BLITZ- Review

Ali Plumb wrote a blog entry last week on Empire Online, praising Jason Statham. The point that really stuck with me, from that entry, was that "he is his own genre". People know what to expect from a Jason Statham movie, and unless that movie is Gnomeo & Juliet, they're certainly going to get it. Blitz is what happens when the satisfaction of those expectations collides with an adaptation of a Ken Bruen novel.

Statham plays DS Brant, a bullish copper who treats South East London like his very own china shop. His station is currently under scrutiny from the press as a result of Brant's very public displays of police brutality towards criminals. While trying to lay low, a murderer calling himself Blitz begins a killing spree, picking off police officers methodically. Teamed with a strait-laced inspector, Brant seeks to bring Blitz to justice, through fair means or foul.

If regular readers of my reviews are wondering why the name of novelist Ken Bruen sounds so familiar. He's the guy who wrote the novel London Boulevard was based upon, and also serves as executive producer on Blitz. Nathan Parker, who wrote Moon, follows William Monahan in writing a rubbish script that happens to come from one of Bruen's novels, and that's a coincidence I shan't ignore. While I haven't read any of Bruen's work, these two recent films based on his books both have the most threadbare stories, reinforced only by the misplaced talents of the cast and crew.

Here's a Thing, that's happened in superhero movies of late. Back in the days when it was Adam West or even George Clooney playing Batman, it was all very frothy stuff. But now, we have Christian Bale as the Dark Knight. Robert Downey Jr. is Iron Man, Edward Norton was the Hulk, Andrew Garfield is going to be Spider-Man- all properly great actors who up the philosophical quotient of these comic book adventures and open them up as more acceptable guilty pleasures to more snobby audiences. And with the arrival of Blitz, I can't help but wonder if London Boulevard marked the start of a similar trend in low-rent British crime movies.

Not that this is unfamiliar territory for Aidan Gillen, whose character is pretty much represented as a poor man's Batman villain, alias and methodology and all. Gillen acquits himself best, having always quite easily crossed between roles in films like this and 12 Rounds, and lauded television like Queer as Folk and The Wire. His character may be written as a cod-Heath Ledger’s Joker, but his performance is much more. Given the calibre of the rest of the cast, their performances are lesser.

Paddy Considine manfully manages the marginalised role of a homosexual policeman who apparently comes to see Brant's way as the correct way- think “the right way, the wrong way, and the Max Power way” again. Ridiculously named "Porter Nash", it's a waste of a fine actor in a role that effectively stops developing once the film's buddy cop movie strand aborts, to make way for more gritty and violent stuff. The particular talents of the always watchable Statham are put to good use, even if it’s in a pretty unlikeable role.

The idea of the archaic cop who gets the right results isn’t exactly untested, having been refined to a high art form by Phillip Glenister’s portrayal of DCI Gene Hunt, but it’s really old hat in films by now. Plus, everyone we meet from the force seems affably corrupt in one way or another in this film, so what is there for Brant to rebel against? As a result, Brant is such a cartoon grunt that it would be out of character for him to have anything more than grudging acceptance of Nash's sexuality and ideological differences, at a point where the film intends to appear all equal opportunities for about ten seconds. Instead, it backfires, coming across with a condescending and surprised inflection that gay men are apparently just as capable as all other men. The very idea!

So this isn't the more enjoyable vehicle for Statham that I wanted to see when I finished watching The Mechanic. The visceral nature of the violence demands that we take it entirely seriously, which makes all the one-liners and trademark Statham moments quite jarring. The plot hares off all over the place, just like London Boulevard, with many abortive plotlines that pad out the running time to where it feels long at a mere 97 minutes. It feels like a too-faithful adaptation of a book in its construction, which I can't confirm because I never, ever want to read any of Bruen's stuff.

While the idea of a Dirty Harry-style series of British cop movies with Jason Statham in the lead role is quite appealing, Blitz ain’t the start of anything. In fact, it barely ends, limping to an unsatisfying conclusion after what feels like an age. The film is also one of those British crime movies that's too much of a British crime movie, as we know them. The tropes are tired, and only the frequently unfulfilled promise of the actors involved is new. It’s violent, it’s dumb and, if you like it, it's the guiltiest of pleasures- but like the other recent Ken Bruen outing, it's far too ugly a film to really enjoy.

Blitz is now showing in cinemas nationwide.
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If you've seen Blitz, why not share your comments below?

 I'm Mark the mad prophet, and until next time, don't watch anything I wouldn't watch.

ATTACK THE BLOCK- Review

Nestled into a cushy niche in the hectic release schedule of summer 2011, Attack the Block arrives in cinemas and immediately announces itself as the film to beat, between now and September. I've made no secret of the fact that I've really been looking forward to this feature debut from Joe Cornish, of Adam and Joe fame, and happily it measures up to expectations.

The bones of the story are essentially like the basis for a Battle: Brixton movie, as an alien spore containing a vicious man-eating beast plummets into the midst of a South London council estate, interrupting a mugging. The muggers, five teenagers who live on the block, are attacked by the beast, but are able to overpower and kill it. As the kids celebrate their trophy, they don't realise that more spores are on the way- much bigger spores.

The immediate problem that some will have with Attack the Block is that we're expected to sympathise with chavs. There's more to them than that, but the characters are still chavs. Nevertheless, there's a case to be made that both the film's detractors and Cornish's script are guilty of simplifying the character types. To those who are too easily reminded of Eden Lake, and of course the yobs they've encountered in real life, the parallel is set up very early on through a middle aged woman calling the kids "fucking monsters". And then the real monsters turn up.

That concept of "inner city vs. outer space" is innovative and interesting enough that the hero yobs never irked me when they weren't supposed to. On the other hand, we do first meet them as they mug the supposed audience identification figure, a nurse called Sam, played by Jodie Whittaker. This is so harsh an introduction that the film spends a lot of time trying to reconcile the muggers and the victim when they're forced to unite, and these are the only times in which the film rings slightly false.

That's really the full extent of the potentially problematic stuff in Attack the Block, which is as bold and accomplished a debut as Richard Ayoade's Submarine, with all the ambition and technical aptitude of Duncan Jones' Moon. Cornish blends easily with that new wave of British filmmakers dedicated to ambitious and commercial projects that don't forsake storytelling, or that British sense of humour. His brilliant work re-enacting popular blockbusters using only toys in his bedroom on The Adam and Joe Show has somehow translated into a live-action visual sense that outdoes most of the film's relevant contenders in the very first shot.

However, virtually nobody else out there is making British films as ambitious as Cornish has. And under the Spielbergian touches, such as that sumptuous establishing shot that opens the film, there's the entirely valid current of social commentary. John Boyega, Simon Howard, Leeon Jones, Alex Esmail and Franz Drameh may not play hoodies you can hug, but they're all rounded and distinctive characters, equally capable of being despicable, as in the beginning of their journey, and heroic. It's only a shame that the portrayal of yobs on screen will conflict so wildly with the cinema behaviour of the audience it will attract.

It comes in at a lean, mean 88 minutes, and it's all muscle. Nothing's gratuitous, as we zip from the streets to the 19th floor of the block at the break-neck pace of a modern Doctor Who episode, while keeping the stakes high and the characters in mortal peril. The 15 certificate isn't merely for strong language and drug references- the violence of these gloriously designed creatures is faithfully represented, blood and guts and all. The film gets away with not probing the aliens too deeply on the strength of that eccentric character design and the sheer brilliance of the action choreography. 

Attack the Block is a curiously difficult film to define. It's not a ribald comedy, but it is funny. It's not a sci-fi film, but it does have aliens in it. It's not an outright horror, but it consistently jolts you out of your seat. Dismissing issues of genre, it's simpler to say that it's a stupefying success from a director who wastes no time proving that he's enormously talented and refreshingly optimistic. Cornish is also a good enough writer to ensure that the characters are accessible to anyone who's willing to take a chance on some unconventional movie heroes, in a film that's as cinematic as British cinema gets. Your move, Super 8.

Attack the Block is now showing in cinemas nationwide.
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If you've seen Attack the Block, why not share your comments below?

 I'm Mark the mad prophet, and until next time, don't watch anything I wouldn't watch.

SUBMARINE- Review

Occasionally, a director makes a feature debut with astonishing hype and anticipation around it, and that's the case with Richard Ayoade's first film, Submarine. I've been no different, even though I was more trepidatious than most. I don't like mumblecore much, and while the trailer was amazing, it made the film look a little mumbly to me. So I approached it with anticipation and wariness together, like I was trying to have sex with a shark.

In the vein of recent film depictions of Mark Zuckerburg and Scott Pilgrim, Oliver Tate is a young man with no perspective of the world in any terms that do not involve himself. He elevates himself in his own estimation by imagining the film of his life in a small Welsh town, as a biopic of a prominent thinker. The Herculean tasks of his adolescence are twofold- to prevent his mother leaving his father for a self-help guru, and to woo Jordana, a tomboy who likes to set fire to things, into bed.

I've been told I like to use big words on this blog. So it's with an appropriate level of self-consciousness that I point out that Submarine is a film that likes to use big words. Ayoade's script even deploys the word "atavistic" in conversation at one point, in an anecdote from the elder Tate that even has Oliver scrambling for the dictionary. I can't really think of many lines of dialogue in the film that I couldn't imagine being delivered by Ayoade himself, remembering his work in The IT Crowd and Garth Marenghi's Darkplace. But the unified voice in the dialogue actually pays off in some ways, because of our self-centred hero.

Having recently despised Greenberg, I realised while watching Submarine that I'm fine with heroes like Oliver, like Mark, like Scott, because they're all young. Well, maybe I'm not OK with Mark Zuckerburg, but the point stands. If you can get behind mumblecore, good for you, but I honestly can't stand to see coming-of-age stories with 40-year-old men. The levels on which Ayoade's film work all work because it's an honest-to-goodness story about growing up from adolescence, not growing up from being Roger fuckin' Greenberg.

My main quibble with mumblecore as a film movement is that it has always seemed to me like observation masquerading as observational humour. This film ain't that, because it's very funny indeed. The self-absorption of Oliver, played by an excellent Craig Roberts, rings true in a way that's both cringey and completely identifiable. As a teenager, all of your problems seem enormous, like they're going to matter now and forever. Sometimes they carry huge pathos, sometimes they carry subjective comedic value, but they most often feel very dramatic, because we are brought up on drama.

The central conceit of the film is that for the most part, we're looking at the low-budget film of Oliver's life, mounting the fourth wall and perching itself there for the duration. And it's an indie film too, Oliver acting throughout as if he's on a low-budget for life, and this is the only chance to get it right and tell his story. Let's hope it's not Richard Ayoade's only film though, because it's stunningly self-assured for a bloke who doesn't ever seem to come across as charismatic in the press he's done for the film. I've recently heard him decry unwarranted enthusiasm, so it's a good thing that all of the enthusiasm for this one is warranted.

The soundtrack by Alex Turner complements the gorgeous visuals, photographed by Erik Wilson, and the production design is pretty much unique too. It's set some time in the late 1980s or 1990s that you can't quite place, the brief nod to 1986's Crocodile Dundee notwithstanding, and set in a rundown Welsh town in which Ayoade's lens is more than capable of finding beauty. The contained but quietly vibrant cast works wonders too, with Sally Hawkins and Noah Taylor as Oliver's parents, and a gloriously knobbish Paddy Considine coming between them. Most of all, Yasmin Paige bursts out of her CBBC roots to make a boisterous and enrapturing Jordana.

All of the best bits about Submarine work in tandem with each other. Whatever my usual problems with mumbly and quirky films like Wes Anderson's or Noah Baumbach's, those problems are somehow overcome with this one. I'm more at ease watching teenagers grapple with minutiae than grown-arse men, but I suspect it's also to do with the setting- repression and procrastination seem so much more at home on the British Isles. They're our main exports after all, but Richard Ayoade seems set to become a truly great British export, and his debut is far more ambitious and romantic and achingly brilliant than even the great trailer could suggest. And it's far more than just using big words, too.

Submarine is now showing in selected cinemas nationwide, and expands to more sites from Friday.
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If you've seen Submarine, why not share your comments below?

I'm Mark the mad prophet, and until next time, don't watch anything I wouldn't watch.

Marx and Spencer- MADE IN DAGENHAM Review

There's a faint echo of Richard Curtis about the much acclaimed new British comedy drama Made in Dagenham, which tells the true story of 187 female machinists at the Ford production plant in Dagenham who went on strike in 1968. Graded as "unskilled" by the penny pinching higher-uppers, their dispute became a national petition for equal pay for women.

The girls in the Dagenham plant rally around Rita O'Grady, a housewife who's picked out by kindly union rep Alfred to lead her colleagues. On the troubled road to reform, Rita finds her capabilities stretched to the limit, or so we're meant to think. This, for me, was part of why I didn't quite like Made in Dagenham as much as the ardent fans it's already collecting- the crusade for equal pay was a momentous development in British social justice, but it really doesn't carry any heft here.

That's where the likeness to Richard Curtis' work comes in. He tends to write fairly frothy comedies, and his only film to date that was deeply rooted in actual social history was his ode to rock music and pirate radio, The Boat That Rocked. As I said when I reviewed that film, you come away from this one without much of an understanding of the subject matter. I really can't blame the British film industry for frequently replicating the Curtis model- Four Weddings and a Funeral and The Full Monty (a facsimile of that sensibility) both got nominated for Best Picture at the Oscars, but then I can't accuse producers of being too ambitious either.

This one will definitely travel well, if not as well as its forebears, and it's definitely less of a hollow pleasure than some of Curtis' oeuvre. but I don't know that it properly conveys the history, despite the most heartfelt efforts of the script and the cast. Sally Hawkins elevates the whole thing a notch or two with her excellent performance as Rita. It's the stuff that Oscar buzz is made of, but it'll be interesting to see if anything actually comes of that through awards season. The rest of the ensemble kind of take turns to steal scenes, and everyone makes their mark, from Bob Hoskins to Miranda Richardson.

In what feels like a very conscious effort by newcomer Billy Ivory to make it an ensemble, the script makes allowance for most of the characters to have their own subplot going on. There's nothing wrong with developing the characters, and indeed, it's great to see characters so fleshed out and sympathetic. But it does lead to a slightly cluttered narrative, especially when it feels like there's a disconnect from the real meat of the story anyway. Nevertheless, director Nigel Cole gives the film an unmistakable aura of the 1960s- all Marks and Spencer and social change- with an acute sense of period detail that The Boat That Rocked never mustered beyond its soundtrack and costumes.

Made in Dagenham isn't aiming to be a gritty Shane Meadows-esque tale about social injustice, but then it's not aiming for much else either. It's frothy, feel-good Sunday evening fare with a laudable cast, but it's not ambitious enough to make an "extraordinary true story" anything outside of the ordinary. It would be the minor part of a nonetheless interesting double bill with Cemetery Junction, a film where we don't have to be told how right the characters are in order to root for their goals and dreams. Sometimes it's enough for a film to make you feel warm and fuzzy, but in this case, I think there's some squandered potential.

Made in Dagenham is now showing at cinemas nationwide.
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If you've seen Made in Dagenham, why not share your comments below? I'm with producer Stephen Wooley on the film's 15 certificate. Everyone quote the South Park movie after 3... "Horrific, deplorable violence is okay, as long as people don't say any naughty words!"

I'm Mark the mad prophet, and until next time, don't watch anything I wouldn't watch.