You shouldn’t have asked about Dubai.

Survivor

(2015)

If James McTeigue’s sub-Salt agent-on-the-run thriller had a self-awareness and sense of humour about its unbridled idiocy, it might feasibly have become really good fun. Instead, it’s left to Pierce Brosnan’s assassin, “the best operative in the business” to bring the entertainment value. He thunders through the proceedings as if a permanent bad smell is lingering just under his nose, while Milla Jovovich’s titular Survivor is left wearing a permanent startled expression, the only one her rictus face seems able to convey.

Presumably no one thought much of Survivor’s box office prospects as it went to video on demand in the US, accompanied by a few grudging (probably contractual) cinema screenings. McTeigue only seems capable of delivering when he has the Wachowski siblings to mentor him, which may explain why he ended up plumping for this cheapie shot entirely in London and Bulgaria (despite a Times Square finale on New Year’s Eve). His action occasionally passes muster when it features Brosnan’s Nash (aka The Watchmaker) pursuing his quarry, but it’s more often often choppy and uninspired. Indeed, once Jovovich’s Kate Abbott manages to elude Nash and gets herself on a plane heading for the big climax, any semblance of suspense has departed with her.

If Philip Shelby’s screenplay wasn’t so roundly implausible and full of holes, one might take its nominal role as a propaganda piece seriously. It finishes with an onscreen caption announcing “ Since 9/11 American law enforcement has stopped 53 terrorist attacks in New York City alone”, although one wonders how many of these alleged potentialities were actually enabled by ever-loving undercover FBI operatives. Earlier, the picture’s thrall to combating the all-consuming threat of terrorism is announced by Kate having a flashback to the Twin Towers and the announcement that “She lost some of her best friends on 9/11”. I suppose its an achievement that in 14 years we’ve reached a point where its fair play to use the event as cheap emotional shorthand, rather than expunging it from screens lest it be deemed to upsetting (Zoolander).

9/11 also comes into play with the plan of the bad guys. It turns out these aren’t passionate zealots, intent on striking at the heart of America (well, apart from Roger Rees, in his final role, as the bomb maker fuelled by the desire for revenge against a corrupt state that… refused his dying wife’s Visa application. Of all the things he might have got upset about. The bastards.) For a movie so sucking up to the security services, it curiously decides to echo one of the conspiratorial loose ends of 9/11 previously referenced in Casino Royale; the Watchmaker notes that, when the New York exchanges opened after 9/11 “people who bet against the market made a fortune”.

For Pavlou (Benno Furmann) this isn’t an act of terror or a bold political move, “it’s just about making money”; post the bombing he plans to make $100bn from similar short selling activity. Perhaps the picture is subversively suggesting that all such terrorism has a money motive somewhere at its core but, given its apology for a plot, I suspect it just plain isn’t aware of how incoherent its content is.

Kate, employed by the US Embassy in London, has been rooting out dodgy Visa applications, much to the ire of Ambassador Crane (Angela Bassett, bringing forth her best hard-nosed bitch), who doesn’t wish to cause any ruffled feathers with anyone. Colleague Bill Talbot (Robert Forster), working for the enemy under duress, reports this to his overlords who duly despatch Brosnan, “one of the most wanted assassins in the world” (talk about bigging someone up) to take her out.

This is one of those pictures where everyone needs to be bloody-minded above and beyond the call of duty, from Crane to James D’Arcy’s police inspector (“The longer she lives, the more people die!”), where the protagonist can’t seem to twig why her would-be assassin is always on her tail despite her carrying around an ID card with a tracking chip in it, and who seems to think that donning a pair of spectacles will get her most wanted mug through airport security (hey, it works!)

Lest you think all is lost, though, there’s Pierce, roaming around London stabbing people in the neck (“You shouldn’t have asked about Dubai” he tells an overly chatty computer hacker) and destroying blocks of flats with a single bullet. He’s an unstoppable killing machine, until he isn’t. One of the great unintentionally funny lines in the picture finds Kate’s devoted colleague Sam (Dylan McDermott, who is to be commended for appearing in nothing but B movies) describing this uber-asssassin; “He’s had so much reconstructive surgery, no one knows what the hell he looks like”.

For one with such a towering reputation, the Watchmaker doesn’t especially show it; Brosnan donning a fake moustache is about the extent of his skills as a master of disguise. He also seems to send easily traceable courier services from his home address (quite what is going on with that elaborate bomb in a restaurant ruse is beyond me), and proves completely inept at accomplishing his task.

Either that or no one counted on Kate being so handy, as she hacks, slashes and generally scarpers from each successive encounter and explosion. It’s a shame she doesn’t cook as well, as she might have given Steven Seagal in his prime a run for his money. The Watchmaker’s inadequacies are never more evident than in the finale, where his plan to detonate the bomb is interrupted by resourceful Kate. She even quips “Time’s up” as he plummets to his death on the stroke of midnight. Alas, Milla’s never been one for comedy.

Kate, who earlier expressed doubts about her chosen career, is now convinced of the value of her role, the one where she fights terrorists all over the globe and generally snoops on everyone she possibly can, as we all should be; she saved over a million lives on New Year’s Eve, “So I guess this is what we’re doing with our lives”. Perhaps the most bizarre consequence of this budget-conscious affair is the casting of Frances de la Tour as Kate’s confidante within the US Embassy HQ. I think Miss Jones is supposed to be American, but I’m still not entirely sure.

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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…

You’re never the same man twice.

The Man Who Haunted Himself (1970)
(SPOILERS) Roger Moore playing dual roles? It sounds like an unintentionally amusing prospect for audiences accustomed to the actor’s “Raise an eyebrow” method of acting. Consequently, this post-Saint pre-Bond role (in which he does offer some notable eyebrow acting) is more of a curiosity for the quality of Sir Rog’s performance than the out-there premise that can’t quite sustain the picture’s running time. It is telling that the same story was adapted for an episode of Alfred Hitchcock Presents 15 years earlier, since the uncanny idea at its core feels like a much better fit for a trim 50 minute anthology series.

Basil Dearden directs, and co-adapted the screenplay from Anthony Armstrong’s novel The Strange Case of Mr Pelham. Dearden started out with Ealing, helming several Will Hay pictures and a segment of Dead of Night (one might imagine a shortened version of this tale ending up there, or in any of the portmanteau horrors that arrived in the year…

Romulan ale should be illegal.

Star Trek: Nemesis (2002)
(SPOILERS) Out of the ST:NG movies, Star Trek: Nemesis seems to provoke the most outrage among fans, the reasons mostly appearing to boil down to continuity and character work. In the case of the former, while I can appreciate the beef, I’m not enough of an aficionado to get too worked up. In the case of the latter, well, the less of the strained inter-relationships between this bunch that make it to the screen, the better (director Stuart Baird reportedly cut more than fifty minutes from the picture, most of it relating to underscoring the crew, leading to a quip by Stewart that while an Actor’s Cut would include the excised footage, a Director’s one would probably be even shorter). Even being largely unswayed by such concerns, though, Nemesis isn’t very good. It wants to hit the same kind of dramatic high notes as The Wrath of Khan (naturally, it’s always bloody Khan) but repeatedly drifts into an out-of-tune dirge.

‘Cos I’m the gringo who always delivers.

American Made (2017)
(SPOILERS) This is definitely more the sort of thing Tom Cruise should be doing, a movie that relies both on his boyish™ charm and at least has pretensions of ever so slightly pushing the envelope of standard multiplex fare, rather than desperately attaching himself to an impersonal franchise (The Mummy) or flailingly attempting to kick start one (Jack Reacher: Never Go Back); remember when Cruise wouldn’t even go near sequels (for about 20 years, The Color of Money aside, and then only the one series)? American Made is still victim to the tendency of his movies to feel superstar-fitted rather than remaining as punchy as they might be on paper (Made’s never quite as satirically sharp as it wants to be), but it at least doesn’t lead its audience by the nose.

Rejoice! The broken are the more evolved. Rejoice.

Split (2016)
(SPOILERS) M Night Shyamalan went from the toast of twist-based filmmaking to a one-trick pony to the object of abject ridicule in the space of only a couple of pictures: quite a feat. Along the way, I’ve managed to miss several of his pictures, including his last, The Visit, regarded as something of a re-locating of his footing in the low budget horror arena. Split continues that genre readjustment, another Blumhouse production, one that also manages to bridge the gap with the fare that made him famous. But it’s a thematically uneasy film, marrying shlock and serious subject matter in ways that don’t always quite gel.

Shyamalan has seized on a horror staple – nubile teenage girls in peril, prey to a psychotic antagonist – and, no doubt with the best intentions, attempted to warp it. But, in so doing, he has dragged in themes and threads from other, more meritable fare, with the consequence that, in the end, the conflicting positions rather subvert his attempts at subversion…

By Jove, the natives are restless tonight.

The Avengers 4.17: Small Game for Big Hunters
I wonder if Death at Bargain Prices’ camping scene, suggestive of an exotic clime but based in a department store, was an inspiration for Small Game For Big Hunters’ more protracted excursion to the African country of Kalaya… in Hertfordshire. Gerry O’Hara, in his second of two episodes for the show again delivers on the atmosphere, making the most of Philip Levene’s teleplay.

Old Boggy walks on Lammas Eve.

Jeeves and Wooster 2.5: Kidnapped (aka The Mysterious Stranger)
Kidnapped continues the saga of Chuffnell Hall. Having said of 2.4 that the best Wodehouse adaptations tend to stick closely to the text, this one is an exception that proves the rule, diverging significantly yet still scoring with its highly preposterous additions.

Jeeves: Tis old boggy. He be abroad tonight. He be heading for the railway station.
Gone are many of the imbroglios involving Stoker and Glossop (the estimable Roger Brierley), including the contesting of the former’s uncle’s will. Also gone, sadly, is the inebriated Brinkley throwing potatoes at Stoker, which surely would have been enormous fun. Instead, we concentrate on Bertie being locked aboard Stoker’s yacht in order to secure his marriage to Pauline (as per the novel), Chuffy tailing Pauline in disguise (so there’s a different/additional reason for Stoker to believe Bertie and she spent the night together, this time at a pub en route to Chufnell Hall) and …

I think we’ve returned to Eden. Surely this is how the World once was in the beginning of time.

1492: Conquest of Paradise (1992)
Ridley Scott’s first historical epic (The Duellists was his first historical, and his first feature, but hardly an epic) is also one of his least remembered films. It bombed at the box office (as did the year’s other attempted cash-ins on the discovery of America, including Superman: The Movie producers the Salkinds’ Christopher Columbus: The Discovery) and met with a less than rapturous response from critics. Such shunning is undeserved, as 1492: Conquest of Paradise is a richer and more thought-provoking experience than both the avowedly lowbrow Gladiator and the re-evaluated-but-still-so-so director’s cut of Kingdom of Heaven. It may stand guilty of presenting an overly sympathetic portrait of Columbus, but it isn’t shy about pressing a critical stance on his legacy.

Sanchez: The truth is, that he now presides over a state of chaos, of degradation, and of madness. From the beginning, Columbus proved himself completely incapable of ruling these islands…

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