Now, most reviews you read of Spooks: The Greater Good will spend time concentrating on comparing the movie to its TV counterpart and the transition from small-to-big screen. I won't be doing that. I believe firmly that cinematic entertainment should be able to stand on its own merit and that there should be no intellectual 'price of entry' for projects such as this. Also, I've never watched the TV series. Whatever, I was always more of a Life On Mars/Hustle kinda guy...
So the tense, frowny, humourless spies of MI5 come bursting onto our theatrical screens with a story of tattle-tales, terrorism and trust-issues. I spent the first half of the film feeling slightly disheartened that it's so pedestrian for an adaptation of such a successful franchise, then I remembered that the po-faced, faux-complex attitude to storytelling is exactly what put me off the TV show in the first place. The film is entertaining enough in its own way, but fails to break any new ground when it comes to cinematic spy-stories. That said, the room-sweeping techniques used in the opening action-sequence are atrocious. And I say that as someone who's only ever shot digital people before (honest, guv). On one hand the film goes for hardened realism, and on the other it ignores one of the most important aspects of the field-work (when [REDACTED] gets shot, [REDACTED] bloody deserves it).
The narrative itself is relatively well executed, but is hampered by a clunky, over-acted script (Tim McInnerny seems to be channelling 'Cartoon Villain No 1'), and the kind of expository dialogue which people only say when they're trying to surreptitiously convey a message to an unseen listener hidden in the room. There also seems to be a sub-narrative about commercial globalisation which, in another draft of the script, could have added some depth to the story, rather than just being mentioned every twenty minutes in passing with a shake of the head.
Inexplicably, Kit Harrington escapes the film artistically unscathed, but after his track record with Pompeiii, Seventh Son and Silent Hill, it's about time he got a break from being the worst thing in a bad film. Also on the plus side, if this film had been made in the US, it would star Liam Neeson, have a one-word title and a script to match. Credit where it's due, I suppose.
There's little here that you couldn't get by watching any number of TV channels of an evening. Despite the extended running time, Spooks: The Greater Good is unable to shake its TV-drama credentials. It's by no means awful, but it's staggeringly average. Most importantly, it's not a film…
Oh, and if you work for a highly secretive organisation, is is a thing whereby they make you have a desktop wallpaper that's the logo or crest of that highly secretive organisation? Because it seems to be a thing in MI5 no less than in other less 'realistic' films. I mean, I can have anything I want for mine, then again I only work for an engineering firm, and I don't get to kill people when I'm away from my desk. Honest, guv.
Not really.
Wait for it to be on telly. It's not a film, after all.
In Kit Harington's case, there's no such thing.
Oh, probably.
Nope.
Nope.
Spooks: The Greater Good stars Tuppence Middleton, who also appeared in The Imitation Game, alongside Keira 'Sabé' Knightley.
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.
Now, I initially felt a little lost in the first act of this film, because I haven't seen Son, Second Son, Third Son, Fourth Son, Fifth Son, or Sixth Son, and that's a lot of ground to cover for someone late to the franchise. And that may well be a hoary old joke to begin the review with, but please believe me that it's more original than anything in the script for Seventh Son…
Jeff Bridges plays Gregory, a sort of alcoholic Witchfinder General channelled through Yoda and Danny Trejo, who acts surprised when the witch he imprisoned in a mountain breaks free, largely due to the fact that she's a witch. He couldn't bring himself to kill the witch because of Plot Reasons™, and so is going to spend the next hour and a half of your life attempting to do just that, aided by his new sidekick apprentice, Tom, a seventh-son-of-a-seventh-son psychic and child of a witch. Who also has a thing for witches. What could possibly go wrong?
Well, murky visuals, ghosting-3D and a script so laboured you could set your watch by it don't really help matters. The problem isn't that the film is bad (although coincidentally, it is), but that with each hackneyed plot-progression and pixel-heavy setpiece, it becomes more and more bland. It's all snarling and pouting with no spirit or conviction; like a mythology assembled by a marketing committee. The limitations of the 12A certificate deprive Seventh Son of the heft (read: violence) that the story really needs, but it's no excuse for that story being so profoundly uninteresting. The film is like a 100-minute cutscene from a very average video game that you know you won't bother playing to completion.
So whatever Jeff Bridges is trying to pull off, it's at least clear that he's having a good time doing it. Julianne Moore, on the other hand, is practically holding up a sign reading "Look, I'm in this for the money", as is Olivia Williams. It's down to Ben Barnes and Alicia Vikander to give surprisingly straight turns as the titular Seventh Son and his sorcerific love-interest. But even then the pair are constricted by the dialogue they have to deliver. Dialogue which can be neatly divided into three categories: Exposition, Cliché, and Exposition And Cliché. There's no real character development because there are no real characters. The most mysterious thing about the screenplay is how Steven 'Locke' Knight was happy to have his name attached to it.
By the time you've added in a very curious range of accents (considering the film takes place within a 100-mile radius), and an array of costume changes for the female characters which appear to have been executed with a view to selling action figures, Seventh Son isn't so much a fantasy film, more a cover-version of one.
You know you're in seriously camp territory when a gang of ruthless assassins all wear leopard-print capes.
If Lord Of The Rings is a mythological banquet, Seventh Son is chewing-gum…
Is it bollocks.
Wait until it's in a format you don't have to pay directly for (TV, Netflix etc).
Well the film industry's in real trouble if it is…
If its aim is to prove that Julianne Moore's acting skills are far better than her judgement in choosing roles, then yes it does.
*looks over spectacles*
I didn't hear one (although the volume in Screen 1 was set to 'deafening' tonight), and there really is no excuse not to cram one into this sort of thing.
Alicia Vikander starred in Son Of A Gun alongside Ewan 'Obi-Wan' McGregor.
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.
Pompeii (3D) (SPOILERS*1)
Cert: 12A / 104 mins / Dir. Paul W.S. Anderson
So, I usually get a coffee when I'm at the cinema. A soft drink will be too big if I'm on my own, and I don't eat any of the food they serve there. So, just a coffee. As with any drink in the cinema, those holders built into the seats are a godsend. It appears, however, that some bright spark decided to deposit their chewing gum at the bottom of my particular drinks-holder recently. Not seeing this in the dark, I put my coffee in there, where the heat melted the hardened gum and reanimated the confectionary, like some sort of spearmintint zombie*2. But it was dark, and I wasn't seeing this. The heat from the cup meant I didn't feel it transferring to my hand, either. The first I realised was when I I felt something sticking my hand to my phone as I ensured it was on silent. By this point the film was about to start, so I picked off what I could and resolved not to touch my face for the next hundred minutes*3. So now, I've not only got someone's hepatitis-C-laced gum on my hands for the duration of the film, but also my phone (since cleaned), and also on the inside of my phone-sleeve (currently in the freezer for gum-removal, later).
And this was still the best thing that happened in Screen 3 tonight.
I wasn't expecting much from Paul W.S. Anderson, because while I quite enjoyed the Resident Evil films, his recent Musketeers adaptation left much to be desired. The opening few minutes of Pompeii promise some rather nice cinematography and a bold, stirring score, setting the tone for the arrogance of the Roman Empire at its height. And then the cast begin to speak. Oh. The script...
Imagine a pantomime written by a twelve-year-old, but with all the jokes taken out so that you're just laughing at unintentionally funny parts. Throw in some decent fight-choreography, but set over half of the film at night so that the dimly lit sets are made even murkier by the audience's 3D glasses. Get your American actors to affect British accents which they have no hope of maintaining*4. Then just for a laugh, make sure the final scene of your film couldn't be more telegraphed if it was printed on the bottom of the cinema ticket.
Normally, I'd say that I can't remember the last time I was so bored and annoyed by something that looks so visually spectacular, but sadly I can.
Utter, utter shite.
I was happy when everyone died.
Oh, you think the trailer looks bad..?
Well, I laughed too much, but soon I even stopped doing that.
There were only fifteen people in the entire screen on the film's opening day (Orange Wednesday, as well), and the guy in the row in front went to the toilet four times. So, no.
None of these options.
Yes, I will.
No, I won't.
I thought I heard one at a couple of points, but if it was there then it was well buried.
What the actual fuck is Kiefer Sutherland doing?
Seriously, though, what?
*1 Although Paul W.S. Anderson's the one who's really spoiled everything, by making the film in the first place.
*2 Actually, that's a great name for a strip club. Some good has come out of tonight.
*3 Some achievement with a movie as face-palmingly awful as this one.
*4 All the more pointlessly because their characters wouldn't have been speaking in English anyway, so their accents aren't making anything more "believable", just more "distracting".
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.
