Brad Anderson

Beirut (2018)

ByChristian Sauvé 2019-05-202023-03-19 Movie Review

(On Cable TV, May 2019) Catch me on a bad day, and I will talk your ears off about how grown-up adult cinema has been evacuated from the multiplexes and shuffled off to art-house cinema, minor streaming releases and the corners of the cable channels. I’m not even talking about meditative character studies, here—I mean geopolitical thrillers such as Beirut, heavy in suspense and action but somehow a bit more complex than the save-the-world Manicheism of modern blockbuster films. Beirut doesn’t do anything outlandish—it simply takes us back to early-1980s Lebanon, near the peak of the unbelievable civil war that took it from a world-class city to loosely arranged rubble. In this complex environment, with half a dozen factions fighting each other under the watchful eye of two superpowers and the powder-keg environment of next-door neighbour Israel, comes a negotiator being asked to secure the release of an American hostage. There are several complications, not the least of them being that the protagonist knows both parties to the hostage exchange and is returning to the city ten years after tragic events involving him. Beirut has the heft of a good thriller, with a flawed world-weary protagonist unsure of who’s trying to help or kill him in an environment where there are no certitudes. Every year, you can read about a dozen similar novels … but you’ll be lucky to find even one movie with that kind of ambition. Of course, there’s Tony Gilroy writing the script, one of the few Hollywood screenwriters with the clout and chops to tackle such a project. Director Brad Anderson has an uneven filmography, but he handles the material well, backed with capable production design taking us credibly to 1982 Beirut. More crucially, he can also depend on a good script and decent actors: Jon Hamm is great as the bruised negotiator, Rosamund Pike is fine as his local liaison (she even gets to have some well-delivered French dialogue) and there’s Dean Norris with a hairpiece in a secondary role. The ending is suitably satisfying—with characters more or less getting what they wanted, but with the impending irony of the 1983 bombing just around the corner. The plot is a full order of magnitude more complex than the usual blockbuster, so it will take some sustained attention to follow. Beirut is the kind of film in my wheelhouse, the kind of film I wish I’d see more often. It’s not a slam-bang thriller, but it’s engrossing enough to be worth a look—especially if the modern blockbusters have let you down.

Movie Review

Session 9 (2001)

ByChristian Sauvé 2018-06-162019-03-24 Movie Review

(In French, On Cable TV, June 2018) It doesn’t take much more than an abandoned hospital, sombre cinematography and a few crazy characters to have the basics of a moody horror movie. Alas, Session 9 doesn’t go any further than that to actually deliver anything memorable. While David Caruso is fine in the lead role, other actors just pass through the film with indifferent performances. Plot-wise, this isn’t anything we’ve seen before, and while one late-movie twist works fine, the rest seems to recycle familiar material. I’m really not a big fan of the early-2000s digital cinematography, which is as muddy as anything done at the time using those tools could be. Writer/director Brad Anderson has done much better (The Machinist) and much worse (The Vanishing on the Street), so Session 9 is a middle-of-the-pack early effort for him. Unfortunately, there isn’t much more to say about the film. It operates in a specific sub-genre, using defined elements and never going outside that zone. Fans of that kind of stuff will like it, while others may feel impatient at the way it advances, or rather doesn’t.

Movie Review

Eliza Graves aka Stonehearst Asylum (2014)

ByChristian Sauvé 2016-04-112017-03-09 Movie Review

(On Cable TV, April 2016) There isn’t much in Stonehearst Asylum that’s startlingly new, but the result is well executed enough to make anyone wonder why the film hasn’t received more attention. As is usual with nearly all movies revolving around an asylum, the question of who’s sane and who isn’t weighs heavily on the plot—and seeing Ben Kingsley in a role similar to the one he played in Shutter Island doesn’t do this film any favour. There is a bit of a plodding rhythm to the movie, with a second half that seems a bit empty once the film’s Big Revelation is explained a third of the way through. (There is another Big Revelation toward the end, but it feels almost meaningless.) Still, what makes Stonehearst Asylum so interesting as an unassuming late-night cable-TV discovery is polish and atmosphere. The surprisingly good cast helps: Alongside an always-effective Kingsley, we get Michael Caine in a smaller part than expected, Kate Beckinsale looking pleasantly glamorous despite being in an asylum, David Thewlis playing the heavy and Jim Sturgess as the everyman protagonist doing his best to avoid overshadowing nearly everyone else. The 1899/1900 period setting is effectively rendered by Brad Anderson’s direction, the Victorian-era asylums offering plenty of opportunities for atmospheric visuals. The cinematography is clean and crisp, adding to the visual polish of a thriller than may not be exceptionally thrilling, but certainly has an appeal of its own. It wouldn’t be helpful to expect too much from Stonehearst Asylum: The film runs on low-grade thrills compared to some similar movies. But it plays much better than expected from a film that was a commercial failure and practically went straight to video.

Movie Review

The Call (2013)

ByChristian Sauvé 2013-12-202014-11-04 Movie Review

(On Cable TV, December 2013) I wasn’t expecting much from this low-budget serial-killer thriller, and while The Call doesn’t quite escape the confines of its chosen genre, it does have one or two high-concept moments that make its first hour worthwhile. The chosen focus on 911 responders is novel, and the way the script uses the limits of the caller/responder link to set up a lengthy car chase sequence is the kind of stuff fit to rejoice even the most jaded thriller fan. Halle Berry and Abigail Breslin are both initially sympathetic as (respectively) the responder and kidnapped caller, while director Brad Anderson seems to be able to wring the most out of his low production budget. The highlight of The Call has to be the titular call, a lengthy sequence in the middle of the film where the kidnapped victim, stuck in the trunk of a car, dials 911 and tries to piece together clues as to where she is, where she is headed and who her kidnapper may be. It’s a sequence with twists and turns and clever little moment and sadly it ends well before the film does. Inevitably (for so are Hollywood thriller written), the character played by the lead actress has to inject herself in the action, go investigate on the ground, find clues that trained investigators have missed, go into a lair without calling for backup, and execute vigilante justice with a heavy side-order of sadism. The Call would be a far better film without its trite and unpleasant last act –too bad that the screenwriter couldn’t recognize that the script’s best assets would be undermined by a conventional end sequence. But so it goes with the Hollywood theory of converging premises: No matter how original the set-up, it usually ends up with a female hero facing down a serial killer in a basement.