April: Film Of The Month

The Raid 2 (2014)

Director: Gareth Evans
Writer: Gareth Evans
Stars: Iko Uwais, Yayan Ruhian, Arifin Putra

Can you imagine a movie co-directed by Martin Scorcese, Akira Kurosawa and Bruce Lee? If so the end product might, just might match the staggering achievement of Gareth Evans’ The Departed meets Ran meets Enter The Dragon epic crime roller coaster.

Where the startling 2011 predecessor at 90 minutes was a quick dash down the road to pick up some munchies from a 24 hour garage, The Raid 2 by comparison is a Sunday afternoon drive which plots its course combining the slowly winding a – roads and blasting down motorways at high speed. The Joy of this sequel is in its stunning sense of spectacle and less is more approach, the action is just as creatively brutal, the martial arts on display just as savagely graceful, yet each action sequences has something unique and memorable to that of the next.

The narrative is a mesh of revenge thriller with undercover cop conventions and mechanics, Rama (Iko Uwais) our hero from The Raid is coerced into infiltrating the Jakartan underworld via some initial jail time. Rama then haplessly falls into the cross fire of a 3 way gang war and is left to kick and flick his way to survival whilst attempting not to blow his cover.


9/10

New: Starred Up (2013)

Starred Up (2013)

Director: David Mackenzie
Writer: Jonathan Asser
Stars: Jack O'Connell, Rupert Friend, Ben Mendelsohn

Starred Up is a film very much aware of the threat of cliché, you’d be hard push to find any prison genre films which don’t feature or at least reference hierarchal violence, racial tensions and captive homosexuality. David Mackenzie’s prison drama in referencing such components is a clash of grounded character study and boisterous narrative elements which allows the film a fire and ice quality.

The fire is that present in lead Jack O’Connell’s impressive display as young Eric, whose explosive propensity for violence has landed him with a premature graduation from Youth Offending status to big boy jail time. Making Eric’s plight all the more difficult is the somewhat contrived presence of his father (Ben Mendelsohn) in the same block, where some seemingly late life lessons are attempted to be passed on with the aim of keeping his stray pup in line.

Where Starred Up finds conflict within itself is the gritty style of its tone, at times we peer voyeur like at the cold light of day procedurals our subjects must endure as well as their emotional and psychological frame of mind, reflected in times of personal and collective solace. Whilst it is difficult not think back to Scum (1979) as an inevitable comparison, Mackenzie’s film copes skilfully with unavoidable platitude so much so that Starred Up is able to sustain a pleasant feeling of freshness throughout.

8/10

My Top Prison Movies

5. A Prophet (2009)

Epic French crime drama about an young Arab man whose incarceration sets him on the path to becoming the hea of an organised crime syndicate.   

4. Lions Den (2008)

Argentine drama about a young woman’s struggle to cope with life in prison with added complication of being pregnant and the subsequent struggle for custody.

3. Cool Hand Luke (1967)

Hollywood Legend Paul Newman is the renegade inmate at a Rural prison trying to win the respect of fellow prisoners.

2. Midnight Express (1978)

True Story of an American drug mule who after being caught must endure life in a Turkish prison.

1. Shawshank Redemption (1994)

Staggering tale of friendship between a veteran Con and a falsely imprisoned man who battle against the institutionalisation of their fellow inmates and those running the prison.

To Borrow:The Reluctant Fundamentalist (2012)

The Reluctant Fundamentalist (2012)

Director: Mira Nair
Stars: Riz Ahmed, Kate Hudson, Kiefer Sutherland

The Reluctant Fundamentalist tells the story of a young and ambitious Pakistani man whose one time love for the American dream serves only to betray him and fuels his subsequent quest to destroy it.

Played with consummate ease by the immensely talented and underrated Riz Ahmed,  we follow his portrayal of Changez born of an understated fire and calculating passion. Climbing the lofty heights of the New York City Skylines utilising his Princeton Education in order to enter money spinning sphere of Wall Street, where Changez finds love (Kate Hudson) and success (Through boss Sutherland) in equal measure.

Director Mira Nair’s tri-linear restructures layer the joyous rise, the crushing fall and the ambivalent levelling out of Changez’s puzzled journey which is reassembled into a narrative similar to that of American History X (1998), with poisoned minds, reflecting the eternal battle of bigotry, racial tension and hatred.

If there is any criticism it is that Nair perhaps crams in too much, case in point is a rather superfluous hostage storyline which opens proceedings but adds little to the more fascinating character study and social commentary.

8/10

January: Film Of The Month

12 Years A Slave (2013)

Director: Steve McQueen

Writers: John Ridley, Solomon Northup

Stars: Chiwetel Ejiofor,Michael Fassbender

 

12 Years A Slave tells the extraordinary tale of Solomon Northup’s hapless descent into the murky depths of slavery and serfdom from the comparative utopia of his previously free north. Northup’s world collapses into the punishing nightmare of an oppressive South where his education and wits are reduced to mere survivalist virtues, whilst his liberties turn to labour, all that he has loved has been lost and life languishes in the cotton fields where only the soulful sound of negro spirituals offer any evidence that the condemned have anything to live for.

Charged with bringing Northup’s tale to a cinematic life is Chiwetel Ejiofor whose performance is nothing less than gigantic, his face is a constant state of perplexed anger that serves to mask his inner fear at the terror unfolding around him, as he is tricked by an ostensive pair of newly acquainted business partners into his impending oblivion. Ejiofor’s voice, a towering blend of majesty and verse like delivery in an obscure way offers faintest of hope to not only him but those around him and we who watch on helplessly at the horror.

Director Steve McQueen’s fragmentation of the narrative reflects Northup’s state of mind continuingly finding poignancies in his free past as in his stricken future where we encounter the likes of Michael Fassbender’s colossally cruel slave owner Epps. Epps is a puzzling, paradox of a man  who becomes Northup’s would be nemesis, lusting for negro flesh be it on the tip of his punitive whipping sessions or his furtive desire fuelled endeavours with his favourite cotton picker Patsey played by Lupita Nyong'o who only exists it seems to be broken, either by Epps or the unbearable heft of despair.

12 Years’ has the power, sense of enormity and personal involvement of Spielberg’s Schindler’s List, is equally painful to watch yet necessary to see, which in itself gives McQueen and all involved the high praise it deserves.

10/10      

Somethink Old Somethink New

Old:Europa Europa (1990)

Director: Agnieszka Holland

Writers: Solomon Perel, Agnieszka Holland,

Stars: Marco Hofschneider, René Hofschneider
 

Solomon Perel (upon who’s written account the film is based) is part of a German Jewish family about to incur the hateful sphere of Nazi Germany’s Nuremburg Laws, despite escaping to Polish refuge in Lodz the danger follows and the family is divided. Solomon subsequently via a ricocheting collective of fate and fortune finds his way into a Bolshevik orphanage, part of a German army unit and enrollment at a Hitler Youth school.

At each stop we suffer a juxtaposing set of belief systems, and are told “Communism is Beautiful” by a Russian Teacher, a German educator waxes lyrical of the Fuhrer’s lust for the purity of Nordic faced Aryan race, whilst a German School girl and would be love interest reveals her poisoned longing to see his people eradicated. Solomon absorbing all this hate and bluster must also ingests a grimly symbolic Grave of Jewish Graves Stones and the pain of his gruesome attempts to reverse his now clandestine circumcision; the only way his true ethnic identity can be revealed.

Europa Europa takes a particularly nuanced look at this survivalist true story of a Jewish boy manoeuvring his way through World War 2, the film has a rather assumptive stance on the graphic horrors of the war which are implied but not widely shown, instad there is a focus on the intense ideological backdrop of the conflict which manifests itself through religion, political propaganda and imposing institutionalism.

 

8/10

New:Last Vegas (2013)

Director: Jon Turteltaub

Writer: Dan Fogelman

Stars: Robert De Niro, Michael Douglas, Morgan Freeman

Imagine Mick Jagger, Paul McCartney, David Bowie and the lead singer from Shed Seven getting together for a knees-up in Blackpool to which you are invited, what might sound like it has all the ingredients for a great night soon declines into the group ogling young girls they are old enough to grandparent. If you can imagine this then you are at least half the way to the attempted joys of Last Vegas, a film that promises you 3 legends for the price of 4 and proceeds to patronise its audience with some uninspired life messages with only a few mildly funny gags to act as compensation.

In what could be dubbed the “The Expendables for serious actors”, Michael Douglas assembles his old pals Robert De Niro, Morgan Freeman and last and least Kevin Kline for a Bachelor Party in Sin City as he battles to fight off father time by marrying a woman half his age, in the process his friends are drawn into a similar battle against the other purported lethargies of later life such as stale sexless marriages, loneliness and ill health.

In the end Last Vegas resembles that night out you probably could do without, but couldn't help feeling like you'd be missing out so you pop along for the heck of it, only to return home somewhat underwhelmed by your own sobriety.

6/10