Chris At The Pictures: josh brolin

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Tuesday, 3 July 2018

'Sicario 2: Soldado' - Review

thriller 7/03/2018 02:33:00 pm 0

★ ★ ☆ ☆ ☆

Picking up where 2015’s grim tale of murky morals on the Mexican border left off, this sequel finds itself squeezing every political pressure point within reach. Josh Brolin returns as CIA operative Matt Graver, tasked with initiating open warfare between the Mexican cartels to dissuade the smuggling of terrorists across the border. He again enlists the mysterious Alejandro (Benicio Del Toro), this time to kidnap a crime lord’s daughter (Isabela Moner) and thereby escalate the unrest: they're going to build a war and make Mexico pay for it.

With the triple-threat of helmsman Denis Villeneuve, cinematographer Roger Deakins and star Emily Blunt now absent, this descent into destruction loses all direction and grace, becoming - ironically - a rather blunt instrument. I didn’t think Sicario had a heart in the first place, but without Blunt’s Kate Macer as the moral anchor, Soldado becomes a one-way ticket to rock bottom for all parties involved. “Rules of engagement, sir?” asks a squadmate of Graver’s as they prepare for a stand-off. “Fuck it all”, comes the response.

Nowhere is the shrugging off of anything less dour than a Nietzschean tract more apparent than this moment, Graver having already dismissed POTUS as “cowardly” for not wanting to cause the destabilisation of a neighbouring country. Taylor Sheridan returns as screenwriter, and makes it his mission to push all the MAGA era buttons he can before someone pries his fingers from the typewriter. The film opens with Mexican immigrants swarming towards the border, ISIS suicide bombers concealed within their ranks. An entire subplot is dedicated to the training of a young Mexican trafficker (Elijah Rodriguez). Disturbingly realistic dramatisations of atrocities committed on American soil are delivered in clear detail while later images of Mexican children and parents boarding separate buses are casually, even callously dismissed before we move to more masculine brooding.

Sheridan still has problems writing women, too: Kate Macer may have been our way into Sicario, but her feminine traits were unsubtly coded as simply daring to have ideals in the first place, used only as a contrast to the more pragmatic Graver and the morally suspect Alejandro. In Soldado, the only women with substantial speaking roles are Catherine Keener as a hawk-like overseer, and Moner, who's (still magnetic) turn as political prisoner becomes little more than a device to draw out development for Alejandro and plot exposition from everyone else. Del Toro is a gripping presence, as one would expect, but Brolin - bereft of any challenger - simply stomps about with his chin forward.

Director Stefano Sollima (Suburra) is no stranger to underworld unrest, and his teaming up with d.o.p. Dariusz Wolski (Alien: Covenant) makes for some appropriately forbidding imagery. Everything’s either blistering desert sunlight or spotlit shadows, both colour-timed to whichever shade of grey fits the current philosophical mood. Soldado’s nihilism, however (largely displayed in explosive but uninvolving action scenes), becomes wearing all too soon. An epilogue that further hammers home this franchise’s Gospel of Matthew, “violence begets more violence” message offers no solution to its central conflict, nor to the real-life horrors it purports to represent.

Thursday, 17 May 2018

'Deadpool 2' - Review

zazie beetz 5/17/2018 09:15:00 pm 1

★ ★ ½ ☆ ☆

Leftover goodwill from 2016’s surprise smash hit doesn’t go the distance in this formulaic and overcranked sequel, which sees Ryan Reynolds slip back into the red onesie. Wade Wilson/Deadpool is mired in a depressive downturn after his wife, Vanessa (Morena Baccarin, who somehow has even less to do this time around), is murdered. His attempts to make amends for his mistakes by joining the X-Men are swiftly shot down when his a botched mission lands him in jail beside Russell (Julian Dennison), a teenage mutant with a highly combustible nature. They’re soon on the run from Josh Brolin’s Cable, a time-travelling cyborg with little patience for the titular twerp’s smart mouth.

Sadly, it’s an attribute with which I entirely sympathise. I was never the world’s biggest fan of the first film, but was found myself won over - almost reluctantly - by its irreverence towards the wider superhero movie landscape. Plus, the years spent in development hell and a need for justice after Fox’s criminal representation of Deadpool in X-Men Origins: Wolverine gave it a strangely underdog status. Now, removed from it’s lowly spot on the studio ladder and armed with a budget more in-keeping with your average blockbuster, the fourth-wall breaks, extreme violence and juvenile humour seem far less subversive than before.

There are still plenty of jokes that land (I missed the second big laugh of the film as my eyes were still watering from a sharp inhalation of drink at the opening visual gag), but if you’re not one for dick jokes or endless pop culture references, you’re in a for a rough ride. A grotesque and potentially brilliant Basic Instinct nod is ruined by a character saying out-loud “Basic Instinct!”.

There’s also a streak of self-fellating hypocrisy to some of the comedy which didn’t sit well with me. One aside sees The Merc With The Mouth mockingly refer to Deadpool creator Rob Liefield’s inability to draw feet, yet the artist receives a ‘special thanks to’ credit. Also, for the plentiful supply of jokes aimed at white men getting away with sexual assault, accused abuser T.J. Miller returns as Weasel. The producers claimed “We’re in the final editing” when the accusations emerged, but in an age where Ridley Scott can re-shoot half a movie in the wake of such allegations, that sort of excuse won’t fly.

David Leitch (John Wick, Atomic Blonde) replaces Tim Miller behind the camera this time, and his snappy, brutal approach to combat feels too...much. Action in a Deadpool film should be light and wacky, but the prison break sequence involving Cable and a horde of armoured guards is the wrong kind of bone-crunching. The creaky visual effects have been given a massive overhaul, but a smattering of the set pieces still remain dutifully small of scale, or openly reject the opportunity for mass carnage (see a hilariously anticlimactic skydiving sequence).

But for all its mockery of everything from shared universes to rival comic giant, DC, Deadpool 2 inexorably stumbles in the same potholes as those it purports to subvert. The villain is a grimdark bore. There’s an overblown vehicle chase. Emotional beats fall flat or are immediately interrupted by snark. And, of course, there’s a Stan Lee cameo.

And yet, Reynold’s clear affection for the character and crusade to please the comic fans for better or worse is undeniably admirable. He’s enjoying himself, and he wants you to share that joy. It’s great that Julian Dennison has landed such a spotlight so soon after his breakthrough appearance in Hunt for the Wilderpeople. It’s great that Negasonic Teenage Warhead (Brianna Hilderbrand) gets to have a girlfriend. It’s great that Zazie Beetz’ Domino (a new ally blessed with a superhuman lucky streak) gets to be a confident action heroine with visible, unmocked armpit hair. There are so many small victories against the usual pitfalls of major comic book fodder, but Deadpool 2’s adherence to a plethora of similar tropes and a suffocatingly smug sense of humour threaten to turn them pyrrhic. “Maximum effort”? Not quite.

Saturday, 10 October 2015

'Sicario' - Review

war 10/10/2015 02:53:00 pm

★ ★ ½ ☆ ☆

Having lay awake half the night trying to figure out just why Sicario didn’t work for me in the same way it worked for apparently everyone else, I’ve still no luck in nailing it down, but I’ll try to explain myself before the sniper scopes of many an outraged critic take aim.

The latest from Denis Villeneuve (Prisoners, Enemy, and the upcoming sequel to Blade Runner), the film follows idealistic FBI agent Kate Macer (Emily Blunt) into the desert of distrust and despair. In the aftermath of a violent and horrific drug raid which sees her team decimated, Macer is enlisted by sandal-wearing CIA operative Matt Graver (Josh Brolin) to aid in the escalating war against Mexican border cartels, working alongside the inscrutable Alejandro (Benicio Del Toro).

If you’re going to sell your film as a ‘suspense thriller’, it might help to make good on that promise. I understand that we’re meant to be kept in the dark just as Macer is as she’s dragged deeper into the cesspit, but the threadbare nature of the dialogue and the tortuous reveal of information kept my investment at arm’s length.

I hate myself for saying this, but the action sequences – excluding with feeling, the fantastic opening and ending – struck me as the high-budget equivalent of Paranormal Activity: there’s a lot of walking and talking with little dramatic verve until something goes ‘bang’ very loudly. Explosions, shady trades and one striking showdown in the bowels of an illegal border-crossing are far from lacklustre ingredients, but there’s a very fine line between a slow build and the construction workers turning up late.

I may be a tasteless moron in the eyes of several readers by now, but even I can appreciate the value of a good cast: Blunt is fiercely engaging and believably lost as the audience eye-view, and Del Toro is continuously fascinating in his role of the silent and enigmatic spook, whose spoiler-heavy arc prevents me from saying any more than that. I also grew a soft spot for Daniel Kaluuya as Macer’s number two, perhaps because he seems just as lost and irritated by the cloak-and-dagger politics as I was.

A perpetual mood of uncertainty is given great heft by Jóhann Jóhansson’s pulsating, windswept score while Roger Deakins’ cinematography takes the cake, delivering a stunning array of powerful imagery that speaks a dial louder than anything else in the film: the colour beige has never looked so good, every frame thick with artful symbolism.

As much as I went into this ready to sing my praise to the heavens, I can only be honest about a film that did so little for me. I have a major inkling Sicario will be something akin to 2001: A Space Odyssey or Blade Runner, both of which I now hold in huge regard: something for everyone else to rave about around my confounded ears until I give it another go a few years down the line, realise the error of my ways, and stop using my least favourite word: overrated.

Thursday, 24 September 2015

'Everest' - Review

true sotry 9/24/2015 04:15:00 pm

★ ★ ★ ☆ ☆

Here’s an intense but crowded disaster epic from director Baltasar Kormákur, detailing an ill-fated expedition to the peak of Mount Everest in 1996. Jason Clarke stars as Rob Hall, the head of a massive tourist pack heading up the slopes. Among his entourage is Josh Brolin as Texan adventurer Beck Weathers, Jake Gyllenhaal as mountaineer Scott Fisher and Emily Watson as base camp leader Helen Wilton.

While it’s no surprise that Jason Clarke is excellent, the real stand-out performances come from Watson and Brolin, particularly incredible for the former considering she’s tied to a phone for a sizeable chunk of screen-time (as is Keria Knightley as Rob’s wife Jan). Brolin has never been much of a selling point for me, but here he’s a wonder to watch as Beck’s go-gettin’ attitude is slowly and cruelly worn away by the ascent.

As one might expect with a true-to-life story, a reverential tone is maintained throughout, particularly by Dario Marianelli’s unfurling score and a script that doesn’t waste time trying to glamourize the climbers as heroes or stigmatize anyone for what may or may not have gone wrong. The mountain itself is also given due respect: a recurring shot with the cast shunted to the side of the frame as Everest looms all around – just itching for them to put a foot wrong – illustrates the famous peak as a character in itself.

Blacing the many characters and respective tangents was always going to be difficult, and sadly Everest makes a bad job of it: Gyllenhaal’s Scott Fisher is sporadically returned to every once in a while almost as an afterthought, which feels ill-befitting not only of his talent as an actor, but also disrespectful of his real-life counterpart. Constantly switching perspectives adds a lot of un-necessary running time too, but at the same time other parts of the story feel underdeveloped. Elements of the real-life tale that are still under speculation to this day are handled mostly through hasty cutaways to other events or by having characters simply drop from the frame…sometimes literally!

The marketing attempts to sell this as a snowbound Gravity (even the tagline ‘Never let go’ is but a word shy of the subtitle adorning posters for Cuarón’s space stunner), but the final effort often loses focus, despite being no less terrifying and beautiful in its own regard. I respect and admire Everest as a thrilling and thoughtful retelling of extraordinary events, but unlike its many characters, Kormákur falls short of the summit.

Wednesday, 2 April 2014

'Labor Day' - Review

tobey maguire 4/02/2014 12:39:00 pm

Labor Day (adapted from the best-selling novel by Joyce Maynard), is a romantic drama featuring Kate Winslet as a single mother who is out food shopping when an escaped convict (Josh Brolin) forces her and her son Henry (Gattlin Griffith) to become hostages in their own home until he is ready to go on the run. Told to the audience from the perspective of an older Henry (Tobey Maguire), the film explores how the outcast Frank and Adele (Winslet) begin to form a strange and intimate relationship as the story unfolds.

In the press book for the film, it describes it as ‘a poignant and heart-warming movie’ and uses phrases such as ‘mid-life renaissance’ and ‘the ties that bind’, cliché phrases that one invokes at their peril. We’ve gotten so used to these kinds of phrases being thrown around any old ‘romance’ film that it’s hard not to raise a cynical eyebrow when going in…and unfortunately for Labor Day, the scepticism is well founded. The film just can’t decide what it wants to be, on the one hand attempting to tackle a melodrama whilst precariously balancing a rather forced coming-of-age story in the other.

The first thirty minutes of the film – which includes most of the footage shown in the trailer – details Adele and Henry meeting Frank, who subsequently holds them under house arrest, then proceeds to (in a very Nicholas Sparks-ian way) start doing odd jobs around the house, teaching the young boy how to play baseball and (I’m not making this up, watch the trailer) helps mother and son make a pie in an almost vomit-inducingly saccharine way. The entire film – save for flashbacks – all seems to take place in late afternoon, the characters and locations constantly bathed in the sort of golden light you’d normally see in a Ferrero Rocher advert, and it’s all under laid with an irritating, ‘ooh look how soft and sweet this is’ musical score and selection of songs.

Performance-wise, Josh Brolin handles the role given to him very well, whilst Winslet just kept reminding me how good she was in Revolutionary Road, a much darker film which gave her a lot more room to breathe in her role as a tortured single mother. Despite his very little screen time, Tobey Maguire gives the most believable performance, whilst Griffith appears to spend most of the film simply staring unblinkingly at everyone and everything with his mouth hung open. Perhaps the most enjoyable character comes from Clark Gregg as Adele’s ex-husband, his scenes actually injecting some light-hearted humour into the drab of everything else around him.

The problem that underlies everything else is that the film just can’t decide on a tone, the pie-making scene clumsily juxtaposed with the realisation that Frank is still a dangerous criminal and that if I was Adele, I would have called the police about fifty times by now, the suspension of disbelief rapidly becoming suspension of common sense. The all-too-brief scenes of real darkness much later in the film are badly misjudged and clash horribly with the sugary-sweet romantic elements established earlier on and is not helped by the (admittedly handsome) cinematography that bathes everything in over-exposed light.

Having never read the source material, I can’t comment on whether Labor Day is an effective adaptation or not, but purely as a film it just doesn’t hold together, the few good performances and enticing cinematography providing little foundation for the mishandled tone and saccharine atmosphere.

2 Stars

Chris At The Pictures