Christian Sauvé » MovieReview

The Great 2012 Quasi-Hiatus

Christian Sauvé — Mon, 02 Jan 2012 01:57:11 +0000

From 1996 to 2011, christian-sauve.com offered a monthly assortment of reviews; Over the years, I have tried to stick to a monthly quota of eight book reviews, and all the movies I have seen. From 2001 to mid-2011, this averaged out to about 96 book reviews and 120 movie reviews per year… not a bad average for volunteer work.

Due to ongoing happy lifestyle changes, however, this rhythm started sputtering in July 2011 and will not be sustainable in 2012. To this end, I am announcing a semi-hiatus of sorts for the year: No more book review quotas, and shorter/shallower movie reviews. I’m not saying that there won’t be any new material: the reviewing impulse is strong in me, I know that I will need to review some noteworthy books and I’m committed to keeping an online record of my movie-watching. Still, as I realign my time toward more urgent purposes, I’m giving myself an excuse to not feel forced to put up content in 2012. We’ll how this goes.

I also expect to be back in 2013, so this isn’t a good-bye as much as it’s a “wait a minute… or a year.”

Wicker Man, The (2006)

Christian Sauvé — Tue, 01 Nov 2011 00:47:43 +0000

(On DVD, October 2011) A bizarre blend of awful ideas and hilarious execution, The Wicker Man is, remarkably enough, just as bad and funny as its reputation suggests. At times, it feels like the result of the fabled Hollywood idea-flattening process: Whatever creepy quality the premise might have held have been squashed by dumb artistic choices, glossy routine horror tropes and an increasingly unhinged script. Nicholas Cage truly stars as a policeman investigating a disappearance on an isolated island: his borderline-psychotic performance is uniquely his, and the only sustained pleasure that the film has to offer. The rest of the film is a mess of weak development, generic tropes, dumb character decisions and a drawn-out ending. (As with a bunch of by-the-number horror movies, it also fails to explain why the villains go to such extremes in their plans.) While I’m always happy to see Leelee Sobieski even in a small role, the rest of the film is dull except when it’s bad and intensely predictable throughout. Ten of the last fifteen minutes are demented enough to be enjoyable, as Cage goes around punching and kicking women (once in a bear suit –I’m not making this up), scaring kids and waving a gun like a crazy man. It’s hard not to feel sympathy for the antagonists when the protagonist is so obviously unpleasant and unable to muster even the most basic sense of fitting-in. I’m not sure what writer/director Neil LaBute was thinking when he put together The Wicker Man, but the best thing about it may be the numerous YouTube videos lampooning the result. (I’m particularly fond of Best Scenes From “The Wicker Man” and The Comedy Trailer)

Rum Diary, The (2011)

Christian Sauvé — Sat, 29 Oct 2011 00:45:54 +0000

(In theaters, October 2011) It’s a good thing that I’m a certified fan of Hunter S. Thompson’s work, because otherwise I’m sure I wouldn’t have enjoyed The Rum Diary as much. It’s already a trying experience even for those who have absorbed Thompson’s life and work: Thompson’s bottom-of-the-drawer “first novel” was a triumph of atmosphere over plot, as it followed a young journalist as he made his way throughout 1960s Puerto Rico and lost much of his illusions. Blending fiction with autobiography, The Rum Diary offered a more melancholic view of Thompson’s early years than you’d expect. The movie version has a hard time trying to put a plot where the novel doesn’t have one, and the result is a bit of low-key comedy interspaced with more serious plotting about corruption and unbridled development. Many of the anecdotes are amusing (although it speaks volume about the film’s pacing that the trailer has a far clearer sense of comedy), but the dramatic narrative of The Rum Diary peters off in a “nothing worked out, but we all learned a lot so… to be continued…” fishtail of a conclusion. The film works best as an affectionate homage to Thompson himself, as it clearly feels like a romanced “birth of an author” narrative: If you don’t know what Thompson would go on to write after his own Puerto Rico transformative experience, then the ending of the film will be more frustrating than anything else. Fortunately, Johnny Depp is wonderful as a young Thompson (it’s a performance clearly meant to lead into his own work in Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas), while Amber Heard finally makes an impression in a paper-thin role. As a drama for people who haven’t read Thompson, it’s a hit-and-miss film with a strong Puerto Rican atmosphere… but frankly, this one is for the fans. And even they may feel that the two-hour film runs a bit long.

Johnny English Reborn (2011)

Christian Sauvé — Sat, 22 Oct 2011 00:44:18 +0000

(In theaters, October 2011) Given how infrequently I have thought of the original Johnny English since its release in 2003, it’s safe to say that I wasn’t demanding a sequel nor expecting too much of it. Unsurprisingly, this kind of low-expectations brinksmanship actually works in Johnny English Reborn’s favour, as the film is occasionally wittier and funnier than expected. Part of what works is that this time around, English isn’t always a bumbling idiot: In-between the goofs and the pratfalls are flashes of competence and wit. The best in-story example comes during a foot chase, in which a parkour expert is defeated by an exasperated protagonist as he goes around obstacles, opens doors and takes an elevator to catch his opponent. At other times, English’s sidekick isn’t the kind of super-qualified overachiever that other bumbling comedy spies often get saddled with; we also get a car chase parody featuring a tricked-out wheelchair. That’s the kind of James Bond satire anyone could enjoy. Unfortunately, they come sandwiched between moments seemingly designed for kids and other undemanding audiences: Johnny English Reborn goes broad and wide in its mugging for laughs, going from Rowan Atkinson’s Blackadderesque suave goatee to the clean-shaven buffoonery of Mr. Bean far too quickly. The romance is barely sketched, and while former Bond-girl Rosamund Pike is cute enough, I would have enjoyed seeing Natalie Imbruglia again. Still, Atkinson makes limp slapstick fly better than anyone else, and the film isn’t without a few scattered grins. Being better than the original isn’t much, but it’s enough to raise the film into average mediocrity, albeit friendly to older kids. Stay for the credits, though: Johnny English Reborn concludes with an absolutely charming comedy sequence in which Atkinson cooks in-sync with The Halls of the Mountain Kings: It’s the film’s finest moment.

Thing, The (2011)

Christian Sauvé — Thu, 20 Oct 2011 00:42:13 +0000

(In theaters, October 2011) Did we really need a remake/prequel/rehash of The Thing? Certainly not: while special effect today may be cheaper and easier than what John Carpenter had to work with, their impact is muted after thirty years of ever-gorier film horror. There’s little of the first film’s sense of isolation, desperation and paralysing terror –something made worse by the film’s intention to ape the original only to end at the very beginning of its prequel. The link is elegant, but it only drives home the recycled nature of this creatively bankrupt sequel that show what was best imagined. It’s not a terrible film, mind you: It’s done with more care than you’d expect from a cheap B-grade horror movie these days. Some sequences are almost interesting, and the integration of the horror with the science fiction isn’t badly done. (What’s not so successful is the sense that the enemy, borrowing more from contagion than identifiable monster, is undefeatable no matter what the protagonist does.) Still, most of The Thing’s virtues aren’t original (what it doesn’t steal from the original it borrows from the Alien series), and it becomes weaker the moment it tries something new: the test to determine who’s human and who isn’t doesn’t do much more than bring back the memory of the first film and distinguish between an inspired film and one that merely imitates one. As an Antarctic thriller, it’s better than Whiteout or Alien versus Predator… but that’s really scraping the barrel of comparisons. This year’s The Thing just feels like a useless film, one where the gore seems even more pointless than usual. I wonder if a back-to-back viewing will enhance the experience of both, or simply highlight the derivative nature of this remake…

Moneyball (2011)

Christian Sauvé — Thu, 13 Oct 2011 00:40:15 +0000

(In theaters, October 2011) Something isn’t quite right with this Moneyball, but it took me a reading through the original book to finally understand why. As a sports drama in which underdogs defeat their opponents through cleverness and unorthodox thinking, it does manage to boil down a complex and dry subject into a narrative that most people (including those without much baseball knowledge) will be able to follow and enjoy. Brad Pitt is surprisingly good as the Oakland Athletics’s general manager Billy Beane trying to make the most out of the small budget he’s given –hiring oddball players and constantly running the numbers game is one way that the story plays out in the good old underdog sports drama narrative. But sometimes, it does too neat a job: While Michael Lewis’ book makes it clear that the sabermetrisation of pro baseball was (and continues to be) a lengthy process in which the 2002 season was just another step, the film condenses decades of thinking into a single year, and heavily dramatizes the events in such a way that they lose their intended meaning. Sabermetrics is about squeezing a few percentage points here and there, enough so that statistically, you end up with better results at the end of the year. So what’s Moneyball’s most triumphant sequence? The complete statistical anomaly of winning twenty games in a row (and that last one on a heroic shot), something that actually undermines the argument made by the picture. Once that twentieth game is won, the film has nowhere to go: while the team makes it to the finals, they lose their season. Other teams would take ideas similar to Beane’s and run with them. The elements that make Lewis’ Moneyball an interesting book aren’t necessarily those that make for a sports drama and the film occasionally suffers from the contradiction. Still, it’s churlish to criticise the film for fairly esoteric reasons: On most aspects, Moneyball is a solid sports drama with enough comic relief to make it work, and it’s hard to overestimate the work that has gone in transforming the non-fiction original book into something that feels like a classic baseball movie. The container, however, may be part of the problem.

Rubber (2010)

Christian Sauvé — Mon, 10 Oct 2011 00:38:28 +0000

(On DVD, October 2011) I suppose that when a film begins with a monologue in which a character directly addresses the audience in explaining why it celebrates having “no reason”, it shouldn’t be surprising if the rest of Rubber is a mixture of meta-fictional experimentation and half-hearted genre thrills. It could have been otherwise, though: As ludicrous a premise as “killer tire” can be, it would have been possible to turn it into a reasonably inventive horror/comedy hybrid. Instead, though, director Quentin Dupieux dispenses with the thrills, adds a framing device that leeches energy away from the film, endlessly circles the same few ideas and seems inordinately proud of himself for screwing with viewers’ expectations. Not all of Rubber is terrible: There’s some interesting work in making “Robert” more than a rolling tire telekinetically making heads explode, and there are a few meta-fictional elements here that, if correctly employed, would have been rich in possibilities: The observers/audience could have been an effective Greek chorus, or commentary on the craven nature of horror audiences –instead, they’re almost entirely thrown away too soon. The conceit of actors making a movie that relies on viewer’s attention is similar, as is the basic horror structure of a tire killing people for “no reason”. But those intriguing elements never gel, and they’re undermined by other more basic flaws: The film’s pacing is deathly, and what would have been impressive in a short ten-minute film here feel overdrawn and beaten to death in 85 minutes. The excessive gore seems more immature than deserved in a film that can’t be bothered to deliver even the most basic movie-watching satisfaction. Ultimately, though, the DVD supplements (more particularly a fake interview with backwards-running segments and blatantly wrong translation from French) confirm what the film suggests: A self-satisfied director with no discipline, no appreciation for the genre he has chosen to work in and quite a bit of contempt for his audience. As much as I’m not opposed to films that go off the beaten track, this really isn’t the way to do it –I felt my enthusiasm for Rubber deflate steadily throughout.

Ides of March, The (2011)

Christian Sauvé — Sat, 08 Oct 2011 00:36:23 +0000

(In theaters, October 2011) As with many backroom political thrillers, The Ides of March tells the story of how a young political wunderkind loses his illusions while working for a star candidate. If you’ve read Joe Klein/Anonymous’s Primary Colors or seen 1996’s City Hall, you have a rough idea of how this works. But familiarity isn’t necessarily a bad thing, especially as the similitudes taper off toward the end, and the result is a convincing look at the way American politics can work. Ryan Gosling’s portrayal of a genius-level political operative makes for a sympathetic hero, and he more than holds his own against such notables as George Clooney, Philip Seymour Hoffman and Paul Giamatti. (It’s one of the film’s interesting choices to use a star Clooney as a superstar candidate, character-actor darlings Hoffman and Giamatti as seasoned professionals and Gosling as an up-and-comer –a good example of Hollywood typecasting working as casting.) Perhaps the best thing about The Ides of March is its pitch-perfect portrayal of the political process at the primary stage –the ground-level organizing, the dirty tricks, the high-level negotiations in dismal settings. Director Clooney does a fine job as portraying the grey nature of mid-March winter in Cincinnati, and the film quickly becomes a must-see for American political junkies, who won’t cringe too much at the film’s faithfulness to reality as we know it. It almost goes without saying that, despite being loosely based on a play loosely based on the Howard Dean campaign, The Ides of March is best interpreted as a what-if rather than an allegory of anything that really happened recently: despite the political in-jokes, if best to appreciate the actors working as character rather than caricatures. It’s unclear whether the film will have much of a wide appeal beyond left-leaning politicos: like many political thrillers, it ends at a funeral, but unlike many it doesn’t feature a single raised gun, conspiracy or assassination attempt. It’s this nominal adherence to a plausible version of reality (with a side-order of capable performances) that makes The Ides of March works well despite familiar ideas and a low-key presentation. Sometimes, you don’t need car chases and explosions to have a thrilling time.

Gnomeo & Juliet (2011)

Christian Sauvé — Mon, 03 Oct 2011 00:34:50 +0000

(On cable TV, October 2011) I’m not sure what kind of warped creative process ends up proposing a comedy take-off on “Romeo and Juliet” starring garden gnomes and featuring the music of Elton John, but when it leads to amusing trifles such as Gnomeo & Juliet, it’s hard to second-guess the filmmakers. A second-tier animated feature aimed at kids but amusing to adults, it’s a fast-paced romantic comedy with enough action sequences and musical interludes to satisfy just about every constituency out there. The pun-filled dialogue may occasionally earn a few groans, but there are a few good Shakespeare-related gags here and there (I’m particularly fond of “Out, out! Damn spot!”) to satisfy the classics-spotter. The animation is fine, and some of the creature design is lovely. Gnomeo & Juliet isn’t too demanding if you don’t focus on the in-jokes hidden in freeze-frames, and the entire family is likely to have a bit of fun along the way. Oh, and don’t worry: The original “Romeo and Juliet” ending has been altered for maximum comedy.

Room, The (2003)

Christian Sauvé — Sun, 02 Oct 2011 00:31:09 +0000

(On DVD, October 2003) I didn’t want to see Tommy Wisseau’s The Room as much as I was morbidly curious about it. Having recently acquired some kind of cult notoriety as one of the worst movies ever made, The Room has spawned a few Internet memes and toured the continent in special audience-participation screenings à la Rocky Horror Picture Show. Alas, the first thing that comes to mind while watching The Room is that we don’t have the cult classics we used to have. Amateurish and incompetent in nearly every facet of moviemaking, The Room has the feel of a vanity project gone horribly wrong, possibly thanks to a producer/writer/director/actor (Wisseau) unable to tell between good and bad, and unwilling to listen to saner heads. Pick an aspect of movies, and The Room sucks at it. The premise presupposes entities without recognizable human emotions. Dialogues feel like the first draft of a first student project. The tone of the film changes from one line to another. The direction is flat. The acting is uncontrolled, starting from Wisseau’s constant ha-has. Even the scene blocking is worse than the average local theater company. The pacing grinds to a halt whenever it hits one of the four too-lengthy soft-core love scenes. Subplots are raised and then never mentioned again. Whatever nice things one may say about the stock San Francisco exteriors are destroyed by their tone-deaf usage as scene transitions. And so on. The issue here isn’t that the film is terrible: I’m sure that there are plenty of other terrible movies buried away somewhere. The real wonder here is The Room’s unexplainable notoriety as an Internet phenomenon. Granted, the so-bad-it’s-good crowd self-selects itself out of any kind of artistic rationale. Still, the fairest way to describe the movie is dull: I started watching it with the best of intentions, and eventually idly started surfing the web as the rest of the movie played without too much surprise or variance in quality. At least I can now place “You are tearing me apart, Lisa!” or “Oh, hi Mark” in their proper, incomprehensible context. Given that Wisseau is riding the film’s newfound popularity as an incompetent comedy by showing it in theaters, those of you still convinced that The Room can’t be missed will have trouble renting it or even buying it online; all I can say is that this is the universe’s way of telling you that you’re better off doing something else.

Drive (2011)

Christian Sauvé — Sat, 01 Oct 2011 00:49:30 +0000

(In theaters, September 2011) Every so often, genre thriller fans are asked to confront moody art-house versions of familiar crime stories. Here we have a stunt driver / mechanic moonlighting as a getaway driver. He meets a single mother and her son; gets embroiled in a heist when her husband gets out of prison; is forced to defend himself once the heist turns bad and he ends up with a lot of money that other people have acquired in ways that would get everyone killed. Having read (and re-read) James Sallis’ thin novel on which the film is based, I can say that the adaptation is both loose and faithful: The plot is there, the motivations are entirely different but the mood is just as laconic and borderline pretentious. There are fewer details in the film about the protagonist’s life as a stuntman, but the details surrounding the main plot are far better developed (in particular “Irene”, much more fully rounded from the novel’s “Irena”). Still, the film itself feels stuck in-between genre conventions and dramatic pretention: The languid pacing alone is a tough sell to thriller audiences: Drive often feels like lengthy silences loosely connected together and the editing seems happy to linger on characters as they stare wordlessly into space to the sound of eighties-inspired music. Ryan Gosling’s nameless character is either a straightforward revenge-driven hero, or an enigma without dialogue; I had certainly imagined a scrappier protagonist from the novel. Meanwhile, art-house audiences may not feel entirely with the Grand Theft Auto-inspired subject matter, or with the unnecessary flashes of extreme gore. Director Nicolas Winding Refn is far more interested in dramatic beats than action sequences, which gives a particular off-beat flavour to the film’s more intense moments: they likely won’t satisfy action junkies, but they do bring something unusual to the table in terms of visual presentation. (The opening pre-credit sequence is remarkable.) Los Angeles itself gets to shine either through glorious night-time helicopter shots, or through the presentation of seedy run-down apartments in which the characters live. This kind of in-between location comes to define the rest of the picture as well, and if there’s enough interesting material in Drive to warrant a look for those who enjoy style clashes, the film itself may be a bit too self-involved to be fully successful. Cut fifteen minutes of the film, and we’ll see again.

Apollo 18 (2011)

Christian Sauvé — Tue, 13 Sep 2011 00:47:58 +0000

(In theatres, September 2011) As a certified space exploration geek, I have to admit that as much as I don’t like the conspiracy-mongering mockumentary intent of Apollo 18, the notion of a secret mission to the moon does hit a sweet spot somewhere in my brain. I’m unaccountably fascinated by stories blending hard-SF with horror (see Event Horizon, Blood Moon, etc.) and Apollo 18 adds another layer of interest by choosing to show its story using found footage. Unfortunately, interesting doesn’t always go hand-in-hand with good and as the film ended after merely 85 minutes, I felt as if I had spent more time second-guessing the director’s choices rather than enjoying the film itself. The biggest problem, obviously, is the script: From the pedestrian lines of dialogue, the mortally slow first act, the lack of twists and turns (save for one unexpected lunar lander), ridiculous threat and a conclusion that ends like most found footage horror movies have done since The Blair Witch Project, this is a thin, weak and predictable film. Even in terms of secret space program science-fiction, it has fewer good things running for it than the first ten minutes of Transformers 3: Dark of the Moon (and I don’t praise the Transformers series lightly) But even allowing for a script that’s more promising than well-executed, it’s really the film’s pseudo-documentary approach that kills it. The opening and closing title cards are annoying in their insistence that What you saw was real (yeah, like anyone could miss a secret mission to the Moon), and the subjective-camera thing becomes a problem more than an advantage: It places a filter on the experience of the film that a more conventional direction would have eliminated. (It doesn’t help that by the final five minutes, we’re seeing camera angles that can’t exist, and that the conclusion makes it impossible to answer the question “Where did they get the footage from?”) So, yes, don’t be surprised to find yourself constantly wishing for the film to have been made another way. It makes Apollo 18 a curiosity, perhaps even a marginal recommendation for SF/horror fans, but certainly not a good film for the ages. Parts of it are ingenious, though, and there aren’t that many other films with a cast list of merely three people.

Contagion (2011)

Christian Sauvé — Sat, 10 Sep 2011 00:43:04 +0000

(In theaters, September 2011) There are many things to admire about Steven Soderbergh’s Contagion, but the one that sticks in mind is his attempt to tell a story about something that’s basically unstoryable. Modern-day epidemics do not lend themselves to the kind of heroics best shown on-screen: They involve many people doing their job, they turn into public policy debates, they don’t spare the righteous or punish the guilty, they peter out rather than climax and they present a diffuse threat rather than a clear antagonist. Faced with those constraints, most movies about epidemics crank it up to zombies (28 Days Later, etc), borrow from science-fiction (The Andromeda Strain), or can’t help but throw in car chases and explosions (Outbreak). No such narrative sleigh-of-hand here, as Contagion keeps to a fairly realistic depiction of a massively contagious and highly deadly epidemic. Hopping all around the globe, bringing together half a dozen narrative strands, Contagion adopts a quasi-documentary look without forgetting to indulge in the occasional spectacle of a world gone wrong. It doesn’t take that many shots of people touching things to let the film unnerve viewers, and Soderbergh’s assured direction does the rest. Among other not-so-subtle touches, he not only kills off two characters played by Oscar-winning actresses, but has a graphic autopsy scene featuring the head of one of them. Much of the script feels reasonably credible, with enough technobabble to set the tone. Of course, trying to tell an unstoryable story eventually takes its toll. Not every subplot is equally compelling (The second half of Marion Cotillard’s trip to China feels dull, whereas Jude Law’s character is annoying enough to create resentment when he escapes death) and the third act gradually diffuses itself as the epidemic runs its course. Soderbergh’s tendency to tell a story in selective bits and pieces can occasionally be frustrating, given the potential here for a slicker film. (Although the anti-chronological coda is a nice ironic touch.) But given the film’s success in so many areas, in telling a familiar story in a way that sticks closer to the real world, Contagion ends up being a modest success; it’s perhaps Soderbergh’s most accomplished melding of art-house instincts in the service of broadly popular entertainment. Amusingly for a filmmaker who’s been known to push for day-and-date direct distribution, at a time where movie theater attendance is dropping and video stores are closing, there may be no better argument for internet streaming/downloading that seeing Contagion and indulging in a bit of paranoia at the thought of human contact.

Un Prophète (2009)

Christian Sauvé — Thu, 08 Sep 2011 00:41:19 +0000

(On DVD, September 2011) A lengthy but rarely uninteresting sit at nearly two hours and a half, Un Prophète is essentially a look at the life of a young Arab man during his year-long incarceration in a French prison. It plays out quite a bit more entertainingly that a simple statement of the premise will suggest, though: Within moments, our protagonist is manipulated by a bunch of Corsican prisonners into murdering an incarcerated witness, and the protection he earns in this fashion propels the rest of the action. Part of the film’s pleasure is seeing the quasi-defenseless protagonist, ably played by Tahar Rahim, grow into a wheeler, schemer and eventually win over his opponents. After a few disjointed minutes in which the quasi-documentary cinematography calls attention to itself, the film’s narrative arc progresses along nicely, adding and removing threats as it advances. It makes for compelling viewing, especially as the film moves away from its initially bleak and uncompromising tone to a somewhat more hopeful conclusion. Less happily, the film occasionally indulges into a bit of magical realism in which reality is bent to ghostly advice and artful foreshadowing (hence the title) –much hidden depth is suggested by the film’s artful flourishes, but it does take away from the more reality-based bulk of the film. Still, that’s not enough to take away much of the impact of this big, full, engrossing film: Un prophète is a look at a reality most will hopefully never experience, but it’s also a terrific story about someone working with the cards he’s been given. Most disturbing, perhaps, is the non-judgement of the camera –the criminal as a hero, obviously, with the disappearance of his ghostly conscience a minor loss when he manages to work the system to his end. The final images of the film suggest that a happy life will never be possible, and that he will always be followed no matter how he tries to escape. Deservedly nominated for an Oscar, Un Prophete offers a dazzling mix of allegory, thematic depth and pure old-fashioned storytelling. It’s worth the sit.

Tropa de Elite aka Elite Squad (2007)

Christian Sauvé — Wed, 07 Sep 2011 00:39:08 +0000

(On DVD, September 2011) It’s really unfair to compare Elite Squad to City of God, given the latter’s well-deserved reputation as one of the best films of its time. But the comparisons go beyond the fact that both movie come from contemporary Brazil: Both of them, after all, have been written by the same screenwriter, and if City of God was more interested in the criminal and bystanders, Elite Squad takes a look at the elite police forces fighting to clean up the corrupted mess that is modern-day Rio de Janeiro. But don’t think for a second that the focus on the police forces makes for a kinder, gentler film: Even the protagonist seldom hesitate to gun down suspects, torture persons of interest or indulge in a bit of gratuitous cruelty. Unusually structured, the film is narrated by a retiring police officer as he tries to pick a successor from two promising, but uneven recruits. Wagner Moura is sympathetic as the narrator, but it’s André Ramiro who captures the film with a performance that sees him go from a good-natured intellectual to a revenge-driven warrior. The solid script may skip over some of the transitional states, but it opens with an effective bit of structure, and ends at the perfect moment. The cinematography lushly captures the moden favelas, and a few action sequences help lift this dramatic thriller into more exciting territory without necessarily sacrificing the themes of the film to a purely action-driven film. A pretty good example of why even populist filmgoers should pay attention to world cinema, Elite Squad is a fascinating look in a very different culture where crime and punishment play out differently. It’s a damning indiction of police corruption and the endless cycle of violence that seems to grip the area, but mostly it’s an entertaining police drama with a heavy dose of moral relativism. The picture never bother to punish transgressions, in part because it’s so difficult to see who never goes beyond moral decency.