Author: Christian Sauvé

  • Iron Man 2 (2010)

    Iron Man 2 (2010)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (In theatres, May 2010) As one of, apparently, only half-a-dozen people who didn’t go completely crazy about the first Iron Man film, my expectations for the sequel were kept in check.  So I was pleasantly surprised to find myself nodding in agreement at this follow-up’s overlapping snarky dialogues, well-choreographed action sequences and pleasant character beats.  The force of the film remains the character of Tony Stark as played by Robert Downey Jr, one of the few superheroes around to actually enjoy the superpowers at his disposal.  Contrary to many of his brethren, this sequel tackles the responsibilities of power from another direction: while the parallels with alcoholism get heavy at times (in-keeping with the source material), it’s a neat bit of character affliction that keeps things interesting even when stuff is not exploding on-screen.  Add a little bit of honestly science-fictional content in how Stark manages to synthesize a solution to his problem (“That was easier than I thought”, the movie self-knowingly wisecracks) and there’s enough fun here to pave over the film’s less convincing moments.  Never mind how a single suit-equipped billionaire can apparently create world peace, or Sam Rockwell’s unconvincing grandstanding as another, dumber billionaire, or the shoe-horned intrusions by the rest of the Marvel universe, or the lengthier stretches in which Iron Man 2 occasionally bogs down.  At least the film has a good understanding of the character’s strengths, and works hard at maintaining them.  I can’t say enough nice things about the replacement of Terrence Howard by the ever-dependable Don Cheadle, nor of Gwyneth Paltrow’s adorable reddish bangs: director Jon Favreau is fine on-screen and even better directing the whole thing.  Iron Man 2 is, unlike other superhero movies often dominated by angst, about joy –and the feeling is infectious.  It may not be a classic, but it’s a decent follow-up.

  • Superman: Red Son, Mark Millar & Dave Johnson

    Superman: Red Son, Mark Millar & Dave Johnson

    ByChristian Sauvé Book Review

    DC Comics, 2009 re-edition of 2003 series, C$29.99 hc, ISBN 978-1-4012-2425-7

    I don’t have much use for the standard superhero comic-book, which is too often an exercise in comfort reading, featuring melodrama that never amounts to much real growth and useless fight scenes thrown in to satisfy fan-boys.  Someone who stops reading a series and picks it up again years later misses out on little: The same archetype will continue to battle it out for as long as there is demand for it… and now that superheroes are big in Hollywood, you can bet that no one wants to upset the moneymaking genre, as narratively stale as it can be.

    I’m not completely immune to the genre’s charm (I’ve got too many Batman trade paperbacks on my shelves to claim otherwise), but I won’t pick up superhero stories unless they’re sold at a bargain, they’re particularly striking examples of the form (Identity Crisis) and/or they’re different.  And Superman: Red Son is certainly different enough.  The premise is suggested early on: What if Superman, rather than landing in a Kansas cornfield, had landed on a Soviet farm?  Audaciously blending Cold War history with the DCverse, writer Mark Millar delivers an alternate history that ends up veering far from ours, and reflecting upon Superman’s innate potential for fascism.

    It’s quite a change from the usual quasi-moronic goody-two-shoe persona that writers often impose on Superman.  This Man of Steel eventually takes up political power, shamelessly uses friends until their breaking point, has a few significant control issues and ends up remaking the planet to his liking.  Brainiac, Lex Luthor and Lois Lane plays important (and unusual) roles in the story, Batman goes against Superman, we get to feel sorry for Wonder Woman and even the Green Lantern corps makes an intriguing appearance.  On top of everything else, Red Son also ends up being an occasional critique of US imperialism and inner power struggles –Millar, of course, is not American.  Best of all, the ending actually wraps everything together, delivering a resolution, an utopian epilogue and a poignant coda.  For a three-book miniseries, it certainly contains a lot of material, even though some of the fights (most particularly the final one) seem a bit gratuitous.  The artwork is fair, although a bit more consistency would have been helpful –along with a better respect for Batman’s aesthetic preferences (you‘ll understand once you see the hat.)

    This vision of Superman is intriguing in part because it plays upon the Superman archetype itself.  A symbol of American power becomes its opponent, and Lex Luthor becomes the noble (and arrogant) genius taking up the task to preserve American Hegemony even as the United States starts seceding.  Millar’s Sickle-and-Hammer Superman also gets free reign to indulge his gift for invention, the genius of which is an aspect of Superman that has often been forgotten in recent incarnations of the character.  After taking up the reins of the Soviet Empire, Superman is free to impose his own version of peace, order and good leadership –as long as it goes through him.

    Red Son is also refreshingly told in shades of gray.  Free from years of accumulated history, Soviet Superman makes mistakes, over-coddles the planet and goes up against enemies that are led by pure and honourable motives.  Lex Luthor is a study in genius-level intelligence tainted by easy cruelty, but he ends up doing good despite his methods.  Wonder Woman is destroyed and discarded.  Batman, well, you’ll have to read it to see for yourself.  Despite the somewhat optimistic tone of the story, terrible things happen along the way.  Superman’s always been about power fantasies, but Red Son tackles the flip side of raw unchecked power.

    The result is something I wasn’t expecting: A Superman story that manages to make a believer out of a confirmed superhero sceptic.  Superman: Red Son is about as good as superhero comics get, even acknowledging that it gets most of its power from upending what everyone knows about Superman.  The 2009 deluxe edition is serviceable enough and while the end sketches don’t add much, the entire package is a good showcase for a series that is actually worth reprinting in hardcover.  Don’t miss it, even if you think you don’t have any interest in Superman.

  • Gunless (2010)

    Gunless (2010)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (In theatres, May 2010) Canadians being politely nationalistic, we won’t help but feel a bit protective about this latest homage to the land of maple-flavoured beavers. Gunless is, conceptually, an attempt to upend the traditional US-based western: A lone American (played by Paul Gross) comes to town and looks for a fight. Unfortunately, he has wandered over the frontier in a quaintly Albertan village where everyone is polite, mild-mannered and unarmed. Through thin plot mechanics, he gets to woo a local widow, defend the village against even worse Americans and learn a few lessons about the value of peace, order and good government. It’s pure catnip for Telefilm Canada, but it’s not exactly the most satisfying film to ever earn government grants: The nationalistic winking gets old real quickly, and Gross seems to believe that enough square-jawed smiles will be enough to make us ignore that Canadian archetypes are often unstoryable. The traditional American western is a show of dominance, of guns as equalizers –serving storytelling needs by making up a difference between numerous evildoers and lonesome do-gooders. Making a movie that satirizes this plot structure is tricky, because it asks audiences to run against their best instincts. There’s seldom a way to bring this off to a satisfying conclusion without being hypocritical and Gunless is certainly no exception: Despite the film’s celebration of Canadian gunlessness, we know that a gunfight is coming: after all, it’s a western! When it comes, we also know that its consequences will be dramatically unsurprising: after all, it’s a comedy! The result is more interesting in how it confirms Gross’ reputation as one of Canada’s fiercest cultural nationalist (also see: Men with Brooms, H20, Passchendaele) than for its limp take on American-style westerns. In many ways, Gunless feels like a bit of cultural content made “because it’s good for you”: Expect to see it re-run often on Canadian TV stations as a cheap and unobjectionable bit of Canadian Content. The problem is not that we’ve seen better; it’s that it’s really easy to see better movies. Many of them were even made by Americans.

  • A Year in the Merde, Stephen Clarke

    A Year in the Merde, Stephen Clarke

    ByChristian Sauvé Book Review

    Bantam, 2004, 335 pages, UK#9.99 pb, ISBN 0-593-05453-9

    As a French-Canadian, watching England argue with France is a bit like being caught between squabbling parents: No matter if most of my family tree left France back when it still had a king, I just wish both of them would get along.  Fortunately, we live at a blessed era in history –one where the enmity between France and England has been reduced to humorous books and snarky blog posts telling us that either Paris or London are overrated.

    As it turns out, I spent a bit of spring 2010 comparing the merits of both capital cities, and it’s only after coming back to London from Paris that I found a copy of Stephen Clarke’s A Year in the Merde.  This not-entirely-fictional comic novel follows the always-hilarious story of a young Englishman (Paul West) who takes a job in Paris.  The narrative of the book follows Paul’s first year in France, as he gets to understand and be further mystified by the French.  Various hijinks ensue, always with madcap results and just-as-always caused by characters exemplifying some kind of French flaw.  Had I read this book a month earlier, I would have been offended on behalf of France at its stereotyping of the French national character.  After coming back from Paris, however, I just find the entire novel spot-on funny.

    Surliness, strikes, cheese, corruption and near-constant eroticism are the only constants of Clarke’s novel, but you will find that they’re more than enough to fill three hundred pages.  Our plucky Brit hero comes to France to impart some of his Anglo-protestant work ethic, but quickly finds out that it’s no match for ever-striking workers, haughty French waiters, passive-aggressive colleagues and the smouldering sexiness of just about every woman he meets. Clichés?  Well, yes.  But it doesn’t mean they’re not based on reality.

    What really counts is what Clarke chooses to do with them.  An idyll with the boss’ daughter leads him to a seemingly perfect country house purchase opportunity which eventually turns sour when it uncovers a complex mess of political influence, back-scratching and outright corruption.  A seemingly sweet deal for an apartment (much sex included) blows up spectacularly, leaving him in the street with only a foreign cleaning lady to help him out.  He falls sick at the moment there’s a pharmacist’s strike.  All of his girlfriends eventually reveal other boyfriends.  It just goes on like that.  Fortunately, the readers are the net beneficiaries of Paul’s misfortunes, smiling from beginning to end.

    Like the best humour books, it zips by at a pace that will make readers wish it had gone on just a bit longer.  The prose is amusing, the many characters and bit-players are well-portrayed, and the asides about Paris have a well-worn quality that betrays Clarke’s long experience with the city.  How much of the book is true?  A bit more than half, says Clarke, although one notices that having spent twelve years in France, he was able to condense a lot of material in just twelve months of hell for his stand-in hero.

    As a look at France and Parisians, it’s quite a bit insulting, but also affectionately tongue-in-cheek.  Originally written for British readers, A Year in the Merde has since found international success and even, yes, a French translation named God Save la France.  (A quick check of the amazon.fr’s user ratings for the book reveal that it’s been received quite a bit better than you’d expect: “sympa et très british” says a sample review.)  Call it a must-read for anyone coming back from Paris or on their way there.  At the very least, this is one book where it’s a relief if the reality fails to match the fiction.

    [March 2011: Follow up Merde Actually is markedly less interesting, in part because it shits gears from one-shot hilarity to ongoing romantic comedy.  Romance is one of those genres where “happily ever after” is preferable to all other alternatives, and it’s not quite as amusing to see Paul go through another number of girlfriends in the sequel. The novel, inevitably, doesn’t feel as fresh or compelling as the first one, and it’s easy to feel as if the first book said everything that could be said about France as seen from an Englishman’s perspective.  Oh, the writing is accessible and the entire book is amusing… but at a basic and forgettable level.  There are now two further novels in the series, but I’m in no hurry to read them.  Used book sales will provide… eventually.]

  • Män som hatar kvinnor [The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo] (2009)

    Män som hatar kvinnor [The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo] (2009)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (In theatres, May 2010) Already a monster hit everywhere in the first world, Stieg Larsson’s Millenium trilogy is slowly conquering the American market, the belated release of this first movie preparing the terrain for the release of the third volume in translation, and maybe even an Americanized version of the films.  It’s no fair betting that the eventual remake will be a lot less distinctive than the Swedish original, which does quite a few things differently from what we’d expect.  For one thing, it starts slowly.  Really, really slowly: While the mystery is suggested early on, there isn’t much of an investigation for the first hour of the film, and its main characters are kept apart for a long while.  The film later moves very leisurely, and takes forever to wrap up after the action climax of the story.  But those who have read the original novel know that it’s even worse at pacing than the film.  Fortunately, The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo places so much emphasis on its characters that the plot doesn’t reign supreme: Instead, we can be fascinated by the odd pairing of a pudgy reporter (Mikael Blomkvist, appropriately underplayed by Michael Nyqvist) and a prickly hacker (Lisbeth Salander, incarnated definitively by Noomi Rapace) in unravelling a decades-old mystery by the slenderest of threads.  The thematic underpinning of the story is all about violence against women (the original title translates at “Millennium: Part 1 – Men Who Hate Women”), and the film finely upholds the original’s progressive political outlook.  The Swedish setting only adds to the interest of the picture, as we get to see the character dig through decades of local history and travel throughout Sweden.  It all adds up to a crime thriller that works in unusual ways, taking advantage of strong characters to paper over a weak structure and inconsistent pacing.  It all adds up to a fascinating thriller, and one that flows quite a bit better than its 158-minutes running time and slow pacing would suggest.  Bring on the sequels!

  • The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, Stieg Larsson

    The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, Stieg Larsson

    ByChristian Sauvé Book Review

    Viking Canada, 2008 translation of 2005 original, 465 pages, C$32.00, ISBN 978-0-670-06901-9

    As an avid six-books-a-week reader, I’m finding increasingly difficult to resist the allure of the It Book.  You know the one: The book at the top of the best-seller lists.  The book that everyone else, casual five-books-a-year readers that they are, can’t stop talking about.  That’s how my bookshelves have somehow acquired copies of The Da Vinci Code, The Celestine Prophecy and even The Secret, along with a number of otherwise respectable books in movie tie-in editions.

    So when I realised that nearly everyone around me was reading Stieg Larsson’s Millenium trilogy, I started thinking that I was missing out on something.  The series certainly has a fascinating background: The work of a left-leaning Swedish journalist who died in 2005, the Millennium trilogy was published posthumously to near-instant international acclaim.  A trilogy of movies speedily made their way around the world, first landing in Canada in French translation about two years before the English editions.  By the time the first movie hit theatres in English and the third novel was published to good sale numbers, I decided to catch up on what had everyone raving.

    It turns out that contrary to elitist belief, quality and sales sometimes have something to do with each other.  The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, first volume in Larsson’s trilogy, is a pretty good mystery set in modern-day Sweden.  It presents an effective enigma, two fantastic lead characters and is written with the kind of attention to procedural detail that only mystery readers can fully appreciate.

    It starts unusually enough, as its hero-journalist Mikael Blomvkist is convicted of libel against a rich industrialist.  Disgraced, he quits his position at the Millenium magazine he co-founded and plans on idling away the days until his prison sentence.  But things take another turn when he is hired by another rich businessman to investigate on a decades-old disappearance.  Working from the slenderest of threads with an unlikely ally, he manages to not only gain clues about the mystery he’s been asked to resolve, but uncover a far more terrifying one as well.

    Never mind the story, though: The real heart of the novel is the unlikely team between our journalist and a prickly hacker named Lisbeth Salander.  He is kind, honest, smart, a bit passive, a hit with the ladies and working from the privileged position of a well-off white male.  She, on the other hand, is moody, asocial, brilliant, considered a ward of the state and unable to form attachments with anyone.  They’re mismatched, but they develop an understanding.  Still, their partnership isn’t without its issues, and it’s that dynamic that ends up carrying the novel as much as the development of the plot.

    It also helps that The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo has quite a bit of thematic depth.  The original title of the book (and indeed the subtitle of the French edition) is Men Who Hate Women, and that theme does end up having an impact on the entire story on more than one level.  It’s no accident, for instance, if Salander is the one character of the pair who is both most victimized and most capable of violence.

    What does end up lessening the novel, though, is its relatively slow pacing.  It seemingly takes forever for the mystery to be revealed to the character, and even longer for any criminal activity to become apparent.  The investigation itself is fine, but the action climax of the novel happens far too early: The rest of the novel reads like an extended epilogue as all the remaining threads are slowly tied together.  If I was feeling generous, I would call this a delightful change of pace stemming from the different cultural milieu in which the novel was written (ie; the Swedes take their time).  For more impatient readers, however, this may end up being a sticking point.

    (Nitpick: The translation of the Canadian Viking edition also has the annoying tendency to translate measures in American-style imperial, rather than the metric system common to both Canada and Sweden.)

    But this aside, The Girl with a Dragon Tattoo is not just an enjoyable mystery/thriller, but also a promising first volume in an ongoing series cut short to a trilogy by the author’s death.  Blomvkist and Salander are a fascinating team, and there are at least two more books to spend with them.

  • Labyrinth (1986)

    Labyrinth (1986)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On DVD, May 2010) Watching this film today is, in many ways, an exercise in nostalgia: As big-budget pre-CGI fantasy filmmaking, it visibly shows its age and the presence of puppets as creatures is a conceit that probably wouldn’t be allowed to go forward given today’s special effects technology.  So watching Labyrinth is, apart from seeing a young Jennifer Connelly in a first starring role, also a game of effect-spotting.  Fortunately, the story is strong enough to sustain scrutiny on its creakiest effects: As a fairy tale, it’s still strong and interesting after nearly a quarter-century.  What doesn’t work as well is the unwieldy mixture of scares and thrills in a film aimed to the younger set, as well as a few musical numbers and comic set-pieces that drag down the story for a while.  Still, Labyrinth’s not such a bad viewing experience, and seeing David Bowie in full goblin-prince attire is enough to compensate for a whole lot of other issues.

  • De père en flic [Father and Guns] (2009)

    De père en flic [Father and Guns] (2009)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On DVD, May 2010) For such a small market, Québec cinema has proven uncommonly adept at finding the recipes required to get audiences in theatres.  In this case, take a respected actor with a good track record (Michel Côté), pair him off with a hip comic (Louis-José Houde), put them in a situation that combines family comedy with criminal intrigue and watch the results.  As is the case with nearly any other Québec comedy hybrid, the film is first played for laughs, and then for criminal thrills.  The movie’s entire middle third is spent yakking it up at a remote camp for estranged fathers-and-sons, with mud-wrestling, Gen-X/Boomer generational complaints and occasional reminders that there is a hostage drama going on elsewhere.  Only De père en flic‘s first and last minutes are concerned with the cops-versus-criminals premise, which is just as well given how it’s the comedy rather than the thrills that made this film such a success at the French-Canadian box-office.  It actually works pretty well: The script may occasionally indulge its stars in going for the cheap laughs, but the generational conflicts have more substance that you’d expect from a light summer comedy, and actually have something to say about today’s Québec.  De père en flic may be a far better farce than a criminal thriller, but that’s not much of a problem.

  • The Box (2009)

    The Box (2009)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On DVD, May 2010) Richard Kelly is a filmmaker to approach with caution, because his capable instincts often get the better of his rational mind.  The Box coming after Donnie Darko and Southland Tales, it’s not hard to see him tackle projects that he doesn’t have the discipline to keep under control.  So it is that his latest film is, once again, an accumulation of strange and ominous portents that fail to cohere: We often see weirdness for weirdness’ sake, but our faith in whether he’ll be able to satisfyingly tie all of this together dwindles as the film slowly (very slowly) progresses.  It doesn’t help that the morality lesson at the core of the premise is so mind-numbingly stupid: Richard Matheson’s short story had the grace of being, well, short: at feature-film lengths, we get far too much time to be exasperated at the characters’ lack of suspicions.  It really doesn’t help that the nature of the latter moral dilemmas proposed to the characters is so arbitrary: From intriguing moral drama, The Box soon sinks into, basically, a demonstration of capricious powers beyond human ken.  Characters are mystified; so are viewers.  Some unsettling visions are likely to remain with viewers for a while, but the overall picture is so scattered that the pieces don’t fit together in a satisfying fashion.  Compare and contrast to The Prestige, where absurdity and ominous portents didn’t prevent the picture from making complete sense in the end.  But then again, Christopher Nolan is a far better writer/director than Richard Kelly: it’s unfair to compare the two.  Until Kelly learns some self-discipline, we’re stuck with films like The Box –not fun enough to be entertaining and not even deep enough to be intriguing except at small doses.

  • Black Dynamite (2009)

    Black Dynamite (2009)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On DVD, May 2010) Genre parodies often depend on the good intentions of its audience, and the concept of spoofing seventies blaxploitation pictures is no exception: Ideally, viewers are expected to be reasonably familiar with the object of the spoof, and be ready to play along with the deliberate mistakes and weaknesses inspired by the source material.  Black Dynamite is reasonably funny on its own (expect to quote bits of dialogue for a few days), but it’s far more amusing if you’re in the right mood for a film that intentionally apes ultra-low-budget shortcuts and mistakes.  Aware that the blaxploitation-parody concept runs a risk of wearing thin, the picture keeps throwing curves and adopting new plots every fifteen minutes: by the time the protagonist is kung-fu fighting with Richard Nixon in the White House, well, we’ve been led somewhere off this planet in a grandiose fashion.  Not every gag works, but they come at such a steady rate that no one has to wait a long time before the next one.  Michael Jai White is great as the titular lead character, while the rest of the cast looks as if it’s having a lot of fun as well.  Black Dynamite had a minuscule theatrical release, but it’s probably best appreciated at home –where blaxploitation films live even today.

  • The Losers, Andy Diggle & Jock

    The Losers, Andy Diggle & Jock

    ByChristian Sauvé Book Review

    Originally published 2003-2006 by Vertigo Comics.  First collected in trade paperback format as The Losers: Ante Up, The Losers: Double Down, The Losers: Trifecta, The Losers: Close Quarters and The Losers: Engame.
    Most recently collected as
    The Losers: Book 1, Vertigo, 2010, 304 pages, ISBN 1-4012-2733-3 and
    The Losers: Book 2, Vertigo, 2010, 480 pages, ISBN 1-4012-2923-9

    Comic books are still best-known for super-heroes, which is a shame given the much larger universe of stories that they could be telling.  That’s part of why I was so interested in reading The Losers after seeing its movie adaptation: A action-adventure comic book series tackling contemporary geopolitics?  That’s promising.  Add to that premise an ensemble cast of sympathetic characters facing down a ruthless villain and you’re got enough material there to ape the experience of a big overblown action movie in comic-book format… and I can never get too many big overblown action movies.

    The premise of the series may not be complicated, but it’s enough to get things rolling: A small team of operatives, having seen things they shouldn’t have seen, is double-crossed and left for dead by a high-ranking member of the American intelligence community named Max.  After recovering, they set out to avenge themselves by finding Max.  But that’s really an excuse for the writer to build elaborate heist scenarios, send his characters in desperate jeopardy, have them spout one-liners and eventually ease his way into a fantastically implausible threat to world peace.

    Being a comic book, there’s little budgetary limitations over where and how the Losers end up tracking Max.  So it is that by the time the series is over, it will have taken us to the continental United States, Quatar, the West Indies, Pripyat, Afghanistan, London, the Persian Gulf and a few places in-between.  Try to make a movie with that location budget!  For that matter, try to make a movie in which so many outlandish action sequences are featured: Writer Andy Diggle clearly has a lot of fun writing a script solely limited by his imagination.

    The best thing about The Losers is its cast of characters: Laconic Cougar, athletic hacker Jensen, transport specialist Pooch, leader Clay and shifty Rocque.  Add to that the dangerous presence of Aisha and the team is just about ready to face down any situation.  This turns out to be helpful, especially as they try to position themselves between run-of-the-mill anti-American enemies, the CIA and Max’s own Special Forces.

    If The Losers’ objective was to deliver a spectacular action-adventure story, it certainly achieve its goals.  Trying to stop reading the series is difficult after the first volume and the richness of the locations, gadgets and geopolitical themes ought to satisfy everyone looking for a somewhat over-the-top techno-thriller.  The only false notes are to be found in the needlessly implausible and down-beat ending, which mows down a significant proportion of the cast in the service of a nonsensical plot that owes more to the worst Bond movies than to the somewhat realistic tone that the series embraced during most of its run.  It doesn’t entirely kill off the series, but it certainly tempers any built-up enthusiasm.

    The other big weakness of The Losers is, of all things, the art: Jock’s kinetic style may be striking, but it’s noticeably darker, flatter and rougher than the industry standards.  Some will like it; others will find it ugly, under-drawn and disappointing.  It’s telling that most characters can only be identified thanks to gimmicky haircuts or other broad physical attributes.  The colouring doesn’t help, but then again there’s not a lot of opportunity for gradient volume in the blocky art the colourers have to work with.  There’s a reason why the script is what we remember about The Losers.

    Still, now that the series is once again easily available in just two volumes (the first one covers most of the ground tackled by the movie adaptation, with significant changes; the second, much thicker volume concludes the entire comic book run.), it’s worth picking up for anyone looking for contemporary action/adventure movie experience with an unlimited production budget.  The ending may be underwhelming, the art may frequently suck, but it’s an enjoyable read nonetheless.  And there’s not one superpower in sight.

  • The Losers (2010)

    The Losers (2010)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (In theatres, April 2010) Ensemble action movies are making a minor comeback in 2010, but sneaking in before The A-Team and The Expendables is this cheap, fast and grandly entertaining comic book adaptation.  The Losers isn’t that good a movie: The limited budget sometimes shows (especially for those who remember the source material’s hyperactive globe-trotting), coincidences abound and the action set pieces seldom make sense.  But those flaws are arguably what enables this film to be a fun throwback to the unapologetic Bruckheimeresque action movies of the late nineties.  The set-pieces make up in eye-popping originality what they lack in coherence, while the quips fly fast and sarcastic.  Thankfully for an ensemble picture, it’s the characters that bring The Losers above its B-grade material: Each one has a few things to do, and while Chris Evans and Zoe Saldana generally steal the focus away from Jeffrey Dean Morgan’s role as the leader of the bunch, Jason Patric has a surprisingly odd turn as the overwritten villain of the picture.  Sylvain White’s direction is hit-and-miss, but there are a few new tricks here and while the picture moves quickly, it doesn’t lose viewers in a flurry of incoherent cuts –which is another thing that The Losers does better than the rest of its recent action movie brethren.  Fans of the original comic book series will be disappointed to see that Andy Diggle’s geopolitical set-pieces have been toned down, pleased to note that the evil plot is completely different and generally amused to see dialogue bits, action moments and characterization details moved around: Most of what’s in this film follows the first two of the series’ five volumes, while the ending sets up at least another film in the series.  Box-office results may not guarantee that (it’s the kind of picture that generally appeals to a very specific audience), but I would certainly welcome a bit more time with the characters and their globe-trotting vengeance.

  • Anansi Boys, Neil Gaiman

    Anansi Boys, Neil Gaiman

    ByChristian Sauvé Book Review

    Morrow, 2005, 336 pages, C$36.95 hc, ISBN 978-0-06-051518-8

    In fantasy circles, saying that one doesn’t care all that much for Neil Gaiman’s fiction is tantamount to an invitation to be lapidated.  The outrage is immediate: Neil is so nice!  Neil is such a great writer!  Neil has won so many awards! Well, yes, but no amount of heartfelt, diagrammed, possibly notarized disclaimers (Neil is nice!  Neil is a great writer!  Neil has won so many awards!) is enough to satisfy his many, many fans and make the point that some readers may not be receptive to Gaiman’s fiction, no matter how accomplished it is.

    So it is that I’m always a bit surprised when I do get to enjoy one of Gaiman’s books after all.  I’m not an enthusiastic fantasy reader, and even less of a mythology-oriented reader.  But that’s exactly what Gaiman is writing.  In Anansi Boys, for instance, he goes digging into trickster mythologies to inform a light-hearted novel of contemporary fantasy.  Against all odds, it worked for me.

    Part of my affection for Anansi Boys comes from how much it can be enjoyed on the slightest of fantasy levels.  When mild-mannered protagonist Fat Charlie discovers that his (Trickster God) father is dead, he has no clue as to how complicated his life is about to become.  On top of his grief, Charlie soon discovers that he has a vastly more extrovert brother named Spider.  Before long, Spider has taken Charlie’s girlfriend, caused him to be framed by a dishonest boss and upset a venerable peace between various supernatural entities.  Who has to fix everything?  Charlie, of course… and he may get to be less of a nerd once he’s done.

    So it is that the biggest strength of Anansi Boys is that you can, if you so choose, skip over the more overly fantastical elements and passages of the book in order to focus on Charlie’s adventures.  This isn’t, strictly speaking, a really good way to read the novel: you’ll end up missing out on half the story and nine-tenth of its depths.  But if you’re in a hurry, and already halfway convinced that the novel will be dull no matter how much attention you can pay, it’s not a bad way to read it diagonally.  (It does mean not caring at all about the links between Anansi Boys and the Hugo Award-winning American Gods, though.)

    But there is still a lot of fun in Anansi Boys even if you limit yourself to the more grounded elements of its story.  Fat Charlie (who’s not fat; it’s just a nickname that stuck) is an appealingly nebbish character, and his explanation of what it was to be the son of a Trickster God has a few hilarious moments, one of them involving dressing up for President’s Day.  His dramatic arc is well-accomplished, as he finds true love, discovers hidden reserves of strengths and even manages to bring back a bit of order and justice in the world and underworld.  The characters surrounding him are also interesting in their own ways, although it’s his outgoing brother who gets the share of the glory by being such an inveterate attention-hog.

    As usual, Gaiman’s prose effortlessly moves in-between high comedy, meaty mythology and sensitive drama.  It’s astonishing how precisely he is able to reach his goals, even in changing modes throughout the novel: The funny stuff is funny, the sensitive passages are sensitive, and the mythological underpinning of the story does give it quite a bit of depth that a lesser writer wouldn’t necessarily have bothered with.

    Not even a largely diagonal and inattentive reading can gloss over Gaiman’s gifts.  And that, ultimately, may be a telling test of any writer’s skills: being able to charm readers fundamentally unsuited to their brand of fiction, and allowing them to read the story at the level they choose.  Quite an achievement, that.

  • On Top of the World, Tom Barbash

    On Top of the World, Tom Barbash

    ByChristian Sauvé Book Review

    Harper Collins, 2003, 282 pages, C$39.95 hc, ISBN 0-06-051029-3

    This should have been a really interesting book.

    After all, the premise of On Top of the World is as simple as it is heart-wrenching: As dawn rose over New York on September 11, 2001, Cantor Fitzgerald was a high-flying financial services firm that employed seven hundred employees in its headquarters at the top of the World Trade Center.  By the end of the day, 658 employees –two third of the firm’s New York workforce- would be dead, and the company would be struggling to stay open after such a devastating loss.  The book is a description of the catastrophe that happened that day, and their recovery in the months that followed.

    As a subject for a documentary, it’s gold.  You can feel your throat closing as the book describes how survivors made choices that either saved or doomed them.  We get to be in the head of Cantor Fitzgerald employees as they go through the events of the day and start worrying at the magnitude of their loss.  We sit at a conference table alongside the survivors of the company as they start grappling with the possibility that the company may simply have to close down.

    A tough-eyed reporter experienced in dealing with such disaster recovery scenarios would have been able to make On Top of the World compelling reading, by focusing on the efforts of the survivors and describing what needed to be done at that time.  How do you re-form business units where everyone but a single person has died in a blink?  What IT challenges become crucial in offloading work to satellite offices?  How do you keep competitors at bay while rebuilding the capabilities to do business in this new environment?

    But novelist Tom Barbash is after something different.  He is, first and foremost, a personal friend of Cantor Fitzgerald CEO Howard Lutnick, and his self-imposed mandate is to present the story of Cantor Fitzgerald’s renewal through Lutnick’s eyes.  It’s almost certainly the most dramatic choice, the most humane choice in presenting the events.  (Lutnick lost his own brother in the tragedy, and only escaped death because it was his daughter’s first day of school)  Alas, it quickly turns into defensive hagiography.

    For when Americans recall Cantor Fitzgerald in the context of September 11, they usually recall two things: First, a teary-eyed Lutnick on national TV, grieving openly.  Then, media reports of Cantor Fitzgerald cutting off pay-checks to deceased employees only a few days after 9/11.  On Top of the World quickly becomes obsessed with setting the record straight about the media outrage that followed the second event: Chapters are spent explaining the business reasons leading to that decision, the frantic public-relations effort that followed the media criticism and the Lutnick’s feelings in the middle of increasingly-negative comments.

    That, too, is an interesting story.  But the way it’s presented is neither objective nor overly convincing.  There’s barely an acknowledgement that Cantor Fitzgerald may conceivably have erred in cutting off pay-checks: The focus instead becomes Lutnick’s life of as he is forced to confront the unfair media criticism.  From a fascinating description of an organizational struggle, On Top of the World soon turns into a dull celebration of a specific person.

    Meanwhile, the details of the company’s renewal are lost in the shuffle.  While the spotlight is on Lutnick and his gruelling efforts to correct disastrous PR, the suburban and London offices take over and save the company from bankruptcy.  Comparatively little is said about them, however: This is Lutnick’s book, as inspired by the “CEO as a hero” branch of business literature.

    This doesn’t make On Top of the World a bad book, but it certainly limits its appeal and, at the very least, makes it quite a bit self-serving.  In-between the most fascinating passages, such as the description of the art collection that decorated the company’s offices and how a few of them were recovered from the wreckage, there’s a sense that only a very narrow portion of Cantor Fitzgerald’s incredible recovery after 9/11 is told through this book and given the most favourable and uninformative spin.  Bring in an objective reporter, tell the story of the entire organization, focus on the inevitable challenges rather than those caused by a PR blunder and the book would be quite a bit stronger for it.

  • Date Night (2010)

    Date Night (2010)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (In theatres, April 2010) There’s something refreshing in seeing a comedy for adults that delivers entertainment while avoiding the crassest demands of teenage audiences.  It’s not that Date Night is short on violence, profanity, sexual references and overall bad behaviour, but it refuses to indulge in them for their own sake.  The result is, for lack of a better expression, well-mannered.  Date Night is seldom mean or meaningless; it features two mature comedians (Steve Carell and Tina Fey) at the height of their skills and it’s obviously aimed at an older target audience of long-time married couples.  Date Night has too many plotting coincidences to be a perfect film, but it does end up better than average, and that’s already not too bad.  If the script logic is often contrived, it’s far better at making us believe that the lead couple’s reactions are what bright-but-ordinary people would say or do in dangerous situations, rather than what the Hollywood stereotypes may dictate.  There are even a few particularly good sequences in the mix, including a deliriously funny car chase through the streets of New York City, and a thinly-veiled excuse for Carell and Fey to dance as badly as they can.  A bunch of recognizable character actors also appear for a scene or two, from the sadly underused William Fichtner to an always-shirtless Mark Wahlberg and a pasta-fed Ray Liotta.  Add to that the somewhat original conceit of involving a bored married couple in a criminal caper (rather than using the thriller elements to make a couple “meet cute” as is far more common) and Date Night is original enough, and well-made enough to be noticeable in the crop of films at the multiplex.  A few laughs, a few thrills and a few nods at the difficulty of staying married; what else could we ask from a middle-of-the-road Hollywood action comedy?