No.217 : The Greatest (2009)

The Greatest at the IMDb

This film opens with Kick-Ass getting it on with Carey Mulligan - enjoy this happy scene as it’s the last bit of joy you’ll get for another 90 minutes, as a dysfunctional family deals with the loss of their son. Kick-Ass you see may be ‘the greatest’ in bed but isn’t so hot on his driving. He stops in the middle of the road to profess his love and is killed by Michael Shannon’s truck for his trouble.

His mother Susan Sarandon is devastated and his father Pierce Brosnan is a bit upset too. His brother is mostly stoned and the bereaved girlfriend, who survived the wreck, finds that she is pregnant.

We learn that Pierce, a maths professor, had an affair with Jennifer Ehle and his marriage is on shaky ground as a result. Sarandon wakes up crying every day and wants to know what happened in the 17 minutes following the crash, before her son expired. The other driver Shannon, is in a convenient movie coma, so she goes and reads to him hoping that he awakes and fills in the blanks.

The pregnant Mulligan moves in with the family but finds it hard to connect with Mum who wishes the girl had died and not her son. She also doesn’t want people to think they are blessed with the son’s baby, when she is grieving for her first born. Meanwhile the less favoured druggy son heads to a grief support group a la ‘Fight Club’ and meets a nice girl who sadly turns out to be a mental.

The film progresses in chapters, signalled by the months of the pregnancy. As she becomes due Pierce has a heart episode, Sarandon has a breakdown and Shannon wakes up - it’s almost like a movie script! Will the baby be born without issues and will it be accepted by the dysfunctional family who could fill a whole season of Alan Partridge’s ‘Problem People’?

I tried to like this film, and to be fair it had a lot of good qualities, but at the end it all seemed somewhat forced and unrealistic. For a start Brosnan and Sarandon weren’t a good match. You could say that’s why he strayed but her earthiness and his tidiness never really gelled, and in some scenes with them both wailing it was flat out embarrassing.

Mulligan was better, but she hadn’t much of an emotional range given she’d had the hardest time out of everyone. The big fall out seemed totally engineered and the coming together was laughable as the family chased the labouring mum to be through the woods. Everyone had a breakthrough and all was put right just in time.

Shannon, who spent the first 70 minutes in a coma only got one real scene and he didn’t convince as the criminal car crasher. He starts by telling Sarandon to bugger off but after a moment’s pleading he manages to recount every second of Kick-Ass’ last minutes in beautiful detail. Maybe that’s what she needed, but I doubt that’s what she really would have gotten in a prison hospital from a man going to the clink due to her idiot son.

The film did have some touching moments and was a decent essay on the way different people have varying reactions to loss. It seemed a bit pat and convenient on many levels however, and far from being ‘the greatest’ it will have to settle for ‘the average’ in this critic’s book.

THE Tag Line : Bring the Kleenex - no not like that -  57%

No.139 : The Double (2011)

The Double at the IMDb

Have you ever seen a spy film? If the answer is ‘Yes’ then you have already seen large chunks of ‘The Double’.

Richard Gere stars as Paul, a retired agent who spent 20 years trying to track down arch bad guy, Cassius. He’s called back into action when Cassius’ signature garrote murder technique is used to kill off a senator. Young whizz kid analyst, Topher Grice, is teamed up with the reluctant Gere to try and finally nail the bad guy.

Of course Gere is reluctant at first, but soon the young agent wins his grudging respect. With occasional input from an embarrassed looking Martin Sheen, playing a sector chief , the unlikely and mismatched duo start to fit the case together.

But wait! Can it be so straight forward? Will ‘the double’ of the title refer to a lookalike or maybe a double agent? Is everyone the person they say they are? Is anyone?

This was a really terrible thriller that made no sense at all, and had such unwieldy pot turns you’d think that the writers were plucking random ideas out of a big bowl and sticking them together to make a script.

The film opens with a scene of some Mexican migrants getting killed off for no apparent reason. Maybe it was lifted from a Trump election broadcast? It’s brought up later on but just as a minor plot point not the pivotal event that the scene suggests.

Gere is the clichéd, jaded ex-agent reluctant to get back on the job and even less keen to take a rookie under his wing. Topher offers little as greenhorn agent Ben, who starts out in awe of Gere but after a few scenes in his company stars to smell a rat - or was it a hamster?

The initial wrong foot was decently handled, but in retrospect it couldn’t have gone any other way. Who is the shadowy villain? Well you only have two choices and the title is a bit of a giveaway. As it is, we get wrong footed twice but not in a satisfying manner - in a ‘that doesn’t make a lick of sense’ kind of way.

The film probably sneaked a release on the back of its star names, but everyone looks disinterested and, apart from one decent car crash, there is nothing memorable about this film at all.

The same 'wire from the watch' murder gets carried out so often, you’d think the prop must have been rented for the weekend and they had to get as much use out of it as possible.

The characters are as thin as a steamrolled pizza with the female  parts being especially weak. Topher’s wife has nothing to do apart from simper a lot and fail to fall off a ladder.

Gere wins no empathy points at all and is downright creepy in places. In one scene at a pee-wee baseball game a lady asks him which kid is his. Gere say none, he just likes to watch. Why child services weren’t immediately called, I don’t know.

The film saunters to a low rent showdown in a warehouse with outrageous revelations being piled on top of a steaming load of unlikely events.

I’m not 100% sure who was doing what to whom at the end, but that’s OK - none of the characters did either.

THE Tag line - Double your fun - watch a party election broadcast instead.

33%

No.101 : The Haunting (1963)

The Haunting at the IMDb

 Another haunted house yarn now with modern era Japan giving way to the black and white America of 1963. Many of the ingredients are the same as our previous offering ‘The Grudge’ and so are the uneven and lukewarm results.

The film opens with a potted history of Hill House, a sprawling gothic mansion. Its original owner’s wife died when her carriage crashed and lots of subsequent occupants have met their own grisly fates. The present owner has stayed away, but as she’s getting on she wishes to know the truth. She agrees to loan the place to the Doctor out of ‘Zombie Flesh Eaters’ so that he can conduct experiments to prove or disprove its haunted house status.

After extensive profiling he chooses six volunteers to stay for a few days. Sadly his time is wasted as he ends up with only three - Eleanor who has an irritating inner monologue, Theo, a psychic lady who likes Eleanor and Luke, a gadabout who stands to inherit the house and who is keen to keep an eye on his property.

The three move in and pretty soon the haunted house staples of closing doors and cold rooms take over. The two ladies don their long nighties and experiences all sorts of bumps in the night. Sadly the budget doesn’t stretch to much so the haunting stays as the loud noises and bulging door level throughout. Eleanor is quickly unhinged and soon starts to fixate on the dashing Doc who has more than a little of the Clark Gables about him.

Sadly for Eleanor the Doc’s wife shows up in the shape of Miss Moneypenny but she disappears just as fast. Soon even the cynical Luke is a believer but can the cast survive the night? and will the twist be that really obvious one signalled from the off. Oh it is!

This seems to be a well regarded horror film but there wasn’t enough meat on its bones for me. They went for that cheap slow and psychological terror build up that just gets tiresome after a while. We the viewer knew the house had issues from the off but it took the characters so long to get there I had lost interest by the time they did. There were loads of really invasive musical cues with blaring ominous portents rounded off by some plinky plonk piano keys - really annoying the second time never mind the tenth.

The actors were all good apart from Julie Harris in the lead who was really needy and unlikable. Of course it was part of her character to be unhinged and random but she just came across as unsympathetic and annoying. Her arc where she went from inquisitive to needy to plain out mental was misjudged with the haunted house seemingly turning her dial from zero to max overnight. The lesbian sub plot wasn’t really explored, but it was no surprise that the predatory psychic wore black while our chaste and chased heroine was in white.

The only special effects were a wobbly staircase and a bulging door and although some will tell you the biggest scares are those you imagine they are clearly wrong. The film would probably play better as a small stage production because as a feature film it came across as cheap and underwhelming. The overlong build-up was a poor investment as the ending was flagged from the off and you just wish the idea that “the place should be burned to the ground” had come to Luke five minutes from the start rather than at the end.

THE Tag Line - Haunted House More Shite Than Fright -52%

No.100 : The Serpent (2006)

The Serpent at the IMDb

 Sub-titled French movies aren’t a staple of The Definite Article Movie Review but this one is well worth a look, not least because Bond Girl Olga Kurylenko shows us what she’s made of.

An old chap thinks he’s got lucky when the sexy Olga goes on a blind date with him but you get nothing for nothing and soon a sinister gang of blackmailers is on his tail. He pays up but it’s never enough. We think he’s being used to show us how the gang operates but he will reappear down the line so remember him and his hearing aid!

The bad guys look for their next mark and choose Vincent. We think he’s been targeted at random but nothing is what it seems in this labyrinth plot. Vincent is a fashion photographer in the midst of a messy divorce from his wife with whom he is still living. He arranged a shoot for the next day and is surprised to find Olga is his late replacement model and his helpers can’t come in as they have been beaten up. The shoot goes well and Vincent thinks his luck is in when Olga gives him a nice kiss - and she’s a scratcher too! Alas he has to run but next day the cops charge him with attempted rape.

The charges are dropped and Olga comes by to tell him he’s been targeted in a scam. Just as we are starting to think she’s nice she drugs his drink and soon the whole gang arrives to photograph Vincent in some kinky poses. He revives just in time to see Olga leave and as he chases after her she falls from his unnecessarily dangerous staircase, seemingly to her death. Vincent, who is already on the police’s radar, calls his lawyer who, on finding no trace of the body, thinks his client is nuts. Things get worse for Vincent however when he’s rear ended and finds Olga’s body in his boot and the cops have just arrived.

The other driver reveals himself to be an old school friend of Vincent’s and he arranges to get the car fixed and the body disposed of - you don’t get that service from Aviva! The body hider, Plender, starts to turn the screws looking for cash and a few free dinners at Vincent’s.  Our man starts to investigate his menacing friend and after his lawyer is killed he realises that the noose is tightening. Charged with murder Vincent goes on the run - can he turn the tables on the blackmailer and save his family from the freezer of doom?

I enjoyed this superior thriller and although it was a bit long there were enough twists to keep me interested. I liked how the troubles piled up on Vincent and it was hard to see how he could escape the elaborate traps that had been set by the dead-eyed Plender. The ending was a little too pat for my liking but I did enjoy the twists most notably the grave robbing!

Yvan Attal was excellent in the lead role as the troubled Vincent as was Clovis Cornillac as the malevolent Plender. Plender’s motivation was well documented but it was a bit unclear why he waited for his Mum to die before focusing on Vincent. Maybe it sent him over the edge or he’s just got plenty of patience. The blackmailing scenes were well done with the poor suckers reeled in by the slick and sexy operation and I liked the creepy shine to the dear departed mother.

All in all this was an enjoyable Gallic thriller with my only real complaint the title - not a serpent in sight apart from the tattoo on the bad guys back - should have called it ‘French Blackmail/Revenge Film’ - at least that does what it says on the tin!

78% Best Bit - Olga’s lingerie shoot