Review: Oppenheimer

Oppenheimer
(Spoilers)
Cert: 15 / 180 mins / Dir. Christopher Nolan / Trailer

Oppenheimer is a three hour, period-set film about nascent nuclear weaponry from a provenly competent storyteller which somehow features neither a young Emmet Brown sitting in a physics lesson nor Indiana Jones in a fridge.

Christopher Nolan is a fucking coward*¹.

*¹ Okay, I'll keep this as brief as I can. The note about Doctors Brown and Jones is obviously a joke. The score is not. I did not enjoy Oppenheimer. Then again, I genuinely believe that it's a film not created for enjoyment in any traditional sense, quite a demanding piece to watch and unsatisfying by narrative necessity. We should certainly expect no less a challenge from Christopher Nolan though, just as we wouldn't want him to be anything other than himself as a filmmaker. I suppose.

Playing with non-linear storytelling once again, Oppenheimer is framed as two separate interviews with associated sets of intertwining and converging flashbacks, each spanning the same twenty-or-so years from different points of view, where the guy we're supposed to be rooting for is demonstrated as being a dysfunctional, womanising moral-vacuum who's figured out how to most efficiently carry out genocide before the nazis and complains non-stop about this before, during and after the fact. Leaving a spray of failed personal and professional relationships in his wake, we see Oppo systematically piss off just about everybody in his life and then act surprised when they take against him...

Of course, this wouldn't be a Christopher Nolan movie without mumbled, unintelligible dialogue from the most important characters, battling here against Ludwig Göransson's piercing, intrusive score in a sound-mix that was finalised while somebody was hoovering. All of this has the pacing and delivery of high-drama, but with the implication of a storyline rather than the exposition of one. I know Nolan doesn't like to spoon-feed his audience, but Oppenheimer doesn't even have cutlery on the table.

You see, despite the device itself having a supporting role on the film's poster, this movie is not actually about Da Bomb. This is just as well, because shortly into the first act Nolan realises he can't narratively simplify for the audience either quantum physics nor the workings of an atom bomb, so quickly stops trying. What the movie actually is, is three clinical hours of dislikeable characters doing unpleasant but necessary admin and then everyone being unable to cope with the fall-out (literal, as well as metaphorical) of that, interspersed with the micro-management of international and domestic U.S. politics of the 1930s, 40s and 50s. So I was hardly expecting Terminator 2, but this is lots (lots) of middle-aged white guys in suits sitting around withholding information and showing they really can't be trusted (I go to the cinema to get away from that), leaving the cinema audience with quite frankly nobody to root for. Other than the demonstrable sociopath the film is named after. I suppose.

In terms of moral debate, Oppenheimer occupies the same shelf as Eye In The Sky and Red Joan, where hand-wringing and thousand-yard stares nudge aside the brutal practicalities of Not Losing A War. I never thought I'd watch a movie where Matt Damon plays the most rounded and sympathetic character, but here we are.

While the two timeline strands are clearly delineated by the use of colour, the content in each rarely seems complementary or interactive enough to warrant the effort. Like several of the director's recent pieces, the presentation seems needlessly fiddly yet is perhaps the only thing saving a story which would otherwise be grindingly linear. But without a solid grounding in the U.S. politics surrounding the Second World War, it all comes out as a mess anyway. It certainly feels like there's a price of entry here that's separate from the one printed on the ticket...

Biggest bugbear: We know that test-bomb's not going to destroy the world, lads; we're all here in 2023 watching the film and we'd probably have heard about that before now.

Second biggest bugbear: So what are these clandestine, closed-room hearings for, exactly? What are the nefarious powers in faceless American government trying to do to Mr Oppenheimer, who single-handedly won all of that very specific part of the late-war for them? Are the Suits trying to have him silenced? Discredited? Ruined? Killed, even? No, they're trying to remove his security-clearance. They want his badge back, that's all. They don't want the guy swanning around the lab like he owns the place ten years after he built them a super-bomb and has done nothing since but wear out the buttons on the highly-subsidised coffee machine. Just have a bit of dignity and retire, Oppo. Jeez...

Oh and bonus points to Kenneth Branagh, failing to control an accent in a built-up screenplay. Again. Proof positive that our celebrated auteur director was either distracted on-set, or deaf.

In short (and I'll bet you wish you hadn't clicked into this footnote now), Chris Nolan has not made a genuinely great film since Inception. There, I said it. ^{[ 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.

Review: A Quiet Place

A Quiet Place (Thematic Spoilers)
Cert: 15 / 90 mins / Dir. John Krasinski / Trailer



I can't work out if a film whose entire marketing focus is based around the deadly seriousness of keeping quiet actually attracts noisy cinemagoers at a subconscious level, or if I just notice them more as a result. Let's go for both options, and the unrealistically optimistic suggestion that concessions staff - if only for the duration of this film's release - brush up on their delivery of the phrase "Look, you can have the tickets and drink at an absolute push, but no, I'm clearly not going to serve you bags of sweets, popcorn or anything else you can use to create an extraneous racket. Now get in there, sit down and shut the fuck up…".

And so April brings John Krasinski's A Quiet Place to our screens, the horror/thriller in which he*¹ and Emily Blunt play Lee and Evelyn Abbott, parents of a young family existing on mid-western farmland in self-exiled isolation after a race of unnamed monsters has hunted humanity almost to extinction. The creatures are hideous, animalistic, vicious but crucially blind, tracking prey by their enhanced sense of hearing. From what we see, the species managed to destroy civilisation before it developed any method of counter-attack. The Abbotts meanwhile have taken to living a life of almost complete silence, communicating to each other via the sign-language which they already know as their eldest daughter Regan (Millicent Simmonds) is profoundly deaf. Every day is a struggle for survival, with the slightest generated sound attracting the hunters from miles around...

And damn, this is good. Krasinski understands the need for tension throughout the movie, not just in 'the setpieces'. There's relatively little downtime, reflecting the lifestyle to which the family have become accustomed, and the rare moments of relaxation are still framed with the unasked question of how long they can possibly last. Much like The Ritual, A Quiet Place isn't necessarily bringing anything new to the genre, but its a film made with enthusiasm and precision.

While it quickly becomes apparent that the monsters in the story aren't just metaphorical, their reveal is teased out gently in the style of 1980s b-movies. Additionally, there's no burst of exposition between the second and third acts letting the audience know how all of this came about*² - we just have to pick up the pieces organically as the story progresses, which lends a refreshing realism to the script. The film is so painstakingly taut that you'll hear the entire audience wince as a character walks barefoot toward a floorboard with a protruding nail.

Story-writers Bryan Woods and Scott Beck seem to have followed the Rian Johnson approach to character development, continually asking "right, what's the worst possible situation we can put these characters in?", not in a way which delights in watching them suffer, but certainly one that makes them work to earn any shred of security they might find. And in any other story, the family happening to know sign-language because one of their children is deaf could feel conveniently tacked-on. Here, it adds its own drawback since Regan knows to be quiet, but can't hear other sounds which could attract the enemy anyway.

With a relatively small cast, John Krasinski and Emily Blunt have a lot of heavy-lifting to do, but they both carry this off with ease*³. Huge credit also goes to Millicent Simmonds and Noah Jupe as their children, trying to lead lives as normally as possible while being near-permanently terrified. All of their performances lend further weight to Krasinski's skills in translating the story for the camera.

In addition to my opening snark above, it's also not lost on me that I frequently criticise contemporary horror for being reliant on the 'Quiet/Quiet/BANG' technique, yet that encapsulates everything which A Quiet Place is about. That said, the film does stray into a pitfall with Marco Beltrami's score. His music is an apt and atmospheric addition to the proceedings, but follows standard operating procedure by falling off prior to A Scary Moment, telegraphing to the audience that they're about to get some payoff. This is the equivalent of having the director standing underneath the screen flashing a torch onto a sign saying "watch this bit!", and the rest of A Quiet Place is far better than that. It would perhaps have made for a more interesting edit to remove the orchestral soundtrack altogether, with the viewer experiencing the events as the characters do, and with fright-cues from the acting and sound design alone.

Speaking of which, the brittle audio is crucial, here*⁴. The vast majority of the 90 minute film's communication takes place through sign-language, subtitled for the audience and occasionally accompanied by a barely-audible whisper to aid lip-reading. However, there are two sections featuring conversational-dialogue. For obvious reasons, this can't occur normally, and the scenes we get are fairly brief and fairly subdued. The sequences act as tension-breaks, as much for the audience's benefit as the characters. But I can't help feel that A Quiet Place would be a much stronger work if it had done away with these completely. Imagine the challenge and reward of a mainstream horror movie with no speech at all, reliant on performance, cinematography and editing. Where the characters are forced by circumstance into upholding the film's title. Imagine a film that doesn't patronise or spoon-feed its audience or characters, but where separate subtitled screenings for hearing-impaired viewers wouldn't be necessary. Maybe the studios think that would be a bit arthouse, I dunno.

But neither of the above caveats derail the film in any way, and everyone involved in this production can be immensely proud of what they've made.

As a straight-up creature-feature, A Quiet Place is masterfully crafted. Perhaps not all it could be, but certainly head and shoulders above the rest of its class…

Think the utter dread of Aliens, and the best moments of George Romero's zombie-works.



It is.
But ideally with as few fellow patrons in attendance as you can manage.



It won't be a movie you'll want to watch often, but it's definitely going to be worth having on the shelf for when the mood takes you.



We shall watch John Krasinski's directorial career with great interest.



I shouldn't imagine so.



There isn't.



Level 2: So, John Krasinski's name is all over this and he was in 2006's Dreamgirls, along with John 'The Voice Of Yoda In The Empire Strikes Back NPR Drama' Lithgow.





*¹ Yeah, John Krasinski is directing the film and he's in the film. And he also part-wrote the screenplay (albeit not the story itself). That level of behind-the-scenes involvement is not usually a good omen for any work, and I was ready to walk if I saw John reaching for an acoustic guitar so he could knock out the theme tune, too. Luckily (in fact, understandably), this didn't happen.
^{[ BACK ]}

*² There's the thought that the audience doesn't get the full origins-tale of the creatures because that's not known to the characters we're following - the kids in particular. But the story isn't being told exclusively from the kids' point of view, and we definitely don't get the full social-background that the parents are sure to know. But the best part is that this doesn't matter - A Quiet Place focuses on the here-and-now of the Abbott's situation. ^{[ BACK ]}

*³ It feels like it's been too long since Emily Blunt has been great in something, yet The Girl On The Train was only 2016, with Sicario the year before that. Although between those we had The Huntsman: Winter's War, and I can't help but feel that's been a heavy blow to Blunt's usually-great track record... ^{[ BACK ]}

*⁴ Although when Evelyn pops half her headphones into Lee's ear so they can share a moment and have a slow dance, surely it would make more sense for the music to only come out of the speakers on one side of the auditorium? Is it just me that sees couples sharing earphones on the street or train and thinks 'well, that looks unbearable for more than five seconds...'? ^{[ 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.

Review: The Girl On The Train

The Girl On The Train (SPOILERS)
Cert: 15 / 112 mins / Dir. Tate Taylor / Trailer



Now you could go to see The Girl On The Train and compare it, perhaps unfavourably, to last year's Gone Girl. Alternatively, you could make the same comparison after watching the trailer and save yourself two hours*¹...

Troubled commuter Rachel gazes out of the train window every day, imagining the details of the perfect lives of strangers. But when one such subject, Megan Hepwell*², goes missing, a police investigation turns up unexpected connections between the two and unearths more uncertainty than it resolves...

Tate Taylor's adaptation of the best-selling novel runs in dual timelines, each slowly filling in the past and the present, intertwining to paint a full picture (yeah, like Gone Girl). And that's fine, but the drawback is that the past of the core players becomes much more important (and more interesting) than their present/future. Despite a sizeable secondary and tertiary cast-list, there are really only five characters in the story (and one of them's dead for most of it. Spoilers), so when the curtain is lifted on the final reveal it works, but you could imagine three other versions of the film showing different outcomes and being just as convincing. With this in mind, it's probably not unfair to say that the performances in The Girl On The Train are far better than the film itself.

Speaking of which, Emily Blunt's performance in particular is far better than everyone else's. I was initially concerned that she opens the film basically 'turned up to 10' as neurotic alcoholic Rachel, because where do you take things from there? But to her eternal credit, as the film slowly digs deeper and piles up tension around the character, Blunt sustains her unhinged intensity perfectly. Haley Bennett and Rebecca Ferguson both put in strong turns, albeit with slightly flimsier characters; Justin Theroux and Edgar Ramírez chew the scenery slightly as one-note placeholders (in a nice reversal of typical Hollywood gender-typecasting); and Luke Evans seems to have peaked for the year, so is back to comedy-scowling and failing to control an accent in a built-up screenplay. Bless him.

All in all, The Girl On The Train is a pretty good thriller. It's just nowhere near as groundbreaking or insightful as it seems to hope it is*³.

Yeah, Gone Girl.
Obviously.



It's not essential to your enjoyment of the film, no.



I think so, but it's not trying to reinvent the genre or anything.



Blunt is on top form here, with reliably solid support.



Nah.



Nah.



Level 2: You remember when that Emily Blunt was in Wild Target with that Ewan 'Kenobi' McGregor? Well, she was…





*¹ That joke stolen wholesale and unashamedly from Mr Stewart Lee.

*² Although Megan's life isn't that perfect, is it? Water-view from her balcony or not, she's still got a commuter-level train track running past the bottom of the garden. Good luck trying to get a lie-in with that racket going on…

*³ Although it's nice that when you find out who-did-it, there's no deep psychological layering to explore. It's just "yeah, because [person] is an arsehole, mate". Which is probably far, far closer to most real-life cases of this type, I'm guessing. Fair play.


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.

Review: The Huntsman - Winter's War

The Huntsman: Winter's War (3D)
Cert: 12A / 117 mins / Dir. Cedric Nicolas-Troyan / Trailer



Why, it was only a week ago that I pondered the increasing phenomenon of the 'Monday Movie Release', positing that it could be a way of further boosting a film's opening-weekend takings. Naturally I'd assumed the same of The Huntsman: Winter's War until I sat down in the cinema after work this evening and quickly realised that last friday was of course April Fools' Day, and would have too telling a move, even for Universal Pictures...

Two worrying things occurred before we even got to the BBFC Title Card. First up was a pre-trailer advert for the upcoming N*ckelb*ck UK tour. Oh, this movie is intended for N*ckelb*ck fans. Or vice-versa, I'm not sure which is worse. Secondly, the final trailer to run before The Huntsman: Winter's War was for... The Huntsman: Winter's War. Yes, this film had a trailer for itself before it. Not only is this a) utterly pointless and b) utterly narcissistic, it's also the trailer which actually gives away the closest thing the movie has to a third-act plot-reveal. So if anyone present had been avoiding spoilers in anticipation, the film's own distributor has made sure they've wasted their time.

[Update #1: 05 April] It appears that the trailer-incident was unique to the cinema I was in. I don't know the exact details, but it sounds like it wasn't planned, anyway. This is fair enough, really; a mis-selected trailer reel makes far more sense than a misplaced marketing decision.
Besides, worse things have happened.

But you didn't come all the way over here to read me banging on about gripes outside the run-time of TH:WW, did you? Oh, no! Right, deep breath…

Using 2012's Snow White and the Huntsman as its central anchor, this film is part prequel, part sequel. This time, rather than just banging the coconuts of Twilight and Lord of the Rings together, someone at Universal Studios has realised that there's now a shit-ton of Game of Thrones and Frozen to rip off, too! So in the pot they go, stir until dissolved and serve with a side-garnish of the rope-bridge from Indiana Jones and the net-trap from Return of the Jedi.

But before all that, this excruciating pantomime of slapdash plotting and digitally-simulated sentiment kicks off with a lead-weight narration to explain the things that visual storytelling can't, and enough lensflare and soft-focus to cover any other cracks which may be left showing. Charlize Theron (The Bad Queen™) starts as she means to go on, putting on two and a half stones in weight due to the amount of scenery she chews throughout production, flanked by her screen-sibling Emily Blunt (The Ice Queen™) whose eyes seem to plead a desperate apology every time she looks at the camera (alarmingly frequently), delivering her clunky, stilted lines. "Where are the days when I could be relied upon to pick challenging, meaningful or just engaging roles?" she asks. The audience briefly remembers that she also appeared in Into The Woods and bellows "BEHIND YOU!".

So, the pre-amble is set, the story (…) moves to a certain point, then the events of Snow White are glossed over with a "seven years later" caption-card and it's time for the next act...

[Oh, Snow White's alive during all this by the way. She's mentioned several times, just not shown other than in brief archival footage from the first film. Yeah, imagine what state your screenplay must be in when you can't even get Kristen Stewart to poke her head around the door and lend a little continuity. With Theron only surfacing in the first and third acts, it's a good job McThor was willing to reprise his role…]

Ah, the pièce de résistance! Headlining the film are Chris Hemsworth and Jessica Chastain. The former has retained his inexplicable Scottish accent from the first installment (his home-region in the highlands being somewhere between Cardiff and Gateshead apparently), and as Chastain plays his childhood sweetheart, clan-mate and love-interest, she also has a Scotch-Twang to match (although hers seems to be based around Dublin and Mumbai). I'd be lying if I said I didn't snort out loud with Hemsworth's first utterance (cue a sharp nudge from Mrs Blackout), and I'd be lying if I said I genuinely wanted subtitles for their dialogue, as I lost so much of it due to the vocal stumbling. Interestingly enough, watching Australian Hemsworth struggling with a Scottish accent isn't completely dissimilar to Scotsman Gerard Butler doing battle with an American one. They should definitely make a movie together.

[Clarification: And I know, obviously, that the story isn't set in the real world, so I wouldn't necessarily expect the accents to have geographical authenticity. But we, the audience, are in the real world, and we, the audience need to be able to understand what they, the characters are talking about at any given moment. So, y'know…]

Meanwhile, the actual (ie intended) comic-relief comes in the form of Nick Frost as the only dwarf to return from the first film, accompanied by his screen-cousin Rob Brydon sporting a Welsh accent (because he's actually Welsh; casting-directors, take note) and their respective counterparts Sheridan Smith and Alexandra Roach. The laughs are a little broad, but there's no denying that the sections of the film starring the dimunitive foursome move with a sureness that's sorely lacking from the rest of it.

And speaking of which, the main thread of the movie is Jock McHuntsman's quest to retrieve The Mirror (y'know, the Snow White Mirror-Mirror, mirror) from a goblin fly-tipping site, discovering in the process that the reflective golden dish has gone from being the Russell's Grant Horoscope Column we all know and love, and is now something closer to Necronomicon Ex Mortis, apparently. Even the characters' motivation for this task is clouded, since apparently it's sending Snow White a bit mad/evil and she wants it back, but the Ice Queen wants it as well because she wasn't evil enough to begin with. They're basically screwed whoever they give it to; a premise which makes up the film's final, borderline-animated, act. The rest is shrieking, grunting and a poly-count that illustrates where the budget really went...

Now obviously I was predisposed to being cynical toward this film, but The Huntsman: Winter's War really is an almighty mess. The melee-fight with the Goblin king was pretty great and Charlize Theron's clearly having a whale of a time, but everyone else just seems embarrassed to be there, as well they should. The first film was a rights-dodging retool of a classic tale; the sequel is Universal shouting too loud, and with nothing to say…

[Update #2: 05 April] Contains spoilers: highlight-to-read. Okay, usually when I hit Publish on a review, I've got any ranting out of my system and I can just move on. But TH:WW has continued to annoy me throughout the following day and I don't feel I've made my disdain for the film clear enough. My main issue with its predecessor was that it adapted a classic fairy-tale, but in a very loose manner which managed to twist any moral framework (that framework being precisely what fairy-tales are built on, the biblical-parables of their historical generation), and instead actually send out a counter-intuitive message.

The sequel however, calls itself a fairy-tale (at several points within the film, via the narrator) yet has no discernible moral message. The story, on a purely surface level you understand, keeps repeating the idea that The Ice Queen has "banned" love in her kingdom, and that the burgeoning relationship between Mr and Mrs Huntsman is the catalyst which can't be surprised and will be the weapon with which justice and peace are restored.

In any literary version of the story, Mr and Mrs Huntsman's love would save the day at a crucial point, where any other potential hero/heroine was left floundering, having learned the lesson that brute force won't win all battles and that sometimes understanding and forgiveness are more powerful. How is the happy ending achieved here? While The Bad Queen is stabbing McThor with her sharp tentacles of hate (don't ask), Mrs Huntsman - incapacitated on the floor as The Girl One must always be - yells to him "Hey, try twatting the mirror with that axe you've been carrying around for the whole movie!". So he twats the mirror with the axe, it shatters, so does The Bad Queen and then The Ice Queen (also stabbed, also incapacitated) manages to slay alive long enough to say "Oh, I might have been wrong about that 'banning-love' thing." while McThor and Mrs Huntsman just sort of nod quietly. Love didn't save the day, here. Twatting a giant mirror with an axe to stop a shrieking zombie psychopath queen is what saved the day.
That's not an inspiring morality-play, it's a fucking Vin Diesel movie.

The Huntsman: Winter's War isn't a fairy-tale; it's half an idea for a cash-in sequel, poorly told in an array of non-accents. Universal Studios' contempt for their own customers grows more vivid with each release.

And this film is for fans of N*ckelb*ck…

Being beaten around the head with a tin tray for two hours while someone tries to remember the plot of Frozen at the top of their voice.



Only for the shiny CGI.



Nope.



Nope.



I just might.



Nope.



Level 1: Jessica Chastain in A Most Violent Year with Poe Dameron? Chris Hemsworth in those Avengers movies with Mace Windu? Well how about Emily Blunt starring with Obi-Wan or Nick Frost being in loads of things with Unkar Plutt?

No.

This film shares uncredited extra Nick Donald with Star Wars: The Force Awakens. Sure, there are loads of level-2s that are fish in a barrel, but I think it's important to remember that there was at least one person on set who should have known better and could have stopped the production in its tracks by pointing to the script and screaming "Yeah, but WHY?".
Maybe next time, Nick...





*¹ I don't even have any footnotes. I poured all my bile, scorn and sarcasm into the main body of text, up there. You're reading this bit for naught, I'm afraid. Mind you, while you're down here I'll just mention that I was quite amused at the film using the term 'wanker'. Sure, it's probably more than you'd expect from a 12A, but bear in mind that you can usually get an in-context fuck-word into the script at that level. What amused me more is that US screenwriters really don't seem to have cottoned on to how that word is used in the UK, bless them. It's mentioned on the BBFC site, and I wouldn't expect the rating to change for it, but I think there'll be more than a few terse comments about its inclusion.


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.

Review: Sicario

Sicario
Cert: 15 / 121 mins / Dir. Denis Villeneuve / Trailer



Apparently the best thing about being an FBI operative is that the riot-gloves they issue you with are so sensitive that you can feel a man's pulse (or lack thereof) though them while you've got the adrenaline pumping through you that you'd get if that man had just shot at you and you'd just blown his spine all over the wall in return. Or so it would appear, anyway.

Following a successful if slightly naive Agent Kate Macer (Emily Blunt) through her recruitment into a CIA black-ops unit to eliminate a Mexican drug baron, Sicario is a tight, grim and moody thriller of a film, but one which never wallows in its despair. Realism, rather than pessimism, is the order of the day as Macer struggles with both the legal and moral loopholes used to tighten a net which is, even she has to admit, for the greater good. As much about the trust issues as it is the dead bodies, the film features the visual aesthetic of Marshland and the philosophical bent of Zero Dark Thirty.

Director Denis Villeneuve is unrepentant in his stark amorality, and cinematographer Roger Deakins' camera pays as much attention to the gorgeous aerial photography and horizon-sunsets as it does the festering corpses who are collateral damage in the story. This film is beautiful for all the right and wrong reasons. Although it's tonally dark, the film never feels exploitative, and even the most blasé killings are carried out with the characters' sense of moral or poetic duty, rather than the dynamic glee which would have come from many other directors.

The film uses a documentary style to immerse the audience, but a sparse script to make them pay attention; the story never strays from the linear path, but you're not spoon-fed the plot either. Jóhann Jóhannsson's accompanying score is percussive and abstract rather than outright musical, and often combines with the camerawork to make the film feel like a first-person-shooter game*¹, particularly during the climactic scene where the photography slips exclusively between infra-red and thermal imaging. Sicario may not always be fluid storytelling, but it's astounding film-making…

But best of all, I love how the Mexican-Spanish for "…on the buses" is (verbally - in this film) "…on the buses". That's going to make sitcom programme-scheduling a hell of a lot easier…

I think it is, but I also know that the film won't be for everyone, despite how much I've just gushed over it.



A rental, then buy it when it comes down to a fiver.



Emily Blunt and Benicio Del Toro are fantastic; Josh Brolin coasts a little, but to be fair that's also how his character's written.



It does, indeed.



Not particularly.



There isn't.



Well, the Benicio Del Toro / Episode VIII situation is still in 'heavy-rumour' mode, so rather than rely on that direct link, I'll just drop these here.
Sicario stars…

• Emily Blunt, who appeared in Salmon Fishing In The Yemen alongside Ewan 'Kenobi' McGregor.
• Benicio Del Toro and Josh Brolin, who appeared in Guardians Of The Galaxy with Peter 'Darth Maul' Serafinowicz.
• Jon Bernthal, who appeared in Fury with Jason 'Inquisitor' Isaacs*².
• Daniel Kaluuya, who appeared in the Doctor Who episode Planet of the Dead alongside David 'Huyang' Tennant.
• Victor Garber, who appeared in Big Game with Sam 'Windu' Jackson.







*¹ And I mean that in the best possible sense, a great film feeling like a great game; it's incredibly rare to get that crossover. The vast majority of game-to-movie adaptations manage to miss it completely…

*² (hello to Jason Isaacs)

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.