Deja Vu

IMDB

Netflix

Being in possession of a physics degree will make a movie look intriguing. The name of the film and the mention of blackouts by the science guy in the previews makes it obvious that large amounts of electricity will be used to meddle with the time-space continuum, with an emphasis on the time part. That’s right kids – a time travel film! With Denzel Washington, no less!

The cast actually has some other folks of mention too, including Val Kilmer (the Ice Man has returned, but looking a little more – um – solid). Adam Goldberg is there playing the science geek (you may remember him from A Beautiful Mind playing another geek, or maybe even The Hebrew Hammer as well, the Hammer). James Caviezel (most notably playing Jesus lately) also shows up towards the end. The people behind the camera warrant mention too – Tony Scott directed (he also did Top Gun and Enemy of the State, which is interesting because the camera work of Enemy of the State is similar, and Val Kilmer was a high billing actor in Top Gun as well). Jerry Bruckheimer was the producer – it is interesting that he pulled himself away from television to do some film work again. This film is also of note, because it is the first one filmed in New Orleans since the tragedy of Katrina.

So with big name talent and the attraction of messing with time, how can things go wrong? The idea of the film is that a ferry explodes in New Orleans, and ATF agent Doug Carlin (Washington) is investigating the scene. As the investigation proceeds, FBI agent Andrew Pryzwarra (Kilmer) approaches Doug and asks him to join his special team, which has some new equipment that is able to do some very special surveillance on the scene. Investigation of a lady who was found dead at the scene leads Doug to finding out more about the ferry explosion. The more that Doug learns about the mysterious lady and the project that he has joined, the more drastic his measures become.

I think that the story deserves credit for being fairly original, if a little predictable at times. There are the usual subpar explanations of the science behind things done to explain things to Doug (and hence the audience, how convenient). The limitations of the hardware that the team is using are explained to be one thing when first shown, and later on seem to have capabilities expanded purely as a plot device. I know that it is just a story but it does kill the suspension of disbelief a little. As does the magic HumVee that is driven around – I feel that it was included to add some action to things, but the plausibility of it is a little lacking in my opinion. One minute they are claiming that their technology can take out half of the United States in a blackout, and the next they have a portable version, first in a car and then in a backpack. The ending of the film is also a little too convenient. If and when you see the film, you will see what I mean. It wraps things up too nicely for my liking.

The strangest inconsistency is at a time where Doug is supposedly in a hurry to go somewhere, and stops at somebody’s house to clean up. Once inside the house, the sense of urgency is completely lost. The people in the house don’t look in a hurry at all – totally at odds to what they looked a few minutes ago on film. Either something changed after they filmed the scene, or somebody did not remind the people on camera how urgently they should be acting. It actually really blew the feeling of urgency that I had as an audience, which was dissappointing.

 Despite these nits the film is actually quite well done. The production is excellent – the atmosphere of post Katrina New Orleans is captured nicely, they show the city in sunshine and in rain, in night and day – which makes for some nice variety. There is even a scene that involves a SWAT raid on a house in the Ninth Ward of New Orleans, which cemented the locale in a very solid way. The style of the shooting is very well done, but not so elaborate that you lose a sense of what is going on. There is very little in the way of chase scenes or gun fights – this is much more of a suspense film than an action one.

All in all, for all of my complaining about some of the story elements, this was a very good film. The acting was great, and the story is very intriguing, making you interested in what will happen next. I think that you can enjoy this whether time travel is interesting to you or not.

Firewall

IMDB

Netflix

Recently, I got me one of them fancy HD-DVD drives for my Xbox 360. I was pleasantly surprised to learn that Netflix is already renting HD-DVDs, and that they have set things up so that when you tell them that you have a HD-DVD drive, they automatically change the DVDs in your queue to HD-DVD (if at all available). And from that point on, you just pick films, and it automatically gets the highest resolution format that you own for that film.

When I made this discovery, I upped my netflix subscription and looked for some high definition films to watch. One of them was Firewall, which I remember coming to the theatres but skipped. Ironically, the reason that I wanted to see the film and the reason that I skipped it in the theatre is the same reason – Harrison Ford.

It is not that I think that he is a bad actor by any means. His resume is something to behold (the Star Wars and Indiana Jones trilogies alone make him one of the greatest stars of all time). The problem is that he seems to pick lemons to star in for no apparent reason. And by lemon I don’t mean flops, I mean the kind of stuff that you don’t feel like driving all the way to the theatre to watch. For example:

• Air Force One – I watched this with a friend of mine, and he still talks about how bad he thought it was. I thought that there was potential, but there were too many cliches in this for it to be truly good.
• Six Days Seven Nights – A bit of a snoozefest for me. I don’t remember much about it, which implies that it was not that engrossing or that I gave up watching it.
• Hollywood Homocide – Anybody who watched this knows what I mean. It feels like somebody made a pitch, somehow got the stars and the money, and then wrote out a script in a hurry to match. And I won’t blame this on Josh Hartnett, because Lucky Number Slevin was a great flick.

I don’t think that Harrison Ford is particularly to blame for the above. He always makes as good lemonade as he can given a subpar script. But after he appears in a certain number of these kinds of films, it hurts his reputation for me. Maybe the problem is that he changed agents around the time of The Devil’s Own or so, and now is appearing in stuff that is not big enough for him. He has a lot of presence on the screen, and blockbusters like Star Wars and Indiana Jones suit that.

Another factor in this film’s favor is Paul Bettany. I first noticed him in A Knight’s Tale, and he was very engaging in that. His next film was A Beautiful Mind, which was an awesome thing to behold, and his character in that film was quite unforgettable. With Wimbledon and The Da Vinci Code he is starting to really come into his own as a big star, and it is very much deserved. Some other cast of mention:

• Robert Patrick of Terminator fame, playing Jack’s new boss.
• Mary Lynn Rajskub of 24 fame, playing Jack’s assistant.
• Robert Forster of Jackie Brown fame, playing Jack’s friend.

The premise of the story is simple enough. Jack Stanfield (Ford), a security guy at a Seattle bank, is blackmailed by Bill Cox (Bettany) into helping to steal money from his bank. If he does not cooperate, his family will be killed by Cox. The film is basically about the struggle between the two as Jack tries to escape from Bill’s clutches without having his family harmed, and without actually robbing the money.

The production of the film is very good, and captures the Seattle atmosphere well (I live in the area, so I can state this with some level of authority). The rainy days and dark nights are there, and Jack’s house looks like the kind of thing a rich bloke in the area would own. There is not much more to comment on in terms of the production values. There is no period or fantastical element to simulate, as this is mostly a character drama. The bank is captured fairly realistically, and although I am not a unix guy or router dude, the technobabble was passable to me. They didn’t even use Movie OS when they showed computers, which impressed me to no end and lended a bit of authenticity to things.

Rather than the production values, which normally have a huge impact on my enjoyment of a film, Firewall depends on the story and the suspense involved with figuring out how the protagonist will get out of the trap that the antagonist has laid for him. It manages to pull this off quite well - there are some unexpected twists and turns to the plot that make it less predictable. The acting is very well done. Bettany plays the cold calculating thief very convincingly, and Ford plays the angry protective father/husband very well too. He has always been his best playing a man under fire in his life, which is probably why they cast him for this.

Overall, a pleasant surprise of a film. Definitely recommended for suspense lovers.

The Prestige

IMDB

Sometimes good films come almost out of nowhere. When I went to see School for Scoundrels, a preview for The Prestige was shown. I had never heard of it before, but the mood of the preview and the cast put it on the must show list. To my pleasant surprise the film opened this week, so I slipped out to watch it as soon as I could.

There were three main draws to the cast. The first was Christian Bale. This guy is somebody who I have enjoyed watching since American Psycho, and most recently he showed how Batman should be done. Next up was my fellow countryman Hugh Jackman, who really made his name for himself in my book with his portrayal of Wolverine. And the presence of Michael Caine just sweetens the deal – this guy has been pumping out great celluloid for years, with classics such as Dirty Rotten Scoundrels, Goldmember and Secondhand Lions just to name some highlights. The film also features Piper Perabo (remember Coyote Ugly?), Scarlett Johansson (very good in The Island, I thought), David Bowie (I did not recognize him when I saw him on screen, unlike his appearance in Zoolander) and Andy Serkis (most people remember him rendered rather than filmed).

Christopher Nolan wrote the screenplay (along with his brother Jonathan) and directed the film. I like his style of film-making – Memento and Batman Begins were both extremely well made, with fantastic atmosphere and electric tension at times. Seeing this has inspired me to see Insomnia, which I had previously avoided based on an ignorance of who was responsible for it.

One comparison which some people will not help making is to The Illusionist, which also had magic as a thematic element and was also a period piece set in old Europe. After seeing and thoroughly enjoying both films, I can safely say that the similarities are very superficial. I think that The Illusionist is more of a story about romantic rivalry, where The Prestige is a story about professional rivalry. This fundamental difference in the story drives the end result to be constructed very differently.

The film is about two magicians, Rupert (Hugh Jackman) and Alfred (Christian Bale) who start out together under the tutelage of Cutter (Michael Caine). Some people have painted the story as the two being friends that become rivals, but I would more accurately characterize it as aquantances who become rivals. There is an element of distrust between them even at the beginning of the film, which blossoms into a very passionate hatred by the time the film is done. Rupert and Alfred eventually create careers of their own, attempting to sabotage each other whenever they can and learn the secrets of each other’s magic. This brings Rupert all the way to Colorado (a long way, considering things are set in late 19th century London) to meet with Nikola Tesla in an attempt to construct the ultimate act.

The film does have a bit of a twist to it, and I have read some other commentary on this. I think that this film is best enjoyed by watching it without reading too much about the twist. Some people have commented that they needed a second viewing to fully see what was going on, and some people leaving the cinema at the same time as me seemed to not understand what was happening. Personally, I had suspicions about what was going on about halfway through. The story leaves a lot of hints here and there, and there are many layers to “the trick” in this film, so the details of what was happening were tough to tell until the very end. The way that the layers are folded onto one another and the way that you can cast back to earlier moments of the film to see what their significance was is very satisfying.

I think that this is one of the best films that I have seen recently. The intensity of the characters is amazing, and the two protagonists bristle with energy throughout the whole affair. Some people have said that they find the characters shallow, but I think that they show the nature of obsessive personalities very accurately. If you don’t have an obsessive personality yourself or don’t know somebody who has, then you might not agree, but otherwise you will know what I mean when you see it.

The atmosphere of the film is great. The two landscapes are London and Colorado Springs, and both are brought to life with that gritty realism that I love (although things look suspiciously cleaner than they would at that time period, but the purpose of things is to entertain, not educate). Sometimes the storyline weaves between the past and the present in a way that does not preserve clarity, but I am unsure if this was a desirable trait or a subtle flaw in the presentation.

This was a very riveting film, especially considering the two plus hours of content. Pretty much everything, from the casting, the acting, the story, the cinematography, the editing, the special effects – is top notch and blended together superbly to create a unique film that defies classification into a generic genre. All that I can add is to implore you to watch it, hopefully without some less considerate reviewer ruining it for you.

The Departed

IMDB

If you don’t want to read the voluminous post that is about to come, then I can summarize this for you very easily – this is a damn good film. If you want to find out why I think so, move on….

First of all, the cast is reason enough to sign up for this, even on a crowded Friday night where you have to come back for the 10:15 because the 7:50 sold out. When I saw a preview for this film, the number of big hitters up on the screen made things look very interesting. It doesn’t take much to make me want to watch a film (hey, I write a review blog, for crying out loud) so the following made it easy:

• Martin Scorsese – Does this guy need describing? Ever see Casino?
• Leonardo DiCaprio – I know that a lot of people write this guy off as a pretty boy, but I think that saying that is weak. Romeo + Juliet was extremely well done, and Gangs of New York was also a great vehicle for him. He played his part well in Titanic, too. In this film he plays the fairly common role for him of the troubled youngster making good in a hurtful world, and it was not a stretch for him at all.
• Matt Damon – Another guy who sometimes does not get appropriate credit because of the attention he gets from the ladies. Good Will Hunting was brilliant, and The Bourne Identity films are something to behold. He was also fantastic in Syriana, which is under-appreciated by a lot of people. This is one of the few times where he plays a bad guy, which keeps him along the road he started down with Syriana of playing more complex roles. He was very spooky in this film, and I liked it.
• Jack Nicholson – The legend himself. To be honest, I have not seen a lot of him lately because he has been doing the kinds of films that I don’t get attracted to. But in films like A Few Good Men, he has made a very good showing of being an old bastard, and doing very well at it. He seems like a very good pick to play the gangster boss that he plays, and seems to relish in the role.
• Mark Wahlberg – Yet another guy who gets knocked for his female appeal, but is actually a great actor. I first saw him in Boogie Nights, but he really became a made man in my eyes in The Big Hit. And then there was Three Kings, The Perfect Storm, The Italian Job, Four Brothers, and now this. He was very well cast as a rough sergeant in charge of the undercover cops. Mark has a great style and presence on the screen in this film.
• Martin Sheen – An old legend, the father of the Men at Work boys, this guy has the biggest scroll bar in IMDB of them all. Doesn’t look like a guy to do a lemon, either, and he certainly did well here playing the old cop in charge of the undercover guys, barely reining Wahlberg’s character in.
• Alec Baldwin – This guy has started to play a recurring role as a real hard ass, but it is a very entertaining role. His portrayal of a rough boss cop talking shit to any and all that he sees is fantastic.

With a cast like this all that was needed was a decent story and script – there was nothing that could be blamed on the people here. The story is about a couple of guys in the academy. One of them (Collin Sullivan, played by Damon) is an inside man for a gangster (Frank Costello, played by Nicholson). The other (Billy Costigan, played by DiCaprio) becomes a deep undercover operative who starts working for Costello’s crew in an effort to bring him down.

Since Costello suspects that he has a rat, and the police suspect that Costello has a man on the inside, Sullivan and Costigan spend the film looking for each other and trying to avoid each other at the same time. Considering the subject matter of cops and undercover cops and gangsters, there are virtually no cliches in the film to speak of. The temptation to do the following was resisted:

• Have extensive arguments about whether a wire is to be worn or not.
• Have the undercover guy fall in love with a criminal girl while undercover, and then have to reveal that he is a cop.
• Arguments between the captain and the untraditional guy ending in a badge + gun on a table.
• Cops being killed right before they are about to retire (Mendoza!!!!).

The setting for the film was Boston, and having only spent 5 days there in my life, it was tough to fault it. The film spends considerable time talking about South Boston, and some of the actors have some slightly overdone accents, but there is definitely an attempt to make it immersive. The cinematography is not outstanding to the point of needing much mention, however, which is fine because this is Drama and it is not really needed.

One of the best things about the movie has to be the script. The banter between some of the characters is priceless, and the shit that they talk is very funny at times, but not in a way that detracts from the seriousness of the film. Where there is shooting or fighting it is brief, which lends some realism. Most fights are over very quickly, which tends to be how things pan out in reality.

The ending is somewhat novel, if a little different to what I expected. I think that maybe 10 minutes could be shaved off the film (it felt a smidgen long) but I would hesitate to pick out what could be removed. Overall, though, this is one of the best cop movies that I have seen for a very long time. There is nothing complex about how this is – the Director, the cast, the script are all very good and that is a simple formula for making celluloid magic.

Whale Rider

IMDB

My wife rented this one, and I decided to watch it since I had heard good things about it, and I never saw a film about Maori culture that I did not like. As it turns out, a lot of the cast of Once Were Warriors and What Becomes of the Broken Hearted turn up (six from the first page of IMDB, as far as I could count). Unfortunately, Temuera Morrison does not make an appearance. But I suppose we cannot expect the man to be in every Maori film ever made.

The story is about a young Maori girl, Pai,  who is the twin sister of the first born child of the first born son of the chief (did you get that). Her twin brother died at birth, leaving the family without the first born son to replace the chief. She is raised by her grandfather, who loves her but still wants a grandson to carry on the traditions of his people. However, Pai wants to follow in her grandfather’s footsteps and stubbornly tries to learn the ways of being a chief.

The film is very well made. I appreciate the fact that the people were obviously Maori and from New Zealand (being from Australia I know the accent well), although ironically the protagonist is played by a girl born in Australia. The landscape and the people feel very authentic, and there is none of the overdone shtick that you see in so many Hollywood productions. The slang and language used helps create an immersive atmosphere for the story. The landscapes are also very beautiful – this is not the kind of film that you could fake in Vancouver and I am glad that they did not try.

Another thing that made the film interesting to watch is that the characters are developed in a deep way that makes you care about them. The simple concept of a granddaughter loving her grandfather unconditionally frames the story in a simple way that requires no explanation. I won’t spoil the ending, but suffice to say that the story lacks predictability, because the authenticity makes you doubt that some Deux ex machina will come and make everything all right.

The story is not all tears and hugs – there are some quaint funny moments that make it fun to watch. The interaction between Pai and her uncle is always fun to watch, and the banter between the small players on the screen is amusing to those from that part of the world. I think that some characters could have done with some more development, such as Pai’s father or the friends of her uncle, but I do understand that these things have to be weighed with the importance of making a film that can be absorbed in one sitting.

Overall, this is a fine film and I wish that I had seen it sooner. Especially recommended for those from the southern hemisphere.