Well, now I know why that trailer felt massively uneven, at least. Dragged Across Concrete is like director S. Craig Zahler absolutely fucking hates you and has made something to annoy you for two and a half hours just to prove a point.
We follow a pair of well-worn cops (Brett Ridgeman*1 played by Mel Gibson, Anthony Lurasetti by Vince Vaughn) as they're placed on unpaid suspension by Chief Lt. Calvert (Don Johnson) for handling an arrest with slightly too much enthusiasm. In the meanwhile, they learn of an upcoming robbery involving recently-released con Henry Johns (Tory Kittles) which they may well be able to intercept - off the books, of course…
SOLID The story itself is solid enough, but the script is self-indulgent yet artless. You know a movie is going to be challenging when the first act involves three middle-aged white guys sitting round in an office excusing racism. Moreso when those excuses go largely unchallenged (to the point where many are underlined) into acts two and three.
Zahler does not want you to like these characters and he does not want you to like Dragged Across Concrete. Then again, I imagine it's quite difficult to make a buddy-cop thriller featuring two cops that you would not want as your buddy. There are definite notes of Jackie Brown here, but with a deliberate lack of zip, of flow.
CUTTING Zahler's script (oh yeah, he wrote this as well) is a linear series of 'and this this happened, and then that happened' events, with the most minute of background details methodically explained in conversations between characters while the story happens around them.
With some films you're worried that if you nip out to the loo, you'll miss some vital plot-point. In Dragged Across Concrete, you can be safe that by the time you get back, the protagonists will still be sitting in the same car having the same conversation, completely missing the point of what's meant to be funny*2.
MÖTLEY Why do we need a ten minute detour explaining the backstory of a bank employee who gets caught up in a heist? A lot of people get killed there and we don't hear shit about them, and none of their origin-tales have any relevance on the plot either. How is this doing anything other than giving an already bloated movie an even longer run-time?
Why are the footsteps are louder than the dialogue in this movie? Inside, outside, everywhere. It's like the audio has been recorded by taping a condenser-mic to the floor for each scene. Every single click, tap and rustle of incidental noise is far too loud, for the entirety of the film.
And perhaps most importantly, why has Vaughn's spray-in hair dye come out completely by the time they reach the garage hide-out? All he's been doing is sitting in a car.
Dragged Across Concrete is a meandering, tasteless, incoherent mess of a film, yet for all its faults I don't hate it. Apart from anything else, I don't want to give Zahler the satisfaction…
If you see a lengthy run-time as value for money and value that above likeability, sure.
This will be the film's more natural home I suspect, yes.
Not particularly.
Possible-to-likely.
There isn't.
Level 2: This film's got Don Johnson in it, and he was in Django Unchained alongside Sam 'Windu' Jackson.
*1 You called your brittly-macho, casually racist character "Brett Ridgeman"? We get it mate, we get it. [ BACK ]
*2 Ref the scene in the trailer where Vaughn is eating the sandwich in the car. This is even more drawn out in the movie (that's fine, it's part of the setup), and when he finishes he's greeted with Gibson's curmudgeonly "a single red ant could have eaten that faster". But the joke, cinematically, isn't that he took a long time. Lurasetti is eating at a pace which is completely normal for a human. The joke is the amount of self-indulgent noise he makes while doing it in an otherwise silent car. The punchline should be about eating it more quietly. Then again, nothing else is quiet in this movie, so that joke would probably fall flat, too. [ 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.
It's odd how these things come around. Two movies produced separately, but with similar themes and uncanny timing. Armageddon and Deep Impact. Olympus Has Fallen and White House Down. Skyline and Battle Los Angeles.
Cinematic synchronicity is nothing new of course, but we currently have two parables of pilfering from opposite sides of the pond, hitting the release schedules at the same time. One from the old school, one from the new; one arising from some opinionated sense of long-term revenge, one from existential dissatisfaction. Both involve the stealing of antiquities rather than cash, and both fail because the perpetrators' ultimate aim is to knock on those antiquities... for cash. One of these movies is a languorous study of obsession, guilt and regret.
The other most certainly is not, but we won't get into all that again. Yet.
There comes a point where you have to wonder whether real-life heists are worth making into movies. Because why else would filmmakers create so many fictional ones? Bart Layton's American Animals opens with the two part caption card "This is not based on a true story. This is a true story". And the truth hurts from the off. Beginning in 2003, it's coming to something when a period-piece only needs CRT monitors and Nokia 3310s to sell its era. I feel middle-aged enough as it is, thanks.
The title relates to a passage from one of the incredibly rare books held in the special collections area of Transylvania University*1 library, Kentucky. When drifting student Spencer Reinhard (Barry Keoghan) remarks on the artefacts to his directionless yet hyper-focussed friend Warren Lipka (Evan Peters), the pair begin an outlandish plot to liberate the volumes and sell them on the private market. To do this they'll need a bigger team than just the pair of them, which results in the recruitment of the less-enthusiastic Chas Allen (Blake Jenner) and Eric Borsuk (Jared Abrahamson). The players are one thing, the game itself is another. Practice makes perfect, but is there such a thing as the perfect robbery?
Playfully loose, the recounting of events surrounding the well documented 2004 theft is dependent on the recollections of those involved. And those involved - the actual thieves, having served prison time - are present on-screen, throughout. As the perpetrators freely admit here, emotional truth and historical fact can be wildly different sides of the same coin.
Revealing the real-life participants of a dramatisation isn't a new idea either of course, but here it happens early, frequently and becomes how the story is told. Documentary interview footage with the protagonists' parents, college lecturers and the boys themselves intersperses the runtime, threatening to upset the pacing at first, since this introspective dramatisation is not quite the feature which the trailer was selling. The finished product comes out at around 80% film, 20% retrospective, but the drama never lets you forget its source.
American Animals isn't necessarily bringing anything new to the genre, but that's because it's players are consciously imitating, not innovating. Layton's film is as much about art as it is about crime. The art of planning a robbery and the creative leaps a conscience will take afterward to justify it. At one point, the boys are shown watching crime movies to help them coordinate their own sting. This is the ultimate in self awareness from the writer/director, as they reap the rewards of such poor research, and in doing so create the perfect piece to not watch before planning a blag.
But the depiction of the robbery itself is tense and awkward in equal measure, a real masterclass is visual storytelling. While this a tale told from the robbers' perspective(s), they're not presented as heroes. The audience isn't willing them to succeed as much as they are to just stop. And in terms of character motivation, interaction and development American Animals is leagues ahead of that structurally similar British offering.
Evan Peters appears at first to be acting in a much slicker, more intense film. Although the more interview time we spend with the real Warren, the more we realise how accurate that probably is. Barry Keoghan is on cracking form as Spencer, with boredom and stress fighting for the centre-stage spot in his psyche. This is, it has to be said, primarily their show. Although Blake Jenner and Jared Abrahamson make up the other 50% of the crew, the focus on their characters is as hesitant as their characters' contribution to the heist.
What's interesting is that there's surprisingly little moralising other than the self-reflection*2. The gang didn't fail because Theft Is Bad, they failed because they didn't plan properly and didn't stick to the things they had covered. They fucked up, end of. Then again, one of the guys uses his mobile phone in a library, so they deserve everything coming to them, frankly.
Ponderous and at times more than a little self-indulgent, much of the first hour feels like a story waiting to begin. But when it does, there's no turning back. Ultimately, the movie is about Generation Y's discontent at being expected to carry on the suburban phase of the American Dream, which despite its socio-geographical specificity is something most younger viewers will click with.
American Animals may be a little too uneven to be at the top of its game, but it knows what it wants to say and it says that well.
And compared to King Of Thieves, it's like fucking Reservoir Dogs…
21.
If you can, rainy afternoon, sure.
It'll be a streamer at first, then buy when it comes down to a sensible price for a movie you're not going to be watching every week.
Difficult to say as it's so much of its own thing.
Nope.
Nope.
Level 2: Barry Keoghan is in this, and he was in that Dunkirk with Tom 'Stormtrooper from The Last Jedi who was cut out of the final edit but fuck it he's in the deleted scenes and the novelisation so it still counts and you know fine well if you or I had been in that suit we'd be telling everyone about it at every opportunity' Hardy.
*1 Yes, it's really called this; no, I don't understand either. Presumably just down the road from St Addams Comprehensive School and The Munsters Adult Education Centre, I don't know. Don't @ me. [ BACK ]
*2 Although seriously lads, you zip-tied a librarian and she wet herself. You didn't kill anyone, get over 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.
Much like the preview screening I attended last week, I'm not entirely convinced I'm on the same page as this film*1. All that follows is highly subjective and based on the track record that any Matt Damon movie being released in the early months of the year will likely be found wanting…
And so, Downsizing is the new feature project from writer/director Alexander Payne and co-writer Jim Taylor, the team behind Sideways. It follows the aforementioned Damon as Paul Safranek, a low-level occupational therapist*2 looking for a fresh start in life and opting for a revolutionary miniaturisation technique, whereby the newly-small subjects live in closed communities at a similarly reduced financial burden, with the added benefit of having a much smaller eco-footprint. When his wife backs out of the procedure at the last minute (that's not a spoiler, it's in the trailer), Paul has to adjust to his new life alone, hoping to fit into the new society with the ease with which it was all advertised. Small chance.
Credit where it's due, this is certainly an interesting premise for a movie. But Downsizing’s natural home is the 85-minute wry, quirky, introspective comedy with a yellow poster, mainly playing in the smaller, indie cinemas and finding its real audience on DVD/Streaming. So, not a 135 minute multiplex navel-gazeathon starring Matt Damon; a film that does have funny jokes, but which arrive so sporadically that they feel like less of a feature and more callbacks to previous revisions of the screenplay.
By the time that Paul works out that the the grass isn't necessarily greener on the other side (a promise literally spelled out by the set of the film at one point), the audience has realised that about 45 minutes earlier, on account of having thought the concept through for more than 30 seconds. It's entirely possible that the central character’s folly is intentional of course, but if that's the case then there’s no real moment of realisation to act as his redemption or turning-point - Paul just rolls with his de-escalating flow of poor choices until around two minutes from the end of the movie, by which point he’s really just resigned to not having a choice, anyway.
I know this seems like I’m being unduly harsh on what is essentially a social parable in a fantasy setting, but that metaphor is so heavy-handed that it becomes worn-out in the first act, and the fantasy-aspect is presented as (albeit inconsistent and hazily explained) science, throughout. Downsizing is occasionally intriguing from a cinematography point of view, managing to represent environments as miniature with very few visual reference points to the things which aren't. Although there are an equal number of scenes where everything in-shot is small, so just looks normal as a result*3.
Christoph Waltz and Udo Kier put in good turns at a 'character' level, but many of the film’s smaller, more incidental parts appear to be filled by people who have never acted before. That said, it’s a point of more genuine concern that Kristen Wiig gets her name on at least one version the poster when Hong Chau doesn’t*4. The former’s role is effectively a cameo, while the latter’s is positively scene-stealing, as Chau out-acts the rest of the cast combined. My main gripe on the performance front has to be Matt Damon, though. He's not outright awful, but as the audience's surrogate in this crazy world, all the wonder, excitement, fear, disappointment, discovery and transformation is supposed to be relayed through the central performer. Instead we get Matt Damon, the expressive equivalent of a Bunraku performance being led by wooden spoon a with face drawn on it in marker. Damon brings nothing to this screenplay. Nothing. And the completed film returns the favour, accordingly.
In terms of a surreal morality tale with a premise so brittle it falls apart the moment it's examined, Being John Malkovich already has this covered. And as a saccharine infused midlife crisis for the over-privileged 21st century white male, Ben Stiller was skateboarding past volcanos in 2013 (also with Kristen Wiig). But if all you're after is a deconstruction of the American dream, Damon himself is better in the still-troublesome Suburbicon.
A neat idea, Downsizing gets worse the more the runtime grows.
Which is either faintly ironic or perfectly apt, I'm not sure which.
*2 Not the low-level, unhappy call centre worker we see in the trailer. That's the shit job he gets after being made small. Now I'm aware that this revelation is technically a spoiler, but I think it's important to note that the trailer is selling a markedly different film to the one which actually plays out. [ BACK ]
*3 And let's not get into how some materials just wouldn't scale down to make their functionally-identical small-world versions. As I said, it’s inconsistent at best. [ BACK ]
*4 But we shouldn't lose sight of the fact that on the main-version of the poster, neither Kristen Wiig nor Hong Chau's names appear, but Alexander Payne's does. Three times... [ 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.
