2022: Another Year In (Another Lack Of) Review

Ugh. 2022.
The apparent knock-on of The Dark Times is that global film production is still in absolute flux, thanks in no small part to online-streaming having knocked distribution into a cocked hat. I'm not saying that all the best stuff's going direct to the small screen, because from my (admittedly undocumented) experience, that's clearly not the case either.

My year began with good intentions of course, as most do. The usual ongoing cinema-reviews were going to be supplemented with catch-up pieces from home, and I'd even pick back up on my list of Can't Believe I Haven't Seen classics. Didn't fucking happen of course, since February's customary despondency fell in lockstep with the frankly 'challenging' standard of newly-released entertainment, with studios veering wildly between 'brainless crowd pleaser for crowds which still aren't there' and 'we're putting this out because even Netflix wasn't interested in throwing money into promoting it as new'.

It's not that all new films are crap.
I'm saying that seem to I care far less about them either way.

That said, my creative energies have been diverted a little (as you are possibly aware from the social-feeds of this site). The retro-TV podcast which I co-host goes from strength to strength, and a short sub-series on movies back in May/June created crossover-posts where I'd write here about them as well. Whereas the audio shows lovingly take the piss out of these celluloid gems, the written versions re-imagine them in a far darker light.

But I digress. This post is is a belated catchup on what I actually watched at the cinema. I only clocked 50 visits this year, the least number of times I've been since 2010. And hand-on-heart, this isn't just down to the choice on offer; I have resolutely refused to spend time sitting in front of movies which did not appeal from their trailers - precisely the kind of movies I'd previously have gone to see as a matter of course. If a trailer doesn't do the job of selling the film to me (the only job it has), I very much doubt I'd be surprised by the final product. Because of this, there's nothing below about Avatar, Uncharted, Three Thousand Years Of Longing, Black Adam, Secrets Of Dumbledore, Rise of Gru, Mrs Harris Going To Paris, Morbius, Strange World, Prey For The Devil and definitely nothing on the cultural fucking atrocity that appeared to be Ticket To Paradise. These might all be marvellous of course, it's my loss in not knowing.

Anyway, here's what I managed to get myself to the pictures for, that I didn't write about here...

THE FILMS

Licorice Pizza
Paul Thomas Anderson, 128m
I'm not a scholar of PTA, so the only thing I was impressed with here was his minute attention to detailing the most unlikable characters at the centre of his own film. Technically exquisite, emotionally excruciating...

Nightmare Alley
Guillermo del Toro, 150m
Like a beautifully-filmed episode of Hustle where there's no intricate twist anywhere to be found. Blanchett's femme-fatale character is so overplayed she's basically a cartoon. GDT is better than this.

Death On The Nile
Kenneth Branagh, 121m
Okay this was always going to be a hard-sell with me as I adore both the Ustinov and Suchet versions, but Branagh ditches half the characters, does nothing with the rest and assembles a cast so bland to tell the story that the world would be a better place if he just hadn't bothered. I mean, who hires French & Saunders and then utterly wastes having French & Saunders on-set? And the moustache doesn't need an origins-flashback, you tool.

The Batman
Matt Reeves, 176m
Very decent stuff. Not my sandpit to play in, but I enjoyed this thoroughly. Loved the performances, and only felt let down by the simplistic pay-off to Riddler's character arc and the screenwriting genius of protecting Gotham's city folk from flooding by herding them into a building which is beneath ground-level. This film works best as a one-off, standalone snapshot, so naturally DC are going to make more...

Phantom Of The Open
Craig Roberts, 102m
Sunday afternoon film. Great cast, decent scripting and solid performances, but can't overcome the hurdle of its own tweeness.

The Duke
Roger Michell, 95m
Was on standby for eye-rolling levels of cinematic saccharine, but found this surprisingly enjoyable due to it having a properly crafted storyline.

The Unbearable Weight Of Massive Talent
Tom Gormican, 107m
If you think the idea of Nicholas Cage playing Nicholas Cage in a movie about Nicholas Cage is exciting, innovative or hilarious, you are going to love this movie. I mean it's basically fine, but the central conceit wears thin pretty quickly, and after that it's just another Ferrell/Wahlberg action comedy with a different label. Consistently entertaining, but far too in love with itself.

Operation Mincemeat
John Madden, 122m
A timely reminder for us here in Blighty that the winning team in the Second World War achieved victory despite having some unlikable arseholes in its ranks, not because of that. Madden's film is too playfully throwaway for Saturday night historical-drama territory and too introverted and acidic for Sunday afternoons. Not a total loss, but the cast are lost with a script still in its second-draft.

The Lost City
Aaron Nee, 112m
An all-star action rom-com, written in caps-lock and painted in neon? Yeah, I was surprised I loved it as well. The cast are committed, this never takes itself seriously and is a better film for that. An unexpected highlight of the year.

The Northman
Robert Eggers, 131m
Takes itself too seriously. Visually dark and tonally linear. Eggers is better than this (The VVitch, The Lighthouse), although I suspect his cast really aren't...

Sonic The Hedgehog 2
Jeff Fowler, 122m
Like a lot of movies, this sequel could never re-capture what made its predecessor a pleasant, lightning-in-a-bottle surprise. It's fine; check-the-boxes, straight-to-video fare which is only intended for an audience who are into spotting Easter-eggs over an actual story...

Doctor Strange In The Multiverse Of Madness
Sam Raimi, 121m
The closest the MCU have/will come to making an outright horror flick. There are pacing, plotting and performance issues and I loved this anyway. Certainly the best it could possibly be without Scott Derrickson at the helm, but a beautiful continuation of his 2016 work.

Everything Everywhere All At Once
Daniels, 139m
Not feeling the love for this. Some moments of audience-baiting genius (subtitled rocks), but spends far too much time being pleased with itself for an arthouse mashup of Brazil and Jet Li's The One...

Men
Alex Garland, 100m
Nice filmmaking, shame about the story. The performances and visual crafting here are outright beautiful, just don't expect the screenplay to have any meaning other than what's ham-fistedly reeled out in its final moments.

Doctor Strange In The Multiverse Of Madness
Sam Raimi, 121m
Back to this one for a second-pass (a rarity this year), revelling in Raimi's revelling in the undead.

The Black Phone
Scott Derrickson, 99m
Very strong performances (this, from someone who usually detests Ethan Hawke) and visual design, and a weirdly flawed narrative where one half of it is compelling and the other is utterly needless other than changing the scenery. Should probably have written about this because I have issues with the aspects which are holding back what should be a great movie. Is this really what Derrickson bailed out of Doctor Strange for..?

Thor: Love & Thunder
Taika Waititi, 114m
Despite the chronic mis-casting of Christian Bale bringing DC energy to a Marvel character and wondering why his performance falls flat on its arse, I absolutely loved this. Okay it hasn't got the flow of Ragnarok, but I don't think anyone realistically expected it to. And yet I didn't go back and see this again during its run, unheard of for Legacy-Marvel. Suspect that has more to do with me in 2022 than the film, though.

Bullet Train
David Leitch, 121m
Film of the year, there I said it. It's messy, it's too long and it's not sure who its main character is supposed to be, but Bullet Train is very bright, very fast and very silly. Like Guy Ritchie directing a Deadpool movie. Full ruddy marks.

Nope
Jordan Peele, 125m
Maybe it's a first-world problem to expect a movie from a provenly-brilliant writer/director to have a coherent narrative and structure, but Nope is a mish-mash of interesting ideas which haven't been developed properly, dumped out in this form because no one at the studio had the cojones to tell Peele to go back and fix it. If this film had come from any other director it would have been utterly roasted, and deservedly so.

Bullet Train
David Leitch, 121m
This was still on, so why wouldn't I go and see it again? Joyous.

Fisherman's Friends: One And All
Meg Leonard / Nick Moorcroft, 112m
Better than it has any right to be and nowhere near good enough to have been green-lit in the first place. The soundtrack is still superb, the scenery is still gorgeous, but that's not enough the second time round.

Nope
Jordan Peele, 125m
Just to make sure. Yeah, I was sure the first time.

Bodies Bodies Bodies
Halina Reijn, 90m
Okay my comparative-pool is smaller than most this year, but this is hands-down the worst film on the list. 94 minutes of mumbling, shrieking and hand-held cameras in the dark. A couple of interesting shots, but I'm actually slightly impressed with how relentlessly awful it is.

The Invitation
Jessica M. Thompson, 101m
Hammy, overcooked, and features some of the very worst British Person Dialogue Written By Someone Who Is Not British™ you have ever heard. But it's got the fun swagger of a decent mid-90s vampire romp. I've certainly seen far worse.

Top Gun
Tony Scott, 111m
First time I'd seen this since the late 80s, first time ever in a cinema. And I don't care what people say, Top Gun is a demonstrably bad film. Deplorable characters, next to no story, just a series of loud events for the best part of two hours while people who like the sound of engines tell themselves they're fans of cinema now. Seriously, I almost walked out...

Top Gun: Maverick
Joseph Kosinski, 131m
...which is why I was so surprised when I enjoyed this immediately afterward. The characters are still cardboard at best, and the fixation with afterburners and destroying what's left of my low-frequency hearing still remains, and the story (such as it is) is basically the Death Star trench-run, but I had fun with this. I'll never intentionally watch it again, but I had fun.

Fall
Scott Mann, 107m
Beautifully shot, well assembled but appallingly written. Fall should have ended after 25 minutes with a Wilhelm Scream. All I'm saying is, this film was better when it was an episode of Bottom.

Bullet Train
David Leitch, 121m
Yes, again.

Hatching
Hanna Bergholm, 87m
As social, coming-of-age metaphors go it's incredibly on the nose, and structurally far from perfect. But for sheer bloody-minded, pent-up, what-the-fuckery Hatching is very solid.

See How They Run
Tom George, 94m
Wes Anderson-lite, and there's something missing in the 'togetherness' of the film as a whole, but it's satisfying and entertaining enough for casual fans of Agatha Christie.

Jaws
Steven Spielberg, 124m
Yeah, it's not great. Sure it's iconic an'all, and obviously worked better for a 1975 audience, but I found the characters to be almost entirely one-note in a story which is grindingly linear. I say this because I know for a fact that the novel has layers which just aren't represented here. Yeah, this and Top Gun. It's almost as if 'a shark' and 'a plane' aren't quite enough for me on their own...

Smile
Parker Finn, 115m
A few superb performances fail to save this social-horror involving a tag based curse which takes seven terrifying-vision-filled days to kill its victim. Well done guys, you've invented The Ring a mere 24 years, 1 reboot and 8 sequels after it already existed.

The Lost King
Stephen Frears
Sunday afternoon. It's fine. Nothing to disappoint, nothing to shock, exactly what you expect. If anything, it's Sally Hawkins I feel sorry for, this is all on her CV...

Halloween Ends
David Gordon Green, 111m
Solid cinematography and a few nice set-pieces, but this is a tonal car-crash of a movie. Narratively and emotionally incoherent, this feels like it's been directed by three people, none of whom have met one another.

The Banshees Of Inishirin
Martin McDonagh, 109m
Intriguing and bleak in equal measure. At one point I was literally crying with laughter, and by the end I was expecting the cinema staff to be handing out leaflets for Dignitas. Wouldn't go so far as to say I enjoyed this, but I certainly appreciated the fuck out of it.

Black Panther: Wakanda Forever
Ryan Coogler, 161m
Torn between acting as an industry-tribute to Chadwick Boseman (which it does very well, when it remembers), and dragging out a b-list story with badly chosen characters and GCSE moralising (I think you can tell how that goes). To be fair, this entertained me all the time it was on and as soon as I stepped out into the foyer I knew I didn't need to watch it again. Also, no post-credits scene: what the fuck, Marvel? Don't get all 'sombre and respectful actually' after a movie where you had the gall to bring the atrocious Sub-Mariner on to the stage...

Confess, Fletch
Greg Mottola, 95m
By no means perfect (more a series of sketches than an actual narrative), but very entertaining in an old-school, disposable, 1980s action-farce kind of a way.

The Menu
Mark Mylod, 107m
Plays like a Shyamalan movie at every single turn, until the crescendo when you realise the twist is that the film is going to do exactly what it said it would. For this reason: decent.

She Said
Maria Schrader, 128m
The template for this 'January Oscar-Bait movies for people who love current affairs but apparently don't watch the news' outing is tried and tested now, but I'll happily admit I was surprised by how fucking good this is. Always justly furious, never preaching or condescending. A masterclass in social filmmaking.

Living
Oliver Hermanus, 102m
Yes it's twee, yes it's meandering, yes it plays like a cinematic mood-board rather than a story, but Bill Nighy raises his game above autopilot and just about saves this.

Bones And All
Luca Guadagnino, 125m
Weirdly decent considering how much the director and the cast seem determined to not let the audience enjoy the story or any of its players. Too drab for a horror, too visceral for a YA drama, but its compelling characters make this worth a watch.

Violent Night
Tommy Wirkola, 112m
Sure, it's an r-rated Home Alone and the storyline is average at best, but Wirkola and his cast embrace the live-action slapstick in a way that's impossible not to enjoy. And the absolute, nailed-on stroke of genius that makes this really work is that the film remains committed to Santa being real throughout (which of course, he is).

The Muppet Christmas Carol
Brian Henson, 89m
Fully restored version, remastered and with When Love Is Gone back in there. This very well may be the single greatest film of all time, and bear in mind I say that as someone with three Star Wars tattoos and none of The Muppets...

The Silent Twins
Agnieszka Smoczynska, 113m
It's not every true-story that's got the balls to haphazardly show its unintelligibly dialogued protagonists as inherently unlikable. Awful. Then because there's no story, there's no ending - the film just finishes as things stop happening. Absolute scenes, although it's still nowhere near as bad as Bodies Bodies Bodies.

Nocebo
Lorcan Finnegan, 97m
Solid performances from the central cast crumble as soon as the film cack-handedly telegraphs that it's going to half-inch the sweatshop subplot from that shit Steve Coogan film. Everything afterward is precisely what it deserves to be.

The Pale Blue Eye
Scott Cooper, 128m
Languorously pacing proves to be this film's greatest ally, as a story that's just on the right side of batshit-crazy builds the atmosphere of paranoid hyper-reality required to make it work. A lovely mood-piece for the cold winter months, this will be largely (and wrongly) overlooked.

THE CONCLUSION

Whatever. 2022 has felt - overall - grindingly average, and my heart goes out to the cinema industry when this is all they've got to attract customers to spend money. I haven't cancelled my Unlimited card, but this is the first year I've thought very seriously about it on more than one occasion. Other than Indiana Jones, there are currently no 2023 movies which I'm actually excited about seeing. And I'm not ready to bin this blog off completely yet (if I was, it'd all just disappear), but I need to formulate a quicker way of writing about movies. This is the one aspect of blogging which I've got worse at over the years, with my obsession over formatting outweighing spontaneous efficiency.

I'd like to say reviews are going to pick back up, but that's precisely the sort of thing I always come out with at the end of December. Let's see. No promises, no regrets.

Let's all just agree to never do 2022 again...

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 Return Of Captain Invincible

The Return Of Captain Invincible
Cert: PG / 91 mins / Dir. Phillippe Mora / Trailer

Fuck them.
Fuck them all.

Our hero sits in a cold debriefing-room, an open prison cell in all but name. Appearing before a congressional committee has not gone well, although he never thought it would. The usual lines about communism and un-American activities were spun out, but everyone gets that treatment. What made this different was the sheer ingratitude of it all. Captain Invincible essentially won the war for these fucks, basically saved the damned world. And now, less than a decade later, to be hauled across the coals as if everything he'd done - every gesture, every sacrifice, every borderline war-crime - hadn't been flat-out encouraged by the self-same people. Ridiculous. When you've outlived your usefulness, they treat you like trash. Plus ça change. You always knew this day would come, you could see them becoming their own enemy even then.

No, fuck them. Time to make a break, anyway. Time to get the hell out of this city, this country. Sometimes it's better than distance yourself and love the memory of a thing than stick around and watch it burn from within. You can always come back when things are better. That's an option. Besides, a rest will do you good. And if your hunch is right, you're going to need it.

Time to go.

It's a downbeat opening, but fits the tone of Phillippe Mora's 1983 exploration of the superhero perfectly. Bleakly introspective at every corner, The Return Of Captain Invincible proved, somewhat paradoxically, to be box-office Kryptonite, setting back the cinematic careers of its stars Alan Arkin and Christopher Lee by some measure, and relegating its only notable female performer Kate Fitzpatrick to a life of daytime soaps form that point onward. What's more ironic, however, is that the film is so much more than it was given credit for at the time. Appearing to be little more than a wry knock-off of Richard Donner's burgeoning Superman franchise, screenwriters Andrew Gaty and Steven E de Souza instead managed to distill the essences of Watchmen, The First Avenger and Logan before any of those existed, soak the whole thing in gin and serve it up with a bleary eye and a crooked smile. Rarely has a film felt so before its time.

The first act is relatively linear, working through a series of flashbacks as our troubled eponymous hero (Arkin) recalls being selected by the US government for use in the Second World War both as a propaganda machine and an actual weapon. It's shown at this point (although never clearly explained), that Captain Invincible does actually have superhuman powers, and that he was deeply instrumental in the war effort. Society loves and hates celebrity in equal measure of course, and undiagnosed PTSD leads to Cap having a chemically-induced breakdown in the years following Allied victory. A show-trial was held by the notorious Senator McCarthy accusing Cap of being a communist, but the real reason for him being 'dropped' by the authorities was a series of psychiatric reports (carried out too late, naturally) and his continued substance abuse.

Part of Cap's delerium is his continued belief that 'Mr Midnight' - wartime nemesis and second-in-command of Hitler in the supernatural sciences division, played in flashbacks by Christopher Lee - managed to escape death and is carrying out a series of grisly urban murders in the early 1980s, targeting those he deems 'undesirable'...

In the oppressive heat of a decaying city, sirens wail their distress in the distance. The alleyway is filthy, the stained tarpaulin doubly so. Pulled half to one side by the investigating officer and then quickly dropped as he regurgitated his lunch elsewhere, the remains of a body lie exposed to the fetid, stifling air. Flies already attendant as devotees to a shrine, the eyes stare glassily to the heavens - one of the few very features still identifying the mass as being formerly human. A blackened 'M' is branded into what appears to be an exposed organ, although which one - and through which part of the torso it is currently showing - is unclear.

And this, muses Captain Invincible, is the irony. This is end-point calling card which negates the very the point that 'Mister Midnight' thinks he's making. The war-time supervillain has returned like the proverbial bad penny and begun an openly racist killing-spree, knowing full well this is on The Captain's home-turf, baiting him back into active service while continuing the hopelessly misguided aims of the Third Reich. That Midnight was never German never stopped him or caused any impediment to his rise to deputational power. And now, now that his dreams of 'mass extermination' have dwindled down to the evisceration of individual citizens in conurbated squalor... the fact that Midnight's inhuman deeds leave their victims in a state so utterly horrific that their ethnicity cannot even be determined - emphasising the point that humans share far more common traits than those which superficially separate them... well, that irony is lost on him.

A buildup of gases is currently finding a vent from some fold or tear in the... in the meat in front of them, and another officer feigns discretion as she leaves to vomit. 'Okay', thinks Captain Invincible, 'maybe I am back after all...'

So far, so comic-book; a rollicking adventure with admittedly sharp edges. But things take a far darker turn in the present day as we learn that 'Mr Midnight' never existed, being himself a propaganda effort by the Axis powers to mock the Western obsession with comic book culture. However, Captain Invincible has spent so many years - during the war and after it - absorbing nazi and neo-nazi operational literature that an unexplored level of his psyche has embraced it. Cap's patriorism has intensified and turned instead to psychotic fascism, becoming the very thing he's sworn to destroy. The murders of immigrant and ethnic minority citizens have been happening, but they've been carried out by Captain Invincible's alter-alter ego, "Mister Midnight" during a series of blackouts previously attributed to his drug and alcohol dependency.

Again this turn of events feels uncannily prescient, as it not only inspired much of the work of Alan Moore but more soberly presaged real-world politics of the last decade. The Return Of Captain Invincible is a blistering and acerbic exploration of the boundaries of sanity through geo-political war and social unrest. It's a shame therefore that the film jumps the shark in no style at all, cack-handedly underlining its villain's mania by having Arkin's character commit the crimes of his nemesis wide-eyed and in full blackface (hence the name 'Mr Midnight'). This is not acceptable now of course, but it wasn't then either. Such an embedded mis-step couldn't be removed in the editing suite, and so the film was doomed to critical and commercial failure. In fact, its legacy is so toxic that even in our current age of superhero-obsession, no studio will go near it for rebooting. This is, deservedly, Song Of The South for the MCU age...

His head feels like it's weighed down by the soul of every dead body he's seen since this all began, and perhaps it is. Midnight is loving this, his sickening leer splitting his face like a rotting melon full of hate. Captain Invincible tries to straighten, to hold himself proudly, but he knows he's almost spent. This is it. Everything which has happened before has led to this point. This time, there will be no last-minute miraculous escape for either of them, these are the final seconds. But still he has to fight, still he has to try, for where is the dignity in coming this far and giving up?

Mister Midnight observes all this knowingly, wordlessly, understanding the very same with every frantic pulse in Captain Invincible's temple as his world dissolves around him. The wait has been worth it. Come what may, this will be a fitting end for one with such a glorious legacy.

Knowing this action will be the most crucial of his entire life, The Captain summons the last primal reserves of energy from the core of his superhuman being. Most would have died long before this point, he almost did himself, but his eyes snap open in a culmination of will as his hearts pump super-heated blood into his limbs to deliver justice - pure and bloody justice - to the world. His calves, thighs and abdomen tense and unfurl in unison, propelling the hero upward and toward this immortal foe, while his right arm arcs forward the object of his burning enmity; to strike, grab or crush as the moment sees fit.

And in an instant reality crashes down, as Captain Invincible's fist meets a sheet of polished glass...

(Yes, the review above is mostly sarcasm. The actual film is intriguingly crap)

...and if you want to listen to some words about this film which take it far less seriously, are far more sweary and have All The Drink involved, here's a podcast version you might be interested in:

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 Boys In Blue

(An un-ironic warning: the following piece is part of a series of joke-reviews, but this one gets particularly dark. Readers of an even slightly squeamish disposition are advised to just not...)

The Boys In Blue
Cert: PG / 87 mins / Dir. Val Guest / Trailer

Fade from black. We open at dawn. Just. A warehouse in a quiet, anonymous British industrial estate is the site of the only activity we see as night begins to recede.

A dishevelled Luton van sits backed up to a loading bay while six burly men in tracksuits briskly fill it with long metal ammunition trunks from a wet floor. A seventh sits in the driver's seat, clearly anxious to leave but restraining his impatience.

Each case is around eighteen inches square by six feet long, with scattered holes the size of snooker balls roughly bored into the sides. The men work in teams of two, and the ease with which they handle each crate suggests this is for expediency rather than the weight of its contents. Nonetheless, they are not chipper in their work. No one speaks. The only sounds to be heard are grunts of exertion and the scraping of the trunks as the they are stacked five-high.

As the last crates are loaded and strapped into place, three of the men congregate outside the warehouse and begin jogging on the spot, getting into character for the decoy pastime they are about to assume. A fourth taps loudly three times on the side of the van. The ignition is started. The four men leave the yard, just an early morning group of fitness enthusiasts. The other two will catch up in no time at all.

Before the van doors are closed, locked and security-sealed, the last thing we see of the interior is one of the trunks closest to the back. Where blackness should be visible through one of the holes, a frantic, terrified and very human eye peers out, red-rimmed, darting around and trying to make sense of its situation.

The door slams. Cut to titles.

Famously unsatisfied with his critically acclaimed work on 1939's Ask A Policeman, writer/director Val Guest waited four decades to finally give his story of insular police corruption a makeover at the tail-end of the first age of cynicism. Taking stylistic nods from the likes of The WIcker Man, Straw Dogs and Taxi Driver, Guest's dark retooling of the British Bobby caper fed off the social unrest and mistrust of authority in Britain as Thatcher rose to power and go-getter capitalism began to properly bear its fangs.

Ed Welsh's pounding score lifts and thrills with its lightly orchestral adrenaline, while Jack Atcheler's cinematography routinely hauls the viewer between the brightly lit Dorset and Bedfordshire location shoots and the near-blackness of furtive night scenes. This is an uncompromising, if blatant, visual metaphor for the mood of our protagonists, a pair of small-town police officers catapulted through a succession of crimes which makes, and then breaks, them.

"Ooh, you really 'ate me, don't ya Tommeh?". Bobby's eyes burn with persecuted indignation as he glares at his partner, his superior and his best friend.

"No, I don't hate yer, I'm just sayin' this is all your fault!". Tommy plays the moment lightly, knowing that a mis-step at this crucial stage of their investigation could have larger ramifications than just a demotion.

"Didn't ah say that it were weird 'ow Mr Lloyd always 'as kidneys fer breakfast? That's weird that, an' ah said it!"

"Yes it's weird, but that on its own doesn't warrant an investigation! Anyway, you've been proved right. The number of staff he's goin' through from the recruitment agency bears that out, even if the missing persons register doesn't."

"So 'ow's this mah fault??". Bobby's voice reaches a crescendo of guilt.

"Because you let the ambulance in crew to take away the body of that girl who died in custody! And I hadn't phoned them!"

"Well I didn't know that!!" blusters Bobby, "...d'you think they're onto us?"

"After Mr Lloyd told them about your little scene in his freezer-room, yes ah do!!"

A knock sounds at the door. The pair visibly start, and after a silent pause which seems to last forever, Bobby crosses the room and gingerly opens it. Framed in the doorway stands the hulking form of the coastguard, his dour, weathered face uplit by the flaming lamp he carries. A smile breaks slowly across the coastguard's face. He has come to ask a favour...

Guest's bizarre master-stroke here is casting Tompkins Canniole Roberto & Ball, at the time three years into helming their own prime-time comedy and light entertainment show. After chatting to the duo backstage one evening in the mid 1970s on the Lancashire club-circuit, the director had learned that both were RADA-trained and had taken to comedy after feeling theatrically typecast in Shakespeare's bloodier tragedies. Happy to take the money that the laughs were bringing in the meanwhile, Cannon & Ball nevertheless yearned to return their hands to something with more heft.

Beginning as a twisted comedy to lull the viewer into a sense of false security, our heroes' tenure at a quiet rural village police station is thrown into turmoil when they uncover a people-trafficking operation feeding into the international modern slavery markets and black-market organ harvesting. That they make this discovery when arranging to illicitly shoot an adult movie at their police station (the "blue" of the film's title), only adds to the thematic confusion that the final product faced on release. Without straying into spoilers, what starts dark soon descends into absolute aesthetic and moral bleakness, and Guest's promo-trail defence of using the film to highlight very real contemporary issues to a mainstream audience feels risible given how much gusto he put into embracing the ethos of giallo-cinema.

Comedically fronting an exploitation conspiracy thriller with every reason to be paranoid, The Boys In Blue are nonetheless a brutal tour de force.

Fade from black.

In a dank, grotty, breathless room with no windows, Sergeant Cannon and Constable Ball lie handcuffed to two rickety old hospital beds, although as the single unbroken shot continues, we see that they are in no real position to move anyway. Lying naked, lesions and poorly-sewn scars cover both, their broken bodies abandoned here, the floor still wet with congealing blood. The camera roves slowly to Ball as he regains consciousness and begins to squirm.

"Tommeh! Tommeh? Are ya there? What's goin' on??". Fear and confusion fight for supremacy in his croaking voice.

"It's alright Bobbeh, ah'm 'ere. It's alright...". Cannon has been awake for some time, and has quietly assessed the situation.

"Ah can't see Tommeh! Ah can't open mah eyes!". Panic has entered and is winning the fight. Bobby's eyelids are sewn shut, but they do not roundly bulge as they should, his eyeballs having been removed for the corneas to benefit someone else. Tommy can just about make this out through his own one remaining eye. He also knows the sickly yellow tinge to both his and Bobby's skin is not due to the single glowing nightlight in the corner, but their kidneys having been removed for the same ends. The uncountable stinging wounds around his torso tell him he is now considerably lighter than he was, Bobby probably moreso. They're only lucky the gang haven't also removed their hearts.

Actually no, not lucky. Tommy knows that was intentional. They were supposed to re-awake here.

"You need to conserve your strength Bobbeh, help will be 'ere soon! Just rest, eh mate?"

"Tommeh? Tommeh! What's goin' on? Ah'm... Ah'm scared Tommeh!". His partner tries one last time to console him.

"It's alright Bobbeh, ah'm 'ere. Ah'll look after ya. 'Aven't I always?"

"Aye... aye, right enough. Rock on, Tommeh...". Fatigue overcomes Bobby as he slumps back against the filthy mattress. He is not unconscious, and his shallow breathing suggests he is far from relaxed. But with his friend's permission, he'll try and grab what sleep he can.

Tommy is still awake, though. He knows the gang won't be back. He know that this is the basement of the now-condemned police station, cordoned off as hazardous and due for demolition. But no one will be here for at least a month. All Cannon and Ball can do now is wait. But not for help. The last shot is of Tommy's lone eye as it darts around the room, and then directly, lingeringly into camera.

Cut to credits.

(Yes, the review above is wishful sarcasm. The film itself is more than a bit crap, albeit in interesting ways)

...and if you want to listen to some words about this film which take it far less seriously, are far more sweary and have All The Drink involved, here's a podcast version you might be interested in:

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: Condorman

Condorman
Cert: U / 86 mins / Dir. Charles Jarrott / Trailer

Standing astride a cross-beam on one of the world's most prominent landmarks, Woodridge Wilkins fumbles for the activator button on his suit. Photographers wait below, disbelievingly eager for this new breed of hero to prove himself. Distant, mumbled shouts of... encouragement?... crowd his head and threaten to derail the absolute concentration needed. No. Shut them out. Silence. The time is now. Time to prove to the world that The Condor Man is indeed its saviour. That mistakes may have been made, but all in the name of progress. Of success. Of freedom.

Daring to look down for a fraction of a second, the concourse is full of gawping tourists not yet realising the importance of this moment in their lives. Activity is frantic, but Wilkins cannot discern it clearly because of the cumbersome nature of this iteration of his flight suit. He is certain it will fly this time, though. It has to fly. If Woody can't convince them of The Condor Man's significance, then his friend Harry will, he knows it. Good old Harry.

Everything which has happened has led to this point. Woody firmly thumbs the activator and leaps forward, wings unfolding into the arms of destiny.

The story begins...

One rather suspects that when Disney commissioned screenwriter Marc Stirdivant to adapt Robert Sheckley's The Game of X into a feature film, they'd expected the end-product to tap into the post-Superman zeitgeist and the ongoing Bond/Palmer/U.N.C.L.E. ethos simultaneously, giving a family-friendly entry point into action cinema. By the time director Charles Jarrot had joined the team, what they received instead was indeed this, but also one of the most brutally efficient examples of high-concept physical and psychological revenge-horror (and at several points, actual snuff-movie) of its era.

That the film owes no small amount to the likes of Scorcese's The King Of Comedy is a given (in development at the same time, writer Paul D Zimmerman was a close friend of Stirdivant) but it goes much further, surpassing subtext and suggestion, straying into territory only previously covered by Tobe Hooper's Texas Chainsaw Massacre seven years earlier. An unlikely yet perfect casting choice, Michael Crawford channels pride, anger and ultimately fear into his performance as proto-incel Woody Wilkins, a socially introverted comic writer who escapes into his own fantasy as reality repeatedly stifles his dreams and crushes opportunities at every turn. Condorman is a blunt parable, showing us what happens when those two worlds collide. It presents its hero without judgement, but also without apology.

Damn Harry. Where was he? The man was supposed to be Woody's friend - his best friend - and now look what he'd gotten him into. A simple desk clerk at the CIA probably shouldn't have access to the information which Harry kept unearthing, but Wilkins was glad that he did. Or he had been glad at any rate. No one had been more surprised than Woody when a favour in delivering a package to a locally-based undercover cop had resulted in one of the city's largest drug busts. Woody's part in this had been hushed up of course, he was an undercover agent himself now.

And how. The hoodlum's neck hung limply in Woody's hands, snapped like a crusty baguette as his heart pumped out the last of its blood through a serrated hole in his sternum. That stain wasn't going to come out in a hurry. Four more similarly attired henchmen lay around the outside of the farmhouse. Convincing disguises - indeed, Morovich had even gone so far as recruiting a pair of old women for this gang - but the heavy villager's peasant clothes had impeded their ability to fight and The Condor Man had succeeded in this strand of his mission. "Send more, I'll kill more" he muttered. To himself.

Backup should have arrived by now, and it was a point of growing concern that there was no sign of the special ops team which Harry had assured him would be there to ease escape from a tight situation. Then again, Woody suspected that Natalia was playing her 'double agent' card a little too wildly, hedging her bets as to which side of the iron curtain to finally fall. If the 'former' spy had interfered in Harry's plans, that would put everyone in danger. This wasn't an insurmountable problem though, Woody could kill her easily enough if needs be...

Set within the extended flashback of The Condor Man's flight into the Paris skyline, Jarrott's film darts around a kaleidoscopic vision of Woody's domestic life - constantly demeaned and put-upon by an ageing but acerbic mother whom we hear but never see, causing us to wonder if she's just another figment of his imagination - and an unfolding backstory of the protagonist coming to believe he's a deep cover black-ops agent for the CIA. The reality that we're watching a man suffer a chemically-exacerbated breakdown and subsequent murder-spree is not fully clear until we see 'Harry' pleading that he barely even knows Wilkins for a third time in police custody.

But rather than use this darkly farcical setup as a prop for any sort of biting commentary (the film predates James Gunn's Super and Bobcat Goldthwait's God Bless America, both structurally and thematically similar, by almost three decades), Jarrott chooses to bring his creative vision closer to that of outright exploitation cinema, a genre which was in its death throes by the early 1980s. This was a definitively bold artistic choice at the time, and one which has ensured his film has only barely survived in terms of its notoriety alone. The fact that three stunt performers died during the intense fight-scenes ensured that there was a four year delay in Condorman coming to VHS. The fact that those scenes were somehow left in the edit ensured that it was instantly banned for another ten. Much like De Palma's Scarface, there are few characters to actually like here - even the most vulnerable are shown to be riven with moral weakness - and the key to salvaging any aesthetic satisfaction from this really lies in enjoying the majesty of a terrible thing done well.

Morovich dead. His goons dead. That lying, brazen, teasing, lying temptress... dead? Almost certainly, she couldn't have survived the blood loss. Good. And where were his thanks? Where were the parades and laudatory press columns and interview requests and Congressional Medals and just general fucking gratitude for all that he - that The Condor Man - had done? For the sacrifices he'd made in the name of freedom? Nowhere to be seen. He'd been sold out by those he'd sworn to protect. Well, so be it. It should hardly come as a surprise, yet the disappointment was no less tangible. It had been worth it, though. Those others, they needed to be stopped. Perhaps one last show of prowess was required. Perhaps the people need a super-hero, not a spy. Well okay, one last punt then.

Back midway up the Eiffel Tower we cut to a wide shot as Wilkins fumbles with his suit-activator button. We now see the reason he has been having trouble with it. 'Harry' - a man who works at the methadone clinic where Woody has been a service-user - is gagged and bound, his limbs crudely amputated, in a device which appears to be half-sack/half-harness on Woody's front. Screaming and wide-eyed, the counter assistant's constant terrified squirming has been threatening to pull Woody out of his reverie and off the steel beam. But even now that The Condor is ready to take flight, everyone knows the glider-suit cannot possibly take the weight and imbalance of two men, let alone one. Only death awaits; glory is an illusion just out of Woody's grasp. But ever the optimist, he has to try. The mechanism engages with a satisfying *clunk*.

The Condor Man takes flight.

Cut to black.

(Yes, the vast majority of the above is a sort of sarcasm, but Condorman is surprisingly good nonetheless.)

...and if you want to listen to some words about this film which take it far less seriously, are far more sweary and have All The Drink involved, here's a podcast version you might be interested in:

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.