action

MONKEY MAN: a massacre, one bad guy at a time

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Photo caption: Dev Patel in MONKEY MAN, Courtesy of Universal Pictures.

Monkey Man is a vividly colored and kinetic revenge thriller staring its director and co-writer, the ever sympathetic Dev Patel. It’s also relentlessly violent and, ultimately, empty.

The story is simple, Kid (Patel) is driven to exact vengeance for an atrocity by killing the head bad guy, and so must first kill his way through scores, perhaps hundreds, of the minor bad guys, one or two at a time. I like seeing bad guys get violently chewed up as much as the next guy, but the vastness of the bad guy fodder in Money Man became tiresome.

Now, I love watching Dev Patel, so good in Slumdog Millionaire, The Second Best Exotic Marigold Hotel, Lion, The Green Knight and The Personal History of David Copperfield. He is magnetic and equipped with what Manohla Dargis calls his “melting eyes that he can light up or expressively dim to create a sense of vulnerability”.

Monkey Man is clearly an homage to Bruce Lee, amplified by the filmmaking advances of the 50 years since Enter the Dragon. Indeed, Patel has studied Taekwando since childhood (not apparent when he’s playing a Dickensian character, for example).

We’ve always known that Dev Patel can act. Monkey Man proves that Dev Patel can carry an action picture. And Monkey Man, with its clever action sequences, speedy pacing and blazing color palette, proves that Dev Patel can direct, too.

When you have dispatch this many bad guys with one’s bare hands, some imagination is required. One instance, with a knife in the throat, will be talked about for decades.

Patel takes a shot at Hindu nationalism in India and a thinly-veiled swipe at prime minister Modi. I noted that Patel is a Brit of Gujarati Indian heritage, some generations removed from India itself. But the need to take on racism and intolerance is universal, so good for him.

Nevertheless, I left Monkey Man unsatisfied. The only unpredictability was whether Kid would kill the next bad guy with a kitchen utensil or the glass door of an oven. The next day, however, I thought about the kind of crap that teenage boys watch, and Monkey Man’s artsy filmmaking, the hint of a political message, and the Indian setting would constitute an elevated alternative. I just can’t think of why an adult cinephile would need to see it.

INDIANA JONES AND THE DIAL OF DESTINY: just a whole lotta fun

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Photo caption: Harrison Ford and Phoebe Waller-Bridge in INDIANA JONES AND THE DIAL OF DESTINY. Courtesy of Walt Disney Studio Motion Pictures.

What everyone wants out of the new Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny is to enjoy Harrison Ford’s relatable Indiana Jones survive a series of harrowing chases, and director James Mangold’s Dial of Destiny delivers. This is pure entertainment.

The opening set piece in Raiders of the Lost Ark was breathtaking to audiences in 1981, and the opening of Dial of Destiny meets that standard. Once again, the plot has the characters, good guys, bad guys and, this time, an ambiguously-motivated woman, hunting an archaeological MacGuffin. Once again, they cover the globe, dipping from thrilling action set piece to thrilling action set piece. As in Raiders, history’s worst actual villains, the Nazis, make for the best movie villains.

Harrison Ford is 80-years-old and convincingly plays Indy at the approximate ages of 41 in 1945 and 65 in 1969. The filmmakers de-aged him by four decades with astounding computer effects. I totally suspended disbelief and never thought about Indy being decades younger than Ford now is. I will say that Harrison Ford can move his body with remarkable suppleness for an 80-year-old.

Fitting for a movie with its star playing forty years younger, the story revolves around time travel.

Phoebe Waller-Bridge, the creator and star of Fleabag, co-stars as Helena, the daughter of Indy’s old pal; Helena is as smart and daring as Indy, and even more obsessive. Helena’s motives, however, are in question and Waller-Bridge brings the needed edginess to the role. Future Raiders sequels starring Waller-Bridge are possible.

Mads Mikkelsen, one of my favorite screen actors, plays the villain, a guy who aspires to be more effective than Hitler. Mikkelsen, who often plays villains in big budget Hollywood thrillers, is a brilliant actor in a wide range of Scandinavian movies, having delivered some of the best performances of the past two decades in After the Wedding, The Hunt, Another Round, and Riders of Justice.

Shaunette Renée Wilson makes a compelling presence early in the film as a mysterious secret agent. As expected, Toby Jones, Antonio Banderas come through with solid performances. There are sentimental and rewarding cameos by Ford’s Raiders of the Lost Ark co-stars Karen Allen and John Rhys-Davis.

Ethann Isidore ably plays Helena’s 12-year-old partner-in-crime. Since Ke Huy Quan played Indy’s child sidekick in Temple of Doom 38 years ago and won an acting Oscar THIS YEAR, let’s not dismiss Ethann as a one-hit-wonder.

The enormous henchman is played by Dutch actor Olivier Richters, who really is a 7 foot 2 bodybuilder.

Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny is just a whole lotta fun.

THE GRAY MAN: an action movie highlight show

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Ryan Gosling in THE GRAY MAN. Courtesy of Netflix.

Ryan Gosling stars in the kickoff of a Netflix espionage thriller franchise, in The Gray Man. It’s a top rate action film directed by the Russo brothers, Anthony and Joe (Arrested Development, The Avengers and Captain America) .

Gosling plays a highly skilled covert operative with a back story thatreally doesn’t matter – just think of him as a renegade American James Bond.

There are six, count ’em, SIX, amazing action set pieces , at least as good as in any James Bond film. The effect is like watching an all-highlight show like ESPN’s Sportscenter, where every football clip is an amazing TD catch and every baseball clip is a walk-off home run. No need for much dialogue or character development in between, That’s okay – The Gray Man isn’t trying to be more than it is – glossy entertainment.

There’s a reason that Ryan Gosling is a Movie Star in the best sense of the phrase. He has a special charisma before the camera, and we are driven to watch him and to sympathize with him. Of course, he’s a remarkably versatile actor who can be heroic, stolid, sexy, dangerous, funny, lovelorn and even musical. Gosling has brought whatever was needed to excellent cinema like La La Land, Drive, The Ides of March, The Big Short, The Place Beyond the Pines and Crazy, Stupid Love, and even to crap like Gangster Squad, First Man and the execrable Only God Forgives. Gosling is a perfect choice to lead a franchise like The Gray Man, and his acting chops are not challenged here.

Netflix’s bankroll provides the Russos with an impressive cast. Chris Evans is a worthy villain to match up with Gosling, and Ana de Armas is a glamorous sidekick. The great Alfre Woodard, along with Billy Bob Thornton, show up in key roles. There’s a very brief flashback to a rotten father figure, close to a non-speaking part, and the Russos were able to utilize the always memorable Shea Whigham in this tiny part.

The supporting roles of Jessica Henwick (Nymeria Sand in Game of Thrones) and Tamil superstar Dhanush set them up for key roles in future chapters of the Gray Man franchise.

The Gray Man streams on Netflix.

NO TIME TO DIE: went to a James Bond movie and a romance broke out

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Léa Seydoux and Daniel Craig in NO TIME TO DIE. Photo credit: Nicola Dove © 2020 DANJAQ, LLC AND MGM.

I went to a James Bond movie and a romance broke out. No Time to Die, a fitting farewell to Daniel Craig’s reign as James Bond, has all the action set pieces, fantastic gizmos and exotic locations that you would want in a Bond film; it all just comes down to his profound love for a woman.

Remember when the Bond formula was impossibly sexy woman beds James Bond and then tries to kill him; repeat. In No Time to Die, however, there are no disposable women.

Bond, retired from the British MI6, is living in domestic bliss in Southern Italy with his girlfriend Madeleine Swann (Léa Seydoux) from the previous Bond movie, Spectre. Bond is also grieving for the redeemed double agent of past Bond films, Vesper Lynd (most recently played by Eva Green); on the suggestion of Madeleine, who is a psychiatrist, he visits Vesper’s grave – but an assassination attempt kicks off the action in No Time to Die.

Besides Madeleine and Vesper, Bond faces another woman, his own replacement in MI6’s new Agent 007 Lashana Lynch. 007 is talented and cocky, and Bond and 007 slide effortlessly into comradeship. Ana de Armas is very funny as the supposedly inexperienced agent Paloma in a set piece (in de Armas’ native Cuba) – lethal in a stunning Bond Girl dress.

Daniel Craig and Ana de Armas in NO TIME TO DIE. Photo credit: Nicola Dove © 2020 DANJAQ, LLC AND MGM.

But No Time to Die revolves around Bond’s relationship with Madeleine. Madeleine’s father was also a hunter of super villains, and she has as many secrets as Bond. So, Madeleine’s reliability comes into question, and the oft-betrayed Bond certainly has justification for his trust issues. Bond once ruefully mutters, “No – I don’t know her at all.” Can Bond summon the trust that is requisite to love?

Don’t worry – the action set pieces are spectacular, particularly the once before the opening titles. That one features perhaps the most impressive deployment ever of the Bondmobile.

There’s also a super villain (Rami Malek) with a biological weapon of mass destruction. There’s a lot of blah blah about how this weapon works, and then more blah blah between the supervillain and Madeleine. And then Bond has a face-to-face with the previous supervillain, Blofeld (Cristolph Waltz) with more blah blah. I started to doze during this part of No Time to Die, but soon we were plunging back into another thrilling action.

Neither supervillain is as entertaining as the traitorous agent Logan Ash (Billy Magnussen), an ever smiling bro boy so white bread that he is referred to as “Book of Mormon”.

Daniel Craig in NO TIME TO DIE. Photo credit: Nicola Dove © 2020 DANJAQ, LLC AND MGM.

IMO Sean Connery was essential to the Bond franchise by creating a studly character so arrogant yet sympathetic – the guy who men want to be and women want to be with. Movie James Bonds have come and gone; (Pierce Brosnan was good, I never saw the Timothy Dalton Bond movies, and my least favorite Bond was the brattily insouciant Roger Moore.) To me, Daniel Craig is every bit as good as Connery. Craig has the requisite physicality, confidence and sex appeal, while off-loading a Connery’s hint of brutishness and adding a sad tint of world-weariness.

The Bond franchise itself is remarkable. Mick LaSalle recently wrote:

…The key to its resiliency is that it has changed with the times, yet never so much that it fully lost contact with what initially made it popular. This amazing balancing act has played out for 59 long years. (To give you a sense of how long that is in movie time, 59 years before the first Bond movie, “Dr. No,” it was 1903.)

No Time to Die is ably directed by the Bay Area’s own Cary Joji Fukunaga (Sin Nombre, Beasts of No Nation, True Detective). No Time to Die is epic and is the keystone to Daniel Craig’s run as James Bond.

ATOMIC BLONDE: kicks ass, looks great doing it

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Charlize Theron and James McAvoy in ATOMIC BLONDE

Charlize Theron kicks ass and looks great doing it in the most entertaining espionage action thriller Atomic Blonde.  Theron plays a British secret agent on a mission behind the Iron Curtain just before the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989.  The MacGuffins that she must recover are a list of clandestine operatives and the double agent who has memorized the list.  She runs into more shady characters than in The Third Man’s Vienna, chief amongst them a debauched British agent gone rogue (James McAvoy).

There is intrigue and backstabbing, double-crossing and  at least one major plot twist.  The brutal action is exquisitely filmed and edited, and the Atomic Blonde qualifies as a full-fledged martial arts movie.  Theron’s character is so Stoli-fuelled, that Stolichnaya Vodka must have paid a fortune for product placement.

Atomic Blonde makes excellent use of a more somber version of 99 luftballons (a 1983 hit by the German group Nena).  There’s a Bond-like opening song, too.

Theron is a superb actress with wide-ranging skills (Monster, The Italian Job, In the Valley of Elah).  And, as we saw in Mad Max: Fury Road, she can credibly carry an action movie.  The rest of the cast is also very good:  McAvoy, Toby Jones, John Goodman, Eddie Marsan and a bunch of scary-looking guys who play commie thugs.

Atomic Blonde is the first feature directing credit for David Leitch, a guy with a long resume as a stunt man as and a stunt coordinator  Leitch sure knows how to film fights and chases, and Atomic Blonde is really a top-notch action film.

BABY DRIVER: an action ballet on wheels

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Ansel Elgort in BABY DRIVER
Ansel Elgort in BABY DRIVER

Baby Driver is an uncommonly innovative summer action movie with the action overtly tied to the rhythm of music.  The credit goes to writer-director Edgar Wright (Shaun of the Dead), who knows better than to weigh down his genre movies with pretension.  The beauty of Baby Driver is that it doesn’t aspire to be more than it is, but it delivers a surprising added dimension.

Baby (Ansel Elgort) is a professional getaway driver with preternatural driving skill.  The childhood vehicle accident that killed his parents has left Baby with tinnitus, which he covers with music from his ever-present ear buds and several pockets full of iPods.  This gimmick allows Wright to time his chase scenes (and this is a chase scene movie) to the beat of Baby’s music.  Even when Baby walks down the street, he walks musically, evoking the opening title sequence in Saturday Night Fever.

At one point, Baby loses his wheels and continues his escape on foot; his wild run turns into elegant parkour.  In an early vehicle chase, Baby creates a shell game for the cops by matching his car with two identical ones.  And Wright scores one musical chase with the 1971 song Hocus Pocus from the Dutch group Focus; you’ll find it funny – and, if you were around in the early 1970s – you’ll find it even funnier.

The story is pretty basic: Baby is working off a debt to a crime lord (Kevin Spacey), who pairs him with a differently configured set of  robbers for each heist.  Baby falls in love with Debora (Lily James – Lady Rose MacClare in Downton Abbey) and plans to run away with her after One Last Job.  Of course, because he is partnering with a bunch of psychopaths, things don’t go well, and soon he is imperiled, along with Debora and his beloved deaf foster dad.  So there are lots of reasons for him to chase and be chased.

Wright has the perfect star in the baby faced teen heartthrob Ansel Elgort (Caleb in the Divergent/Allegiant/Insurgent franchise and the star of the teen melodrama The Fault in Our Stars).   Elgort’s mom is a ballet dancer (as is his girlfriend), and he tried on ballet before his acting career.  Elgort naturally moves like a dancer and can overtly walk, run and even drive like he’s dancing.

Jamie Foxx and Jon Hamm light up the movie with their performances.  Foxx is terrifying as a murderous psychopath with a hair trigger.  Hamm’s bad guy is less flamboyant at first, but takes over the end of the movie with a relentless and lethal slow burn. Baby’s foster parent is played by CJ Jones, a deaf actor playing a deaf character.  It’s not a very textured role on the page, but Jones brings an unexpectedly deep humanity to his character.

The Mexican actress Eiza González, who has been appearing in action and vampire movies, plays one of the robbers.  Besides being beautiful and sexy, González has a magnetic presence and, in Baby Driver, she’s able to match up with Spacey, Hamm and Foxx.    She’s going to star in an upcoming James Cameron screenplay directed by Robert Rodriguez titled Alita: Battle Angel, which looks like a trashy franchise, but it just might make her a star.

Lily James is winning as a good girl with a wild side, in a much different performance than her good girl with a wild side in Downton Abbey.  The rest of the cast is good, too, down to the bit parts.  And it’s always fun to be surprised by a Paul Williams cameo.

The car stunts are first rate.  Baby Driver doesn’t claim to be a great movie, but it is a damn entertaining one and may well win an Oscar nomination for film editing.

 

FREE FIRE: a witty and fun shoot ’em up

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Brie larson in FREE FIRE
Brie Larson in FREE FIRE

The clever and fun action thriller Free Fire begins when Oscar-winning actress Brie Larson introduces both sides of an illegal gun transaction.    It’s 1978, and the hoods, played by Armie Hammer, Cillian Murphy and a bunch of less recognizable faces, meetup in a long-abandoned factory.  The deal, of course, goes bad, and they start shooting at each other.  They are all pinned down, and all the action occurs in a confined space.  Pretty quickly, everyone is wounded, and has to crawl, hobble, limp and hop around trying to take out the others.

The factory is a dark and gritty setting, and it’s not going to turn out well, but it’s too light-hearted to call this a neo-noir.  These are boys (and a girl) playing with guns, and everybody is having a lot of fun.  Indeed, Free Fall has the all-in-good-fun tone of The Dirty Dozen and reminds us of a Quentin Tarantino film with much crisper dialogue and less gore.  Two of characters come to especially gruesome ends, but this is not a splatter-a-thon.  And here’s a cinematic First – a tickle attack in the midst of a gunfight.

In another Taratinoesque touch, classic rock, especially Creedence Clearwater Revival, is put to great use on the soundtrack.  But the insertion of a John Denver album into a cassette tape player is a hilarious high point.

Larson leads a set of appealing performances.  Armie Hammer is especially memorable as a particularly suave and smug gun merchant (and wears the same stylish beard sported by The Movie Gourmet in 1978).

Written by director Ben Wheatley and his writing partner Amy Jump, Free Fire is pure Wheatley.  Jump adapted his successful 2016 sci-fi High-Rise from  the J.G. Ballard novel

Leaving the theater, The Wife asked me “Why did I enjoy that movie so much?”, and I replied “Because it didn’t try to be more than it was.”  It tries to be a very witty shoot ’em up, and, as such, it’s very entertaining.

Armie Hammer in FREE FIRE
Armie Hammer in FREE FIRE

Swerve: predictable action and one scary dude

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Jason Clarke in SWERVE
Jason Clarke in SWERVE

In the Australian thriller Swerve, a Good Samaritan drifter gets caught up in a deadly entanglement involving a briefcase full of drug money, some very dangerous guys and a sexy woman of uncertain loyalty.  The movie gets its title from some key moments when vehicles swerve and move the plot along.  There’s a lot of convincing action (there not even any dialogue for the first seven minutes and two fatalities), but writer-director Craig Lahiff is a better director than a writer. If you’ve seen a femme fatale and some action thrillers, nothing in the plot will surprise you. Unfortunately, the wife with wandering thighs is played by Emma Booth, who is unable to elevate the Bad Girl to Kathleen Turner/Lana Turner territory.

The best thing about Swerve is that hulking Jason Clarke (Animal Kingdom, Zero Dark Thirty, Lawless) is really good at playing menace and indestructibility, and here he adds a mad glint in his eyes. Plus there some pleasingly absurd touches with marching bands randomly wandering into otherwise tense scenes. Bottom line: Swerve is one hour forty minutes of unsurprising and predictable action peppered with one fun performance.

Swerve is available on DVD from Netflix and streaming from Amazon, iTunes and Vudu.

DVD/Stream of the Week: The Hunger Games: Catching Fire

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The Hunger Games: Catching Fire is another gripping episode from the popular and acclaimed young adult fiction trilogy by Suzanne Collins. Just like The Hunger Games, it’s a well-paced, well-acted and intelligent sci-fi adventure fable. And it’s yet another showcase role for Jennifer Lawrence.

To review, the story is set in the future, where several generations after a rebellion, an authoritarian government plucks teenagers from the formerly rebellious provinces to fight to the death in a forest. It’s all broadcast on reality TV for the entertainment of the masses. Children killing children – it doesn’t get much harsher than that.

This time, the malevolent tyrant picks his gladiators from the winners (i.e., survivors) of the past Games. Because they have survived by killing off the other children, they could constitute their own PTSD support group; they range from emotionally fragile to raging bonkers. This adds a particularly flavorful set of roles, acted especially deliciously by Jeffrey Wright, Amanda Plummer and Jena Malone.

The main purpose of a second act is to tee up the third, and Catching Fire is very successful, with the help of a new character played by Philip Seymour Hoffman (who, sadly, will not complete the sequels). Francis Lawrence (no relation to Jennifer) does a fine job directing his first Hunger Games movie – and he’s set to direct the final chapter in the trilogy (which will actually be two movies – The Hunger Games: Mockingjay – Part 1 and – Part 2).

[Gary Ross, the director of the original The Hunger Games, is in pre-production on two new Jennifer Lawrence movies – Burial Rites from the Hannah Kent novel and Steinbeck’s East of Eden (where Lawrence’s role is the one played by Julie Harris in the 1955 Elia Kazan/James Dean version).]

But, at the end of the day, it’s all about Jennifer Lawrence, who must carry the movie as she plays the determined and resourceful Appalachian heroine. She’s an amazing screen presence, capable of believably portraying both panic attacks and action hero sequences. She’s worth the price of admission all by herself.

The source material may be aimed at tweens, but I haven’t met an adult yet who hasn’t enjoyed and been impressed with The Hunger Games or The Hunger Games: Catching Fire. HG: Catching Fire is available on DVD from Netflix and Redbox and streaming from Amazon, iTunes, Vudu, YouTube, Google Play and Xbox Video.

The Hunger Games: Catching Fire – smart, fast-paced and Jennifer Lawrence

by

The Hunger Games: Catching Fire is another gripping episode from the popular and acclaimed young adult fiction trilogy by Suzanne Collins. Just like The Hunger Games, it’s a well-paced, well-acted and intelligent sci-fi adventure fable.  And it’s yet another showcase role for Jennifer Lawrence.

To review, the story is set in the future, where several generations after a rebellion, an authoritarian government plucks teenagers from the formerly rebellious provinces to fight to the death in a forest. It’s all broadcast on reality TV for the entertainment of the masses. Children killing children – it doesn’t get much harsher than that.

This time, the malevolent tyrant picks his gladiators from the winners (i.e., survivors) of the past Games.  Because they have survived by killing off the other children, they could constitute their own PTSD support group; they range from emotionally fragile to raging bonkers.  This adds a particularly flavorful set of roles, acted especially deliciously by Jeffrey Wright, Amanda Plummer and Jena Malone.

The main purpose of a second act is to tee up the third, and Catching Fire is very successful, with the help of a new character played by Philip Seymour Hoffman.  Francis Lawrence (no relation to Jennifer) does a fine job directing his first Hunger Games movie – and he’s set to direct the final chapter in the trilogy (which will actually be two movies –  The Hunger Games: Mockingjay – Part 1 and – Part 2).

[Gary Ross, the director of the original The Hunger Games, is in pre-production on two new Jennifer Lawrence movies – Burial Rites from the Hannah Kent novel and Steinbeck’s East of Eden (where Lawrence’s role is the one played by Julie Harris in the 1955 Elia Kazan/James Dean version).]

But, at the end of the day, it’s all about Jennifer Lawrence, who must carry the movie as the plays the determined and resourceful Appalachian heroine.  She’s an amazing screen presence, capable of believably portraying both panic attacks and action hero sequences.  She’s worth the price of admission all by herself.

The source material may be aimed at tweens, but I haven’t met an adult yet who hasn’t enjoyed and been impressed with The Hunger Games or The Hunger Games: Catching Fire.  I’ll probably go see Catching Fire again (this time with The Wife), and I’m looking forward to Mockingjay.