Ruth Negga

  • The Samaritan (2012)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, September 2022) It would be easy to dismiss The Samaritan as just another thriller, especially if you tune out (as you may be tempted to do) after the conventional first act. Here’s an aging career criminal being released from prison and being tempted back into a crooked life as an alternative to a miserable life. There have been dozens of movies on that theme, and this one doesn’t look any different despite the Canadian setting. The casting of Samuel L. Jackson (aged 64 at the time of the film’s release) doesn’t help distinguish it as much as you’d think, considering that he brings the expectation of a different, lighter-hearted film. But as The Samaritan advances, it also darkens. On a plotting level, it reveals its intentions to go slightly beyond the usual heist thriller by inserting some neo-noir complications: an ill-fated flawed protagonist, oedipal relationship and a resolutely downbeat dramatic arc. What seemed like cheap plotting at first (such as a transgenerational romantic relationship sparked by the protagonist saving a young woman from harm) ends up leading to more troublesome material, and the hero being drawn deeper and deeper into paths he doesn’t want to follow. The Samaritan eventually negotiates itself into a slightly interesting distinction. Jackson doesn’t play the role that his persona would suggest, and I find Ruth Negga to be a compelling actress no matter the part: she doesn’t disappoint here either. I wouldn’t want to oversell the result—The Samaritan is a bit underwhelming in spots, a bit awkward in others, and rough in how it handles its climax. (If there’s any doubt that writer-director David Weaver meant the film as a neo-noir rather than a heist/con film, observe how it fumbles the final con.)  But it ends up being slightly more interesting than expected, and that counts for a lot.

  • Ad Astra (2019)

    Ad Astra (2019)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, June 2020) On paper, Ad Astra doesn’t look like my kind of movie—moody ruminations in space? Eh. But I was willing to cut it some slack, and the opening moments of the film do set an intriguing tone—this is going to be moody ruminations all the way to the end of the solar system, but if you’re going to do yet another riff on Heart of Darkness, you might as well commit to it and hop on board for the ride. In retrospect, I should have listened to my instinct when I started twitching at the “International Space Antenna” that doesn’t even make a credible upgrade to the idea of a ribbon space elevator, or workers dumb enough not to follow basic OSHA tethering procedures when working in space. Or the wonky gravity that portended an entire movie’s worth of bad gravity. But there are a few things that work, and for far too long I kept clinging to those elements. The visuals are terrific, and the frame-by-frame credibility of the setting is astonishing—they really went for plausible-looking gear here, and even if we could quibble for roughly sixty years about how late-twenty-first century space gear will not look like twentieth-century NASA (especially not that even SpaceX suits don’t look like that), this film plays heavily on visual callbacks to familiar material—all the way to a 2001 HAL room nod later on. I brushed off the small chorus of inner voices pointing out one scientific mistake after another—This is Hollywood, after all. But I did start to have my doubts about the Moon rover pirates. Supposedly raiding US Armed Forces convoys in trips across vast swaths of the lunar surface that seem measured in minutes rather than hours. I brushed this off as filmmakers bending to studio pressure to have cool action visual stuff to liven up an otherwise atmospheric film. But even by that stage, uneasiness had set in. While I do like quite a bit of Ad Astra’s surface sheen (and Liv Tyler, and Ruth Negga, and even Brad Pitt has his moments) and while I was willing to play along with the glum Heart of Darkness structure, I was starting to have my doubts about the whole squishy middle layer of the film between intention and visual execution. But then…then the film thinks that the laws of physics allow for rescue stop on a ballistic trip from the Moon to Mars. Which leads to space baboons. That explodes when depressurized. Jesus Heinlein Christ, why does this movie have to be this stupid??!? This isn’t 1983’s Outland. This is 2020 and STEM career paths are considered important enough to warrant national programs. I’m not that smart and I don’t have an astrophysics degree, but there is something absolutely hopeless when a film that claims to be hard-SF becomes an unceasing carnival of scientific mistakes that I can easily point out. The lack of tracks on the Moon. The gravity mistakes. The chronological errors. The goddamn stupidity of the rocket hijacking sequence in which a character manages to climb a ladder aboard a rocket being launched into orbit. This is not a hard-SF film, even by Hollywood standards. This is an emo daddy-issue drama hideously cosplaying as hard-SF while not really liking any of the characteristics that make the genre. It gets worse at the end, what with a visibly rock-filled Neptune ring and—oh why bother I don’t care anymore. Even the main dramatic thread is cut off unceremoniously—while revolving daddy issues by killing off Daddy is unorthodox, it’s also trite enough to feel as if we’re given a big comic slide whistle at the end of the trip. Fortunately, I had given up on the movie at that point. If there’s an Ad Astra anti-fan club, I’m in.

  • Loving (2016)

    Loving (2016)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, July 2017) I’m not the most enthusiastic viewer of social-issue dramas, but there is something quietly fascinating in how Loving portrays the story of how laws against interracial marriages were struck down in the 1960s. For, as amazing as it can sound, there were laws on the book in several southern states that forbid interracial couples. The Lovings, whose story is told here, were forced to pick up everything and leave the state for twenty-five years or spend a year in jail. Writer/Director Jeff Nichols takes up their story with his typical attention to details, and the result is interesting largely because the Lovings did not see themselves as civil rights activists, just two people in love with each other. This is particularly the case for the husband, played with quiet determination by Joel Edgerton, who may not have been particularly intelligent or outspoken, but let his actions speak for themselves. Ruth Negga also turns in an exceptional performance as the wife. The script spends a lot of time on the Lovings and very little on courtroom machinations—in keeping with the heroes of the story, which were far more concerned about living their lives than being a symbol. The resulting movie is heartfelt without being overbearing, a combination that makes it more effective than other similar social-issues film. For Nichols, Loving is a return to formal drama after three genre films and it shows that he can do just as well without any genre elements (which shouldn’t be an issue, given that the strengths of his genre pictures were in their dramatic elements).