Aidan Gillen

  • Those Who Wish Me Dead (2021)

    Those Who Wish Me Dead (2021)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, October 2021) I miss those large-scale thrillers we used to see more often back in the 1990s and 2000s—nominally criminal stories but ones that usually ended up as a pretext for large-scale spectacle. Something like a forest fire does nicely! Having seen Firestorm two weeks ago (and Only the Brave last year), I was primed to properly appreciate Those Who Wish Me Dead, a classic child-on-the-run-from-assassins thriller that ends up in the middle of a forest and, eventually, a forest fire. Angelina Jolie headlines the cast as a disgraced smokejumper who ends up on a fire lookout tower duty (those who played the Firewatch videogame will feel a big pang of recognition the moment the character enters the tower), ideally placed to respond when the kid of an accountant, having discovered terrible things, escapes his father’s assassins and seeks help. Written and directed by Taylor Sheridan, whose reputation as a mature thriller filmmaker is no longer in doubt after penning Sicario and Hell or High Water, as well as writing/directing Wind River, the film is a steadily engrossing suspense that’s not afraid to go big in its final set-pieces. CGI technology has evolved quite a bit since Firestorm, and the final sequence set in a burning forest is a great capper to a film that finds a good middle way between character-based thrills and action spectacle. Aidan Gillen is deliciously evil (and in-persona) as one of the relentless assassins, but it’s Medina Senghore who makes an impression as a pregnant woman who ends up mercilessly taking down her targets. Those Who Wish Me Dead is very well handled, and a welcome throwback to a kind of narrative-driven film that delivers the expected thrills.

  • Wake Wood (2009)

    Wake Wood (2009)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (In French, On Cable TV, April 2021) What kind of grieving parents would be so stupid as to accept a pagan warlock’s offer to resurrect their daughter under some very specific rules… and then proceed to break those rules? Clearly, anyone dumb enough to have never seen any horror movie in their lives, no matter whether it’s Pet Semetery or any “deal with the devil” kind of thing. But the parents in Wake Wood haven’t and so they behave in ways that inevitably bring about the film’s gruesome and unforgiving third act. It’s all quite tiresome from a narrative standpoint, even though the execution is not that bad and at least there’s Aidan Gillen playing another morally compromised character, and Timothy Spall as the warlock. Still — it’s hard to care at all, and by the time the extra-sadistic ending rolls around, it comes with a free shrug. Wake Wood is the kind of film that may play very differently based on viewer indulgences toward well-worn premises with obvious complications and idiot-grade characters. Those who don’t mind that will find the result more acceptable than those who do.

  • Blackout (2008)

    Blackout (2008)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (In French, On Cable TV, April 2021) I’ve got faint praise and exasperated criticism for Blackout, even when I acknowledge that it’s a horror movie made according to the often-ludicrous standards of the genre. The compliments first: For a film largely focused on three strangers stuck in an elevator, director Rigoberto Castañeda wrings a surprising amount of style and energy to the result. In between Amber Tamblyn, Aidan Gillen and Armie Hammer, the cast is surprisingly well-known. Then, the mild criticisms:  While the film focuses on a trio in an enclosed environment, Blackout escapes strict minimalism: there are enough flashbacks and peeks outside the elevator (not to mention excursions in the elevator shaft) that the entire result escapes the rigour of more high-concept takes, such as Devil. Even at 85 minutes, there’s not a whole lot to sustain the plot, and the style can’t quite compensate. Finally, the exasperation: As this is a horror film, it’s not enough for three strangers to be stuck together in a small box: one of them has to be a serial murderer, and this is actually held back as a revelation for far too long. (Also, once it’s revealed, much of the film stops making sense — “what idiot serial murderer would leave his apartment with a dead body inside?” comes to mind.)  One of the drawbacks of having only three characters in an elevator is that it’s harder to create drama out of only a relationship triangle — even the aforementioned Devil started out with a pentagram of people. This does reinforce Blackout’s very artificial approach to plotting: we’re often reminded that this is a horror movie with little relationship to reality, and by the wilder third act (in which everyone dies at least once, thanks to fantasy sequences) nothing really matters. The ending isn’t really surprising, and any opportunity for deeper thematic commentary takes a back seat to grand-guignol shocks. The result is somewhat redeemed by the style and the actors (although the recent controversies about Armie Hammer have made it much funnier to say, “Hammer plays a character who’s not the serial killer”) but there’s definitely something lacking in order to get Blackout to fulfill its potential.

  • Maze Runner: The Scorch Trials (2015)

    Maze Runner: The Scorch Trials (2015)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, June 2016) I’ve reached my limit on teenage dystopias a year ago, so it’s not a surprise if I find Maze Runner: The Scorch Trials to be both useless and dull. The moronic world building of the first film gallops further afar in nonsense here, with our teenage protagonists blindly flaying between murky opposing forces. They wander through the desert, the mountains and discover groups that seem to exist without any food or water sources but hey—as long as the chases-and-thrills structure is followed, nobody really cares. Despite the action sequences, though, The Scorch Trials is surprisingly dull: the thrills are derivative, most of the plot points mean nothing, the cast of characters is largely undistinguishable (and overwhelmingly male, especially in the first half of the film) and there’s a sense that the film is just wasting time before the third-movie conclusion. There is, to be fair, a few interesting post-apocalyptic visuals, especially when the group wanders in broken cities. It’s also sort-of-interesting to see a few Game of Thrones players pop up in minor roles, with Aidan Gillen nearly playing the same character in the same way. But not much of it amounts to any particular interest for The Scorch Trials. A quick Wikipedia check suggests that the plot of the book has been substantially altered, but given the inanity of the source material, it’s hard to count this as a failure of adaptation. Much like everyone else, I will reluctantly end up seeing the third movie when it comes out—but seeing the falling box-office results of the competing teenage dystopia series, it sure looks as if I’m not the only one who’s ready to put that subgenre out of its dreary misery.