Is dad a badass?

3 Days to Kill

(2014)

Costner riding the crest of… well, being sucked up by a twister in Man of Steel, I guess, ploughs his comeback trail by going all Liam Neeson on the arses of various Eurotrash types. Luc Besson’s formula cheapie action vehicles have scored one great success (Taken) and one moderate one (Transporter). 3 Days to Kill won’t be following them into franchise territory, but it’s actually a lot of fun.

McG, asking for trouble by saddling himself with a nickname, was even less appreciated by the dubious after he decided to take on the Terminator franchise. I don’t especially mind his hyperactive flash, though. He can stage a decent action scene, and he’s considerably less stomach churning than the equally derided Brett Ratner. McG’s last movie, This Means War, was fairly awful, lumbered with an unfunny script and a trio of leads with zero chemistry. Here, equipped with the latest of Besson’s ten or twelve annual screenplays, the results are closer to the familial funnies of The Family than the dopey deadpan of Taken.

Costner’s game, and as CIA assassin Ethan Renner he learns he has three months to live. So Ethan moves to France to be close to his estranged family (gorgeous Connie Nielsen is his wife, and Hailee Steinfeld his petulant daughter). Instead of cuddly toys, out-of-touch pater buys Zooey a purple bicycle (shades of Taken there). Meanwhile, he finds a family of squatters camped in his flat and is offered a lifeline by CIA superior Vivi (Amber Heard); an experimental drug in return for his killing arms dealer the Wolf (and his dodgy assistant

the Albino).

There’s an effective comedy trail of incongruity here. Costner is continually interrupted mid job by his daughter’s teeny bop ringtone, usually during the torture (it’s the CIA way, just live with it) of some unfortunate (frequently Marc Andreoni as Mitat, with whom Ethan swops parental tips). It’s the same sort of play of contrasts we saw in The Family (ultra violence versus domesticity) and I have to admit it also frequently tickled me there. Dad offering his daughter advice on how best to hit someone at school, particularly coming from Costner in slightly irked mode, is quite winning.

Added to this McG stages his action effectively, from a fight in a butcher’s shop, to a gas masked attack on the Wolf’s convoy, to daddy rescuing his daughter in a nightclub (the closest this gets to Neeson-esque angry pops, although Costner trumps him by casually shooting a bouncer in the foot to gain entrance). He also embraces the chance to show Ethan’s drug-addled point-of-view (the device of Ethan pegging out at a crucial moment is leant on maybe one time too many, however).

True, the family stuff is never actually affecting or meaningful, and scenes such as dad teaching Zooey to dance make you choke up in the wrong sense, but for every scene like that there’s another where Zooey is given a pasta sauce recipe by one of Ethan’s torture victims, who is at gun point on the other end of the phone.

Amber Heard, both in terms of the character she plays and her casting, doesn’t work. She’s completely ridiculous, almost as if McG had been watching Sex and Death 101 and The President’s Analyst back-to-back and decided to mash them together in a constantly costume-changing spymaster with a nymphomaniac/ sadistic bent. The character is too broad, and Heard doesn’t have the chops to pull her off, but it does peg the movie as one ready and willing to embrace the absurd.

Richard Sammel (one of the very best things’ in Guillermo del Toro’s lousy The Strain) makes a good villain, and Tomas Lemarquis makes a good henchman (with a thing for decapitation). There’s a fantastic reveal scene towards the end that could have pushed the climax in an entirely different direction (of the cat-and-mouse, battle of wits variety). It would have been more in keeping with the two-tone picture as a whole. Instead the makers opt to shoot the shit out of everything, which is still engaging, but a lost opportunity.

Mostly this is a lot of fun, and well-played. Costner’s never been a consistent action star, although he’s quite accomplished (he can hold a gun with conviction and poise), and it’s a nice change to see him do this between all the many sports movies he has to fit in during his career second wind. 3 Days to Kill is also a good reminder that he has an able light touch as a comedy actor. And that he has a marginally better wigmaker than Nicolas Cage.

Your Mickey Mouse is one big stupid dope!

Enemy Mine (1985) (SPOILERS) The essential dynamic of Enemy Mine – sworn enemies overcome their differences to become firm friends – was a well-ploughed one when it was made, such that it led to TV Tropes assuming, since edited, that it took its title from an existing phrase (Barry Longyear, author of the 1979 novella, made it up, inspired by the 1961 David Niven film The Best of Enemies ). The Film Yearbook Volume 5 opined that that Wolfgang Petersen’s picture “ lacks the gritty sauciness of Hell in the Pacific”; John Boorman’s WWII film stranded Lee Marvin and Toshiro Mifune on a desert island and had them first duking it out before becoming reluctant bedfellows. Perhaps germanely, both movies were box office flops.

If I do nothing else, I will convince them that Herbert Stempel knows what won the goddam Academy Award for Best goddam Picture of 1955. That’s what I’m going to accomplish.

Quiz Show (1994) (SPOILERS) Quiz Show perfectly encapsulates a certain brand of Best Picture nominee: the staid, respectable, diligent historical episode, a morality tale in response to which the Academy can nod their heads approvingly and discerningly, feeding as it does their own vainglorious self-image about how times and attitudes have changed, in part thanks to their own virtuousness. Robert Redford’s film about the 1950s Twenty-One quiz show scandals is immaculately made, boasts a notable cast and is guided by a strong screenplay from Paul Attanasio (who, on television, had just created the seminal Homicide: Life on the Streets ), but it lacks that something extra that pushes it into truly memorable territory.

Say hello to the Scream Extractor.

Monsters, Inc. (2001) (SPOILERS) I was never the greatest fan of Monsters, Inc. , even before charges began to be levelled regarding its “true” subtext. I didn’t much care for the characters, and I particularly didn’t like the way Pixar’s directors injected their own parenting/ childhood nostalgia into their plots. Something that just seems to go on with their fare ad infinitum. Which means the Pixars I preferred tended to be the Brad Bird ones. You know, the alleged objectivist. Now, though, we learn Pixar has always been about the adrenochrome, so there’s no going back…

Other monks will meet their deaths here. And they too will have blackened fingers. And blackened tongues.

The Name of the Rose (1986) (SPOILERS) Umberto Eco wasn’t awfully impressed by Jean Jacques-Annaud’s adaptation of his novel – or “ palimpsest of Umberto Eco’s novel ” as the opening titles announce – to the extent that he nixed further movie versions of his work. Later, he amended that view, calling it “ a nice movie ”. He also, for balance, labelled The Name of the Rose his worst novel – “ I hate this book and I hope you hate it too ”. Essentially, he was begrudging its renown at the expense of his later “ superior ” novels. I didn’t hate the novel, although I do prefer the movie, probably because I saw it first and it was everything I wanted from a medieval Sherlock Holmes movie set in a monastery and devoted to forbidden books, knowledge and opinions.

No one can be told what the Matrix is. You have to see it for yourself.

The Matrix (1999) (SPOILERS) Twenty years on, and the articles are on the defining nature of The Matrix are piling up, most of them touching on how its world has become a reality, or maybe always was one. At the time, its premise was engaging enough, but it was the sum total of the package that cast a spell – the bullet time, the fashions, the soundtrack, the comic book-as-live-action framing and styling – not to mention it being probably the first movie to embrace and reflect the burgeoning Internet ( Hackers doesn’t really count), and subsequently to really ride the crest of the DVD boom wave. And now? Now it’s still really, really good.

Piece by piece, the camel enters the couscous.

The Forgiven (2021) (SPOILERS) By this point, the differences between filmmaker John Michael McDonagh and his younger brother, filmmaker and playwright Martin McDonagh, are fairly clearly established. Both wear badges of irreverence and provocation in their writing, and a willingness to tackle – or take pot-shots – at bigger issues, ones that may find them dangling their toes in hot water. But Martin receives the lion’s share of the critical attention, while John is generally recognised as the slightly lesser light. Sure, some might mistake Seven Psychopaths for a John movie, and Calvary for a Martin one, but there’s a more flagrant sense of attention seeking in John’s work, and concomitantly less substance. The Forgiven is clearly aiming more in the expressly substantial vein of John’s earlier Calvary, but it ultimately bears the same kind of issues in delivery.

You ever heard the saying, “Don’t rob the bank across from the diner that has the best donuts in three counties”?

2 Guns (2013) (SPOILERS) Denzel Washington is such a reliable performer, that it can get a bit boring. You end up knowing every gesture or inflection in advance, whether he’s playing a good guy or a bad guy. And his films are generally at least half decent, so you end up seeing them. Even in Flight (or perhaps especially in Flight ; just watch him chugging down that vodka) where he’s giving it his Oscar-nominatable best, he seems too familiar. I think it may be because he’s an actor who is more effective the less he does. In 2 Guns he’s not doing less, but sometimes it seems like it. That’s because the last person I’d ever expect blows him off the screen; Mark Wahlberg.

Twenty dwarves took turns doing handstands on the carpet.

Bugsy (1991) (SPOILERS) Bugsy is very much a Warren Beatty vanity project (aren’t they all, even the ones that don’t seem that way on the surface?), to the extent of his playing a title character a decade and a half younger than him. As such, it makes sense that producer Warren’s choice of director wouldn’t be inclined to overshadow star Warren, but the effect is to end up with a movie that, for all its considerable merits (including a script from James Toback chock full of incident), never really feels quite focussed, that it’s destined to lead anywhere, even if we know where it’s going.

In a few moments, you will have an experience that will seem completely real. It will be the result of your subconscious fears transformed into your conscious awareness.

Brainstorm (1983) (SPOILERS) Might Brainstorm have been the next big thing – a ground-breaking, game-changing cinematic spectacle that had as far reaching consequences as Star Wars (special effects) or Avatar (3D) – if only Douglas Trumbull had been allowed to persevere with his patented “Showscan” process (70mm film photographed and projected at 60 frames per second)? I suspect not; one only has to look at the not-so-far-removed experiment of Ang Lee with Billy Lynn’s Long Halftime Walk , and how that went down like a bag of cold sick, to doubt that any innovation will necessarily catch on (although Trumbull at least had a narrative hinge on which to turn his “more real than real” imagery, whereas Lee’s pretty much boiled down to “because it was there”). Brainstorm ’s story is, though, like its title, possibly too cerebral, too much concerned with the consciousness and touting too little of the cloyingly affirmative that Bruce Rubin inevitably brings to his screenplays. T

Haven’t you ever heard of the healing power of laughter?

Batman (1989) (SPOILERS) There’s Jaws , there’s Star Wars , and then there’s Batman in terms of defining the modern blockbuster. Jaws ’ success was so profound, it changed the way movies were made and marketed. Batman’s marketing was so profound, it changed the way tentpoles would be perceived: as cash cows. Disney tried to reproduce the effect the following year with Dick Tracy , to markedly less enthusiastic response. None of this places Batman in the company of Jaws as a classic movie sold well, far from it. It just so happened to hit the spot. As Tim Burton put it, it was “ more of a cultural phenomenon than a great movie ”. It’s difficult to disagree with his verdict that the finished product (for that is what it is) is “ mainly boring ”. Now, of course, the Burton bat has been usurped by the Nolan incarnation (and soon the Snyder). They have some things in common. Both take the character seriously and favour a sombre tone, which was much more of shock to the

Now In Full Color, with a Happier Ending

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