump and Who Framed Roger Rabbit? and who has stayed in a more producing role over much of the last decade. It's a change of pace for him and it's good to see him back centre-stage.  But, frustratingly, there's a far superior film within Flight trying to get out. The best moments are the original crash-sequence (quite as breath-taking and audacious as you're ever likely to see on screen) and then a much quieter scene in a hospital stairway when a recovering Whitaker meets Nicole and a cancer-patient, played by a scene-stealing and unusually gaunt James Badge Dale ( The Pacific, 24 and the forthcoming Iron Man 3) for a circumspect ciggie. Either scene could have been spun out and maximised to make a compelling film of its own and yet both are ultimately wasted as we go in search of  actually getting wasted, another beverage from the mini-bar and into territory that the likes of Ken Loach and Peter Madden could mine much more brutally.

Flight is a well-intentioned film with a solid cast and moments of class and inspiration that you WANT to like because of the first-class talent involved, but it's also one filled with so much relentless self-loathing and moral ambivalence that the audience are merely likely to roll their eyes, assume the crash position and brace for the credits.

Like the plane itself, Flight is shiny and full of baggage, but ultimately it's also off-course and desperately in need of a better rudder to guide it home...

6/10

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FILM REVIEW: LINCOLN

LINCOLN (12)
Starring: Daniel Day-Lewis, Sally Field, David Strathairn, James Spader, Tommy Lee Jones
Director: Steven Spielberg
Running time: 150minutes
Released by: Twentieth Century Fox
Out:25th January 

It makes an immediate sense that if you're going to make a film about one of the most iconic American politicians ever to walk the star-spangled earth, you're going to get one of the most iconic American directors to ever look through the camera and yell 'action'.  And so it came to pass that Lincoln - the story of the sixteenth president of the United States and possessor of the most famous pre-Bruce Forsyth chin in history - was lensed by Steven Spielberg, doing for the history of the Oval Office what Jaws did for sharks, ET did for aliens and The Terminal did for airports lounges.

Ignoring Lincoln's early days (apparently as a Vampire Hunter), the film is focused very much on the challenges he faced in, what turned out to be, the twilight years of his presidency and life - in particular his efforts to end the Civil War, make sure the Emancipation Proclamation passed and the freeing of all slaves within much of the US. The film traces a weathered man, played with innate gravitas by Daniel Day Lewis, still with huge charisma and sense of purpose, but all too aware of the obstacles which he faces and the importance of legacy. Though we abhor slavery in the modern, civilised world, the film holds up a mirror to how little politics itself has changed - showing it to be a battle of wit, tactics and all too often egos. With his eyes fixed firmly on a moral legacy, Lincoln himself isn't above political sleight of hand, obfuscating the truth and making promises that he can't always keep.

Spielberg has enough karma in the cinematic bank to make sixteen sequels to Showgirls if he so wished and STILL have his resume come out smelling of celluloid roses... and for someone who has already pointed his light-meter at the likes of Amistad, Band of Brothers, Saving Private Ryan, The Pacific and several other celebrations of the country's trials and tribulations on the way to "exceptionalism', there's little doubt that the film in firmly in his wheelhouse.

Day-Lewis is fond of larger-then-life characters, personas and challenges he can get his teeth into, but while not every film has been a box-office blockbsuter, he undeniably brings a sense of purpose to almost everything he does. He picks the roles carefully and could never be called prolific, but he often is the best thing in anything he chooses. Lincoln really gives him an opportunity to inhabit a giant of a man and he does so completely. Equally his supporting cast - and as always Spielberg pays as much attention to picking the right actors for those parts as his leading man - is excellent. Sally Field as his wife Mary is as wise as she is long-suffering, David Strathairn as Willam Seward is shrewd and dry-humoured and James Spader is clearly having an excellent time throughout. The list also includes Tommy Lee Jones, Joseph Gordon-Levitt, Hal Holbrook, John Hawkes (also excellent in last week's The Sessions), Bruce McGill, Jackie Earle Haley and Tim Blake Nelson. Yes, it's that calibre of movie actor-magnet..

The UK print of the film comes with a scene-setting script/montage before the film itself begins and this is perhaps a wise move. Though Americans may also find that there's facts and story-points they weren't aware of, international audiences will find they know less than they thought, little beyond the famous profile, his attitude to slavery and the famous monument in the heart of Washington. DC. Though much is shot through a bleached lens which picks out every sodden boot and hat, every spec of dust and dirt, this is a film that tries to show an element of colour and fill in some of the blanks and motivations.

Though he wrong-foots us for a second, it's not too great a spoiler to reveal Spielberg chooses not to take the cinema audience into Lincoln's fateful trip to the theatre and instead the last we see of a fully-alive President is his silhouette as he leaves the White House that night. It would have been a nice image to leave the audience with, but the director does take us to the actual death-bed, which seems a rare and slight misstep.

The film is not short, nor necessarily well-paced. At two and a half hours, Lincoln is in no hurry to get us to the theatre (or out of it) and this requires a hefty investment for the modern attention-deficit'd  audience. There's little doubt that Spielberg strives his hardest to make sure he's not wasting any time and opinions will vary on how well he achieves that goal, though there's no doubt about the effort. It meanders through the historical world created in detail, but as the genre of biopics go, this is at least imbued with a reverence and respect but not utterly blinded by the same.

Know what you're going into and Lincoln checks off a lot of the needed attributes:  scope, solid performances and excellent cinematography. Despite all that, there is something of a sense it's trying just a little too hard to be worthy and impress.  It won't be to everyone's taste and will almost definitely take a majority of its box-office stateside where there's an innate interest inbuilt into the country's psyche, but this is still a director and ensemble cast bringing their all.

In truth, I found it too long to completely hold my interest throughout and despite the individual ingredients, the result is a little dry. American auteurs love examining the country's roots and in this case Spielberg has brought his microscope to an undeniably important chapter. With Hollywood often rewriting history, this at least FEELS like its planted its feet in the right place and with the best of intentions.

8/10

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FILM REVIEW: ZERO DARK THIRTY

ZERO DARK THIRTY (15)
Starring: Jessica Chastain, Kyle Chandler,  Jason Clarke,  Jennifer Ehle, James Gandolfini.
Director: Kathryn Bigelow
Running time: 159 minutes
Released by: Universal Pictures
Out:25th January 

A little like Michael Moore's agitant documentary Fahrenheit 9/11, the start of  Kathryn Bigelow's Zero Dark Thirty begins in darkness with only the ominous soundtrack of 9/11's historical events to suggest the film has started... and to remind us that sometimes real-life is just as dramatic as any Hollywood fiction.  Though, admittedly,  the two films are very different in any number of ways and diverse significantly thereafter, it is not unreasonable to note that both were already lined up in pundits' gun-scopes for judgement before ever making it to the screen.  Such is the primal nature of the subject-matter. Such is the nature of the film-makers. Such is the nature of what is 'true'...

Bigelow's last film was The Hurt Locker, another film positioning itself on the frontline, but one dripping with minute-to-minute tension as audiences quickly learned that any of the characters who populated the story of bomb-disposal experts in Iraq might be expendable.  It rightly garnered her an Academy Award nomination and then an eventual win. Zero Dark Thirty, once again teaming her with Locker's screenwriter Mark Boal, is a different animal entirely, one slouching towards Bethlehem rather than ticking down towards oblivion. Unless you've been living in a cave for the last decade you know that Osama Bin Laden... wasn't. After a decade of being the world's most wanted terrorist, a Seal Team entered a high-security compound in the heart of a Pakistan suburb and 'terminated him with extreme prejudice' in May 2011. This film is described as the investigation that led up to that moment.

Just how true the film is to the events it portrays is an ongoing debate. The focus is on Maya (Chastain), a driven, feisty analyst whose singular purpose in life is to track down bin Laden (or 'UBL' as the CIA calls him using the American 'Usama' spelling). She has no time for a private life and finds it hard to make friends, but she becomes a driving force in the small team of operatives who have survived the conflict and department budget cuts. Painfully slowly - and sometimes merely by chance - the pieces of the puzzle begin to come together. Climbing through mountains of paperwork, sifting through walls of photographs and applying 'enhanced interrogation techniques' on prisoners, Maya becomes convinced that previous intelligence on the terrorist mastermind is mistaken and that he and his network of terrorist cells may not be in Afghanistan at all.  Now she has to convince her superiors that she's on the right track, but with limited resources and past failures... everything is on the line.

Sources close to the events that transpired around May 2nd 2011 would indicate that the details of the actual raid itself are pretty accurate, with Bigelow wisely deciding against a too gung-ho approach to the final Seal Team Six operation. But the film's main problems may be in what leads up to that moment, the investigation which is three-quarters of the film's running time 'Maya' is supposedly based on a real undercover operative, but though Chastain gives a solid, engaging performance, there's always the feeling that she's more an amalgamation of several analysts and given the attributes that will please the audience. That's common-place in any Hollywood's adaptation of 'real' events', but the film is getting more attention for the brutality against prisoners in its opening reel.

The argument of whether the 'enchanced techniques' used by the investigators were morally right, pragmatically necessary or even gave key components to the eventual operation is one open to many hours of debate and ultimately judged by history and your view of the bigger picture. The real problem is that Bigelow and Boal have somewhat tried to have their layer cake and eat it... they depict the brutal treatment as factual, but in doing so put themselves at odds with official American policy. This, at the same time as certain cable stations condemn them for getting privileged access from the Obama administration and acting as a re-election tool (a theory extinguished by viewing its content and the fact the release was delayed until Deceber 2012 in the US).

In short, for a film that sets out to tell the 'truth', it has placed itself firmly in an arena where someone is - to continue those convenient 'safe-words', being economical with the actualité . One suspects that no amount of water-boarding will ever fully divulge the particulars there.

Those expecting a red-white-and-blue romp with an overtly bloody climax will be disappointed. But judging it on its own merits, it is interesting if not always compelling.The pacing is that of a mini-series condensed down to a few hours and much of the film serves as walky-talky prologue to the raid that takes place in the final fifteen minutes. It's The West Wing meets Homeland with a subdued Call of Duty denouement. Having said all that, it's an interesting experience and one that comes across as better considered than the romp into which it could have been easily shaped.


8/10

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FILM REVIEW: DJANGO UNCHAINED

DJANGO UNCHAINED (18)
Starring: Jamie Foxx, Christoph Waltz, Leonardo diCapio, Kerry Washington, Samuel L Jackson.
Director: Quentin Tarantino
Running time: 165 minutes
Released by: Sony Pictures Releasing
Out:18th January 

Django (Foxx) is a shackled slave freed by wandering dentist-turned-bounty hunter Dr. King Schultz (Waltz) in return for the slave helping him track his latest quarry. Django is one of the few people who has seen the sadistic brothers that Waltz is seeking and lived to tell the tale. An agreement is made that in return for his help, Schultz will help Django track down his wife, Hildy (Washington) who has been sold separately. It turns out she is now in the grip of a despotic plantation pwner Calvin Candie (diCaprio) and the duo form a plan to free her by playing on Candie's vain nature. But naturally, things never go that smoothly and before Schultz and Django can even get to Hildy, they'll have to endure seeing and experiencing the brutal racism and sadism that the era's wealthy often imposed on their slaves...

There is little chance that you're ever going to head to the local cinema to see a Disney cartoon helmed by Quentin Tarantino. Though he often deals in grotesques, exaggerations and caricatures, his playground is of the more 'R/18' rated variety. See his name above the title and you know that you're most likely to have profanity, blood, gunfire and death... yes, they are their own particular brand of fairy-tales, but it's rare that anyone gets to live happy ever after.

Django Unchained flexes all the familiar Tarantino muscles as he moves deftly from the chop-socky of Kill Bill and the sauerkraut of Inglourious Basterds to the spaghetti westerns of old, here complete with meatballs and a slight toasting of cheese.  Copious amounts of blood,  so many uses of the 'n' word that you could create a plantation of profanity out of it and enough quickfire snark to rival the bullets. You know what to expect and on that level there's little doubt it delivers.

The problem with the film is that is moves from genuinely insightful and funny (HILARIOUSLY slapstick in certain cases - a fashion faux-pas Klu Klux Klan ride-out would fit into a Me Brooks Hollywood comedy), to merely inciting and sadistic, ultimately enjoying the recklessness and depravity it began by rallying against, a little too much.  Revenge is a dish best served cold, but brutality is much more effective if sprinkled more sparingly and this is a lesson that Tarantino refuses to embrace. Instead the more tightly-paced first half starts to loosen its shackles and chomp at the bit... and the director is in no mood to rein it in.

Foxx is good in the title role, delivering a character that is simmering to deliver revenge, but remaining coiled like a snake for most of the proceedings, forced by various cultural and pragmatic deceptions to bide his time and be ready to enact it - instead learning his new craft on Schultz's other targets. But it's Christoph Waltz that perhaps steals the show - giving us a smart and calculating character who has no compunction about delivering death to his targets, but who is just at home in playing with words to get his way.

Leonardo diCaprio's decadent Calvin Candie makes an excellent moustache-twirling bad guy (for whom you ache to see his comeuppance) and Samuel L Jackson also makes a powerful impression as Stephen, Candie's opinionated and duplictous 'house-negro'. The supporting cast - and Tarantino surely knows how to deliver an ensemble - are all excellent. The likes of James Remar (in two different roles if you watch carefully enough), Walton Goggins (everywhere at the moment and consistently good therein) and Dennis Christoper all make the most of their screen-time, though there's a feeling that Kerry Washington's Hildy has little more to do than quiver her lips and look distraught (a shame as she's excellent on a weekly basis in Scandal).

But while excellent in many regards, Django Unchained runs far too long and would benefit from losing at least thirty minutes of its running time. The brutality could be toned down in quantity and still be as effective smaller doses and Tarantino's apparent love-affair with the n-word shows no sign of abating, used here far too often as casual shorthand rather than social commentary on casual racism.

Definitely worth seeing and likely to be appreciated by Tarantino's existing fan-base, the film is already looking to be the director's biggest hit to date. It's merely a shame that the talented Tarantino tends to lean towards being a slave to his own impulses rather than the true master of his craft..

8/10

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FILM REVIEW: THE SESSIONS

THE SESSIONS
Starring: John Hawkes, Helen Hunt, William H. Macy, Moon Bloodgood, Alan Arkin
Director: Ben Lewin
Running time: 93 minutes
Released by: Fox Searchlight UK
Out: 18th January.

Mark O'Brien (Hawkes) is a journalist, but unlike most scribes he lives 90% of his day in an iron lung. A survivor of polio, he relates how his parents never expected him to reach his fifth birthday, but by sheer force of will, he has survived. However in his quieter moments he knows he has missed out on much of what most people take for granted. Though he maintains feelings throughout his body, it doesn't respond to his wishes. He can't run, jump or walk... never mind having the opportunity to enjoy any real form of physical intimacy

A devout Catholic in intention at least, he reaches out to local priest Father Brendan (Macy) to ask whether hiring a 'sex surrogate' would be against scripture. Brendan appreciates the ethical minefield, but admits that he thinks it would be a strange God that would deny Mark some moments of pleasure in his foreshortened life. Mark seeks out the services of married soccer-mom-cum-sex-surrogate Cheryl (Hunt)  who specialises in helping the disabled and who quickly explains the rules to him: she's not a prostitute, she's a therapist, that their time together will be strictly limited and that she will work with him on a physical level without the romantic nature getting in the way.

Thus begins an extraordinary journey for both Mark and Cheryl as their physical encounters with each other have profound effects on both their outlooks to life.

Any film that deals with sex and the disabled is obviously going to be scrutinised closely. Even with good intentions, it must avoid a number of potential and obvious pot-holes - from being patronising to being depressing, from making broad generalisations to being too flippant.  So it's quite remarkable how well The Sessions, inspired by a true story, brings the subject to the screen and imbues it with enough elements to educate AND entertain the audience, providing real insights, bittersweet moments and tension-breaking humour that stays with you.

The cast are uniformly great. The often under-rated Helen Hunt gives a bravura turn that requires stripped down emotions and actual  full-frontal nudity, an actress comfortable enough in her own physical skin to give us a character who is comfortable in hers - never titillating but frank and uncompromising. Hawkes also gives a performance that could well earn him some major awards... expressing his passion, frustrations and character through merely his voice and above-the-shoulder movements. He and Ben Lewin's script/direction give Mark a sense of completeness that friends of the real O'Brien say reflect the late writer's personality. Macy is also understated as down-to-earth holy man who wants to provide good but pragmatic guidance.

Despite the quite explicit action on screen, the audience quickly loses any sense of voyeurism that might be there to begin with as The Sessions becomes a character-study on life. There are moments of both laugh-out-loud humour that ease our nervousness and punctuate some of the more bittersweet elements and the result is a film that is ultimately never too bleak or saccharine.

It's not perfect. Adam Arkin as Cheryl's understanding husband is too underwritten to feel realistic and while Moon Bloodgood is a good and proven performer, the naturally glamorous actress seems to be strangely miscast in the role of Mark's new personal assistant - requiring her to be constantly 'dowdy' (perhaps leaving a Hollywood-conditioned audience wondering if Mark will notice the innate beauty beneath stereotypical librarian glasses). Thankfully, Bloodgood's character doesn't conform to such sexist formula. However while the film has no problem with Hunt's nudity, it doesn't go unnoticed that the camerawork on Hawke is much less revealing for no real reason. Sexism clearly does exist, at least in some regard.

The film's certificate reflects the adult subject-matter, language and nudity, but in every other way, The Sessions is a mature look at a difficult subject and an outing that will really offend no-one. Life-affirming in the face of death, it takes the concepts of love, sex and intimacy and strips away the Hollywood glamour to reveal that, in real life, all three are wonderfully messy, ridiculous and totally worth it.

9/10

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