Body of Lies

After a spate of spate of middle-east based failures released by Hollywood over the past 12 months, you have to approach yet another one with some trepidation, even if it comes from an acclaimed director and has the one-two punch of Crowe and Di Caprio above the title. It's been met with a muted response from critics - Body of Lies currently polls a mediocre 50% on rottentomatoes, which means half of those critics polled would class this as a failure, putting it behind the likes of Zack and Miri Make a Porno, Quantum of Solace, and, incredibly, RocknRolla. Point me out the raving lunatic that thinks Guy Ritchie has done anything in the last 10 years that comes anywhere close to the quality of this film and I'll beat him to death with a big black rubber sex toy. To be fair, that memorable scene actually came from the one film that Guy Ritchie has ever done that was any good, but I digress.

Body of Lies opens with a skilfully directed action sequence set in Manchester and then another in the Middle East involving Roger Ferris (Di Caprio), a covert Arabic speaking CIA agent specialising in counter terrorist work. After almost single-handedly dispatching a terrorist cell he is given a promotion of sorts to work out of the US embassy in Jordan. After quickly putting his predecessor in his place over the half arsed job he and his team have been doing, Di Caprio approaches the Jordanian head of security (Mark Strong) with whom he sets up an uneasy alliance - one where they clearly prefer the tag of friendship than enmity but where neither has the confidence to share classified information with each other. The film explores Ferris' attempts to root out terror in Jordan with the ultimate goal of capturing Al-Saleem, the man responsible for the Manchester bombing as well as others throughout Europe.

Critics have said this is a very Tony Scott film, and it is true that this is the most technologically up to date film of the Ridley's career, and the most action heavy piece since Black Hawk Down. Ridley's younger brother hasn't really done anything of note since Enemy of the State, but that particular film is genuinely great in my opinion and, like this, was technologically savvy and covered much ground quickly.

Body of Lies though is a completely different beast. It has a smart script penned from the David Ignatius novel and adapted by Oscar winner William Monahan, with whom Scott work on Kingdom of Heaven. Perhaps a perceived lack of focus hurt the film in terms of critical reception, and it is true that there is a lot going on here. We only settle into the meat of the plot half way into the second act, but the build up to that point has been so satisfying that you almost didn't need a clearly defined goal, although when it comes it is a strength of the film. Ferris hatches a clever plan to entrap Al-Saleem by setting up a rival terrorist cell and getting Saleem curious enough to initiate contact. The way Ferrris goes about setting it up is smart and brilliantly executed and could easily have merited its own 2 hour picture.

However I wouldn't fault the structure of this film at all and it was extremely entertaining to be plunged into the hi-tech world of counter-terrorism. Di Caprio is once again on top form in a film in which he probably should have got sole billing. That honour was shared by Russell Crowe who, despite being one of the finest actors working today, I have yet to mention. That's because he really is a secondary player to Di Caprio and has very little to do other than speak on the phone to his man in the field. If Di Caprio is a bit like Jack Bauer, Crowe is a bit like a one man CTU - someone who phones in advice and instruction from Washington and a man capable of making extremely tough calls instantly, and without giving them a second though. Crowe carrying an extra few pounds and in the Jeffrey Wigand build from The Insider, plays his small role perfectly and is possibly the star of the show, although it's a close run thing between him and relative newcomer Mark Strong. Strong plays the Jordanian minister with a quiet gravitas that has you completely convinced that the guy is extremely powerful. Oozing charisma and authority in his role, Strong really should get a significant career boost from his impressive performance here.

Body of Lies is far far better than critics will tell you. Whilst it wont go down as a home run in the Ridley Scott canon, it a film I would unhesitatingly recommend. The strong performances and the wonderful visual flair that you a guaranteed with Ridley, make it worth the price of admission alone.

B+

Quarantine

Well it just couldn't be as good as myfilmvault's virtual lock for film of the year could it. Could it? [Rec] is the only film in both mine and Matt's top 3 - it got an A+ from him, an A from me. The last time we agreed on a film, Scorsese was just an Oscarless journeyman director and Arnold Schwarzenegger had as much political clout as Jean Claude Van Damme. We nevr agree on films - yet on [Rec] we agree; it is essential viewing.

Watching an original film and virtual shot for shot remake in the space of 6 months feels a little more like homework than going to the cinema should. I couldn't help myself making frequent comparisons to the original: comparing characters, comparing actors that played those characters, spotting deviations in plot or structure, comparing dialogue. Certain things were done better, some felt pointless, many changes however simply made the film weaker, and a couple made you scratch your head and wonder what the director was thinking.

The main points for comparison are the quality of acting and screenplay. Jennifer Carpenter is surprisingly accomplished for a relative newcomer in her first starring role. She convinces throughout and deals with some difficult scenes very well. However, she is simply not as good as Manuela Valesco who was near faultless in the [Rec]. Supporting characters are a mixed bunch in the remake, whilst I don't remember any weak links at all in the original. Unless you are really anti subtitles, there is little doubt that the Spanish film has the finest script. A couple of crass jokes in Quarantine take you out of the picture and characters behave a little more stupidly in this than they do in [Rec]. It is a typical horror film complaint of mine for inexplicable behaviour, but that was a complete rarity in the original. Not so here, although it is nowhere near as bad as many contemporary US horrors.

Plot variations are admittedly slight, although those minor changes do feel completely unnecessary. Why focus at length on a open fracture for instance - horror films are surely at their best when eliciting a sense of dread, fear or, well, horror. A rather gross looking wound elicits none of those emotions and for me it's a disappointing nod (albeit a slight one) to the appalling likes of Hostel where the torture porn aspect seems infinitely more important than actual plot, structure or intelligence.

Ultimately of course, if I'd seen Quarantine first these quibbles would disappear and I'd be on hear telling you to go and see this wonderful film. After all they've done very little to it and based it on an excellent film. How could it possibly fail? Answer: it couldn't, and it hasn't. However since it is the lesser of the two trapped-in-an-apartment-block first person video camera filmed horror films released in 2008, you really should check out the better one.

B-

The Baader-Meinhof Complex

Germany's entry to this years foreign film Oscar race is the ambitious retelling of the early years of the West German terrorist group the Red Army Faction. The RAF were responsible for at least 34 deaths and many more injuries during its existence, many of those coming in the group's early years as depicted in Uli Edel's film.

Screenwriting 101 will tell you to define your main character and to define his or her need - the desire of the character will drive the story forward. Think of the classic screenplays and you'll be able to work out quite easily who the protagonist is and what they want. Clarice Starling needs to find the senator's daughter, TE Lawrence wants to help the Arabs lead a revolt against the Ottoman empire, Rocky wants to be a heavyweight champion, LB Jeffries wants to discover whether a murder has been committed across the courtyard. Well for the life of me I couldn't work out either either who the main character in this was in the Baader-Meinhof Complex, nor what he, she or anyone in the film wanted.

Ostensibly the RAF want to establish themselves amongst the plethora of revolutionary and radical groups. They want themselves to be heard, for people to take notice, for American to pull out of Vietnam. The pledge to prevent what they see as the rise of fascism once again, to fight West Germany's capitalist establishment and to "annihilate, to destroy, to smash the system of imperialist domination, on the political, economic, and military planes." But what on earth motivates such a group to commit heinous acts? Vandalism, theft and murder are all within what the groups sees as acceptable acts, but the viewer never gets a sense of how they came to this conclusion. Perhaps there isn't an easy answer to this question, and perhaps it is not in the remit of a screenplay to explore such motivations, but after 2 hours 45 minutes you do feel shortchanged when such an unfocused, overloaded film leaves you knowing nothing more about the RAF than you did when you went in.

There are saving graces. The Baader-Meinhof gang, as they were known initially, come across as a rather morally bankrupt bunch of hypocritical, senseless extremists and not the courageous, activists that I feared they would. This is after all a gang of indiscriminate murdering, vandalising thugs, and not some misunderstood intelligent politically savvy left wing crowd. Hard to believe reports that a high percentage of Germany's youth sympathised with the gang, but apparently it is so. Fortunately Edel resists any temptation to glamorise the gang but despite this, there is still some concern that any film focusing on the now disbanded organisation would give them some unnecessary coverage and only serve to upset the many victims of the RAFs attacks. This controversy upon its release in its homeland did little to help ignite it at the box office, as might have been expected and in fact it flopped quite badly - a severe blow to Uli Edel and his team who reputedly made the most expensive German film in history. It seems likely then that it may also be the German film industry's most expensive bomb.

Why then has it been entered in the Oscar race by a country who must surely have had others films to choose from? Perhaps this may play better overseas where the controversy very clearly doesn't exist. Few people will be at all familiar with the RAF and fewer still with the key individuals within the organisation that are portrayed here. The film has technical merit, screenplay aside. Edel is more than competent with his direction, the acting is impressive and the production values are strong.

Yet if you, like me, find you learn nothing from a film that has sacrificed plot and narrative for character study you have to chalk this one up as a pretty sizable failure since those characters reveal very little about themselves in the entire duration. A very noble failure no doubt, and one that has some very large plus points, but a failure nonetheless.

C

OSS 117: Cairo - Nest of Spies

James Bond spoofs have a history of failing to be as funny as they think they are. This is just another example and the second Bond parody to fail this year alone. This is certainly a notch up on Get Smart, but the latter set the bar so low that it was barely off the ground. This French farce has probably raised it a couple of millimetres - or, as the French like to say - millimètres .

This went down well in its homeland, earning several Cesar nominations, including a Best Actor nomination for its star. Jean Dujardin is certainly well cast and performs his role with gusto, however he just can't shake the limp, uninspired script that weighs the whole film down. 95% of the jokes just don't work and that simply doesn't make for a very good comedy. I did love the stylish opening credits however.

D+

Pride and Glory

Colin Farrell is one of those actors that inexplicably has a career in which he continues to get starring roles despite none of his films doing particularly well at the box office, nor indeed garnering much praise from critics either. I certainly remember some good notices for his supporting turn in Minority Report - a breakthrough performance that pushed him into the big time, however you have to wonder what he has done in the last few years to deserve getting his name on the marquee. Flop after flop has been released - all films taking well under their productions budgets at the US box office. Neither Intermission or A Home at the End of the World could even cover a quarter of their very modest budgets. Alexander was a spectacular bomb in his biggest budgeted film to date - a film in which undoubtedly people would either come to see it if the Colin Farrell name carried some sort of cache. They didn't.

Since then we have been treated to The New World (Terence Mallick flop), Miami Vice (Michael Mann flop) and Casandra's Dream (Woody Allen flop and his 2nd worst box office return in his 37 film history). 3 great directors all clamouring for Farrell's services but look where it got them. Farrell is box office poison and you have to wonder what he has to do to get himself relegated to supporting roles again - something I suspect he'd fare better in.

So we come to his latest box office crashing disappointment: Pride and Glory - a film that currently hasn't even taken two thirds of its production budget at the worldwide box office. To be fair Farrell probably is more of a supporting character in this, although still shares top billing with Edward Norton for reasons that remain elusive. Norton plays a cop assigned to investigate a multiple police homicide that seems to be more complex than some want to believe. Farrell plays his brother-in-law and fellow cop. One's corrupt, one's not. You can work out for yourself which is which. Except you wont, since you almost certainly wont watch this film, because it isn't very good.

Any good will built up by moderate first act success - a decently staged opening American Football match, some good scenes with the underrated Noah Emmerich - quickly evaporates as things descend into absolute farce. It's as if the screenwriter got half way and thought "fuck, I've got absolutely no idea how to end this things. Let's have the two main characters fight." It is completely laughably, embarrassingly stupid. It makes no sense. It makes less than no sense. And that's only one of several ridiculous contrivances that drive the story to its inept coda. Think of the worst ending you've ever seen in a film. Double it, and you've got the ending to Pride and Glory.

D

Easy Virtue

This thoroughly appalling British film marks the 6th occasion this year that I have bailed on a film before the credits rolled. One leading American critic got into trouble a few weeks ago after it emerged he reviewed a film he'd only seen the first 8 minutes of. I stayed for significantly more than that, although I don't think I quite made it to the hour mark. Perhaps one shouldn't review a film unless they've seen all of it, or perhaps if you do you should be upfront about it. Well here's me being upfront: if you don't think I should review a movie I didn't see to its conclusion, treat this as a review of the first 45 minutes.

It is very possible that Easy Virtue defied all expectation and suddenly found some shred of competence in a screenplay that had thus far adapted a Noel Coward play so badly that it made the playwright seem positively humourless.

It is possible that every single attempt at humour suddenly hit the mark where they had hitherto missed so badly that is was excruciating to watch.

It is also possible that the makers of this thing realised that watching interiors shot as though they have been illuminated by candle-light was unacceptable and that they drafted in a proper cinematographer for the second half.

It is quite possible that the powers that be realised that a period film with a jazzed up soundtrack featuring covers of songs written decades after the film was set, Rose Royce's Car Wash being one example, was completely inappropriate and did nothing more than convey a hopelessly desperate attempt to appear whimsical, funky and cool.

It is certainly possible that Kristen Scott Thomas was given a character of substance in the second half rather than a two-dimensional pale imitation of her Gosford Park character.

It is possible that Biel and Barnes discovered some sort of screen chemistry that had eluded them.

It is possible that the actresses playing the two sisters were recast with actors with more charisma.

It is definitely possible that the director (Stephan Elliot) realised that you don't have to invent new camera angles or movements to make your mark on the industry. Turning the camera 90 degrees to shoot a car sideways on is not clever. It's just irritating.

Yes, all this is possible.

Is it likely? No.

D

Catch Up With The Classics? Part Two - Killer of Sheep

Taking over from where my previous post left off, why have we had to wait until 2007 for this film, an undoubted classic, to appear on the big screen and receive a full distribution? The answer appears to be that the music rights were too expensive, because the soundtrack features famous American artists like Paul Robeson, Dinah Washington and Elmore James. What? How much were the rights eventually bought for in the end (thanks, in part, to a donation by Steven Soderbergh)? $150,000. What? Are you seriously telling me that no Hollywood studio could afford to spend $150,000 dollars on some music rights when - to pick a few random examples - Saw 4 had a budget of $10 Million, Cradle 2 the Grave had a budget of $25 Million and Book of Shadows: Blair Witch 2 had a budget of $25 Million. Not buying that one at all. Here we have the selective tradition at work again, the process by which great works, Whitman grass-level cultural artifacts, become lost in the cultural ether because of the strange choices and decisions of certain powers that be. At least Killer of Sheep has now been saved and is available to buy on DVD. It is a shame that it only saw a limited cinematic release in 2007, 30 years after it was first made, it deserves a much wider audience.

This is a film where nothing really happens but nothing happens brilliantly. The film is as invigorating as the first summer rains or the sight of a single star shining bright through a city's smog, dust and ether. The narrative loosely follows Stan (Henry Gayle Sanders) as, in what amounts to a series of vignettes, his life drifts aimlessly on through the Los Angeles ghetto of Watts, where he works in a slaughterhouse. Other characters drift in and out (it reminded me of the Thin Red Line, which is perhaps one reason I loved it so much) and Stan's relationship with his unnamed wife (Kaycee Moore) provides some of the most beautiful and perfect moments of simple, everyday, tenderness that have ever been seen of screen. One scene where the pair dance to Dinah Washington's 'This Bitter Earth' is a perfect symbiosis of musical and cinematic soul and might have made it into my top 25 scenes of all time, but I don't have the heart - yet - to start again. This moment of everyday beauty encapsulates both the film and human life at its most beautiful, its most tender and its most shy.

Burnett clearly has an eye for the brilliant and the beautiful. The cinematography - done by Burnett himself - here is stunning. Although notable for looking strikingly everyday, the film's images retain a power that transcends the everyday. One shot of the local kids playing and running across train lines (see above) more than resembles a war zone, surely no accident given the year (1977) this was filmed and, therefore, its global context. Striking image follows striking image and the black and white only adds to the depth, beauty and realism of the whole thing. Burnett also said that he wanted the film to stand as a testament to the history of African-American music. That's a grand claim and it clearly doesn't live up to it (the film is, after all, only 81 minutes long), however, this does not detract from the amazing symmetry between sight and sound, as though the music is plumbed deep into the veins and lifeblood of the film's rhythmic and soulful heartbeat.

Aside from Sanders and Moore and the children in the film (one of which was played by Burnett's daughter, Angela), the rest of the performances are pretty bad or simply appalling, though none are in the film long enough to tarnish it, nor are any as bad as Charlton Heston's 'effort' in A Touch Of Evil. Sanders invests Stan with a quiet, meandering, dignity and charm and every look and expression reflect the feel of a man whose life is a self-defined struggle and whose quest for purpose and meaning is lost in the depression- and-isolation-scarred landscapes and tenements and found only in life's tender little moments, like the pressing of a warm teacup against a cheek. You really feel for Stan and that is some achievement (to be shared by Gayle and Burnett), given the total lack of narrative or plot of the film. Killer of Sheep is just life.

This is a classic example of brilliantly drawn realism. Realist films don't tend to be considered 'high' culture, perhaps being, in their very essence, too gritty, pavement-centred and down-to-earth. What becomes 'high culture' and why? No one really understands this, especially, perhaps, with cinema, because the infinitesimally small-level, ants-eye, processes by which films get selected, made, produced, distributed, reviewed are totally beyond the sight of both films critics and those of us who form the general film-going population. The same is true of literature, theatre and art (among other things). We just will never know in the vast majority of cases primarily, of course, because the inner processes of selection and choice go on in the privacy of the mind, which can only be shared by communication and, in such cases, rarely is shared. If Killer of Sheep has remained hidden for thirty odd years, what other gems lie unearthed in film-school vaults and studio filing cabinets? Perhaps I can suggest that Indy 5 should be called 'Indiana Jones and the Quest for the Lost Reels', where Indy battles evil film executives, producers and critics to give the world a true view of global culture now lost and hidden.

In the meantime, I'll just have to enjoy Killer of Sheep. And enjoy it again I will. I'm sure this will make it into my top 25 of all time, I've already watched it twice and might watch it again this weekend. A stunning, unusual, imperfect, tender, beautiful film, unlike any other you have ever seen, even other classically 'realist' films. Killer of Sheep and Burnett as a film-maker stand on their own. Not least in the fact that the film is unique in - ultimately - surviving the dreaded clutches of the selective tradition.

Killer of Sheep: A+

Quantum of Solace

This review is brought to you by Sony Ericsson: Yours to Create; Virgin Atlantic: No Ordinary Airline; and Aston Martin: Power, Beauty and Soul.

Quantum of Solace bowed Friday in the UK, two weeks before its stateside debut, and promptly rewrote the record books for a Friday box office take. Quite obviously the producers and Daniel Craig have re-energised the franchise with Casino Royale and expectation is high for Bond films once again. Trouble is, this just isn't very good - but then again neither was Casino Royale.

If I wanted to watch a Bourne film I would go and watch a Bourne film. Why the Bond overlords decided audiences would prefer all the humour and fun stripped out of these things? Quantum of Solace is just a tiny bit depressing. Relentless action with barely time to cobble together a plot. Precisely 2 very mild quips from Bond - both of which Craig could have timed better - you almost long for Roger Moore.

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