There has to be a point, sometime soon, where we all have to sit up and pay Sam Rockwell his dues. It's not that he isn't already appreciated by a great deal of film fans, but after giving the best performance of 2009 in Moon and promptly not getting any awards recognition to that tune, he's got to be one of the best and most underrated actors working today.
His latest role in Conviction may be a supporting turn, but he is so much of what elevates a formulaic legal procedural above the level of a weekday afternoon TV movie on Five. Rockwell plays Kenny Waters, a man seemingly framed by the police department and sentenced to life in prison for first degree murder. The film itself is the true story of his sister Betty Anne, who spends the best part of two decades trying to exonerate him, first by going to law school and later by trying to untangle the legal and bureaucratic issues around his original trial.
The title is transparently a double entendre, referring to both Kenny's sentencing and Betty Anne's belief in his innocence. The film itself leans more towards the latter part of that equation. Hilary Swank plays Betty Anne, in a better role than any she's had since Million Dollar Baby. She's fiercely loyal to her brother and her struggle is one that's very easy to get behind given how the script is constructed. Director Tony Goldwyn's background behind the camera is largely in television, and he brings Pamela Gray's script to the screen with the same fluidity of narrative that you can play with in that medium.
We begin with the salient points- that our two leads are as close as siblings can be, and that Betty Anne Waters attends law school with the aim of proving his innocence. Then for a little while, the story unfolds as a Russian doll would, bringing flashbacks within flashbacks as we first see the circumstances that led to Kenny's arrest, and then the relationship the siblings shared when they were children. If any of this so far sounds slightly familiar, you're probably reminded of last week's The Next Three Days, as I was.
Aside from the obvious distinction of Betty Anne getting her brother out of jail by using the legal system that put him in there, instead of breaking the law as Russell Crowe resolved with his wife, this one is a markedly different watch because of how it takes pains to establish a strong sibling relationship. In films with this kind of plot, the relationship is so often between a husband and wife, or in the case of another recent film, Mother, between a parent and a child. Conviction's central relationship makes it easier to get into it, and to care about the characters.
Sam Rockwell gives another award-worthy performance, and I'm not yet sure if he'll be overlooked once again. As we saw with Jeff Bridges' win last year, the Academy will sometimes nominate an actor for a strong body of work as much as a single recent performance. Whether he gets it or not, he deserves attention for this performance. What he does so well is play the character ambiguously. If you're not familiar with the true story behind this one, you won't know how it turns out. Rockwell brilliantly plays Kenny as a likeable guy with a fierce temper. You come into the same doubts that other characters encounter in the course of their quest to see him freed from prison, making it remarkably tense at times.
It's not perfect, of course, and even though I enjoyed Conviction immensely, I find myself weary with the first fortnight of 2010. This film, The King's Speech and 127 Hours are all good awards candidates, but they're all films in which the topic is so worthy that a good portion of the audience knows how it all winds up. I was in the minority on this one, but reading around the film and finding out what happened afterwards means that it doesn't quite ring true in retrospect. For the most part though, it's handled pretty well.
Conviction tempers melodrama with a compelling human story to make for a legal procedural as watchable as any you're likely to see in 2011. Sam Rockwell continues to be an absolutely magnetic presence, and although Hilary Swank has yet to top some of her previous performances, she's good in this one, and her chemistry with Rockwell is arguably what makes the film. If you don't already know the story, it's able to keep you guessing while still telling an inspirational narrative.
Conviction is now showing in cinemas nationwide. ------------------------------------------------------------------ If you've seen Conviction, why not share your comments below?
I'm Mark the mad prophet, and until next time, don't watch anything I wouldn't watch.
As something of a regular disclaimer, it's only my opinion here- others are available. As ever, mild spoilers may occur in the process of reviewing, but never so far as to spoil any major plot developments. That said, the Iron Manreview will contain SPOILERS, because if you haven't seen the first one yet, I doubt you'd be here. The Internet is abuzz with reviews of Iron Man 2, the definitive beginning of the 2010 summer blockbuster season. With such widespread interest in the sequel, there's only one thing your Mad Prophet could do, true believers. That's right- go back and review Iron Man. You know, because this blog started just shy of the opportune time to do a review of that film. Nah, there will be a quick snifter at Iron Man 2 as well, so sit back and enjoy a blog post that scrutinises the ongoing adventures of Tony Stark. -------------------------------------------------------------- Iron Man begins with Tony Stark being ambushed by a terrorist group whilst in a military convoy in Afghanistan. He's a billionaire and genius, and his talents are understandably coveted by America's enemies. While in captivity, he pulls a Doc Brown by using the materials provided to create something much more awesome than he's meant to- in this case a mechanised suit of armour capable of dealing heavy firepower. Through these experiences, Tony's eyes are opened to the effects of his work, and when he returns to America, he vows to develop the armour and right his own wrongs as the titular superhero.
In the time since the film came out, Jeff "The Dude" Bridges has publicly decried Paramount's initial handling of the film, setting a release date and even starting shooting before they had a script or a cast locked down. In the same breath, he said that the film turned out as well as it did thanks to the improv skills of director Jon Favreau and leading man Robert Downey Jr. Certainly they make Iron Man the all-out riotous bit of fun blockbuster cinema that it is. You have to remember that Iron Man is no Superman or Spider-Man. With the upper tier characters spoken for, film studios are turning to lesser known characters, making this an unlikely hit when it originally came out.
Of course it's also the film that largely gave Downey the stardom he finally secured in the last few years. He earns every bit of it with his sardonic portrayal of Stark, making the audience like him from barely a minute after the film starts. Favreau wisely keeps him on screen for as long as possible, because in a superhero film where the alter-ego is entirely concealed by a suit of robot armour, there's little room for performance in major action sequences.
Save for a few ingenious finishing moves, there's little to show that Stark is Iron Man, resulting in a number of open-helmeted exchanges when he does don the suit. On which note, it's nice to see they partially employ practical effects for the suit, and that it's near impossible to tell the difference between the effects and the physical suit. Also to be applauded is his chemistry with literally everyone on screen. He sparks off of Gwyneth Paltrow as his long-suffering assistant Pepper Potts without the film resorting to a traditional romantic conclusion. He mocks Terrence Howard's Colonel Rhodes without ever letting the audience lose sight of the fact that they're best friends. Downey is perfectly cast as Stark and is simply one of the best things about this film.
The plot rattles along wonderfully, especially considering they improvised much of it, and the only real problem stems from Iron Man being a second-tier Marvel hero. The first-tier heroes are often so well-known because they also have everyone's favourite villains. In Iron Man's case, his nemeses are more often bigger or more metal versions of himself- another guy in a suit.
Even if the action climax fizzles out, it picks up for one of the better final scenes of any modern blockbuster- a complete subversion of the angst around preserving a secret identity when you have superpowers. Tony telling the press "I am Iron Man" leaves the audience wanting more from the film from the second it cuts to the credits. And who could blame any audience? This is a witty, gloriously acted and hugely enjoyable film that stands up on repeat viewings and doesn't adhere too closely to superhero genre formula. Iron Man defies expectations by pleasing both comic fans and broad audiences, setting up both the origins of the character and some pretty intense anticipation for a follow-up. -------------------------------------------------------------- It's that intense anticipation that threatens to overshadow Iron Man 2 for me. Beginning simultaneously with the first film's ending before skipping six months on, the sequel picks up with Tony being massively popular for the Iron Man brand and for "effectively privatising world peace." Opposition stirs within the US government, who want to replicate the armour for military usage, and across the globe, where a resentful Ivan Vanko plots vengeance on Tony. Whipping up an arc reactor of his own, Vanko embarks upon a mission to prove to the world that Iron Man is not indestructible...
On my first viewing? I don't think it's as good as the original. I wouldn't call it a disappointment, but it's just missing something. I will be seeing it again to check I wasn't compressing it under the weight of my expectations, but here's my review for now. The first hour or so is really pretty dull. The highlight, an fight scene at the Monaco Grand Prix, has been flogged to death in the marketing, and so has little impact in the context of the film. After a promising opening, it becomes bogged down in extended scenes of sub-poena hearings and corporate mix-ups, which is not what you want from a film called Iron Man 2.
After that second hour though, the film becomes preoccupied with selling the forthcoming Avengers film. The convergence of all the Marvel characters here takes up a sizable chunk of the second act, when I'd really much rather have seen a film solely about Iron Man. It wouldn't be fair to say it suffers from Spider-Man 3 Syndrome, but it does stretch itself massively to cover numerous plot points about SHIELD when giving proper focus to the narrative at hand would have been more satisfying. Despite the flab, it's a decent narrative with some strong action beats, but it seems divorced from the sense of fun that made Iron Man so good. Of the cast, I can't really declare any faults. Downey is once again superb as Tony, becoming ever more isolated as the tide of opinion turns against him, but special mention should go to Sam Rockwell. Assess your wants and needs, and I guarantee you there is nothing you want as much as Justin Hammer wants to be Tony Stark. He's an incompetent shadow to Tony's genius and Rockwell knocks it out of the park completely in every scene he's in. Don Cheadle makes a better Rhodey-cum-War Machine than his predecessor Terrence Howard right from the off, and Mickey Rourke proves an interesting casting decision, playing Vanko. His righteous anger is pretty much the length and breadth of his character, but Rourke sells it well, proving a threatening screen presence throughout. Downey has always been fast-talking as Tony, often speaking at the same time as an equally flustered and garbled Gwyneth Paltrow, but it really jars this time around in the early instances of their dialogue together. If there's one character who's perfectly legible and well-covered throughout, it's Happy Hogan, played by... director Jon Favreau. Expanding a cameo from the first film, he gets lots of dialogue in this one, gets involved in action scenes and at one point is pinioned between Scarlett Johansson's legs. If you have to do a cameo, make it more like Hitchcock and less like Shyamalan. I do have to wonder where director Jon Favreau's head was this time around, other than locked between ScarJo's thighs in that one scene. Is Iron Man 2 solidly entertaining? Ultimately, yes, but it's not a patch on the first one. The unconventional ending of the first film is countered with a bog-standard denouement for two certain characters and a final scene that's kind of copied from the ending to one of the Star Wars films. And just prior to those scenes, we have a villain face-off similar to the end of Iron Man- as mentioned earlier, his opponents are invariably other robots, and that's the case here. I'll hand it to Favreau though, it still seems fresh if not entirely as enjoyable as what's gone before. And it held my attention throughout, so it's visually top-notch even if the meat in the story is a little thin at the outset. It's funny really, how Iron Man proved a winning formula with little planning and a largely improvised production and this one didn't. The signs of aforethought are all too clear in Iron Man 2, and the half-hearted attempt to recapture that formula turns it into just that- a formula. There aren't many original thrills, but it has a better cast giving better performances than many other films you'll see this summer. Thankfully it hasn't attempted to stray into the intangible territory of "darkness" that many Hollywood sequels try to broach, but sadly it doesn't really try anything else new either. -------------------------------------------------------------- With the caveat that I may well be kinder to the sequel on a second viewing, let me know what you think of the Iron Man films with a comment below!
I'm Mark the mad prophet, and until next time, don't watch anything I wouldn't watch.
Yeah, this is about the size of that promised rebrand. Let me fill you in on why I've gone off in a different direction from the "Filmgoat" name I was planning and alluding to. Having gotten catastrophically drunk last week, I wandered outside the club I was in and met an old friend from secondary school. Well, I say a friend... point being he's apparently being reading these reviews and told me they were very funny. This, for me, is a score.
More than anything else, I've hoped I'm not brow-beating people with my opinions. If anything, I'm happier to be Howard Beale, the mad prophet of the airwaves from the film Network. His show in that film is set up by the TV network executives to open with him delivering elaborate and disillusioning rants that he's channeling to the world from some unknown celestial force. At the end of each rant, he'll collapse into a faint in the spotlight, whereupon the studio audience applauds raucously. They're entertained, but they haven't took on a word he's been saying. And when someone reminds me of that in their response to these reviews, I know I'm doing something right. No one likes a critic, so I'm on the backfoot if I'm not entertaining you.
Moving on then- I've seen four new films this week and this post shall cover two of them. One quite literally involves the Moon, and the other is a remake that drops trou and flashes its arse at the superior original. As ever, mild spoilers may crop up here and there but not so far as to reveal any major plot developments.
Who's in it? Sam Rockwell and Kevin Spacey are at the forefront in what's largely a two-hander, I was surprised to see homegrown Channel 4 stars like Matt Berry and Kaya Scodelario (of The IT Crowd and Skins fame, respectively) popping up in the background.
What's it all about? Sam Bell (Rockwell) is an astronaut nearing the end of his three-year contract working on the Moon to extract and export an energy resource that has made the Earth clean and efficient. With only a computer (voiced by Spacey) for company, Sam has a quintessentially personal encounter right before he's due to go back to Earth.
Any good? Sci-fi is bandied around like a dirty word sometimes, unless it's followed by the word "blockbuster". Nine times out of ten, such films have more money than ideas, and so the genre in its undiluted form rarely sees wide release. Even the Sci-Fi Channel have rebranded themselves as the mind-killingly banal "Syfy". So a film like Moon is a breath of fresh air if you like intelligent films with ideas. And I'm eager to point out from the off that not all science fiction features Klingons or Daleks, so don't fall into that slightly populist trap of avoiding Moon cos you're expecting something boring and nerdy.
Director Duncan Jones lovingly harkens back to the age when sci-fi films had ideas- films like Silent Running in particular- but it's as a result of that that it's not particularly original. I couldn't pretend that Moon has new ideas, as I even spotted one major part of the plot that's been done in an Arnold Schwarzenegger film, but the execution of these ideas is what makes it a good film- it wasn't half as good with Schwarzenegger. This film is directed and performed with more subtlety than Michael Bay could muster if he spent ten years in the dark trying to make a silent film, and it's just beautiful. As mentioned, it's more or less a two-hander, providing a claustrophobic atmosphere in the moonbase, which Sam Rockwell amplfies brilliantly with his diverse and great performance. I can't sing Rockwell's praises enough in general, but here is one of those performances that should get nominated for an Oscar, and probably would if the nominations and voting procedure weren't so skewed against genre fare. When February rolls around, I doubt the recipient of the Best Actor award will have been half as good as Rockwell is here, in whatever beige "prestige" film he (or she, you never know these days) has starred in.
There's not much of a supporting cast to speak of, but Kevin Spacey lends the film some tension as well as Sam's helper robot, GERTY. As he trundles around with a "Kick Me" post-it stuck to his back, he does his best to keep Sam sane and happy, but his ulterior motives are brought to the fore by the fact that Spacey can't even ask if you'd like something to eat without sounding menacing. But then I'm not planning to eat round Kevin Spacey's house anytime soon, so that's just fine with me. So besides these two, the other stand-out aspect of the film is the effects work. Far from relying on CGI, some beautiful model shots are employed of the vehicles, the base and the surface of the Moon itself. Another aspect of the homage to Silent Running and its low-budget ilk? Perhaps, but Jones was absolutely right to look elsewhere instead of succumbing to CGI shots. I'm talking about anything other than the story because I'm avoiding talking about the crux of the plot in advance- I knew nothing about this aspect of the story when I saw it, and I think I enjoyed it more because of that. So while I'm lavishing more praise than usual on effects (the score is good too, by the way), be assured that the film has more than enough story to keep you thinking and guessing throughout.
Intelligent and thought-provoking, Moon is the best sci-fi film in ages. Possibly since The Matrix. It's not entirely original, but it takes the time to execute the ideas that support the plot with new techniques rather than patronsing the audience by lazily chucking CGI at us. As with most low-budget films, it's sadly not in wide release, but I strongly recommend you catch it when it's released on DVD/Blu-ray.
Who's in it? John Travolta and Denzel Washington sit in for Robert Shaw and Walter Matthau, with James Gandolfini and John Turturro lending ample support.
What's it all about? Walter Garber (Washington) is a New York subway train dispatcher whose life is changed when Ryder (Travolta) hijacks a subway car and demands $10 million in return for the 19 hostages he has on board. The two men form an uneasy relationship over the radio system as the clock ticks towards Ryder's deadline- for every minute he doesn't have the money thereafter, he'll kill a hostage...
Any good? Let me tell you about the 1974 film, The Taking of Pelham One Two Three. I saw it recently and found it to be one of the better films I've seen since... well, ever. Well-paced, great action sequences and beautifully acted by Walter Matthau and Robert Shaw. Shaw, he of Jaws fame, is ice-cold and completely dedicated to getting what he wants, while Matthau is an endearing everyman who could easily have gone into his own spin-off series. Hell, I'd have watched another film with Matthau's Garber. Most importantly, the film leads up to one of the best endings ever- played just right and ending in media res. As the credits roll, you'll be smiling. 35 years on, Tony Scott has also adapted the book from which the 1974 film was based, so this isn't a remake in the strictest sense. But that won't stop me tearing it a new one, folks.
First problem, I say, as I pop open the hood of the film to take a look at it, is that Scott has clearly cast the lead roles the wrong way round. Denzel Washington can clearly play baddies well, as his Oscar for Training Day will attest, so while he's as endearing as he is in other films where he's the good guy, he's just too cool to be in the role of Garber. Cool, that's what Robert Shaw was. John Travolta, not so much. He needs to stop playing baddies altogether. Just... stop. People have talked endlessly about his easy charm, the kind of thing that came through in Grease and Pulp Fiction. In this, he's easily the worst possible drop-trou to the 1974 version as he overacts his way through yet another villain role, seemingly only there to demonstrate every possible vocal iteration of the word "motherfucker". Oh, and in an unintentionally hilarious moment, the word "bumhole". On the positive side of things, James Gandolfini captures the ineptitude of the Mayor of New York perfectly, even in spite of the script making him more competent than his predecessor towards the end of the film, and he has some of the best lines in the film.
Second problem, I say, poking at the mechanics of the film with a spanner, is the "updating" of the film. I feel that Pelham One Two Three was a film very much of its time. In the mid-70s, you can have a subway car full of New Yorkers react with derisive laughter when a gunman tells them he's hijacking the train. They have a cynicism and hard edge that only evaporates once they start shooting. Of course, something quite big happened in New York within the last ten years that now has "terrorist" being said almost as often as Travolta spouts "motherfucker". Post-9/11 subtext was one of the many things the film didn't need, and because it's an unfortunate necessity of setting a film like this in New York, it raises the question of whether it was necessary to remake the film in the first place. Additionally, you know you're in trouble when your film has a social networking sub-plot and vague allusions to the financial corruption that's landed us in the current credit crunch.
But the major problem, I yell, as I start smacking the film with a pipe-wrench, is Tony Scott's direction. He sits somewhere just above McG in the pantheon of awful directors, and he's far too content to bring in shaky-cam, aerial shots and rock music wherever he possibly can. He is not one of those directors who does subtlety. One scene in the original has a police car crash into a fire hydrant- understated because the significance of the crash to the plot is more important than the spectacle of it. The equivalent scene in this update has the car fly spectacularly off a bridge and roll several times, causing various other explosions around it as it goes. Don't even get me started on the jump-cuts and the horrible raping of that brilliant 1974 ending I mentioned. But replacing the hood for a moment, I have to grudgingly admit that most people will be entertained by this. It's got a lot going for it with Washington and Gandolfini at the centre, even if the former is miscast, and Scott didn't change enough of the story to make this a bad film.
The Taking of Pelham 123 is due a drubbing from anyone who's seen the 1974 version, and I strongly advise you to see that film instead of this one. Newer isn't better, but I admit that you could do a lot worse in an evening at the cinema than see this. On the other hand, the DVD costs but £2.99 online at its cheapest, and £5 in HMV. The 2009 version is a good film done poorly.
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The next films to be reviewed will be G-Force and G.I. Joe: The Rise of Cobra, and I obviously kept those back because I need help with witty subtitles and they have the G thing in common. Um, but also because they're both family films, obviously.
I'm the Mad Prophet of the Airwaves, and until next time, don't watch anything I wouldn't watch. Mark.
