Linda Cardellini

Hunter Killer (2018)

ByChristian Sauvé 2019-12-222023-03-09 Movie Review

(Netflix Streaming, December 2019) As a quick look through this web site will reveal, I spent a substantial part of the 1990s and 2000s reading military techno-thrillers (including many submarine thrillers) and I have kept a lingering affection for the subgenre, even if it hasn’t been particularly served well on the big screen. There’s usually one submarine thriller every year or two, and I probably saw all of them. Lately, both Phantom and Black Sea had their issues, but neither were the kind of slam-bang contemporary military thriller that the genre deserved. Hunter Killer, on the other hand, is almost exactly what I was looking for: A slick movie version of those submarine technothrillers, blending military valour with pulse-pounding action sequences in the service of a plot riffing off today’s headlines. (Well, maybe yesterday’s headlines: The US president here is a competent blonde woman while the Russian president is a likable and humane statesman. But nobody would believe the current reality in fiction.) The crux of the plot has to do with a coup in Russia, and American forces lending a hand through a submarine crew in the water and Special Forces operatives on land. Gerald Butler stars as an unorthodox sub captain, the kind of square-jawed hero so prevalent in those kinds of novels. A capable cast of supporting characters (Gary Oldman is unrecognizable as always, but also Michael Nyqvist, Common, Linda Cardellini and Toby Stephens) helps flesh out a cheerfully plot-driven film, which has a major submarine battle in the firth thirty minutes and then goes on to other, bigger action sequences. It’s all familiar and cool and highly enjoyable thanks to Donovan Marsh’s direction, even though I suspect that people without my accumulated baggage of experience with the subgenre may not react so positively. As for me, though, I got almost exactly what I was looking for in that kind of movie. Butler has earned quite a bit of critical scorn for his choices, but in most of his recent films (Den of Thieves, Geostorm, the Has Fallen series), I find that he’s playing a very kind of specific role in a very specific sub-genre, and that he’s pretty much perfect for what the filmmakers are looking for. I can’t guarantee that other viewers will find in Hunter Killer the same kinds of thrills that I did, but I’m surprisingly happy that it exists, and that it brings to the big screen the kind of expansive thrillers that I like.

Movie Review

Green Book (2018)

ByChristian Sauvé 2019-10-122023-03-19 Movie Review

(On Cable TV, October 2019) Considering our increasingly sophisticated understanding of (North)American racism, it’s getting obvious that the approach of previous eras isn’t quite enough today. At a time when the Oscars are being awarded between Black Panther, BlacKKKlansman and Green Book, well, it’s infuriating when the Academy ends up picking the absolute safest choice. Green Book, is, in many ways, a throwback to the comfortable anti-racism message of previous decades: White people should be nice to “The Other” so that they should feel better about themselves. In this simplistic message, the inner lives and culture, agency, and aspirations of “the Other” are irrelevant to showing the evolution of the white person. That’s not enough today: “The Other” deserves a full personality, deserves to be the heroes of their own story. In that context, Green Book isn’t all that impressive: as the story of a white protagonist driving around a black musician across the deep south and keeping him out of trouble, it’s clear that the film is more interested in making white audiences feel superior to the cartoonishly racist antagonists of the film. Not to take anything away from the performances of Viggo Mortensen (as the driver) and Mahershala Ali (as the musician, a character of such welcome complexity that the film short-changes him by shoehorning him in a simple story), nor a welcome supporting role for Linda Cardellini, but the result has its limits when comparing it to other best-of-the-year movies. I’d be lying if I didn’t confess to enjoy much of Green Book: there’s a straightforward propulsive quality to the screenwriting that makes it an easy movie to watch and enjoy. I do have the white privilege of liking the film’s reassuring message. But coming off the movie high of BlacKKKlansman, which confronts racists in its ugliest contemporary forms and refuses any easy comfort by making the point that the fight is still ongoing, well Green Book looks like thin soup. There’s a bit of Spotlight Rot at work here, in that a perfectly good genre piece wilts when examined by sustained attention from audiences outside its comfort zone. But at this moment, with the top echelon of the American government not even hiding its inherent racism, I have little patience by comforting lies when “The Others” are not being merely marginalized or harmed but often killed. Green Book may be a feel-good fable, but I want more.