No. 254 : The Jackal (1997)

 

The Jackal at the IMDb

With the new Eddie Redmayne TV series of this classic tale garnering great reviews, I rewatched the 1973 original. That was as good as I’d remembered it, and this led me to watching this 1997 remake. Huge mistake! I say ‘remake’ but there are curious credits that note the film is ‘inspired by the 1973 screenplay’ and Wikipedia reveals that author Frederick Forsyth and director Fred Zinnemann didn’t endorse this effort. Indeed, original Jackal Edward Fox, also turned down a cameo, so the film looks like a tainted effort from the start.

 

The picture opens with a raid on some Russian gangsters. Somewhat implausibly, my favourite actor Mister Sidney Poitier, is in charge with some joint operation nonsense shovelled into explain his place in a Moscow dust up. Things go south and a prominent mobster is killed. This doesn’t land well with his brother who demands high level retribution.

 

We see him meeting with Bruce Willis’s Jackal and a deal of $70 million is agreed for a hit. It’s kept deliberately unclear as to who the target is, but you can bet your boots it’s not the FBI director that is dangled before us!

 

Bruce tries to look enigmatic and sinister but comes across as mildly constipated, He has a hotline set up for tips and sets about his mission. He finds an unlikely forger in a young black woman who he tips a few quid - £500 for a bunch of documents does seem pretty cheap – even in 1997! He also orders a big gun using a clunky voice interface on his computer in a scene that may have been impressive once, but just looks ridiculous now, what with Ali Express and all.

 

Unlike the original, when a thin gun that could be hidden in a set of crutches is used, Bruce’s gun is massive and needs a mini van to cart it about. Subtle this is not. He employs Jack Black’s tech genius, yes really, to build him a big mount for his gun, but Jack makes the unwise decision to blackmail Bruce and gets turned into a colander for his troubles.

 

Elsewhere the investigation is on and the Feds have nothing apart from a rumour that IRA terrorist Declan Mulqueen may have seen him once. They head to the prison and meet the Irish terrorist. Wouldn’t you know it’s Richard Gere, in a performance what must be to Irish people what Dick Van Dyke is to Cockneys. Gere goes full ‘Bejeezus’ and is soon helping the Feds for some vague concessions to his situation in jail.

 

Bruce manages to evade all his pursuers, including a pointless group of hijackers, who are after his gun. An excuse for some more killings and explosions, I guess. He also raids the dress up box to show off his fantastic range including fat delivery man, stoner surfer and gay seducer. He’s equally awful and unbelievable in each.

 

As we meander to a climax the true target is revealed, and the countdown is on. Who will win the day and who will get away?

 

This was a terrible film full of 90’s excess and noise. Willis made a pitiful Jackal with all of Edward Fox’s subtlety replaced with a dress up box and a script deserving of the cat’s litter box only.

There was no sense of urgency, and the detection angle was weak. A scar faced lady Russian character tried to add a bit of suspense and a personal angle, but she just got shoved to the side as Willis and Gere took turns to chew the scenery.

 

A good cast was wasted with JK Simmons showing up as a second banana agent and Leslie Phillips, who offered dodgy banking services, meriting only a single scene. The climax with Willis’ gunship mini van was a laugh, with the bored looking Bruce sitting on a bench with a laptop and joystick controlling this, and garnering no attention whatsoever from a seemingly on high alert security service.

 

The finale was drawn out with a long chase through the subway tunnels before the day of the Jackal finally ended, but only after a predictable resurrection.

There is a lot to like here but sadly it’s mainly laughing at the film’s awfulness, it’s unbelievable plot and more outrageous accents.

THE Tag Line : Stick with the original - 45%

 

No. 253 : The Rapture (1991)

 

The Rapture at the IMDb

 

This is a strange offering that is part swinger party and part religious brainwashing. I’m not sure what the target audience was, but it would make for a pretty narrow demographic.

Mimi Rogers, who is excellent throughout, stars as Sharon, a bored phone operator who gets her thrills through having sex with random couples, along with her sleazy boyfriend. One of these couples includes David Duchovny, and the two start a relationship on the side.

Sharon is aware of some co-workers talking about God and seems to laugh it off, but one night at 3am she shoves David (who has the excellent character name ‘Randy’) out of bed as she needs to change the sheets. Well, we’ve all been there. She decides her whole life is dirty and she needs to find God.

 

We get other clues along the way that she may not be a total nut, such as a vision she has of a pearl, having first seen it on a swinger’s tattoo. She joins a religious sect centred around ‘The Boy’, a wise child who tells them that God will be back in five or six years. Kind of a loose arrangement, it would seem. Mimi is totally bought in at this stage even going so far as to offer religious direction to people ringing her for a phone number. She seeks out now former love Randy, who is also a lost soul, and the two get back together.

 

We jump forward six years and learn that God has yet to show up, but at least he told Randy to ditch the mullet. They all eagerly await the Rapture with the now teenage ‘The Boy’ telling them it’s this year for sure. Shouldn’t have used Evri for the delivery, I guess.

Tragedy strikes however, when Randy is killed in a workplace shooting, leaving Sharon alone with their annoying daughter. Randy's death only affirms Sharon's beliefs and she decides that her vision of Randy in a photoshop window is enough to send her to the desert to await the big moment.

 

Once again, God is delayed. I’m sure he must be at the baggage carousel by now. Sharon decides that she’ll speed things up by shooting her daughter, as you do. The once friendly policeman, who clearly needed better safeguarding training, arrests her and sticks her in a cell with another God botherer. Unfortunately, Sharon has given up on God as he let her shoot her own daughter – free will anyone?- so when the rapture does arrive, she’s not onboard.

The Rapture is a bit low rent with some horns and people on horses and more smoke than an 80's rock video. We do get overlaid hoofbeats and those who accept God are sent on their way with a mechanism somewhere between ‘Star Trek’ and Thanos. Sharon, who refuses to forgive the Almighty, is left in purgatory – will she proclaim her love for God or will she hang about in the dark for all eternity?

 

I quite enjoyed this film but I wasn’t totally buying Sharon who went from carefree slut to pious worshipper to then outright denier in the three acts. Her initial conversion seemed a bit urgent with little in the way of doubt seen before she decided that she was right and that everyone she’d previously scoffed were on the ball after all. Mimi was great although a bit more modest at first as she held the bedsheets tight to her chest in the bed scenes. Later on she was a bit more of her carefree self. I see this film was made around the time she split from Tom Cruise so maybe that was a factor. The film poster makes the production look like a sex romp, so no doubt there were a few disappointed cinema goers when this was released!

 

The whole endeavour was clearly low budget, but I liked the almost Ray Bradburyesque conspiracy with people muttering away about their visions in the background. It gave the film a sense of unease and I wasn't sure if we were going to find redemption or mental illness at the end. Believers were found in all sorts of places and it was fun when Sharon gets pulled in by her boss for God bothering the callers before he reveals he’s seen the light himself!

 

There are large portions of the film that seem like a recruitment video for the Jehovah’s Witnesses and Sharon was all over the place with her conflicted mental states. It was however a decent ride and offered a few questions, albeit with no real answers - if you want answers, I'd recommend 'This Is the End'.

 

THE Tag Line : Praise Be! 64%

No.252 : The Animal (2001)

 

The Animal at the IMDb

Reviewing a Rob Schnieder film is pretty much an object lesson in futility – you know it’s going to be rubbish with a few cheap laughs, but let’s do it anyway.

This one dates from his golden period where he crapped out a couple of Deuce Bigalow films along with ‘The Hot Chick’ and ‘Stan Helsing’. Rob isn’t much of an actor so he relies on mugging a lot and crowbarring in as many fart jokes as possible. At least he can’t be touched under the Trades Descriptions Act, as you are served up pretty much what you’d expect with each outing.

Here Rob plays Marvin Mange a police evidence clerk who dreams of emulating his late father and becoming a fully-fledged police officer. He has failed the vital obstacle course the previous four years and pissed his pants during his last attempt. To add to his troubles, he gets grief off John C Reilly’s Officer Sisk who is a pumped-up alpha male, and no respect from his field trip school children.

He does have a couple of friends in a thinly drawn (the irony!) character ‘Fatty’ and in Miles, a black man who thinks everyone is being nice to him to atone for 400 years of slavery. He probably had the best lines in the film and I’m not saying that because he was black!

The action, as it is, starts when Marvin has to answer a 911 call having been left alone at the station. He gets distracted by a seal on the road and endures an endless car crash as his vehicle tumbles down an never-ending mountain before being crushed by a boulder. Hopes that he’s dead and we can stop the film after 25 minutes are dashed when he is rescued by a mysterious stranger. Through his fevered dreams Marvin has visions of various animals in medical gear before waking up at the crash site a week later. He isn’t very curious about his situation, but soon we see changes in his character and abilities.

It turns out he has been fitted with various animal parts, as you do, and can now run fast, swim like a dolphin and smell things up peoples’ butts. After a successful drugs bust and a water based rescue Marvin becomes a full police officer and starts dating local tree hugger Rhianna, who also runs an animal sanctuary.

The only fly in the ointment is an unknown predator referred to as ‘The Beast’ which is attacking people and eating cows – could these nocturnal events be down to Marvin or is he not the first to have endured animal part transplants? Soon an angry mob of townsfolk are hunting for The Beast and we have to wonder who is the culprit and can Marvin enjoy a happy ending?

I’d seen this film 20 years ago and thought it was quite funny. Time hasn’t been kind however and apart from a couple of scenes it was really poor. I’d did like Ed Asner telling Marvin that ‘We’ve all eaten from the garbage’ and the black characters outrage at people being nice to him still translated to today’s easily offended world. It was also fun to see the late Norm MacDonald as an inquisitive mob member and, as is usually the case in Rob’s films, Adam Sandler, this time as a baying rabble rouser. 

The wafter thin plot was padded with too many overlong scenes such as those with the orangutan and the goat, but I guess if you’ve booked the animals you better use them! There were a few plot holes which was some going seeing at it was pretty much transparent to start with- I mean, who ate the cows? 

As a mindless distraction this squeezes a pass but the laughs were too far apart and there was no plot or intrigue to speak of.

 

THE Tag Line : Animal Lacks Bite 51%

No. 251 : The Outfit (2022)

 

The Outfit at the IMDb

 

After a long hiatus the Definite Article Movie Blog returns! The ‘W Movie Blog’ has also had a recent entry and the long awaited Michael Shannon Blog, ‘Michael Shannon and On and On’ is coming soon. It is truly a golden age of unread blogingness!

I picked this film up on Netflix, mainly because it featured Johnny Flynn whom I recently enjoyed in a cinema screening of the play ‘The Motive and the Cue’. He played Richard Burton in that and gave good Welshness. In this one he plays gangster against Mark Rylance’s tailor, sorry cutter.

The film feels like a play itself, with only a couple of sets and the action all taking place over a few days, and in mainly during one night in 1950’s Chicago. Rylance is excellent as Leonard an English tailor who has set up shop in The Windy City, citing the advent of blue jeans in London as his reason for his move. We later learn that there was more than denim behind his emigration, but from the start he’s a simple and quietly spoken man going about his work.

The film opens with a voice over as we witness Rylance making a suit. We learn of the various fabrics involved and the skilled and complex process behind the making of a bespoke garment. He corrects people when he is described as a tailor, whom mainly do alterations – he’s a cutter who cuts out the many shapes of fabric needed for a suit, before stitching them together.

As he goes about his business various shady men appear and drop off envelopes in a locked box at the back of the shop. It’s not clear what’s going on initially, but Rylance just minds his own business. Some of the envelopes bear a distinctive mark which we learn is that of ‘the outfit’. This is a shady organisation, seemingly started by Al Capone, and the local low level gangsters think that they may soon merit an invite to the top table.

We learn that Rylance’s first customer was a mob boss and he has since dressed all manner of underworld figures. There is however an issue as there is a rat in the organisation and ‘the outfit’ has sent over a copy of audio tape that fingers the suspect.

The tape sets in motion a night of violence and double crosses as gangster Flynn and the boss’s son try to work out who the rat is. Gun play and double crosses ensue, and soon rival mob bosses are in the back shop - and they’re not after a new pair of trousers.

Who is the rat? And what other secrets does the mild mannered cutter have in store for us?

This was a superior offering that passed me by on it’s cinema release. The whole production is played out like a theatre offering and I don’t think much was lost with a Netflix viewing at home. Rylance does his usual excellent work and he was ably assisted by a fine supporting cast.

The film kept me guessing and, despite it’s single set staging, it never seemed limited or unambitious. The dialogue crackled along and I like how Rylance’s true character slowly emerged as the film wore on. The twists were well realised and fully earned and I liked the cut of this one’s cloth overall.

THE Tag Line : A Cut Above 74%

No.250 : The Ripper (TV) (2020)

The Ripper (TV) 2020 at the IMDb

 I was born in 1971 and in many ways the Yorkshire Ripper was my first experience of an ongoing hunt for a serial killer. I do have a distinct memory of the murder of Jacqueline Hill being reported in November 1980 and of it being the talk of the schoolyard. Fortunately she was the last victim, with Peter Sutcliffe being arrested soon after, after being picked up for offences unrelated to his murders.

I have been interested in the case and enjoyed a three part pod cast on the Case File site  which I’d strongly recommend. It went into greater depth than the Netflix TV show we are discussing now, but they are clearly different approaches to the same horrific crimes.

This Netflix documentary series is in four parts of roughly an hour each. They are presented in chronological order with the first setting the scene, the middle two covering the murders and the investigation and the last dealing with Peter Sutcliffe’s capture and the fallout of the investigation which, by all accounts, was botched and contributed to at least some of the murders being allowed to happen.

The series uses mainly archive footage and is pretty familiar in its approach, with a voiceover explaining what is happening set against news reports and newspaper headlines of the time. What sets this series apart however, is the present day interviews with many of the key players, which  included the son of one of the early victims who relives the trauma of learning of his mother’s demise and her character assassination in the press who dubbed her as a prostitute.

Other talking heads include Bruce Jones of Coronation Street fame who discovered one of the bodies as well as police personnel and journalists who worked the case at the time. I didn’t learn too much from this series, but what was done well was the telling of the story with events laid out in chronological order with graphics showing where each of the women died, relative to each other.

They also delved into Sutcliffe’s other crimes, many of which were forgotten when his 13 murders were being discussed. Several women survived his assaults and it was haunting to hear their first hand accounts of their encounters with the maniac.

The clear message from the series was one of police incompetence. The Ripper was interviewed nine times, with one officer telling us that he told his bosses that he had found the suspect only to be rebuffed owing to Sutcliffe not fitting the profile that had been created. There was also a lot of content devoted to the misogyny of the police and the public’s attitude towards the victims who were painted as worthless due to some being prostitutes. This was a valid thread for the programme but they did spend a lot of time on it with lots of opinions being offered about contemporary attitudes. 

This was fine and laudable but it was at the expense of other aspects of the case being unexplored - Sutcliffe himself didn’t get much of a profile with his motivations being largely untouched. We know he’s a nutter but what took him to that place and what made him so adept at murder and at evading capture? The other villain of the piece, the hoaxer ‘Weirside Jack’, was also not discussed in depth which was a shame as this was a thread the show left hanging. The hoaxes, which were bought wholesale by the police, contributed greatly to at least three murders being allowed to happen and I’d liked to have seen this aspect being explored. I did read up on it and the miscreant concerned got 8 years after a cold case investigation captured him in 2000.

Overall this was a well made and compelling series that paid due respect to the victims involved and highlighted the issues that led this murderer the chance to run free for a decade. It’s hopeful that lessons have been learned as it was clear that the policemen involved in this investigation couldn’t find their arse with both hands. At the end it was blind luck that netted the Ripper with the police investigation being as much use as a cock flavoured lollypop.

This was a crime of its time that will never happen again due to advances in DNA detection, CCTV and computing. The police were clearly negligent but the crimes belonged to one man alone, and that shouldn’t be forgotten amongst all the finger pointing.

This was a good and worthwhile effort but it was too short with the ending seeming somewhat rushed. The material could easily have filled 12 one hour episodes and I hope a ‘director’s cut’ that explores all the hanging threads is in the works.

The Tag Line : Ripper Yarns   70%

No.249 : The Meg (2018)

 The Meg at the IMDb

Jason Statham stars in this ‘hunt the fish’ thriller that is ‘Jaws’ in all but name, but also takes the time to rehash every seafaring cliché that you could point a harpoon at.

We open in the past with Statham in charge of a rescue attempt on a stricken sub. He gets most of the men off but has to close the hatch on the last few when an unknown force starts to attack the sub. He’s haunted by the decision and retreats into a refreshing bottle of Chang beer, in one of the many overt examples of product placement on show.

Nothing will get Statham back in the water, and we head off to a sea exploration lab off the coast of China. Dwight Shrute, who seems to have done well out of the beet business, is coming to inspect his billion dollar investment. He’s come at a good time as the deepest trench of the ocean is about to be explored by one of their submersibles. The diverse crew see lots of nice sea life but are then attacked, and rendered disabled, by a megladon, a prehistoric shark that can grow to 70 feet. With life support for only 18 hours left they may as well start writing the obituaries…unless Jason can be tempted out of his retirement? Well it is his ex-wife that’s in peril and his name’s over the title; so he'd better get packed.

The rescue goes well, apart from the standard sacrifice of a crew member, and all that’s left is to take care of ’The Meg’ before it kills anyone else. They could just leave it alone, but that wouldn’t make for much of a film so they set off with a few schemes, the first several of which are doomed to fail, as you‘d expect.

After catching their prey an even bigger fish appears; with the crew and hardware decimated, how can it be stopped now that its heading to Amity, sorry, some Chinese beach where it‘s bright coloured inflatables day?

I avoided this film when it came out as it looked rubbish. You know what they say about making rash judgements? That’s right, they are often correct. The ingredients were all here -  Statham in an obvious cash in monster movie, a genre that makes it hard to be original and a Chinese Co-Production which led to several Chinese characters being shoe horned in for no discernable reason, including a cute wee girl who possibly was an ill-advised passenger on a boat under constant megladon attack.

It really was by the numbers, with the troubled Statham trying to gain redemption whilst struggling with a CGI fish that changed size depending on what was required of it. Shrute should be ashamed of his outing as the billionaire financer who for some reason was getting into the fish exploitation business. He had no arc to speak of and even when he went off piste to avoid the lawsuits he was hardly a malevolent genius or even a misguided do-gooder he was just ‘can you show me the way to the bank?’ throughout.

Statham gave his usual effortless performance playing the same baldy Cockney who inhabits all of his films. He had no journey or emotional range and it looked like he was just waving a harpoon against a green screen until the run time hit the contractually agreed length.

The effects were decent in places but there is only so much that you can do with a big fish chomping on people and boats. There was plenty of gore but that was pretty comic, with the buckets of chum the only realistic blood on show.

If you watch ‘The Meg’ you pretty much get what you deserve. There may have been a message about the environment or over fishing in there, but it was hard to pick it out amongst all the CGI, product placements and cardboard cut-out characters who were designed to keep the demographic and screen time to the backers’ requirements. A cookie cutter film that could have done with a shark bite to the script to jazz things up just a little.

THE Tag Line : MEGa Disappointment  - 35%

 

No.248 : The Duel (2016)

The Duel at the IMDb

Woody out of ‘Cheers’ and the less successful Hemsworth brother star in this derivative western that starts out in decent, if predictable fashion, but ends in farce.

The film opens in 1863 after some captions tell us about the Mexican / American War and the uneasy truce that now exists. The Texas Rangers have been set up to keep the peace but frontier justice still prevails. We meet a bald Woody in the rain who is about to take part in a ‘Helena Duel’ which sees the two men tied arm to arm, armed with a small knife each. They then get all stabby with each other until only one is left standing. Woody, not surprisingly as he’s the headline actor, wins the day but the body of his dead opponent is mourned over by the corpse’s now orphaned son. Bet that’s significant!

We fast forward 22 years and that mourning son is now a Texas Ranger in the shape of Liam Hemsworth. He’s called in by his boss, Death out of ‘Bill & Ted’, and asked to investigate a series of dead Mexicans who are showing up in the river. They suspect Woody is involved as he has a secret settlement just upstream. Rather implausibly he sends Liam undercover on the pretext that sending a garrison would be problematic and says that our hero should report back with his findings.

Liam is a modern henpecked man with a Mexican wife who nags him into taking her along. The two head into town and are soon welcomed, with Woody appointing Liam as sheriff. He is meant to come over as all culty but that turns out to be a spelling mistake, as he has designs on the wife and in brainwashing the town. As is standard, he has a sadistic and dim son who sets about the hooker with a heart with his knife. At times it’s like western cliché bingo here!

Woody’s wise words start to turn Liam’s wife’s head and when she gets ill things start to fall apart. Liam susses out Woody’s grand scheme and is captured - he’s then set loose to be hunted by Woody’s paying customers . Can he survive and win his woman back? Is this about revenge or just a long metaphor about the poor treatment of Mexican immigrants? Or maybe it’s just a directionless mess with more unintentional laughs than drama?

This was a strange film, it was almost like several scripts had been cut into pieces and randomly stuck back together. The opening brutal scene of the knife fit was well done and I expected this to be a film about revenge and redemption. It was fine that they chose not to go down this path, but the route taken instead was signposted ‘Ridiculousness’.

Woody was portrayed as the Messiah type figure who perhaps had supernatural powers, but after an hour it was revealed that he was only running a ’Westworld’ type operation, where patrons could shoot Mexicans for $200 a pop. It would have worked too if his idiot son hadn’t dumped the bodies in the river rather than bury them as instructed!

Liam uncovers the terrible conspiracy but is captured. Amazingly Woody makes him the subject of the next hunt but also gives him a rifle and ammo. Predictably Liam takes out all of the red shirts and our two headliners have the duel of the title. And what a laugh it is! The two shoot at each other for five minutes whilst ten feet apart. Then, low on bullets, Liam tips a big rock onto Woody Wile E. Coyote style. Now trapped with his leg pinned Woody goes all ‘127 Hours’ and stabs his own leg off with a penknife. It is glorious in its mentalness.

There is no big lesson here apart from don’t watch this whilst drinking red wine or you’re liable to redecorate your walls with each burst of outrageous action.

It may have been that the film set out to redefine the western a la ‘Bone Tomahawk’ and lost its nerve, but it ended up as risible nonsense that had more laughs than a tickling convention.

THE Tag Line : You Mexican’t Be Serious 41%

 

No.247 : The Gentlemen

 The Gentlemen at the IMDb

I wasn’t relishing this trip to the East End in the company of Guy Ritchie’s cadre of mockney Cockneys but it was actually really enjoyable.

Matthew McConaughey stars as Mickey, a poor American kid who earned a scholarship to Oxford University. Whilst there he supplemented his income by selling weed and eventually turned his talents into a large drug empire. In his voiceover he describes his plans to sell up and get out of the business but his plan is rudely interrupted when he’s shot in the head - or so we think. The pickled egg is ruined, that’s for sure.

We flash back to Charlie Hunnam out of ‘Sons of Anarchy’ getting an unwelcome house guest in the shape of Hugh Grant. Hunnam is Mickey’s right hand man and Hugh has a proposition for him. Hugh has gotten wind of the plan to sell the empire but has information that will assist them - the trouble is he wants £20 million for his data.

The film jumps back and forth and we see the marijuana set up, that sees Mickey befriend improvised Lords and set up large plantations on their properties. They get a cut of the profits and the operation can flourish without the ‘cunts’ who ramble chancing upon the illegal weed.

The empire is up for grabs for £400 million and it looks like Mickey has a willing buyer in Matthew a non threatening businessman type gangster. Mickey explains all his business practices, including a site visit,, but things start to go awry when the site is turned over by a shell suited gang who are trained by Colin Farrell’s ’Coach’.

Other players such as the Asian ‘Dry Eye’ are also in play and the film rattles along with the narrative device of Hugh describing what’s hapanning and how he’s gleaned his knowledge. Eventually we return to the pickled egg outrage - why are the Russians now involved, who is upsetting the applecart and can someone else be described as a cunt before the film…oh there we go.

There wasn’t an awful lot of plot here to sustain a two hour film, but that was easily compensated by a load of colourful characters and some cracking dialogue. I wasn’t convinced by McConaughey’s quiet menace or by Hunnam’s thoughtful consigliore, but Grant was excellent as the slimy Fletcher and he essentially held the whole film together. It was kind of him to explain the labyrinth plot of double crosses to me, and the editing and on screen captions kept the info dump going and the entertainment at full pelt.

Farrell was good fun as the foul mouthed coach and it was good to see Eddie Marsan, albeit in an underwritten role. The film wasn’t a comedy as such but was certainly played for laughs with one funny scene of Grant and Humman voicing some video footage a standout.

The violence was pretty comic book and even when people were getting bits chopped off the film never made me look away - such a big softie. The language on the other hand was fucking deplorable and they should all be thoroughly ashamed of themselves.

Previous Ritchie efforts haven’t worked for me with ‘Revolver’ in particular being incomprehensible. Lessons have been learned however, and this film was excellent and easily understood without the plot being spoon-fed to the drooling audience. The style and locations were excellent and you got the sense of a fun time being had by all. Not one to take too seriously but worth a look for the snappy dialogue, fun and scary situations and Hugh Grant calling everyone a cunt.

I would also suggest that ‘the gentlemen’ is an ironic title as this lot were just a bunch of cunts. Oh I’m at it now too…

THE Tag Line : Blow Me Away 80%

No.246 : The Gift (2015)

The Gift (2015) at the IMDb

Jason Bateman and Rebecca Hall star as a yuppie couple who relocate to L.A. and get some nice presents. Well they do, but ‘the gift’ of the title is something far more sinister - or maybe not, it all depends on your point of view.

Bateman and Hall are trying for a baby and seem to have an ideal lifestyle in the suburbs with their dog. Trouble looms beneath the surface however, with Hall seeming a bit too keen on the contents of their friend’s medical cabinet and I’m not talking about the piles cream that we all have. That most people have, not me.

On a trip to the shops the couple meet up with Gordo, an old high school friend of Bateman’s. He’s a bit creepy and Bateman fobs him off with a fake phone number. There’s no film in that however and they are soon beset with gifts of wine and fishes from Gordo who also invites them over for dinner. That turns out to be a bust, especially when it’s revealed that Gordo’s palatial home isn’t even his. 

It’s clear that Gordo is a total freak and the rest of the film will deal with him stalking our yuppie heroes. But wait! They don’t want to go down that route so things start to slowly dismantle with the roots of Bateman’s and Gordo’s relationship explored. Is Bateman all he seems and who is the real victim here?

As the tension ratchets up Bateman is vying for a promotion with one other candidate and Hall falls pregnant after the couple have tried for ages. Can these events play out in a nice and convenient manner? No chance - as the birth approaches Bateman and Hall question their relationship whilst we are left to wonder if Gordo is a pyscho or the real victim here. Will the final gift tie up all the clues or will it be something to return for store credit? Should have provided a gift receipt really.

I enjoyed this film that had Bateman playing against type with his usual everyman persona giving way to a nasty bully. He had clearly made a huge mistake in engaging with Gordo and that was never going to end well. Gordo was played by Joel Edgerton who also wrote and directed and he did a good job juggling all the responsibilities. His Gordo was the right level of creepy with an air of the pathetic, although I was less convinced by him towards the end when he turned out to be the master planner and manipulator.

The first half hour of the film was very familiar and I’m glad they deviated from the path of the obsessed stalker and made things a lot more interesting. Bateman was his usual reliable self with the added mean streak a welcome distraction. There was a bit of victim wish fulfilment going on, but the film was well paced with the surprises earned and satisfying.

All in all this was a welcome gift on Amazon Prime and one that would give you an even better reason for avoiding your high school reunion.

THE Tag Line - Better to Give Than Receive 71%

 

No.245 : The Landlord (2015)

 The Landlord at the IMDb

Also known as ‘Slumlord’ and ‘13 Cameras’ this film seems to have struggled to find an identity and that’s no surprise given it also struggled for a narrative, twist or anything approaching engagement with the audience. Still it did spawn a sequel ‘14 Cameras’ so at least the Go-Pro people seem to be doing well out of the franchise. Next up ‘15 Cameras and a Wi-fi dongle’ I suspect.

As a landlord myself I was hoping to pick up some tips about rent collection and stain removal but instead it was a peeping tom landlord who locks folk in his basement. Nothing new here then!

Young pregnant couple, Ryan and Claire, are looking for a new rental condo. They find a nice one which happens to have a fat and scruffy, monosyllabic landlord who stinks. That’s a stereotype right there. They take on the property but unknown to them the landlord has a Tandy gold card and has fitted out the whole house with a load of cameras - I’m guessing 13.

He watches their comings and goings on and we and he learn that Ryan is boffing his PA, the lovely Hannah. Luckily for the landlord Ryan brings his work home and he gets a front row seat for all the action, even underwater in their pool. At first I thought he was maybe a kindly overseer with perhaps his purpose being to keep some supernatural evil in check? This better plot wasn’t thought of or was as dismissed however, with our man just being a total creep, with a shot of all his used Kleenex around his computer monitors all we needed to know of his motivations.

His peeping runs parallel with the demise of the couple's relationship, with the affair suspected and Ryan exiled from the house. The Landlord tried to keep the girlfriend a secret by locking her in the basement but things come to a head when a camera is spotted and the basement hostage manages to escape. Will the landlord go without a fight and return the security deposit? No chance; armed with his hammer heads over to sort out his troublesome tenants - will he be able to re-let and retain his accreditation from the local authority?

This was easy viewing as basically the film went from a to b to c with no struggle at all. As mentioned I was hoping we’d get a wrong foot with the Landlord being a kindly soul watching over the couple like a guardian angel. Instead he was just a pervert who for some reason became homicidal towards the end. Maybe he’d done similar before, but it was kept vague, especially as he barely mumbled a dozen lines of dialogue in the whole film.

The two leads were passable but you didn’t really care for them, given their relationship was already crumbling when we first meet. The end was undercooked with the hammer filled home invasion over in moments with the minimum of fuss. The closing scenes of our man still in the rental market were probably meant to worry the viewer, but I was just happy to see an upturn in tenancy rates.

This was a passable thriller that has nothing to set it apart in a crowded genre, that could have done with a better bad guy and a bit more peril than him messing with their toothbrushes.

THE Tag Line : Not One For Rental 54%