I went from killer to cashier. Don't tell anyone.

The Gunman

(2015)

(SPOILERS) What were you thinking, Mr Penn? Particularly since you share co-screenplay credit. The Gunman is about the worst example of pampered Hollywood expressing its social conscience-easing behaviour one could imagine, as Sean’s reformed assassin plotline forms the backdrop for saying some important things about humanitarian aid (good) and big corporations (bad). Which is fine as a message, I’m with you there Sean, but finance a searing documentary about capitalist exploitation would have been a more convincing avenue with which to express yourself, rather than throwing $40m into in this sloppy, third-rate concoction, one that operates more as a bizarre vanity vehicle than anything approaching an indictment of corrupt business practices.

Penn’s Jim Terrier is former special forces, equipped with terrific abs (which he is contractually required to display as much as possible, while chain-smoking; I guess this is understandable if you’re in you’re mid-50s and going through a mid-life crisis) and a reasonable aptitude for surfing. He’s also a kick-ass assassin, posing as an aid relief employee. Following a black-ops venture in the Congo, in which Terrier shoots the Minister of Mining in order to ensure his employer’s contracts are not renegotiated, conflicted Jim drops from the radar. Six years later, he has become a charity worker, digging wells (I shit you not; now you can see why Sean developed the abs; it’s basically a Stallone screenplay, Penn’s Rambo III, if you will). But his former life is catching up with him, and it isn’t long before he’s luxuriating in a glorious bath of ultra-violence. And flashing those abs.

Everything about the screenplay, credited to Penn, Don Macpherson and Pete Travis and based on The Prone Gunman by Jean-Patrick Manchette, is an embarrassment of horrifying clichés and crude punctuation. It’s all the more bizarre that talent like Javier Bardem, Idris Elba, Mark Rylance (Mark Rylance!) and Ray Winstone (well, maybe not so much Ray “The Sweeney” Winstone) should appear in this crap. Possibly the persuasive powers of Le Penn.

Presumably he also ensnared poor Jasmine Trinca, whose work I was unfamiliar with but who is essentially required to stand by her man, a morally unconscionable psychopath who doesn’t think twice about his behaviour until he does, even when, or because, he announces “I can’t ask you to forgive me”. When Jim initially absconds, she takes second-best Bardem, artlessly identified as muscling in from the first moment we see him and even more artlessly identified as an imbecilic alcoholic who helpfully gets himself shot when Sean comes back on the scene.

Elba hardly features, but he does sit on a park bench with Jim, imparting some wisdom about when and when not to build a treehouse, and doesn’t want to hang him out to dry, which is incredibly charitable. Rylance, in an entirely pitiful bad guy part telegraphed as such, as every plot point is, is naturally moderately watchable simply because he is Mark Rylance, even when getting shot in the hand. Less so when getting gored by a bull, in a finale of ludicrously poetic and metaphorical proportions (Sean is the put-upon bull, don’t you see? DO YOU NOT SEE?) Winstone meanwhile, plays Ray Winstone, and, to his credit, he does the best Ray Winstone out there.

Jim may have done horrible things, but he’s broken up about it, suffers from PTSD and is full of regrets. Some, but not all, of these things lead to dizziness and vomiting. Most of them lead to bone-crunching or flesh-shredding mayhem as Terrier proves an unstoppable force, dogged even, bringing about peace through extreme measures. A particular highlight sees Jim abruptly punching a friendly neighbourhood mum on the nose, only for her to be revealed as a vicious, hypodermic-wielding hit woman.

Pierre Morel, despite the crushing unsubtlety (a field he has already ploughed with Taken) knows his way around an action sequence, but it’s disappointing to see him stuck with this mess, when a few years back there was a chance of him taking on Dune. In particular, Jim’s bruising battle with Number One Henchman Peter Franzen, actually instils the movie with something approaching urgency for a couple of minutes. He clearly needs a better agent. And Penn needs to get over the idea that he’s the silver screen’s answer to Bono (what with his perma-shades and endless capacity for righting wrongs). The Gunman might have had something to say in conception, but only ends up saying anything about Sean’s ego; when Joel Silver is barred from an editing room and the picture still ends up lousy, it’s the producer-actor-star who warrants the blame.

Ziggy smokes a lot of weed.

Moonfall (2022) (SPOILERS) For a while there, it looked as if Moonfall , the latest and least-welcomed – so it seems – piece of apocalyptic programming from Roland Emmerich, might be sending mixed messages. Fortunately, we need not have feared, as it turns out to be the same pedigree of disaster porn we’ve come to expect from the director, one of the Elite’s most dutiful mass-entertainment stooges, even if his lustre has rather dimmed since the glory days of 2012.

The Illumi-what-i?

Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness (2022) (SPOILERS) In which Sam Raimi proves that he can stand proudly with the best – or worst – of them as a good little foot soldier of the woke apocalypse. You’d expect the wilfully anarchic – and Republican – Raimi to choke on the woke, but instead, he’s sucked it up, grinned and bore it. Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness is so slavishly a production-line Marvel movie, both in plotting and character, and in nu-Feige progressive sensibilities, there was no chance of Sam staggering out from beneath its suffocating demands with anything more than a few scraps of stylistic flourish intact.

What’s so bad about being small? You’re not going to be small forever.

Innerspace (1987) There’s no doubt that Innerspace is a flawed movie. Joe Dante finds himself pulling in different directions, his instincts for comic subversion tempered by the need to play the romance plot straight. He tacitly acknowledges this on the DVD commentary for the film, where he notes Pauline Kael’s criticism that he was attempting to make a mainstream movie; and he was. But, as ever with Dante, it never quite turns out that way. Whereas his kids’ movies treat their protagonists earnestly, this doesn’t come so naturally with adults. I’m a bona fide devotee of Innerspace , but I can’t help but be conscious of its problems. For the most part Dante papers over the cracks; the movie hits certain keynotes of standard Hollywood prescription scripting. But his sensibility inevitably suffuses it. That, and human cartoon Martin Short (an ideal “leading man” for the director) ensure what is, at first glance just another “ Steven Spielberg Presents ” sci-fi/fantas

All I saw was an old man with a funky hand, that’s all I saw.

The Blob (1988) (SPOILERS) The 1980s effects-laden remake of a ’50s B-movie that couldn’t. That is, couldn’t persuade an audience to see it and couldn’t muster critical acclaim. The Fly was a hit. The Thing wasn’t, but its reputation has since soared. Like Invaders from Mars , no such fate awaited The Blob , despite effects that, in many respects, are comparable in quality to the John Carpenter classic – and are certainly indebted to Rob Bottin for bodily grue – and surehanded direction from Chuck Russell. I suspect the reason is simply this: it lacks that extra layer that would ensure longevity.

Are you telling me that I should take my daughter to a witch doctor?

The Exorcist (1973) (SPOILERS) Vast swathes have been written on The Exorcist , duly reflective of its cultural impact. In a significant respect, it’s the first blockbuster – forget Jaws – and also the first of a new kind of special-effects movie. It provoked controversy across all levels of the socio-political spectrum, for explicit content and religious content, both hailed and denounced for the same. William Friedkin, director of William Peter Blatty’s screenplay based on Blatty’s 1971 novel, would have us believe The Exorcist is “ a film about the mystery of faith ”, but it’s evidently much more – and less – than that. There’s a strong argument to be made that movies having the kind of seismic shock on the landscape this one did aren’t simply designed to provoke rumination (or exultation); they’re there to profoundly influence society, even if largely by osmosis, and when one looks at this picture’s architects, such an assessment only gains in credibility.

I work for the guys that pay me to watch the guys that pay you. And then there are, I imagine, some guys that are paid to watch me.

The Day of the Dolphin (1973) (SPOILERS) Perhaps the most bizarre thing out of all the bizarre things about The Day of the Dolphin is that one of its posters scrupulously sets out its entire dastardly plot, something the movie itself doesn’t outline until fifteen minutes before the end. Mike Nichols reputedly made this – formerly earmarked for Roman Polanski, Jack Nicholson and Sharon Tate, although I’m dubious a specific link can be construed between its conspiracy content and the Manson murders - to fulfil a contract with The Graduate producer Joseph Levine. It would explain the, for him, atypical science-fiction element, something he seems as comfortable with as having a hairy Jack leaping about the place in Wolf .

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.

This risotto is shmackin’, dude.

Stranger Things Season 4: Part I (SPOILERS) I haven’t had cause, or the urge, to revisit earlier seasons of Stranger Things , but I’m fairly certain my (relatively) positive takes on the first two sequel seasons would adjust down somewhat if I did (a Soviet base under Hawkins? DUMB soft disclosure or not, it’s pretty dumb). In my Season Three review, I called the show “ Netflix’s best-packaged junk food. It knows not to outstay its welcome, doesn’t cause bloat and is disposable in mostly good ways ” I fairly certain the Duffer’s weren’t reading, but it’s as if they decided, as a rebuke, that bloat was the only way to go for Season Four. Hence episodes approaching (or exceeding) twice the standard length. So while the other points – that it wouldn’t stray from its cosy identity and seasons tend to merge in the memory – hold fast, you can feel the ambition of an expansive canvas faltering at the hurdle of Stranger Things ’ essential, curated, nostalgia-appeal inconsequentiality.

That, my lad, was a dragon.

The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug (2013) (SPOILERS) It’s alarming how quickly Peter Jackson sabotaged all the goodwill he amassed in the wake of The Lord of the Rings trilogy. A guy who started out directing deliciously deranged homemade horror movies ended up taking home the Oscar for a fantasy movie, of all genres. And then he blew it. He went from a filmmaker whose naysayers were the exception to one whose remaining cheerleaders are considered slightly maladjusted. The Desolation of Smaug recovers some of the territory Jackson has lost over the last decade, but he may be too far-gone to ever regain his crown. Perhaps in years to come The Lord of the Rings trilogy will be seen as an aberration in his filmography. There’s a cartoonishness to the gleeful, twisted anarchy on display in his earlierr work that may be more attuned to the less verimilitudinous aspects of King Kong and The Hobbit s. The exceptions are his female-centric character dramas, Heavenly Creat

Gizmo caca!

Gremlins (1984) I didn’t get to see Gremlins at the cinema. I wanted to, as I had worked myself into a state of great anticipation. There was a six-month gap between its (unseasonal) US release and arrival in the UK, so I had plenty of time to devour clips of cute Gizmo on Film ’84 (the only reason ever to catch Barry Norman was a tantalising glimpse of a much awaited movie, rather than his drab, colourless, reviews) and Gremlins trading cards that came with bubble gum attached (or was it the other way round?). But Gremlins ’ immediate fate for many an eager youngster in Britain was sealed when, after much deliberation, the BBFC granted it a 15 certificate. I had just turned 12, and at that time an attempt to sneak in to see it wouldn’t even have crossed my mind. I’d just have to wait for the video. I didn’t realise it then (because I didn’t know who he was as a filmmaker), but Joe Dante’s irrepressible anarchic wit would have a far stronger effect on me than the un

Now In Full Color, with a Happier Ending

Search This Blog