Author: Christian Sauvé

(In theaters, February 2009) In the small universe of exploitation thrillers, there are few surer recipes than the old kidnapping plot. This one complicates the formula a bit by putting an A-list dramatic actor such as Liam Neeson in the protagonist’s role and making him an ex-CIA operative with serious skills. The rest is pure crunchy B-movie fun, with little deviation from the expected conclusion. It may not be deep, but it’s competent to such a point that it’s hard to believe that the same screenwriters responsible for this script also wrote the flaccid Transporter 3. Still, co-writer Luc Besson’s heavy touch may be lighter here, but it’s hardly unrecognizable: the French police forces are just as reliably corrupt as in his usual films, and he can’t resist goosing the premise with an over-the-top white-slaving excuse. The direction is unequal (the hand-to-hand combat is good, for instance, but the car chases are incoherent), but the whole film generally holds up better than most B-grade thrillers seen lately. Neeson gives the film some unexpected gravitas that goes much to make it look respectable. Hardly memorable, but generally irreproachable.

(In theaters, February 2009) For a feel-good movie about getting the money, the girl and the dream, this film will make you feel bad for quite a while. It’s hard to do otherwise, though, when picking characters out of the most unbelievably poor slums of Mumbai. The conceit that drives the tale (quiz-show questions alluding to the character’s life, as shown in flashbacks) is nothing short of clever, and the most interesting thing about the film may be how deftly it starts weaving through three time-lines, building a story out of snippets. As a look at contemporary India, it’s as depressing as it’s exhilarating, reflecting the real-life disparities to be found there at the moment. This being said, the payoff is long in coming, and the film’s self-assurance in building its premise isn’t always carried through in the lengthy over-explained segments that make up the bulk of the film’s content. Fortunately, the three set of lead actors are charming, and it all builds up to a great finale. In some ways, it’s old-fashioned film-making married to hip contemporary global awareness, and that’s got a lot going for it; no wonder the film did well on the Oscars nomination roll.

(In theaters, February 2009) Imagine, for a moment, hearing of a movie featuring “forbidden love between a young man and an older woman… nazis… women in prison”. Promising, right? Alas, all of this is ruined by the film’s dreaded “Oscar-worthy drama” pedigree, which makes fifteen minutes’ worth of plot turned into a two-hour film feel like most of a lifetime. Even Kate Winslet’s frequent nudity isn’t much of a selling point given how frequently she disrobes on-screen. If you have the patience to sit still through dull melodrama, there are a few interesting moments in The Reader: The filmmakers are good at portraying illicit passion, relatively competent at examining collective guilt and not too bad in portraying very flawed characters stuck in their decisions. But none of this actually translates into anything more than shameless pleas for Oscar nominations and superficial respectability. The moment you look closer at the plot, it falls apart: The film’s big dramatic moment (indeed, its title) depends on a secret that would never exist given the character’s biography. It all amounts to an exploitation film, but not the good kind of exploitation film that could have been titled Hannah, She-Wolf Of The SS. More of a feel-good-to-feel-bad formula drama to exploit the Holocaust once more, made without energy, wit or care for the audience’s time.

(In theaters, February 2009) Even viewers with little specific interest in gay issues will find much to like about this didactic tale of political activism with a tragic ending. Based on a true story of Harvey Milk, “the first openly gay man to be elected to public office in California”, the film is a time-capsule slice of San Francisco during the late seventies, a biography of a most unusual man and a primer on how to affect social change via political activism. As a result, it’s not exactly the most action-driven or funniest film on the planet. But it does represent a strong lesson in the way things work, and does so with a minimal amount of preaching. Covertly, it’s intensely relevant to today’s political issues: It’s hard to see the story of 1978’s Proposition 6 without thinking about 2008’s Proposition 8, or hear the anti-gay arguments of Milk’s opponent without thinking that they are seriously on the wrong side of history. Philosophically, it’s hard not to be impressed by a film that advocates steady political and social change over revolution, given how the latter is far more dramatic than the former. Alas, it’s the tragedy at the end of Milk’s life that acts as the dramatic driver to the film, mixing up a number of the lessons one could learn from it. (One also gets the feeling that the story of the Moscone-Milk assassinations was also far more complex than the simplified Milk-centric version presented on-screen.) Sean Penn is convincing in the lead role, while Science Fiction fans will be amused to see Frank M. Robinson (who was Milk’s speech-writer) in a series of cameo appearances. The period feel of the piece is remarkable and the film doesn’t overstay its welcome despite a relatively tepid rhythm.

(In theaters, February 2009) More of an extended multi-artist music video anthology with added contextual material than a true documentary, Made In Jamaica refuse to provide narration or explanation, relying solely on captured footage and interviews. Alas, the filmmakers rarely question what their interview subjects tell them, and the result is a quick introduction to reggae-dancehall that quickly becomes a frustrating superficial look at a multi-faceted issue. While it touches upon most of the aspects of the modern Jamaican reggae culture (the poverty, the aggression, the misogyny, the roots/dancehall split), it says little on some of its most damning aspects and almost nothing at all about its regressive take on heteronormativity. There are about half a dozen junctions where the film ventures into something interesting, then shies away from it. For instance, a pretty good moment when the film contrasts Elephant Man’s rote statements about promoting peace with concert footage where he sings about killing other people, is as close as the film gets to questioning its subjects. Another example of the film’s occasional gems is Lady Saw’s frank admission that she became a rude girl for purely commercial reasons, buried in a too-short look at the genre’s troubling male-dominated culture. For a dancehall fan such as myself, one of the film’s big ironies was that the musical performances I enjoyed the most (Third World’s “96 degrees in the Shade”, Gregory Isaac’s “No Woman No Cry” and a wild cross-cultural take on “I Shot the Sheriff”) were firmly on the roots divide, and the smartest interview subjects were also the roots people. I have long suspected that I would like reggae-dancehall a lot less if I understood the lyrics, and Made In Jamaica went a long way in confirming this suspicion. Good but hardly transcendent, this is a gateway documentary that often works better as an extended video musical anthology: Some of the sights are spectacular, and it is a treat to actually see some familiar names signing.

(In theaters, February 2009) Such is the randomness of filmmaking: Five month’s worth can make all the difference between banks-as-invincible-entities and banks-as-bailout-beggars. Which is unfortunate, because a thriller based on the idea of a bank going rogue and severely punishing anyone looking into it isn’t necessarily bad (heck, it even happened with BCCI, which shares a suspicious number of letters with this film’s IBBC), and The International is as it bests when it realistically grapples with how to expose international money-for-weapons schemes. Clive Owen is irreproachable as the rumpled hero in the middle of it all, but one can’t say the same thing about a film that doesn’t quite know what to make of itself. Rumors of extensive re-shoots may explain the abrupt and inconsequential action sequences, including a spectacular-but-nonsensical shootout at the Guggenheim museum. At least the rest of the film offers a few real-life visual thrills as it hops between Europe and New York, delivering a procedural thriller whose flaws don’t quite match its strengths. A few ideas are wasted, and the conclusion is a bit of a downer. It all makes up for a middle-of-the-road thriller, promising but ultimately too scattered to be efficient. It may be respectable for what it tries to achieve, but sadly it doesn’t seem determined to get there.

(In theaters, February 2009) In time, no single aspect of World War 2 won’t be turned into a movie, and this little-know story of resistance in the Polish backwoods is often more interesting than you’d expect. When small-time bandits turn their survival skills to the protection of Jewish refugees, the film becomes an amalgam of war drama, small-scale action and survival Robinsonade. Daniel Craig is effective in the lead role, lending his increasing Bondish gravitas to a film that sorely needs it. Elsewhere, the heavy hand of Hollywood movie-making can be seen rewriting history for maximum thrills (such as a tank battle with a nick-of-time rescue) and buffing up small characters into exposition mouthpieces. Defiance seldom shies away from underscoring whatever mood the film wants audiences to feel, and the result often ends up feeling forced. The interplay between the various groups involved in the story (Nazis, sympathizers, Polish-Jewish elders, Russian resistance, etc.) merely hints at the complexity of the true story. But even discounting the manipulation, Defiance still manages to feel like solid entertainment with a dash of history: Edward Zwick is comfortable with historical dramas, and the result is not too unpleasant once you stop identifying with the horrid conditions in which the characters spend most of the film. There are worse films out there, even in the limited “footnotes of WW2” sub-genre.

(In theaters, February 2009) Every crop of Oscars contenders includes overlong weepy dramas, and The Curious Case Of Benjamin Button is 2008’s entry in the sweepstakes. Based around the fantastical premise of a man aging backwards, the film feels free to explore issues about youth, aging, living and dying. With intentions like those, you won’t be surprised to find out that the end of the story is solid weeping time, the film sparing no effort in lining up every single piece of symbolism it has accumulated during its considerable length. From the first few moments, it’s obvious that this film goes from scope and length rather than any single conception of narrative efficiency: The scenes drag on with unrelenting digressions, bit players, slow accents and separate set-pieces. This is a life epic told as watered-down fable (Fans of Big Fish will find something familiar in Benjamin Button‘s off-beat sweep through the twentieth century), a mode that will charm certain viewers and leave others riffing on the melodramatic weight of the film’s every moments. For some, the irony will be that the film comes from director David Fincher almost ten years after the hyper-aggressive Fight Club: the technical polish of the film is just as considerable, but the narrative style is almost half as dense. There’s something admirable in the way the film so obviously reaches for tears in its final thirty seconds, even when the manipulation is all perfectly obvious. Acting-wise, there’s little to say except for Brad Pitt’s measured performance through the ages, and the able supporting work from a diverse cast. Don’t be surprised that the film plays better at home, with ample leisure time, than in the cramped seats of a movie theater.