I have to be honest and say that the mawkish and patronising trailer for Mel Gibson's true-story wartime epic didn't put me in the most receptive frame of mind for the film*1, and nor indeed did the opening of that film itself, comprising a battlefield scene from the climactic sequence enacted in slow-motion with full orchestral accompaniment, and inserted apparently for the members of the audience who want All The Guns And Explosions Immediately Now. Was young Mel going to bring us a Spielberg film, after all? This is, after all, a film about a pacifist in a war-zone, so we should expect some level of preaching, right?
After the title sequence, the film drops a 'Fifteen years earlier' card and we see a pivotal moment in the young protagonist Desmond Doss's life. Skip forward from that, and we meet the adult Desmond (Andrew Garfield), properly for the first time. By now, we're in more familiar, character-building territory, with narrative support coming from his mother (Rachel Griffiths) and father (Hugo Weaving), as he meets his wife-to-be, Dorothy (Teresa Palmer). And the latter three are all great performers, but the thing which already makes the film shine at this early point is Andrew Garfield. He's great, isn't he? Like, from his first scene where he's in a church, playfully making fun of his mother's choir (even if he is soon seen breaking the Code of Conduct by talking in a cinema, of course*2). Garfield brings an optimistic sincerity to his role as a conscientious objector who signed up to serve in the Army medical corps, where many another actor would have gone for naive righteousness. And while the trailer suggests that everyone around him is a one-note cutout, there to dissuade and belittle Doss until some third-act revelation, I was delighted that that's not the case. Those scenes in the trailer do take place of course, but at a pace which is kinder to everyone involved.
So, Act 2 comes along and with it the first battle on the titular Ridge. Good god. The utter, utter carnage. As much as I'm a wooly liberal at heart, this first extended sequence is deeply satisfying, cinematically*3. I can only describe what we see as Walking Dead levels of gore and mutilation. More interestingly, there's no score during this first fight, just a symphony of ordnance, screaming and the coursing of adrenaline. And that's worth noting because the second-wave battle the next day, and Doss's subsequent rescue-mission do have the soundtrack running behind them, which naturally increases the emotion of what we see, but lessens the overall impact.
As the film progresses, the characters are filled in more intricately, as is the gravity of the situation. And sure, it gets a little bit pantomime on occasion, but the film's worst pouting excesses are still easily forgivable. At two hours twenty minutes, this isn't a short tale, but it's worth every minute. And true-story or not, you will find yourself holding your breath and wondering who's going to make it. As is so often the way with this type of film, the closing segment shows archive interview footage from surviving members of the platoon and Doss's family*4; as is less-frequent, the film earns this entirely.
Thoroughly pleased to have my cynicism thwarted, Hacksaw Ridge is an outstanding film. Mel Gibson has done the unfathomable and made a movie which is completely respectful of pacifism, whilst also being unrepentantly gleeful in its violence.
He's also done the unimaginable by making a movie where Vince Vaughn and Sam Worthington are an actual pleasure to watch*5…
…although am I alone in thinking the poster tagline is basically Mel Gibson telling Clint Eastwood to fuck right off?
At this rate, I suspect that Eastwood is going to jump on Gibson after school…
Saving Private Ryan, I imagine.
(Although I haven't seen that. No, you shut up.)
For the big and the loud? Oh, yes.
It certainly does.
It's up-there.
Probably not.
Of COURSE there bloody is!
Level 2: Andrew Garfield was in that Silence with Qui-Gon JinnandKylo Ren. I mean yeah, that's a recent one, but I think it's worth not-forgetting.
*1 To the point where I had tickets for Monday's preview-screening, but after a shitty day at work, decided I couldn't handle being condescended to for two hours, knowing that the film was on general release from Thursday anyway. [ BACK ]
*2 Where young Desmond is pestering his date through the newsreel at the start. Okay it's not during the movie itself, but it's more important than trailers or something, y'know? Actually, it occurred to me in this scene that it would have been cool for Gibson to have used the newsreel footage we see in the first Captain America film, to easter-egg this movie into MCU continuity. But then it occurred to me that Hugo Weaving plays the Red Skull in The First Avenger, and he plays Desmond's dad in Hacksaw Ridge. And if Des's compatriots are initially reticent about going into battle with a pacifist by their side, I shouldn't imagine they'd feel any better if they found out his old man was the head of the Hitler-disowned Nazi deep-science division, Hydra. This is why I'm not a screenwriter, by the way. [ BACK ]
*3 Although I now want to see a sequence of that intensity, but with Stormtroopers and Rebel Fleet Troopers, like a live-action R-rated Battlefront. And naturally, I know that's never going to happen. [ BACK ]
*4 Although I'm not going to lie, from the 2003 interview we see at the end of the film, the real, actual Desmond Dossdoes remind of of Henry Kane from Poltergeist II, and that does kind of take the glow off the film a bit. Imagine lying bleeding out on a battlefield when he comes over to grab you, saying everything's going to be just fine… [ BACK ]
*4 And yes, you're right - For the first time I've actually hyperlinked these footnotes so you can just flip up and down at a click/tap. It's a pain in the arse as I manually code all this, but I might just keep it up. That's how much I care about your scrolling-finger… [ 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.
Act I: "What, me? Oh, I'm just working late and alone in a poorly-lit industrial unit full of mannequins on a deserted business-park. Yeah, I'm sure nothing could go wrong…" A curiously late entry this far into the season for David Sandberg's Lights Out, this is a strict 'genre-flick'. Based on his short film by the same name, I have - to be brutally fair - seen vintage steam engines that were less mechanical. That's not to say it's an inherently bad film, but it feels like someone's done a paint-by-numbers horror movie, and just ended up using black for most of the colours, anyway. A surprisingly capable cast cruise through this tale of a traumatised woman and her mildly dysfunctional family, as they're plagued by a creature known as Diana, who exists only in the darkness and has a penchant for destroying the light.
This is a very efficiently made movie, but the scares are overly-telegraphed and the plot unfurls itself without building up the tension required for any kind of reveal (although at a lean 81 minutes, there really isn't time for holding anything back). As far as the writing goes, the screenplay uses mental illness and a primal fear of the dark as a clever analogy for mental illness and a primal fear of the dark. Yeah.
Act II: "Oh, I seem to have conveniently stumbled across an old filing-box full of photographs, case notes and an audio-recording of the time when our nemesis was a patient in a psychiatric unit. Well now that mystery's fully unravelled, I'm sure nothing could go wrong…" Credit where it's completely due though, the premise of Lights Out means the film's budget is used excellently, with the most tense scenes relying on little more than lighting-states and acting. Because when your antagonist only appears in silhouette, you can achieve a hell of a lot with a hell of a little. The make-up box is broken out for the climactic showdown, but the film's earned it by that point. In fact, the fundamentals of lighting and acting are executed so well that it underlines how much they're propping up the pick'n'mix screenplay.
Teresa Palmer heads up the cast as a Movie Metaller*1 who has to deal with the recurring trauma of her mother and protection of her younger brother, played by Gabriel Bateman (who's still young enough to play all this shit with a straight face and not look bored with his lines, unlike the rest of the cast). Still, it's no relief to realise that after two thudding Silent Hill movies, Maria Bello's role in Lights Out as the scared/bewildered/psychotic mother means that her career hasn't moved on a single iota.
Act III: "Well, I guess I'll just have to venture alone down into this cellar to restore the power and lighting we so desperately need. I have a completely non-brittle UV tube with me though, so I'm sure nothing could go wrong…" I think my favourite aspect is that a character dies in the first five minutes (a character who knows the film's three central characters and is shown to be in regular contact with at least one of them), and nobody even notices until about two minutes before the end. Which in plot-time is about two whole days.
Bulletproof, Dave; bulletproof…
All Of The Horror™.
Not particularly.
Not particularly.
I should hope not.
Doubtful.
There isn't.
Level 2: Lights Out features Andi Osho, who appeared in three episodes of Holby City back in 2012 which also starred Hugh 'Panaka' Quarshie.
*1 The kind of Metaller who's Demonstrably Metal™ because she a) wears black-mesh tops, b) lives in a flat above a tattoo-parlour and c) has an Avenged Sevenfold poster blu-tacked at an unconventional angle in her largely mainstream flat. I think there's supposed to be some subtext that because she had some poorly-explained childhood trauma, this turned her All Metal™. But it's that kind of Metal™ where someone appears to have ram-raided Hot Topic before borrowing Trivium's greatest hits, rather than adopting any kind of alternative ethos at all…
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.
Warm Bodies Cert: 12 / 97 mins / Dir. Jonathan Levine
Another genre-bending oddity, and a good indicator that there's more to be done with zombies than just growling and clawing - if it's handled with care. Warm Bodies succeeds on some levels and boldly fails on others, never quite managing to clear the hurdle of supernatural romance. It's this, hand-in-hand with its near constant vocal-soundtrack, that holds the film back and will leave many dismissing it as a sub-Twilight teen movie. Think of it as a Shakespeare-adaptation (for the most part, the end isn't that dark), and it holds the attention a lot better.
Nicholas Hoult is a great choice as R, the zombie at the centre of it all, and reminded me at times of a young Tom Cruise. It's his eloquent voice-over that really sells it, being the only truly unique selling point of the film. Teresa Palmer plays a confident second-fiddle, doing most of the heavy-lifting in terms of dialogue, and Rob Corddry handles his share of the undead-shambling with a relaxed ease. John Malcovich pretty much phones in his role, which he can't really be blamed for given the part he has.
Overall, I found it to be rather sweet and slightly fascinating, but the purist in me couldn't detach from the fact that the zombies here may look in keeping with the Romero-school, but they don't follow any of the same rules. I loved the memory-transference caused by the eating of brains; Running-zombies I can handle, but talking corpses had me raising an eyebrow; Why don't the Bonies need to be shot in the head like the Walkers?; The decomposition of necrotic tissue alone would render the plot resolution impossible…
And when you're complaining that the zombies in a film 'wouldn't work like that', you know you're in too deep. Either way, it's still a better zombie film than World War Z.
Warm Bodies is a valiant effort, but I think I'm better off sticking to The Walking Dead.
If anything, the film's more ponderous than the trailer, but yes.
Pretty much.
I think so.
Pay-to-rent, unless you're already sold on it.
No.
At some point.
I don't recall catching one, but I could be mistaken.
Leaving aside the mechanics of how the undead function in this film, is talking zombies a step too far? If the deceased brain can hold enough residual charge to handle walking and eating, wouldn't there be enough left for basic words (if not actual conversation)? Let me know what you think.
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 'catch-up' review. I watched this film at home, not at the cinema. I saw the trailer for this at the cinema, and I would have seen the film there too, but they didn't/couldn't show it. So now iTunes, Amazon, Netflix and Blockbuster get to reap the rewards of my local's advance-advertising, and I'm sure they're delighted. Now you may say "oh come on, they can't show everything down there", and that would be a valid point if they didn't do things like running Taken 2 for six weeks. Was it that successful? No, I don't think so. Twilight? Batman? Les Mes? Sure, go for it; if they're pulling the punters in then keep making that money. But Taken 2? I ask you. Anyway, this is essentially a DVD review, but still of a new(ish) film. There. I'm glad that's sorted.
• 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.
