No. 257 : The Vanishing (2018)

 

The Vanishing at the IMDb

No, not the 1998 Dutch film of the same name or even the Jeff Bridges remake of that from 1993, this one is a bunch of Scotsmen on a lighthouse shouting a lot in a 2018 flick that had passed me by.

I found this in a charity shop for 10p and although it was probably worth that I’m glad that I didn’t invest more – apart from my precious time!

The film is based on the real-life disappearance of three lighthouse keepers from the Flannan Isle lighthouse in 1900. The official report concluded that the men were most likely swept out to sea, but that would be somewhat prosaic for a movie – so let’s have some gold and murder to spice things up!

I’m no puritan, but I have to say if these men were my relatives I’d be a bit upset at seeing them portrayed as a bunch of murdering psychos who swear for Scotland and have a Gollum type fascination for the shiny stuff.

The film opens with the three men taking over a remote lighthouse for a few weeks. We have Peter Mullen and Gerard Butler (Trinity House should be investigated if that casting is an accurate depiction of the men involved!) along with a young lad, there on his first stint. We get a brief idea of what’s involved with the light being cleaned and the foghorn tested before the action proper begins.

The men find a washed-up lifeboat with a body nearby. The body, in what becomes a recurring theme, doesn’t stay dead for long as the seaman wakes up and starts to fight the younger keeper. Our man manages to bash the salty tar’s head in with a rock, before the body and a mysterious box are recovered to the lighthouse station.

Mullen decrees that the box remain locked but within five minutes he’s opened it up and found it to be full of gold bars. He initially tries to keep the hoard to himself but soon the other two get wind of the treasure and the three plot to keep the loot. Butler suggests someone will come looking for the gold and he’s proven right within another five minutes.

 

The crew show themselves up to be inept liars, as the owners of the gold aren’t convinced with the lads’ tall tale that the box has already been handed over to the authorities. After a brief stramash our lads have another two bodies on their hands – wait, three as Butler carelessly whacks a young lad causing Paisley's finest no end of trauma and bad acting.

The three men now have a quandary – what to do with the loot and with each other as tensions and suspicions multiply.

This was an OK kind of film but it’s easy to see why it sank without trace. Mullen and a rather portly Butler play to form with a lot of shouting and swearing. Butler’s trip into mania and back again isn’t believable nor is Mullen’s relative indifference to the horrors unfolding in front of him. There are a lot of long pauses and drawn-out scenes that appear to be an attempt to show the malaise and isolation of the situation but it just looks like so much constipation.

The settings were good, but I didn’t buy into the tension or that these three men would turn to murder over a pile of metal – this is no ‘Treasure of the Sierra Madre’. It was a passable 100 minutes, but one that offered no insight into the true events of Flannan Isle nor a compelling narrative for a standalone feature.

THE Tag Line - Light's Out! 56%

No.216 : The Chameleon (2010)

The Chameleon at the IMDb

Sometimes you see a story on the news and think ‘That’ll make an interesting film!’. Other times you go with ‘mmm, that’s interesting, I wonder if ‘Tipping Point is on?’ This film falls squarely into the second category. It’s a decent set up, based on a true story, but not a lot happens and things panned out pretty much as I expected from the off.

The film tries to be interesting by jumping about with the narrative timeline but ultimately it’s about someone faking an identity and getting caught doing it. There are the motivations of the various characters to consider, such  as to how they allowed this to happen but ultimately, who cares? The films tries and fails to inject some drama and insight into proceedings but it ends up with all the excitement of a ‘Crimewatch’ re-enactment.

The films opens in 2006 with Famke Janssen’s FBI agent trawling the bayou in Louisiana, presumably for a body. Before anything happens we jump back to 2000 and a boy being found in the street claiming he had escaped from kidnappers who had held him since 1996. He says he is an American boy who had gone missing in 1996 and, given he knows the names of all of the missing boy’s family, he is reinstated to them.

The sister greets him with open arms, the brother less so. The mother, played by a scuzzy Ellen Barkin, isn’t keen at first but soon starts to confide in her ‘son‘. No one seems to worry about the boy’s change in appearance or his new French accent and no one apart from Janssen who smells a rat. She thinks the brother killed his missing sibling and his acceptance of this interloper is proof that he has something to hide. Sister and mother both have their own issues and this new transplant offers an answer to some of their problems.

After an hour Janssen, like the viewer, gets bored of all the hanging around and arranges a DNA test which proves the missing son is in fact a serial French con man, who has multiple identities. He gets charged with the impersonation but can his new foothold in the family generate any new leads into the case of the missing boy? Before long we are back at the bayou where we started - will something get resolved at last?

I wasn’t impressed by this film and had nothing invested in any of the paper thin characters. Druggie Mum Barkin was like Seymour Skinner’s Mum accepting Armin Tamzarian into her home despite all the evidence to the contrary. The sister , who was an awful actor, was just plain needy and the violent and  potentially murderous brother carried all the threat of a Teletubby.

Famke had a thankless task going through the detective motions and you have to wonder why they bothered. We knew from the start he was a big faker and even though it was a true story it beggared belief that the police would accept the ‘missing’ boy’s story at face value, especially as all his knowledge of ‘his’ family was freely available on the internet.

I think the story would have been better served as a documentary, as the dramatic elements  that were introduced didn’t take and stuck out like a sore thumb. If you need to know about this thin tale I’d recommend the Wikipedia page over this dull 90 minute hash of the facts.

THE Tag Line - He Came, He Faked He Went Away -  45%