No.205 : The Informers (2008)

The Informers at the IMDb

Based on a book by Bret Easton Ellis and boasting a stellar cast, I had high hopes for ‘The Informers’ but alas it was a bit of a mess, although a mess with a couple of decent ideas and scenes.

The film is set in L.A. in 1983. We open with a great looking party with everyone wearing neon and looking like escapees from the set of ‘Miami Vice’. The dreamy feelgood vibe lasts for all of two minutes as one attendee wanders out into the road and bleeds to death in his friend’s arms after being hit by a car.

The incident has a greater or lesser effect on a wide range of characters, and we follow seven separate stories, some of which intertwine, and others which barely reference the event at all.

I won’t go into intimate details of the plot as that would take all of the 100 minute run time to map out. The main events were a love triangle between Billy Bob Thornton , his wife (Kim Basinger) and the TV anchor he’s having an affair with played by Winona Ryder.

We also meet an English band who are jetting in for some concerts and to shoot a video. They are managed by a barely seen Rhys Ifans and have a lead singer who is a total nonce. There is also a plot involving a hotel worker whose uncle, Mickey Rourke, comes to stay and gets him involved in a kidnap plot, and a group of teens who all sleep with each other, often at the same time.

The hedonistic and seamy lifestyles we look in on slowly start to unravel and  as they play out we have to wonder if we really care what happens to these privileged and hedonistic assholes.

As you can imagine, there is a lot going on here and it’s a difficult balancing act to keep all of the balls in the air, and it's one the director fails to manage. The main love triangle plot was dull whereas I could have done with a lot more about the kidnapping. Chris Izzak and his son looked like they had fun in Hawaii but I missed the point and the rock star plot didn’t go anywhere.

I think that this was supposed to be an essay on 80’s culture and excess but it just came across as a bunch of rich folk with too much time on their hands. I guess the ‘informers’ of the title is a suggestion that they are each informing us of a flawed element of society. That, or it was just a load of good looking people having sex and taking drugs?

Reading the details of this production, I see that it suffered in the edit with a vampire plot from the book excised from the movie. That’s a shame as the film could have done with an extra element, supernatural or otherwise, to take it away from the self-indulgent mess that we ended up with.

There is a star name in nearly every scene but Thornton and Basinger were well off their Oscar form and only dear Amber Heard appeared to put everything into her role. I wouldn’t write it off as a complete waste of time, but the film certainly represents a wasted opportunity.

THE Tag Line :The 80’s Without the Fun  53%

No.150 : The Natural (1984)

The Natural at the IMDb

I always enjoy a good sports film but I’d never seen ‘The Natural’ before. Maybe the long run time of 137 minutes put me off or maybe the whole thing looked a bit too wholesome for my slightly seedier tastes. Well, now that I have seen it I can say it’s well worth a look and, although not the best baseball film I’ve seen (Major League 3 : Back to the Minors, seeing as you ask) it’s still pretty good.

We open with a young lad playing ball with his Dad - an idyllic scene right up to the point Pop has a heart attacked and snuffs it and then a tree gets hit by lightning for good measure. The lad is Roy Hobbs and when fate gives him an exploded tree he makes a baseball bat out of it. He calls the bat ‘Wonderboy’ just like Homer Simpson’s ‘Wonder bat’ - in fact most of the baseball Simpsons episode pays homage to this film, so that’s a blind spot in my education erased.

We jump forward a few years and the young lad has become Robert Redford. That’s one tough paper round he had! Redford was 38 when he made this, and there is no effort to explain why a 38 year old is playing a teenager. I thought I’d stick with it an all would be revealed - an old man’s fantasy maybe? No, they just didn’t have ‘The Irishman’ style de-ageing then, so just go with it.

Roy gets a call up to the Chicago Cubs and says goodbye to his equally middle-aged, but playing it  young, girlfriend Glenn Close. Roy gets on the train to Chicago and meets sports hack Robert Duvall and ‘The Whammer’ a Babe Ruth type baseball legend. The journalist sets up a bet that Roy can strike out The Whammer which he does, and in turn attracts the attentions of psycho groupie, Barbara Hershey. Barbara takes him back to hers but shoots him in the guts for his trouble. Not what he expected when she agreed to fire into him!

16 years pass and we meet the same Robert Redford whom everyone is now calling ‘Granddad’. He has been signed up by the New York Knights, the worst team in baseball. The manager doesn’t fancy Redford and keeps him on the bench, but a couple of strokes of luck, and a bad bay for Mr Blonde, see him in the team. Roy is a smash hit until he meets floozy Kim Basinger, the squeeze of the local bookie. Soon Roy is facing bribes and a slump in form. Will an old flame reignite the magic and will an old would prevent Roy from winning the pennant and saving the club?

You could probably delve into the subtext of this film and come up with an allegory for the corruption of the American Dream. I didn’t bother and enjoyed the tale of a man striving to win against the odds for what it was. There was a lot of nostalgia flying about with the games and crowds all wonderfully realised by director Barry Levinson.

The turning points of Roy’s life all involved the dames and I think the message is that you’d do better if you kept your pecker in your pocket. The villains such as the bookie and wannabe club owner, The Judge, were all a bit boo hiss and I wondered why they didn’t just bump Roy off rather than try to turn his head.

Some of Roy’s hits were great such as one where the ball is knocked out of it’s cover and others that destroyed clocks and stadium lights. It was well done and you’d be a cold individual not to get the chills when Roy faces the last pitch 2-0 down with two outs and two men on. To be honest I wasn’t sure he was going to win when a young version of himself was the new pitcher - would the story continue with the new ‘natural’? Nah, but it was a nice thought.

I was surprised that the film did as well as it did in awards season as I thought it was a bit slight, but like ‘Field of Dreams’ I think it would speak to Americans about better, more innocent times when you could meet women on trains and be shot by them!

Redford was good, but it was a mistake not to have any attempt at him looking any younger in his adolescent scenes - at one point I’m sure the conductor was going to give him senior citizen discount! The film more than makes up with that one conceit with an excellent cast and a finely realised world.

THE Tag Line :  Whammy!  79%