Review: Till

Till
Cert: 12A / 130 mins / Dir. Chinonye Chukwu / Trailer

Directed by Chinonye Chukwu and screen-written with Michael Reilly and Keith Beauchamp, Till is the adapted true story of Emmet Louis Till (Jalyn Hall), a 14yr old African American from Chigaco who was murdered in 1955 by a white lynch-mob while on holiday in his family's heartland in Mississippi. The film covers this, and follows his mother Mamie (Danielle Deadwyler) in her subsequent fight to bring the killers to justice - unheard of at that time and place.

Cutting straight to the chase Hall is great, but for obvious reasons has limited screen-time. And while it may be named after Till's character, there can be no doubt that this is Deadwyler's film. Her performance is magnificently layered as a parent who is both cloyingly over-protective, and shown throughout to be entirely justified in that caution. Scenes of panic and of despair play as you would expect, but Danielle's skill lies in capturing the alternating numbness and simmering fury of her grief. Backing her up ably is John Douglas Thompson as Emmet's uncle Moses who was present on the night of the abduction, again with a complexity of emotion that most films would skip in favour of glowering silences.

PUNCHES

The production design and cinematography give this the aesthetic and colour palette of a much gentler film, so it's really down to the script and acting to deliver the story's punches. The drama builds more slowly than expected, rarely descending into theatrics even at its most heightened points. It's is rarely an easy-watch, intentionally and deservedly so, and Chukwu manages the intensity of the themes fairly well within a 12A certificate. While this certainly holds back in places, it's not likely that a 15 would allow the film to paper over its cracks, and ultimately the accessibility of the 12A is more important.

Other than the behaviour of the press in how these cases are covered during trial, there's not really any contemporary angle to the film. Till is an historical story, presented historically (had this been about a child being murdered by the police, it would play very differently in 2023). After a purposeful first act and its inevitable halt when the key plot-point takes place, the pacing feels off for a while as players are moved around the board; not so much like the film is building tension but actually putting off its crescendo.

JUDIES

The third act is essentially a Mississippi courtroom drama as Mamie's persistence leads to the landmark arrest of two men for the murder. It's well assembled but feels somehow ordinary for a film with this much to say. Because the screenplay has already shown the truth of events in the first act, there's no unravelling or revelation awaiting the viewer at the trial (other than watching the antagonists vilify themselves further), and the sequence borders on becoming admin.

The (thankful) exception to all this is the single, minutes-long, unbroken close-up sequence where Mamie is cross-examined by both the prosecution and the defence. Focusing purely on Deadwyler's delivery and reactions, it is an absolute masterclass. This scene will be the one which lands awards and leads to the film being seen by a wider audience, and ultimately that's what matters.

Till's performances are exceptional in some places solid everywhere else, but a pedestrian screenplay can't save the narrative limitations of historical fact, and the frankly unsatisfying nature of what is one dark chapter in a much larger story. At its most testing points, this risks turning into a John Grisham pastiche, and the story deserves better than that...

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 Magnificent Seven (2016)

The Magnificent Seven
Cert: 12A / 133 mins / Dir. Antoine Fuqua / Trailer



It's a well-established fact that I'm not a particular fan of the classic-model Western™. It's a lesser-known, but concurrent, fact that I watched the 1960 version of The Magnificent Seven a few years back and didn't particularly enjoy it (see fact #1). So going to see a re-tooling of a movie I wasn't arsed about in the first place did not fill me with rootin'-tootin' joy.

And Antoine Fuqua's 2016 reboot begins on unsure footing as the marauding bandits of previous iterations are replaced by a greedy, capitalist gold-mining baron intent on buying up frontier outpost Rose Creek for a pittance and slaughtering anyone who objects, causing the Equity-cards of all concerned to be bent just shy of breaking-point as the live-action pantomime unfurls. Bad Man Wearing Black Is Bad, etc. Luckily (thankfully), the film then slows down as the town's ever resilient Haley Bennett recruits bounty hunter Denzel Washington*¹ to help the good folk see off the corporate-menace. Obviously Denz can't do this alone, so he rides around for about an hour picking up Chris Pratt, Ethan Hawke, Byung-hun Lee, Vincent D'onofrio, Manuel Garcia-Rulfo and Martin Sensmeier to assist him.

Now, this was my bugbear with the John Sturges version of the movie. Despite a respectable two-hour running time, the Seven themselves are never fully painted in; and if the eponymous heroes themselves are placeholders then what does it matter what they're fighting for? With only an extra eight minutes in the bank, Fuqua's 2016 version manages to explain the setup (okay, heavy-handedly), then introduce seven other characters to the point where we don't necessarily know them, but we do like them. Ergo, the battle for Rose Creek matters. More to the point, it's also bloody good fun into the bargain.

The principal cast of Washington, Pratt and Hawke aren't stretching themselves particularly here, but they're giving it their all in being entertaining characters. Funny in some places, self-deprecating in others, and committed to whatever the screenplay has in mind for them. Of particular note are Semsmeier, Rulfo, Lee and the fantastic Vincent D'onofrio in being way more than the bit-part players many other films would have featured. Although I'm more than a bit disappointed that Haley Bennett's role didn't expand the way the film seemed to suggest it would, but that's a grumble for another post*².

All in all though, pretty damned good given how unnecessary the remake was (the second of which in recent weeks, no less).

The Magnificent Seven looks and sounds fantastic, and is performed with all-round gusto. Although behind it all, there's always the feeling that this is a love-letter to everything about Western movies, rather than being an actual Western™ itself. An action movie with cowboy-hats, if you will. Although I'm reliably informed by Mrs Blackout that that's exactly what a good Western should be, anyway…

Tonally, it borders on Guardians of the Galaxy (and not just because of Chris Pratt's involvement). But you'll watch it because you enjoyed the 1960 version, obviously.



For the cinematography, yes.
Everything else will be just fine from your sofa.



It does.



It's not.



I won't.



There isn't.
And given that the film's features arrows being fired and has people falling off horses from arsehole to breakfast-time, there really is no excuse for its non-inclusion.



Level 2: Loads of direct links in the behind-the-scenes folks, but let's go for Byung-hun Lee, who appeared in Red 2, as did Garrick 'Biggs' Hagon.


*³


*¹ I'm not going to bother with character names for this review. The film barely bothers with them and you never forget that you're watching Washington, Pratt and Hawke, anyway. I mean, the characters get names, but they're so inconsequential as to be meaningless.

*² I won't go into potenially spoilery spoiler-stuff here, but talk to me about it on The Twitter or The Facebook.

*³ Yeah, as much as I enjoyed the film, I'm deducting a point for the marketing department's visual plagiarism:



…talk about having so little faith in your own product that you have to ride on Tarantino's coat-tails.

"Oh Terry, we need to promote a western but I don't want any earth-tones in the poster, everyone uses those. Come up with something, would you?" That poster still boils my piss even after seeing the film, because Magnificent Seven and Hateful Eight are about a thousand miles apart, tonally. To suggest otherwise is either foolhardy or fraudulent.

Also, This is why I don't work in marketing.


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: Hardcore Henry

Hardcore Henry
Cert: 18 / 96 mins / Dir. Ilya Naishuller / Trailer



And the award for Clearly Having The Most Fun on a Film Set goes to... Mr Sharlto Copley. Yes, although we see the events of Hardcore Henry through the eponymous protagonist's first-person vision, the most frequently recurring character (whose face we see) is that of Copley's Jimmy, the companion, guide and co-player to Henry's super-soldier cyborg-self. Without wanting to delve to deeply into why, Copley gets a succession of costumes and mannerisms to play with*¹ whilst delivering the lion's share of the exposition. Not that there's a massive deal to exposit...

Taking the First Person Shooter format as its starting point and doing very little to move much further, Hardcore Henry is a film presented entirely from Henry's point-of-view. It also utilises standard game mechanics such as the player initially orienting themselves in a lab through a brief introductory scene, the companion/guide as above, a series of escalating missions and weaponry and of course The End Boss, Akan (all scenery thoroughly chewed courtesy of Danila Kozlovsky). Sprinkle in Haley Bennett's love-interest/macguffin, Estelle and a smattering of flashbacks featuring Tim Roth as Henry's father, and there's your film. Just add pyrotechnics and blood to fill the gaps.

Now although it certainly won't be to everyone's tastes (and nor should it be), it's a bold experiment and one which can be classed as successful. Although crucially, Hardcore Henry is a great film of a game that wouldn't be particularly good. The best film-adaptations certainly appear to be ones of games that don't actually exist; HH bolsters that theory. But frankly it's the sort of game you'd have powered through in a single afternoon in the mid 1990s, then not thought about again.

The storyline itself is a little patchy (go to the dot on the map; shoot people; rinse/repeat), as is the Eclectic™ soundtrack. And there are a few jump-cuts (particularly in the chase-sequences) which make things more disorienting than they really should be. If you're seeing this in the cinema you'll want to sit middle-to-back, as motion-sickness could well be a problem the closer to the screen you are.

Outside of the storytelling technique itself, the film is mostly immense fun, although it occasionally cruises over the line of good-taste unnecessarily. Then again, it does a lot of things unnecessarily. Gleefully violent and at times horrendously misogynistic, the film embraces the best and worst excesses of the industry which inspired it. It's not that Hardcore Henry is trying to offend you, but it really doesn't give a fuck if it does, either.

If you've ever enjoyed an FPS game, you should have some fun with Hardcore Henry. If you haven't, you probably won't; it's that simple.

Edge of Tomorrow, Crank.



A big screen will heighten the adrenaline, but it'll also heighten the shaky-cam.



Not always, but mostly.



As Naishuller's first full feature, it's an impressive start, but he'll have to move onwards and upwards from here.



Nope.



There is.
And it's glorious.



Level 2: Hardcore Henry stars Sharlto Copely, who was in The A-Team alongside Liam 'Qui-Gonn' Neeson.





*¹ Although not really 'accents', as each of his personas adopts a London-based tone. Sharlto's normally on shaky ground with any accent other than his native South African and Hardcore Henry is no exception. But, he's having such a blast with the role than even I didn't mind his occasional slip-ups. And that says a lot (as regular readers can well imagine).



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 Equalizer

The Equalizer
Cert: 15 / 132 mins / Dir. Antoine Fuqua




There are a few scenes in Antoine Fuqua's big-screen adaptation of The Equalizer which suggest that at one point this was going to be a dark and visceral thriller about a vigilante who also happens to be a borderline psychopath, and who uses his connections, experience and knowledge of the authorities to cover his tracks whilst protecting the innocent from crime and corruption. Then the suits got hold of it, wrote a Liam Neeson film and threw some money at Denzel Washington to play the lead as Neeson already had three films in production.

Sometimes, and irrespective of how much The Bad Men™ might deserve to get killed, Washington's Robert McCall drives in the knife / screwdriver / hand-drill / shard-of-mirror with the sort of blank-faced enthusiasm we've come to expect from a David Fincher film. Not with glee, and never with any other viable course of action present, but there's more than just efficiency to McCall's repertoire. Everything else in the film though, is sadly more pedestrian. The plot of 'blah blah widowed retired intelligence officer, blah blah Russian oligarch, blah blah young prostitute who forms a platonic bond with hero' is so tired that it's almost insulting to audiences. Denzel Washington sleepwalks his way through the film, one step away from becoming the Morgan Freeman of action-thrillers. Other 'good' characters in the film are used solely when actually required for the mechanics of the plot, meaning Chloë Grace Moretz doesn't get the screentime she needs for Alina to be effective, and Melissa Leo's cameo appearance is the deus ex machina of plot exposition.

If I sound like I'm being overly harsh, it's because I'm actually disappointed with how little effort the film puts forth. The original TV series ran for 88 episodes, and while it may not have been awarded a place in the all-time-greats, there has to have been more depth to it than this (doesn't there?). At 132 minutes, the film is far longer than it needs to be and feels it, too. There's some fun to be had, and it's engaging enough while it's playing, but there's a painful scarcity of new ideas, here.

The Equalizer isn't a 'bad' film, it's just nowhere near good enough.

But if you like your pantomime villains to twiddle their moustaches in oak-panelled offices, between ostentatiously slapping around sex-workers in their employ, whilst a righteous, silent do-gooder looks on disapprovingly thinking about what size hammer will be right for the job of fixing their attitudes… you may well enjoy this.

It's not an unfair assessment.



Not as much as the director would have liked, I'm sure.



Not nearly.



This is a £2.99 DVD parked by the tills when you're buying some beers for a night in, if ever there was one.



I won't.



I won't avoid it, but there's nothing calling me back.



There isn't, but the hospital scene does feature the 'Dr Davis, telephone please…' sample, and that's the next best thing, right?.

Are we really (seriously) expected to believe that an ex-intelligence officer would murder four people in a room immediately after leaving his fingerprints all over the skull ornaments on the desk and the office door he was playing with, not to mention the murder weapons themselves, and just expect to get away with it? Really, though?

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.