How is the major this evening, sir?

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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She writes Twilight fan fiction.

Vampire Academy (2014)
My willingness to give writer Daniel Waters some slack on the grounds of early glories sometimes pays off (Sex and Death 101) and sometimes, as with this messy and indistinct Young Adult adaptation, it doesn’t. If Vampire Academy plods along as a less than innovative smart-mouthed Buffy rip-off that might be because, if you added vampires to Heathers, you would probably get something not so far from the world of Joss Whedon. Unfortunately inspiration is a low ebb throughout, not helped any by tepid direction from Daniel’s sometimes-reliable brother Mark and a couple of hopelessly plankish leads who do their best to dampen down any wit that occasionally attempts to surface.

I can only presume there’s a never-ending pile of Young Adult fiction poised for big screen failure, all of it comprising multi-novel storylines just begging for a moment in the Sun. Every time an adaptation crashes and burns (and the odds are that they will) another one rises, hydra-like, hoping…

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Apostle (2018)
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Tully (2018)
(SPOILERS) A major twist is revealed in the last fifteen minutes of Tully, one I'll happily admit not to have seen coming, but it says something about the movie that it failed to affect my misgivings over the picture up to that point either way. About the worst thing you can say about a twist is that it leaves you shrugging.

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Hold the Dark (2018)
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Ridley Scott Ridders Ranked
During the '80s, I anticipated few filmmakers' movies more than Ridley Scott's; those of his fellow xenomorph wrangler James Cameron, perhaps. In both cases, that eagerness for something equalling their early efforts receded as they studiously managed to avoid the heights they had once reached. Cameron's output dropped off a cliff after he won an Oscar. Contrastingly, Scott's surged like never before when his film took home gold. Which at least meant he occasionally delivered something interesting, but sadly, it was mostly quantity over quality. Here are the movies Scott has directed in his career thus far - and with his rate of productivity, another 25 by the time he's 100 may well be feasible – ranked from worst to best.

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Tomb Raider (2018)
(SPOILERS) There's evidently an appetite out there for a decent Tomb Raider movie, given that the lousy 2001 incarnation was successful enough to spawn a (lousy) sequel, and that this lousier reboot, scarcely conceivably, may have attracted enough bums on seats to do likewise. If we're going to distinguish between order of demerits, we could characterise the Angelina Jolie movies as both pretty bad; Tomb Raider, in contrast, is unforgivably tedious.

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Fearless (1993)
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Phantom Thread (2017)
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Darkest Hour (2017)
(SPOILERS) Watching Joe Wright’s return to the rarefied plane of prestige – and heritage to boot – filmmaking following the execrable folly of the panned Pan, I was struck by the difference an engaged director, one who cares about his characters, makes to material. Only last week, Ridley Scott’s serviceable All the Money in the World made for a pointed illustration of strong material in the hands of someone with no such investment, unless they’re androids. Wright’s dedication to a relatable Winston Churchill ensures that, for the first hour-plus, Darkest Hour is a first-rate affair, a piece of myth-making that barely puts a foot wrong. It has that much in common with Wright’s earlier Word War II tale, Atonement. But then, like Atonement, it comes unstuck.

Now In Full Color, with a Happier Ending

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