REVIEW: Sicario (2015)

In the heyday of the political thriller, which we will put as the 1970s for American cinema, ambiguities were often less moral in nature and more in terms of the extent of the problem. The Conversation, a masterpiece by the way, is ambiguous as to the exact nature and motivations of the forces ranged against poor old Harry Caul, but the film itself is less ambiguous about what it thinks of the culture of surveillance. We see the same questions of the nature of the crime and the criminals in The Parallax View and All The President’s Men. Those murky days were, ironically, a simpler time – the enemy was hidden and seemingly omnipotent, but they were not us. The films are never in doubt about what they felt were wrong with the world. Nowadays, however, this division is less clear, as are the films. Sicario sinks under some of the same issues that made something like Zero Dark Thirty such a hateful film.

Emily Blunt plays Kate Macer, an FBI agent recruited into a secret task force which aims to take down the leader of a Mexican cartel. Under Matt Graver (Josh Brolin) and the mysterious Alejandro (Benicio Del Toro), Kate is told to watch and learn. However, Matt and Alejandro may have other reasons for wanting Kate around, and they may not be trusted.

Sicario is a thriller about Mexican drug cartels, the American’s complicity in both the crimes and the general demand which funds and fuels the cartels, the moral ambiguities in policing across borders and outside the rules. It is a great-looking film, brilliantly shot by Roger Deakins, tightly directed by Denis Villeneuve and scored by Jóhann Jóhannsson. It moves at a good pace, which keeps it serious and largely engaging throughout (apart from a seriously poor coloured rubber band plot contrivance), a dense and complex plot that keeps you interested and some tough performances. It is effective, slightly shrill entertainment, with some fantastic, tense set pieces that largely hold the film together. As such, it is a very well made and watchable film. But…

Most political thrillers have a problem striking a decent balance between the complexity of their politic commentary and entertainment value. Sicario is dark and complex, even uncompromising, plot-wise, but it is hopelessly shallow in other ways. Its representation of Mexico is downright insulting – American agents casually climb to the roof of their compound on the Mexican border and watch gunfights and explosions in Mexico with binoculars. We do see short sequences detailing small aspects of American corruption (a few scenes) and complicity (one line), but we get a lot more focus on Americans getting the job done, state murder compared to finding a vaccine and talk of the ends justifying the means. Using Kate Macer as an audience surrogate, finding out as we do how the Mexican drug war ‘really’ works, the film makes its own world view clear. But since this is primarily a thriller, this world view is hopelessly inadequate to any real and true understanding of the problem and strongly stacks the deck to favour of the Americans as emotional identifiers for the audience. We are always standing on the American side of the border, looking at the Mexican drug war through the eyes of Americans. The film offers then a severe view of Mexico and a queasily ambiguous view of the Americans’ collusion with criminals and their willingness to break the rules. Where a fairer and more complex film might want to question this very American idea of the ends justifying the means, Sicario prefers to avoid this issue.

Sicario is a very well made film, but it remarkably shallow in terms of what it depicts. It is hard to work out what the film wants you to think of the Americans’ use of torture and their collusion with criminals who slaughter whole families. It represents this world as murky, dense and confusing, but does not dare offer an opinion, happy presumably that it is largely across the border and not here – a presumption that is self-serving and certainly not good enough. Where it should confront and shock but stand above the nastiness shown onscreen, Sicario instead remains mired in the same ambiguities as the film’s American characters. But when these ambiguities involve assassination and torture, that’s an uncomfortable place for a film of any sort to be.

REVIEW: Inherent Vice (2015)

It is difficult to briefly scan over my review for The Master, first, having since written an article on Party Girl and the more negative effects of the auteur theory on film culture and, second, having since seen Inherent Vice. My review for The Master equates that film’s qualities almost entirely with those of its director, Paul Thomas Anderson, while my article on the auteur theory suggests that the director should not be the only reason we watch and/ or praise a film. This contradiction leads me to my present difficulty reviewing Inherent Vice – the film itself isn’t any good and yet many of its flaws would seem to be entirely down to its director. It leaves me with little room to manoeuvre – between trying not to focus too much on the director and their previous work and blaming Anderson almost entirely because of the lack of control displayed here. Some films, it seems, are more easily addressed via an oeuvre than others, which could be why Party Girl gets more acclaim for the qualities of its director than for the qualities of the film itself. Maybe one can only properly consider the works of a filmmaker when that filmmaker has made his last film or, worse, has stopped experimenting.

Leaving that conundrum aside (I’m sure it wasn’t a particularly interesting one) and moving on to Inherent Vice – first, I would like to say without condescension that I feel it is a good thing for a filmmaker to be experimenting with new ways of making films. Who wants a Paul Thomas Anderson film as bored and safe as Magic in the Moonlight? An experiment that doesn’t pay off will not be as rewarding, but surely it will be different enough to inspire some kind of thought or reaction. In theory, it should as long as the experimentation is due to something more than just mere style.

Inherent Vice is two-and-a-half hours and I felt left out within the first ten minutes. The film is a mess and it seems that this may have been intentional. The film is intentionally vague. The plot is intentionally incomprehensible. A lot of the dialogue is intentionally inaudible. The characters are mostly unlikeable and fairly one-note. The film’s themes are not particularly profound and are not addressed with any depth. The film, then, is pointless and seemingly proud of it. The apparent intention of the film is to be a mood piece that wanders and rambles, mourns the 1970s and introduces you to interesting, colourful people and waxes lyrically and beautifully to some nice vintage music. None of this is particularly off-putting – indeed the brilliant The Long Goodbye manages it, as does the OK The Big Lebowski, the repetition of whose cult following seems to be this film’s raison d’etre. But Inherent Vice does not succeed here in any shape or form. The characters are not interesting; the settings are not particularly memorable. The film isn’t sad or funny, but bland. It is a mood piece that doesn’t create any moods. It tries too hard to be unique and forgets to allow its audience to be emotionally or intellectually invested. It is too pretentious to be likable and too stupid, too shallow to be thought provoking.

And that is really it. As I said, the film is two-and-a-half hours and it does nothing with its running time. There have been a few critics who have tried to make claims that the film’s flaws and cock-ups are actually qualities – the one of the silliest is Jonathan Romney’s attempt (in last month’s Sight and Sound) to praise the film’s use of the human voice is an instrument for music rather than communication, as well as his attempt to address the film’s apparent influence from 1960s Playboy magazines. There have also been many who find the film’s world dense and fascinating and exciting and its tone moving but, and I need to be personal here, I don’t agree. There is nothing immersive about Inherent Vice; I did not see enough of interest in the characters and the set pieces to keep boredom at bay.

Paul Thomas Anderson, his crew and his cast have produced something unfocussed and lazy and there is nothing in it to fool those looking for art in it. And that’s it. This review may be as incoherent or as badly thought-out as Inherent Vice, but at least it does have a point.

REVIEW: True Grit (2011)

  True Grit is the new film from the Coen Brothers, not a remake of the 1969 classic starring John Wayne as “Rooster” Cogburn, but a new adaptation of the Charles Portis novel. A new Coen film is always of interest, but does their version of True Grit cut the mustard?

  The film follows 14-year old Mattie Ross (an impressive feature film debut from Hailee Steinfield), who sets out to avenge the death of her father at the hands of hired man Tom Chaney (Josh Brolin). She enlists the help of the aging and mostly drunken Reuben “Rooster” Cogburn (Jeff Bridges), a US Marshall who has, as she sees it, ‘true grit.’ Accompanying them is Texas Ranger LaBoeuf (Matt Damon), who is also in search of Chaney.

  True Grit is not really a surprising film for the Coens to have made. After all, they have done straight thrillers before, most recently with No Country For Old Men, and most of their films are in fact period films set in the past. However, whilst No Country For Old Men managed to be an intensely affective thriller, its real achievement was its outlook on life, which lent the film a depth and a resonance that was there if you wanted to see it, and gone if you just wanted thrills. The main problem with True Grit is that it has very little depth and no resonance.

  Excitement it does have, with plenty of nasty characters and several bloody shoot-outs. It is full of good performances that give real dramatic weight to the outlandish characters. The central relationship between Mattie and Cogburn is well handled, as is Damon’s secondary role. The Western landscapes are fantastically well shot and the period is skilfully imbued with a sense of eerie danger and reckless cruelty. However, as a whole, the film doesn’t hold together. Many scenes feel like comical interludes from other films and many more serious sequences are handled as if they have much more import than they really do. The writer-directors approach these scenes as if they are key to the film as a whole, but it always remains unclear exactly how. In the end, the film feels completely lackadaisical, almost as if the Coens made it up as they went along and only permitted one draft.

  The characterisation of Tom Chaney is one of the film’s more obvious problems and is an indicator of what is wrong with the whole film. Absent for most of the film, his entrance is long anticipated but ultimately rather forced. He is neither the chief villain in the film nor is he a concrete character. He appears neither evil and pitiable, a non-character who is presented in an unfocussed and poorly judged light. The lasting impression is that he, like the film, doesn’t make any sense.

  True Grit goes for dark and, for the most part, achieves it. But the typical Coen humour seems forced, clichéd and not very funny. Many of the scenes set a palpably sinister and brooding tone, but nothing is ever made of it. It feels like the Coens did a lot of research to get a powerful level of authenticity into the film but then, when the time came to write the script, opted to prioritise making good use of the research than writing a coherent story.

  To a big fan of the Coen’s, this film was something of a disappointment. Perhaps the problem lay in the tackling of a time that they knew little about, or maybe it is evidence that Hollywood just can’t figure out exactly how to make a proper old-fashioned Western anymore. As good as the trio of lead characters are, True Grit feels like a film that was considered much too highly by the talented but momentarily lost duo. A step down from A Serious Man, maybe the film would have been better if they had taken a little more time in pre-production.  

REVIEW: Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps (2010)

  Twenty-three years after Oliver Stone laid bare the excesses and everyday corruptions of the Eighties with "Wall Street", he is doing it again with a film that is as much a stand-alone film as it is a sequel. Michael Douglas is back as the slimy Gordon Gecko, whose catchphrase "Greed is good" inspired a generation of bankers. With his release from jail, he has aged and may have even turned over a new leaf.

  Gecko has released a book "Is Greed Good" and has taken young banker Jake (Shia LaBeouf) under his wing. Jake is getting married to Gecko's estranged daughter Winnie (Carey Mulligan). Together they avenge themselves against Bretton James (Josh Brolin) who may have brought about both Gecko's imprisonment and the collapse of Jake's bank.

  Like most of Oliver Stone's historical films, Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps mixes fiction and non-fiction. The insight into the finagling of every businessman in the film highlights the inevitability of the coming economic downturn. When it arrives, the events of late September 2008 are evocatively portrayed with a mix of real and staged footage. These are easily the best parts of the film and act as a good reminder that Stone used to make really powerful films like "JFK". The problem is that, before this sequence and after, you could be forgiven for forgetting.

  The performances are mixed. Brolin stands out in a memorably slimy role and Douglas is given at least one good speech. Frank Langella is good but his world-weary managing director is a step down from his fantastic performance as Nixon in "Frost/ Nixon". LaBeouf and Mulligan are rather bland as a couple in over their heads.

  The film is oddly lackadaisical, with the good scenes almost alternating with the bad. Watching Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps, you are not quite sure whether Stone is trying to be serious or is playing for laughs. Stone himself cameos, once in a comedy scene and once in a serious scene. The film is at its best when it takes on a pessimistic tone, detailing how these bankers and businessmen might just be bringing about the end of civilisation. However, in many sequences, it takes the cloudy-eyed perspective of the Hollywood Ending, where everything works out nicely and everyone bad gets their comeuppance. Then there's a motorcycle race or a Brian Eno music video thrown in. Stone doesn't seem sure if he wants to make a film that will call for reform or a stylish wallow in the corruption of the American economic system. It seems that Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps just can't take itself seriously. Even the title is silly.

  By turns powerful and laughable, Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps is the tame work of a director who used to be one of the most controversial filmmakers in American cinema. You leave the film, not wondering what can be done about this shameful situation, but wondering whether Stone has lost his touch or does he just not care anymore.