Yardie Cert: 15 / 102 mins / Dir. Idris Elba / Trailer
The problem when you're an actor as accomplished as Idris Elba and you move into directing with a project you're clearly passionate about is… well, expectation. Because people are waiting for great things to follow that BBFC card, and even though that's half the critical battle won, what comes next will be the decider.
Adapted by Martin Stellman and Brock Norman Brock from Victor Headley's 1992 novel, Yardie follows a young Jamaican, D (as in D for Dennis, played by Aml Ameen) making his way up the drug-dealing ladder in 1983 Kingston as he's then sent to London to calm him down. The turf wars of his homeland become the sound-system battles of England's capital, but the difference is only superficial as old scores have followed D across the Atlantic, in addition to the trouble he packed himself…
In short, Yardie is a good film.
In long, it's not a great one, though… Aml Ameen is outstanding in the main role, carrying the charisma of a young Jamie Foxx. I wanted Yardie to be longer just to watch him more and look forward to seeing him lead other movies. Meanwhile, Elba does well to resist the temptation of getting distracted by the story's outlandish secondary characters. Most notably, Stephen Graham's Rico is to Yardie what Sharlto Copley's Vernon is to Free Fire; a loose cannon who amuses and terrifies in equal measure, with a fantastic faux-Jamaican accent which dips into Cockney whenever he loses control*1. Yet he's still used sparingly here; less is more.
The sets and period detail are gorgeous in their urban decay. The claustrophobia of D's life when he reaches England means that the final result looks slightly less than cinematic, but still so much more than televisual. While cinematographer John Conroy has obviously been limited to locales which fit the 1983 aesthetic, East London is presented with the same meticulous affection as West Kingston. Everything in Yardie feels like it's been done on the director's terms, and is more rewarding as a result. It's not so much that it's an 'uncompromising' film tonally, but still one that's been made without compromise.
But it's a film that can't manage to sweep its audience away to another world completely, probably unless they've already got a first-hand nostalgia for the location and era, anyway*2. Yardie never quite manages to find its own voice. While Elba's work has an intimate, if not autobiographical, feel to it, the fingerprints of Guy Ritchie and Matthew Vaughn are plain to see (in the best possible way). An anti-hero trying to find his place among gang wars and infighting, set against the backdrop of a grimy metropolis, this could be the closest to a Grand Theft Auto flick we've had since the game series began. Certainly the closest which also takes its story very seriously.
But that's the problem. Structurally, the tale is so universal that the events could easily be transferred to the echelons of the Mafia, the Yakuza, or yes a GTA spinoff, with barely a beat missed. The only real fingerprint of identity is reduced to a background setting. At the same time, the story here is personal to the point that the stakes never feel that big. It's about D's own struggle rather than that of a movement or an era, and this holds back the flow back because D is a naturally guarded person, he's had to be, so the audience always feel like outsiders.
A crime movie like this is only going to end one of two ways, and you get the impression that either of them wouldn't have had much of an effect on the larger picture. The gang problem existed in both Kingston and London before D got involved, and whether he lives or dies at the end of this, the audience know it'll continue anyway. Similarly, the small family our protagonist manages to start certainly seems to be getting on better in his absence than when he returns in a turbulent cloud of problems. That he cares for them is never in any doubt; whether he's the best thing for them, is. We're interested in D, we just never get the opportunity to really like him. And without that, it's difficult to be rooting for the hero.
There's plenty to enjoy in Yardie. This is a solid directorial debut for Elba, but it feels slightly constrained by working from an adapted novel. But given the man's acting pedigree and now this vision behind the camera, I think Idris is going to be an important filmmaker in the years to come.
Best line:"Take your grandma's suitcase and get to fuck…"
Level 1: That outpost-trader from the Ring Of Kafrene in Rogue One is in this.
You know the one. You do. You know him.
*1 I'm not going to lie, a lot of the Jamaican conversational dialogue went right over my head, even though the gist of the story was still very clear. Elba made a joke in a recent interview about a subtitled version of the film, and while I realise that would be patronising (especially with screenings in the UK), let's just say I'm looking forward to the DVD... [ BACK ]
*2 And for the record, while we're here, I'm not a fan of Reggae, Dancehall or Ska. So while everyone else is all "oh, but the soundtrack!", that was another hill I was having to climb. I mean it didn't annoy me as I know it's integral to the movie, but at the same time I couldn't use the music as an entry-point to build upon. [ BACK ]
DISCLAIMERS:
• ^^^ That's dry, British humour, and most likely sarcasm or facetiousness.
• Yen's blog contains harsh language and even harsher notions of propriety. Reader discretion is advised.
• This is a personal blog. The views and opinions expressed here represent my own thoughts (at the time of writing) and not those of the people, institutions or organisations that I may or may not be related with unless stated explicitly.
On a crisp September's afternoon, Mrs Blackout and myself were lucky enough to be shown the first Maze Runner film as part of a private-screening event*1. I had seen the film before and rather enjoyed it, Mrs Blackout hadn't. This would be interesting.
As it turns out, my better-half enjoyed it (luckily, since it was in preparation for a 4DX screening of The Scorch Trials immediately afterwards), and since I'd recently seen the film's sequel, this gave me a unique opportunity to watch the film retrospectively on a big screen, but with a particular emphasis on how it relates to its successor.
Now, obviously this is true for all movies, but you can only see The Maze Runner for the first time once. The story is told almost exclusively from Thomas' point-of-view, and the viewer learns of his surroundings and amnesiac back-story at the same time as Thomas does. With this in mind, a lot of the tension in the film's first-act is lost, as you already know the answers to Thomas' (and the Gladers') questions, although luckily TMR is a well-enough-made film that it isn't lessened by this. Indeed, the dreams and flash-memory sequences act more solidly as call-forwards when you know what they specifically relate to.
That said, a re-watch of the first film reinforces the feeling that too many details are left unexplored, perhaps having not been fully realised in the first place*2. The most prominent example of this is the bio-mechanical Griever spider-creatures. Since no-one (prior to Thomas' arrival) makes it back from the maze to tell what they look like, why make them so intricate and physically imposing? As the maze is fully monitored (as is the entire system), couldn't unsuccessful Runners just be terminated by remotely-manned gun/dart emplacements, with sound-effects broadcast over a speaker system to give the impression of monsters within the stone labyrinth? The Grievers seem like a monumental drain on WCKD's development and production time, given that they don't really need to exist and the company is supposed to be working on finding a cure for the Flare.
Moreover, it becomes more apparent (having seen the sequel already) that any details which aren't bestowed upon the viewer in this first film aren't going to be handed out in future installments, either. When we leave The Glade in this movie, we aren't going back; it's not so much a base-camp, as the first step on a one-way journey*3. So with that in mind, perhaps the questions arising from 'the ridiculous amounts of engineering and construction effort which would go into making a 200ft high, moving stone maze full of artificially created lifeforms and a verdant acre of farmable land in the middle of a global desert, in order to monitor the brain activity of 30 kids, which could be performed equally well by putting pads on their temples as they played on a PS4 in a lab' aren't worth answering after all. Because as much fun as The Maze Runner is (and it is), the notion that it's all a science experiment seems more unfeasible than the experiment itself…
INT. WCKD HEAD OFFICE. DAY.
IAN WCKD sits at the head of a large oval-table with AVA PAIGE and the other BOARD MEMBERS.
AVA: Following your request for our full, backdated reports, you can see that the subjects continue to thrive in The Glade, having mastered team-work and self-sufficiency to create a miniature version of society among themselves with a minimum of outside supervision. The addition of a new inhabitant once a month has given a-
IAN: Yeah yeah, I read that. And it's odd, because I thought we were trying to analyse the physical differences between immune and prone subjects with a view to eradicating a global plague which has all but destroyed human civilisation. Only in the document I received, it seems like your twelve trillion dollars of funding has given us a three year program to determine which of the subjects can run the fastest and who's best left in charge of growing the asparagus? I knew I should never have left The Umbrella Corporation…
Not that you'll have to now, but yes.
Worth buying to stick on the shelf in preparation for a marathon when the final movie is released.
Young cast = on great form.
I think it tells the story incredibly well, but sketches in many of the details.
Nope.
No. Why not?
The Maze Runner stars Dylan O'Brien, who appeared in 2013's The Internship alongside Tiya Sircar, the voice of Sabine in Star Wars Rebels.
*1 An actual, proper private screening (yeah, get me. No, you shut up), not just one of those films where I'm the only audience member. Actually it's worth pointing out that even though the event was invite-only and very select, there were still more people in attendance than Friday's opening-day Everest showing…
*2 Although they might well be, in the expanded narrative of the books. I haven't read the books. I'm not going to read the books. I don't have the time to read the books. I've been to the cinema 111 times this year, when do you think I have the time to read books?
*3 Yeah, unless of course the third/fourth/fifth books take place in The Glade because Thomas decides it's just easier to say 'fuck the apocalypse' and run a garden centre instead. I wouldn't know, would I? I haven't read the books. Didn't you even read *2?
DISCLAIMERS:
• ^^^ That's dry, British humour, and most likely sarcasm or facetiousness.
• Yen's blog contains harsh language and even harsher notions of propriety. Reader discretion is advised.
• This is a personal blog. The views and opinions expressed here represent my own thoughts (at the time of writing) and not those of the people, institutions or organisations that I may or may not be related with unless stated explicitly.
While I'd been initially skeptical about another Young Adult Novel™ to screen adaptation*1, it didn't take long at all for Wes Ball's The Maze Runner to gently brush those worries aside. The film is actually just a very competent dystopian action-thriller which happens to have a predominantly young cast. For the most part, The Maze Runner is incredibly well acted given the outlandishness of the plot, with a strong lead from Dylan O'Brien and an array of naturalistic supporting performances. Oh, and Thomas Brodie-Sangster effortlessly stealing every scene he's in.
After a dream-like opening sequence, young Thomas (O'Brien) finds himself in 'The Glade', an inhabitable woodland clearing walled off by a gigantic concrete maze which 'opens' nightly. Amnesiac to the point of only eventually remembering his own name, he soon discovers that he's not alone, but in the company of thirty-odd other inhabitants with the same mnemonic handicap, all in their mid-to-late teens, and all male. The existing 'tribe', as they've become, are wary of Thomas' presence as he seems to somehow instinctively know more than they have worked out in their time there (up to three years for the 'oldest' ones), and Thomas' arrival is the first in a chain of events which will reveal exactly who they all are, and why they're there. Including the subsequent arrival of The Girl One™...
On top of the performances, the film's visual and special effects are outstanding throughout, and while they're a little too murky-looking for my liking, the sequences within the maze itself are fantastically tense (and I can't be the only one who, at the first glimpse of the Grievers' mechanical arachnoid legs, thought of the Clone Wars' Spider-Maul). I think the narrative itself would work better with an adult cast, but the kids here certainly hold their own. The young-adult nature of The Maze Runner could well rob the film of the wider audience it deserves, but since a 'grown-up' version would probably star Tom Cruise, we've got the better end of the deal as it stands. Ironically, the film would lose a lot of its subtlety with an adult cast (and not just because of Cruise).
There are, of course, hiccups along the way, mostly plot-based. A lot of the practical questions about the boys' warder-less incarceration seem to be answered by the fact that no-one asks them (on-screen, at least), but it seems jarringly unworkable that a group of necessarily intelligent characters have unquestioningly accepted the status quo, amnesia or not. I have no problem with a story being split into a trilogy*2, even if that structure has been established from the word go, but The Maze Runner seems to raise questions then withhold the answers not in a teasing way, but as if the writer hasn't quite figured them out yet. And hey that can bulk out the sequels, right? Once again, perhaps the source text haa been ruthlessly trimmed to fit onto celluloid, but I certainly think there are fascinating questions here that are barely even asked, while too much time is spent trying to make the film appeal to the Teen Adventure Film™ demographic.
Plot niggles aside, the slightly-meta action puzzler of a movie was going really well for me until the final reel. When the adults show up on set. Bringing with them that overbearing sense of teenage paranoia, complete with a patronising "you're so special because you're young, that's why your lives have been a living hell for the last three years" monologue. In any other flick, this section would be where an hour and a half's worth of questions are answered. In The Maze Runner, it's where I.O.U.s are handed out in lieu of exposition, with a hint that the sequel could be a mashup of The Matrix and Half-Life. Oh, I'd love that to be the case, but I know if won't be. Either way, I'm on board now, the film proved to be head and shoulders above many of its 'grown up' contemporaries. I only hope the sequels don't try too hard to fulfil more than their already-considerable potential.
Kinda, but the film's way more engaging than the trailer.
Mostly.
It probably does, and that's just not what I want from it.
Cinema if it's your thing, otherwise renting/streaming it at home should be acceptable.
No.
Probably not until the sequel's due to arrive.
Didn't hear one. Plenty of opportunities, too.
For those who've seen the film, highlight-to-read: We see an aerial shot of The Maze at the end of the film with The Glade at the centre. Other than being in the middle of a 100-metre high technologically unfeasible engineering, it's completely exposed to the elements. If the Earth is "scorched" as Dr Paige says in her expository assault in the film's final throes, how come the flora in The Glade is thriving, largely unassisted by human intervention? (the farm project that the group have set up isn't what I'm referring to) If The Maze had just been a simulation, I could have lived with it. Hmmf.
*1 It's not so much their existence which irks me (anything which gets people reading should be a positive thing, so how can a cinematic spinoff be negative?), but more than they're all marketed as the same genre. Y'know, in the same way that all films for 30-40yr olds are the same, right? Yeah, that. it's insulting to the audience, more than anything else.
*2 Come on, how could "I", of all people, let alone anyStar Wars / Indiana Jones / Back To The Future fan?
DISCLAIMERS:
• ^^^ That's dry, British humour, and most likely sarcasm or facetiousness.
• Yen's blog contains harsh language and even harsher notions of propriety. Reader discretion is advised.
• This is a personal blog. The views and opinions expressed here represent my own thoughts (at the time of writing) and not those of the people, institutions or organisations that I may or may not be related with unless stated explicitly.
