Gambit
(2012)
The script for this remake of Ronald
Neame’s 1966 caper had been doing the rounds since the late ‘90s. The estimable
Coen Brothers took on script duties, looking for some rewrite work (never
intending to direct). Despite the pedigree of most projects their names are
attached to, it remained in Development Hell for another 15 years. Which
probably wasn’t a good sign. The finished article bears testament to this, but
I don’t really think the script is to blame. But it does lead me to suspect
that the only people who can make a good movie out of a Coen Brothers script
are the Coen Brothers themselves.
Surely a good script is a good script,
though? Yet throughout Gambit, I could hear their dialogue and recognise their
plotting while fully aware that very little of it was hitting the mark. Everyone appears to be trying too hard.
Pushing the comedy this way ultimately kills the comedy. Michael Hoffman is unable
to bring the rhythms the Coens bring to their films, both in terms of pacing scenes
(and by extension across the film as a whole) and crafting the performances of
their actors. You can see that approach even in their most-maligned pictures,
The Ladykillers and Intolerable Cruelty. It’s the latter I
imagine this bearing most resemblance to on paper; intentionally broad but with
a zestful delivery.
Hoffman’s directorial career has been
nothing if not erratic, and you’d be hard-pressed to claim an out-and-out
artistic and box office success (1991’s Soapdish
is probably closest). He follows course here; the film looks quite nice,
but the wink-wink artifice never engages with the result that it quickly becomes
rather tiresome.
The Coens lift the outline of the first 15
minutes from the original (easily the most memorable and bizarre part of a
likeable but middling movie), and a few of the names including that of the
“villain” (Alan Rickman’s Shahbandar sounds like a Coen Brothers made-up name,
so that figures). And the reasoning for employing the female lead in the con is
as farfetched as in the 1966 version. But, that aside, they have come up with a
completely new caper. Harry Deane (Colin Firth) seeks revenge on his boss by
selling him a fake monet (producer by forger Tom Courteny – with Quartet this is the second film I’ve
seen him in this week) and enlist’s Cameron Diaz’s rodeo queen to carry out his
plan.
Colin Firth is very good in a certain kind
of role, but he lacks the natural charisma of Michael Caine’s Dean (for some
reason he’s borrowed his glasses, though). Firth should be mugging away like George
Clooney does for the Coen Brothers if this is to stand any chance of working. But
he plays Harry Dean very straight, very exasperated, and slightly dull. Which
drains away the energy. Meanwhile, Cameron Diaz tries on a Texan accent and
Alan Rickman embraces his uncouth side to sometimes amusing effect.
Fitfully, this has its moments (a bit of
bedroom farce, some extended innuendo concerning Firth's "major"). More
frequently, Hoffman settles for weak slapstick (Firth keeps getting punched,
loses his trousers, is attacked by a lion) and fart jokes. Both of which may be
readily found in the two Coens movies I’ve mentioned, but it’s all in the
execution.
**1/2
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