Wanted

Ah, summer movies. Don't you just love them? No, actually I hate them. I despise the summer movie season and have barely mustered enough enthusiasm to get to the cinema more than once a month since April (summer starts early in cinema-land.) But being the UK's most loved cinema critic*, every now and again I feel I ought to get my arse into a movie theatre and watch some brainless popcorn fare, so yesterday I did.

Actually, if I'm honest I was quite looking forward to Wanted ever since I saw the trailer with Angelina Jolie dressed only in an impressive array of tattoos emerging from some sort of bath, dripping wet and looking positively stunning. And when it comes to brainless action flicks, they quite often prove to be far more satisfying than those worthy, earnest pictures that are carrying the weight of the world on their shoulders. There's no air of pretension here - director Timbor Bekmambetov has simply set out to film some jaw dropping action set pieces and keep the high octane plot moving so quickly you don't get chance to dwell on its ridiculousness. And if we judge a film by what it sets out to try and be rather than judging it against a standard it never aspired to, you have to give this one a pretty solid thumbs up.

Bekmambetov made his name (and what a name it is) directing Night Watch and Day Watch, 2 breathless, adrenaline filled action films that were huge in Russia, and which played pretty well overseas too. I managed 20 minutes of the incomprehensible first before bailing, however will concede that the director had a certain flair for action sequences. That flair hasn't escaped him in his first Hollywood film - in fact some of the action sequences in Wanted are as good as you'll see. There's a couple of especially brilliant scenes worthy of mention. In the first, Angelina Jolie flips her car over a police road-block, onto the side of a knocked over bus, and then drives off. In the second a train spectacularly derails off a bridge spanning two mountains either side of a huge gorge. A film can't get by on amazing CGI-enhanced action alone though (see Transformers for proof, in fact save your money and don't bother). You need some semblance of decent acting, or a decent script: preferably both. I think here they had the former rather than the latter. McAvoy is effective enough in his big Hollywood break. Jolie looks great. Freeman plays the same role that he always plays in these films. They are all effective though.

The plot however is complete crap. For the record, James McAvoy plays a complete nobody who just happens to be the son of one of the world's greatest assassins. Someone who can harness his almost superhuman power into ridding the world of bad guys as instructed by the (and I'm not making it up) the "loom of fate", which is so ludicrous it doesn't deserve further explanation. McAvoy gets drafted into to a group of assassins to replace his slain father, and embarks on a mission to avenge his death by killing the rogue assassin who killed him. Aside from the loom of fate, we have the problem of a final act involving thousands of explosive rats: surely the dumbest conceit in recent movie history.

Despite this failing, I am going to give the film a pass. Summer films are usually braindead crap and this may well be braindead and it may well be crap, but it has enough quality about it to get a half-recommendation from me. Everyone involved seems to be intent on simply making a fun, watchable action film and they pitch it just right. Wanted is very good at being what it wants to be and for my money that's far more enjoyable than seeing a film that aspires to greatness, but which comes up woefully short.

C+

*as voted by the editor of myfilmvault.com

Atonement (2007)

I have to say, I was surprised by this one. Very surprised. Okay, I didn’t expect it to be awful, but I didn’t expect it to blow me away either. But it did.

It’s a little difficult to describe the plot without giving the game away but here’s a taster. Essentially a love story which has to endure a misunderstanding with horrendous consequences, the film charts the lives of Robbie (James McAvoy) and Cecilia (Keira Knightley) as they attempt to get back to one another. I shouldn’t say any more.

The set-up, the first half an hour to forty minutes or so, is superb, faultless, film-making, with the possible exception that the audience is left in no doubt about some things it might have been better to leave them in doubt about. It then loses its way before ending everything pitch-perfect and allowing the tears to flow.

I don’t like, nor have I ever liked, Keira Knightley. I find her performances typically hollow and unconvincing. Not here though. She’s not top five for 2007 quality (or most other years for that matter) but she delivers a performance that is certainly noteworthy, although she is upstaged by the excellent Saorise Ronan, who plays the jealous, confused, spiteful, younger sister to perfection. Although there’s more for Ronan to play with and the character has much more to her than Knightley’s, the delivery is excellent and well worthy of a top five finish.

I do like, and have long liked, James McAvoy but felt a bit like he didn’t have much to do here. Although I didn’t find the two lead characters all that challenging, the chemistry between them was again, pitch-perfect, especially in the first act which fizzles and cracks like electric summer thunder. It’s a shame this wasn’t quite sustained. If it had have been there was definite A+ quality in the material and the staging. It’s not quite there but it’s not far away either and I can certainly see myself returning to it and I don’t normally say that for films like this. This had something about it, that great, indefinable, quality that lingers long in the mind, put there by a quality film’s sinewy tangles, threads and mysteries.

Recommended.

A-

Movie Years Meltdown

Huge problem with the actors this year. I still reckon there's at least 10 awards worthy films to be seen: including, and not restricted to, American Gangster, Sweeny Todd, Into the Wild, No Country for Old Men, The Assassination of Jesse James.., There Will Be Blood and Charlie Wilson's War.

Trouble is I'm struggling badly to find any room on my top 5 actors. It's currently a resolute 8 and I really don't like the idea of bumping any of them. 3, and maybe even more, of these would have walked into my top 5 in many other years.

George Clooney - Michael Clayton
Chris Cooper - Breach
James McAvoy - Atonement
Russell Crowe - 3:10 to Yuma
Gordon Pinsent - Away from Her
Christopher Mintz-Plasse - Superbad
Viggo Mortensen - Eastern Promises
Joseph Gordon-Levitt - The Lookout

Atonement

James McAVoy and Keira Knightley excel in Joe Wright's Atonement.

Based on the best selling book by Ian McEwan, which I confess I’ve not read, this ambitious adaptation arrived yesterday in theatres after a fanfare of glowing reviews when it debuted at the Venice Film Festival last week. Headline grabbing reviews that proclaimed this as an instant classic and pondered whether Joe Wright is Britain’s best director must have been music to the producers ears, and to Working Title, the British film production company who have practically single-handedly kept the British film industry afloat over the last 15 years. So is this just another example of flag waving from the British critics or is the hype justified?

Well the short answer is yes and no. The long answer is that Atonement begins by introducing us to the budding playwright Briony, just 13 years of but charmingly enthusiastic about the completion of her first effort on one particularly hot summer’s day. In the midst of trying to get various members of her family to audition, she spies an odd scene from her bedroom window between her sister Cecily and the family’s gardener, Robbie, in which Cecily strips down to her underwear and then jumps into a fountain. A display of such indecency (this was the 1930s) troubles Briony greatly and the only explanation from her child-like point of view is that it must be Robbie’s fault.

We’ve only seen this unfold from Briony’s point of view as well, however Wright immediately jumps back a few moments in time to play out the scene for us again, this time from Cecily’s perspective. What seemed to be an odd encounter is revealed to be quite innocent, however we the viewer already know that there’s a significance to that first perspective that will ultimately shape the direction of the story.

For Cecily, played by Keira Knightley, who Wright directed to an Oscar nomination in Pride and Prejudice, and Robbie (James McAvoy) that encounter proves to be the catalyst that leads to them realising their mutual feelings for each other. Knightley and McAvoy totally convince as lovers and are both excellent in this opening act of the film; at first unable to express themselves around one another and then, embracing passionately within the space of a few minutes on film. Yet this lightening fast progression feels natural thanks to the note perfect performances of the two leads. The opening act, all of which takes place on that same day, is wonderfully engaging, at times very humorous in the way it is written and directed. You want to spend more time with these characters, and the palpable chemistry they share on screen. It’s nearly as good as cinema gets. However, and you knew this was coming, things start to go downhill as soon as that day ends and the story moves forward 4 years.

Briony accuses Robbie of a crime he did not commit and it results in him being whisked off to jail, and then Northern France to fight in WWII leaving Knightley in England on her lonesome. Now their chemistry was good, but I’m not sure even they are good enough to pull off a screen chemistry with the English Channel separating them.

Clearly since this is an adaptation of a successful novel, Christopher Hampton was not at liberty to deviate so dramatically from the source, however I felt it a huge mistake to separate Knightley and McAvoy. The middle act holds a fraction of the interest generated by the first and it’s a different film altogether without the two leads in the same country. Heck, I’m not suggesting for a moment that McEwan got it wrong and that his novel would be a lot better if only he would take my suggestions on board. However I do know that it’s often hard to come by such great chemistry between two leads and when you do you have to milk than cash cow for all it’s worth. It’s generally not a good idea to put 600 miles between them, and, worse than that, include what seemed an interminably long stretch without either of them on the screen.

The film recovers somewhat in the third act – there’s a nice appearance by Vanessa Redgrave as the elder Briony, and McAvoy delivers a knock-out scene towards the end. However I came out of this disappointed that a film with an A+ first act couldn’t sustain it for the whole 2 hours. Minus marks too for a score that’s run of the mill and often too much, and for an ending that is all too predictable.

It’s definitely worth seeing and I’m sure many people will have a completely different take on the last 2 thirds, but I wanted to see a film that I was promised in the first half hour. I know you should judge a film on what it was a out, and not on what you wanted it to be about, however on this occasion I’m going to break that little golden rule and judge it on what I felt it should have been. And by that criterion it’s a slightly disappointing B