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Open Water

January 24, 2012

Susan and Daniel (Blanchard Ryan and Daniel Travis) are your typical work-obsessed couple drifting apart in the American suburbs. But, when left to fend for themselves in tropical, shark-infested waters, they cling to each other so desperately, it’s almost sad and touching. That is, until those fins break the surface again, triggering panic on the screen and setting our nerves on edge. “Open Water” is a textbook example for how to build and sustain tension, develop character and even sneak in wry social commentary over a tightly wound eighty minutes.

Gutsily made by husband-and-wife filmmakers Chris Kentis and Laura Lau, “Open Water” disarms the viewer (à la “The Blair Witch Project”) with its no-frills, home-video ethos, but, make no mistake, this is shrewdly calculative filmmaking. The story is straightforward, opening in Susan and Daniel’s leafy, SUV-appointed home as the cell phone-toting couple pack up for an island vacation, wondering if they’ll still get email where they’re going. In a few deft strokes, the filmmakers establish their couple and whisk them off to their tropical getaway.

Kentis and Lau assuredly develop the couple’s close-knit but none-too-romantic routine, intimately conveyed by actors Ryan and Travis. To soothe away workaday stress, they embark on a deep-sea dive. From the movie’s premise, we know that this is an ill-fated outing, that the couple will be left behind by a bungling boat crew. But we watch anyway, uneasily but riveted, as the movie puts its pieces into place. Then, from their initial petulance at finding themselves abandoned, through their spasms of antagonism, their attempts to cope and overcome and, finally, their realization that all is futile against a menace largely unseen, “Open Water” becomes an expertly modulated horror movie.

Perhaps the greatest irony in “Open Water” is the claustrophobia of its setting. The sea that looks so limitless and wide-open eventually feels so confining, availing the characters with the barest hopes for survival, not least of which is that its predators simply stay away. The water’s lapping and splashing sickens us as much as it does Susan and Daniel, and the predators most definitely do not stay away. Kentis and Lau know that horror can never be fully realized till the lights are out, and they gain maximum fright wattage out of the all-enveloping darkness of night with only flashes of lightning to orient us. At this point, the filmmakers teasingly cross-cut to scenes of island revelry, but the festive music is muted, faraway, thereby punctuating the ever-growing distance between Susan and Daniel and the lives they’ve left behind. It is here that the absolute meaninglessness of the material world, one of comfortable jobs, SUVs and cell phones, is most keenly felt, pitted against the cunning and merciless forces of nature.

Grade: B

Written/Directed by: Chris Kentis
Cast: Blanchard Ryan, Daniel Travis, Saul Stein

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Kontroll

January 24, 2012

A killer is terrorizing the subway stations beneath Budapest. Like the Angel of Death, he stalks the tunnels and platforms in a black hood, sneaking up behind late-night commuters and shoving them into the path of oncoming trains. It’s into this Langian netherworld that Bulcsú (Sándor Csányi), the roguish young hero of writer-director Nimród Antal’s debut feature, “Kontroll,” has exiled himself from life on the surface.

When he isn’t curled up on a desolate platform, Bulcsú is riding the rails as a ticket control officer for the metro. Alongside his ragtag crew, he patrols the subways, making sure they’re free of freeloaders. Judging from Antal’s depiction, it’s a hellish gig, prone to frequent scuffles with authorities, fellow inspectors, not to mention the host of belligerent, ticketless commuters, each itching for a fight, a chase or both.

“Kontroll” finds its footing not upon the rungs of plot, but through a succession of vignettes depicting the inspectors’ workaday grind. Antal gets the textures right, all urban grime and pallid lighting that gets under your skin, but there’s a jokiness to these sequences, a gimmickry in the cutting and the theatrics, that points to the filmmaker’s background in commercials and music videos And for a movie about a killer on the loose, there is scant dread and paranoia at work here: Neither the ticket inspectors nor commuters seem terribly concerned, and there’s none of the morbid sense of inquiry behind the killer’s motives, both ingredients with which thrillers achieve their credibility. The movie, instead, settles in on Bulcsú as he tangles with rival inspectors, falls for Sofie (Eszter Balla), the lovely, self-assured daughter of an aging metro driver, before he finds himself the lead suspect in the subway killings. You can see the final showdown between Bulcsú and the killer coming as clearly as the headlights of the next train. It’s not the destination that counts in “Kontroll,” however, but the visceral delights to be had in getting there.

Above all, “Kontroll” is a gleeful demonstration of Antal’s flair for the medium. He is clearly a natural, as comfortable with the classical fundamentals of craft as with the hyperkinetic attitude of the modern action movie. Propelled by a dance-fevered soundtrack, Antal has fashioned an enticing allegory about lives suspended in self-imposed purgatory and seeking to rise again into the light of the real world.

Grade: A-

Directed by: Nimród Antal
Written by: Jim Adler, Nimród Antal
Cast: Sándor Csányi, Eszter Balla, Csaba Pindroch, Zsolt Nagy

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Confessions of a Dangerous Mind

January 22, 2012

Confessions of a Dangerous Mind is George Clooney’s directorial debut, but, if you didn’t know it, you’d swear it was the concoction of a seasoned filmmaker. While the erstwhile lions of film culture seem to be fumbling with misbegotten, less-than-successful ventures like Autofocus and Gangs of New York, Clooney and his team have fashioned a rip-roaring jolt of a movie, two hours that remind us that story and style can co-exist in a fierce, exhilarating embrace.

The film is based on the autobiography of TV legend Chuck Barris, in which he recounts his rise in the ’60s and ’70s as producer of such rowdy, culture-defining fare as The Dating Game and The Gong Show. Barris goes on to detail his adventures in the thick of the Cold War when, he alleges, he served as a hitman for the CIA. Whether you buy Barris’ dubious claim or not, the sheer zest and energy on display here render any misgivings unimportant.

While scraping by as an underling at ABC, Barris, played to the hilt by Sam Rockwell, hits on the idea of The Dating Game. Downtrodden during his initial struggles to sell the show, Barris is approached by a CIA recruiter (Clooney) who entices him to sign on for a life—albeit a covert and dangerous one—of heroic espionage. As Barris embarks on his double life, Confessions branches out into parallel stories which take on their own complications, eventually overlapping and blurring.

Among these complications are Penny (Drew Barrymore), Barris’ girlfriend, and Patricia Watson (Julia Roberts), a CIA operative who seduces Barris. While Watson’s wiles are easy for Barris to succumb to, it’s his love for Penny that forces him confront his own fears of commitment. That sounds a bit clichéd, but Clooney’s film goes further as it delves into Barris’ tortured past, dredging up some disturbing, though fascinating, explanations for what drives those fears, as well as his deep desire for approval and the appeasement of his male ego.

Over the years, a gamut of writers worked on Confessions until Charlie Kaufman (Adaptation, Being John Malkovich) hammered it into its final shape. While not a particularly in-depth character study—what really drives Barris’ zeal for fame remains shadowy—Kaufman’s script appeals by virtue of its ambitions. Equal parts psychodrama, Cold War thriller, romantic comedy and an Alger-esque rags-to-riches yarn, Confessions engages on every front.

Rockwell steals the show in a performance that plays up its comic potential without losing sight of its pathos. He’s ably supported by Barrymore in a role tailored to her sweet, quirky persona, by Clooney himself as the delightfully deadpan recruiter and, of course, Rutger Hauer as an aging hitman who relishes his job a bit too much.

Clooney and his cinematographer, Newton Thomas Sigel, create a kaleidoscope of styles, from the staid sepias of the ’40s, to the burnt ochres of Mexico and the nervy, pan-and-zooms of the ’60s, before hitting the candy-coated, soft-focus hues of the ’70s. The film’s visual dynamics, including its giddily inspired staging, blend into the fabric of its narrative, always complementing its pace and mood, never overwhelming it.

Only a first-timer, free from the trappings of an auteuristic ego and from studio expectations, could’ve told a story so passionately and efficiently at once. Confessions is an auspicious debut, and the closest the majors have come in years to fearlessly expressive moviemaking.

Grade: B+

Directed by: George Clooney
Written by: Charlie Kaufman
Cast: Sam Rockwell, Drew Barrymore, George Clooney, Michael Cera, Maggie Gyllenhaal, Julia Roberts, Matt Damon

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Confidence

January 22, 2012

“Confidence,” the crackerjack new caper from director James Foley and writer Doug Jung proves, finally, that Ed Burns is a better actor than either Matthew McConaughey or Ben Affleck. Much better, in fact, for he never resorts to the gimmicky smirks or stone-faced stammering associated with clueless actors run amok. Burns combines a working class charm with the requisite cool of an ace grifter to genuinely appealing effect.

Jake Vig (Burns), and his partners, Gordo (Paul Giamatti) and Miles (Brian Van Holt), choose poorly when they pick Lionel Dolby, an accountant, to swindle, because, it turns out, the money they steal is already stolen—from a little terror of a kingpin named, aptly enough, The King (Dustin Hoffman). After both Dolby and Big Al, the gang’s fourth member, turn up dead, Vig promptly approaches The King, and, in a bid to cool tempers and settle his debt, strikes a deal with him.

Targeting a bigtime banking tycoon, Vig offers to hatch an intricate scheme to extort millions from his coffers, then divide the spoils between them. Before setting forth, Vig recruits Lily (Rachel Weisz), a clever pickpocket who puts her fetching sexiness to full use in practicing her trade.

Jung weaves his plotlines briskly and entertainingly, never idling long enough for us to notice the kinks in his story. Once Vig, Lily and the gang strike up their camaraderie, the script hits the ground running, bringing into its fold a discontented lunk of a banker, a pair of weasely cops and the curious snoopings of a grizzled Federal officer (Andy Garcia) sporting the dullest of neckties

It’s clear from the chemistry of this cast that everybody’s having a grand time. Already relishing the go-for-broke spirit and bristling dialogue of Jung’s script, the cast is aided further by Foley’s distinctive character-driven style. He reinforces his characters with enough psychological nuance and backstory to make this a truly compelling gallery of cads and villains.

“Confidence,” however, never slows down to enjoy its own charms. Foley seems obliged to keep his movie galloping along to a needlessly frenetic rhythm. A casualty of this, unfortunately, is one my favorite scenes in which Vig and his gang go to work on a sad sack banker. It’s a scene that confirms the strength of this cast and this material, in which Foley might’ve let his camera rest, so we too might enjoy the slow, predatory nature of their game. While it sometimes fails to live up to its title, “Confidence,” ultimately, wins us over—in short, it dazzlingly does what all good cons are supposed to do.

Grade: B+

Directed by: James Foley
Written by: Doug Jung
Cast: Edward Burns, Dustin Hoffman, Rachel Weisz, Paul Giamatti, Donal Logue, Brian Van Holt, Andy Garcia

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Code 46

January 22, 2012

A futuristic film noir-love story with an Oedipal twist. That sounds like a devilish cocktail and it might’ve made for just such a movie. But “Code 46” by director Michael Winterbottom and writer Frank Cottrell Boyce is a muddy, strangely unintoxicating mix. A noir with no moral desperation, no clear-cut point-of-view and a love story whose eroticism feels about as urgent as yardwork.

This is not to say that “Code 46” lacks merit. Mark Tildesley’s production design and Alwin Kuchler and Marcel Zyskind’s photography ingeniously render a future-world that has ingredients of “Blade Runner” and “Mad Max” among other futuristic noir antecedents. Its soaring neon-lit towers and its smog- and dust-enshrouded landscapes are striking, but equally so is how the movie’s design—out of a need for economy and narrative expediency—is kept within the bounds of a recognizable reality. Those gleaming and ominous settings are modern-day Shanghai, Dubai and Hong Kong tricked out merely with lighting, filters and minimal art design.

Winterbottom and Cottrell Boyce postulate an endpoint to our age of rapid urbanizing and globalizing. Theirs is a George Orwell-meets- Phillip K. Dick dystopia where people’s mobility and behavior are heavily regulated and where overpopulated cities are separated by vast stretches of wasteland. “Code 46” itself refers to a reproductive law in which partners who share common genes are prohibited from mating—a way to keep genetically identical humans and clones from getting it on.

There’s the rub for William (Tim Robbins), a detective who arrives in Shanghai to track down who’s been manufacturing and selling counterfeit “papelles”— special permits needed to transit from one city to another. The culprit, he discovers, is Maria (Samantha Morton), a waifish, dreamy-eyed loner. He promptly falls in love and into bed with her. Soon after returning to his married life, William is alerted to a murder that leads him back to Maria. But her memory of William, their shared sexual history, has since been wiped clean by doctors, owing to a Code 46 violation. William learns that Maria was cloned from his own mother’s genes. Logically, I wondered why, if sex with such a clone were possible, aren’t there measures—identity cards, retinal scans, whatever—to preempt such an act. Why? Because logic would’ve overstepped “Code 46’s” entire second half when William, too smitten with Maria to care about their genetic relatedness, flies off with her for another illicit jaunt in the desert. Their cavorting, of course, comes to the lovelorn end we expect from this genre, but which registers none of its emotional payoff.

Tim Robbins and Samantha Morton, two intelligent actors, are fatally unconvincing as lovers. As William proceeds to woo Maria, we continually wonder what he sees in her and vice versa. Sporting her close-cropped “In America” haircut, Morton pitches her performance somewhere between the crime-predicting humanoid of “Minority Report” and the mute wallflower of “Sweet and Lowdown”—not exactly a combination to get a man’s pulse racing. The foundation for all noirs is how it reveals a wounded world through the dark but ever-hopeful gaze of its detective-protagonists. “Code 46,” which poises itself as noir, fails utterly to lock us into William’s world-view; Winterbottom, instead, lingers on Maria’s pseudo-poetic interior monologues, conjuring dreamy moments that narratively amount to nothing. Below William’s cocksure surface, Robbins’ characterization is a milky mess, absent of any motive for his infidelity, let alone a personal desire to solve this or any crime.

“Code 46” is an ambitious but miscalculated affair, owing entirely to Cottrell Boyce’s unengaging script. It prompts more questions of logic and motivation than it bargained for, losing its actors and audience along the way. Winterbottom is a competent filmmaker known also for his prolific output. Were it not for his flair for mood and texture, “Code 46” might sink entirely. Nevertheless, he might better serve his stories—especially those as conceptually complex as this one—by slowing down and taking the time to tell them clearly and well.

Grade: C

Directed by: Michael Winterbottom
Written by: Frank Cottrell Boyce
Cast: Tim Robbins, Samantha Morton, Om Puri

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Cabin Fever

January 22, 2012

Peter Jackson has hailed “Cabin Fever” as “brilliant.” And those of us with an unquestioned love of gore will likely embrace Eli North’s movie with the same giddy enthusiasm. In essence, his movie isn’t a far cry from Jackson’s own “Dead Alive” (1992)—his whacked-out horror spoof about humans who become ravenous zombies after being bitten by a satanic monkey. A deliriously unhinged nuthouse of a movie, “Dead Alive” makes a terrific double bill with Sam Raimi’s “Evil Dead 2” (1987), with everybody’s cult hero, Bruce Campbell, trapped inside a cabin, gamely mowing down zombies of his own. North retains the cabin setting of Raimi’s movie but replaces Jackson’s monkey with a just-as-fearsome flesh-eating virus, unleashing it among a bunch of bungling teenagers trapped in the deep woods. In that sense, “Fever” also harkens back to “Friday the 13th” and the whole spate of “teensploitation” horror flicks that followed in the wake of “Texas Chainsaw Massacre,” on through the mid-80s to mid-90s heyday of Wes Craven, by way of the biological gross-out of John Carpenter’s “The Thing” (1982).

“Cabin Fever” is a rollicking nostalgia ride through that hallowed tradition of gore flicks that holds our childhood memories in such thrall. North and co-writer Randy Pearlstein have the uncanny talent for weaving into their narrative every cliché, plot device and nuance from the horror cannon of the last 25-or-so years. As an homage, it’s energetically made, enjoyable while it lasts, but never breaking new ground or leaving behind much of an imprint.

Five horny, party-hardy co-eds take off for a week of sex, squirrel hunting and campfire stories at a secluded cabin. When a local hobo crashes their party, raving and stumbling in the throes of what is clearly an evil virus, things heat up. One-by-one, they begin to fall ill, panic and paranoia set in, and, in their blundering efforts to seek help, they only turn the already-freakish locals against them. The pathology of this virus isn’t clear other than it turns you into a raving lunatic and your skin into hideous bacon strips. North, in that sense, has commandeered the makings of crackerjack medical horror, with its slow-burn dread, then grafted it onto far less interesting teen-scream material.

Scott Kevan’s cinematography and Nathan Barr’s score, with help from David Lynch veteran Angelo Badalamenti, are effectively eerie and evocative. On their lead, North builds a genuine sense of creepiness and foreboding. Certainly, “Fever” packs its share of jolts and none-too-shabby black humor, both worthy of a place alongside Romero. But after all the noise dies down and “Fever” cools, resolving itself as predicably as any “Elm Street” installment, what do we have? A remembrance of past frights, I guess, but as a horror yarn in its own right, it just bleeds into the background.

Grade: C+

Directed by: Eli Roth
Written by: Eli Roth, Randy Pearlstein
Cast: Rider Strong, Jordan Ladd, James DeBello, Cerina Vincent, Joey Kern

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Farewell (L’Affaire Farewell)

January 20, 2012

In 1981, a KGB operative named Grigoriev decided to sabotage the Soviet Union’s espionage cover in hopes of ending the Communist regime and bring about an end to the Cold War. He got in contact with Pierre, a French engineer working in Moscow, and began to pass top-secret documents over to him. The documents revealed the startling amount of information the Soviets had amassed about America’s military, industrial, and scientific R &D. Pierre frantically photographed these documents, and passed along the files which eventually found themselves in the hands of Presidents Mitterrand and Reagan.

The discovery proved to be a linchpin in Reagan’s victory over the Soviet Bloc, as he used the intelligence to bluff the already cash-strapped Soviets into a making a critical choice: either take the nuclear arms race into space (via a prohibitively costly missile-defense system) or declare an end to Cold War hostilities and democratize. If you’ve followed the news over the last 20 years, you know the choice Russian President Gorbachev made.

Director Christian Carion’s “Farewell” – which takes its name from the code name given to Grigoriev by the French Secret Service — takes a close look at these events, focusing on the private lives of Grigoriev (Emir Kusturica) and Pierre (Guillaume Canet). Co-writers Carion and Eric Raynaud, adapting Sergey Kostine’s novel, turn the themes of loyalty and emancipation into a metaphor that runs through all of “Farewell’s” dramatic layers, from the national and geopolitical to the deeply personal. The informant Grigoriev’s home life is hardly better than the political and economic life of his tottering nation. That both he and his wife Natasha (Ingeborga Dapkunaite) feel guilty about extramarital affairs doesn’t remedy the fact that their marriage is in shambles. His relationship with his teenage son, Igor (Evgenie Kharlanov) is in similarly dire straits as Igor – having no idea of his father’s top-secret activities — resents his old man’s seeming conformism, and craves to free himself of the shackles of home, finding an outlet for his rage in Western rock ‘n’ roll (Queen in particular features heavily throughout the film).

Grigoriev’s unfaithfulness towards both home and country is less a critique about his personal flaws and more an observation on the messiness and inconsistencies in our personal and political lives. And while he resents his role as a go-between, particularly because of its dangerousness, Pierre develops a genuine respect for the brusque, eccentric Grigoriev. The trust between him and his wife, Jessica (Alexandra Maria Lara), meanwhile, begins to unravel as she realizes the intensely reckless nature of her husband’s double life.

This paradox between truth and appearances is capably woven through the fabric of “Farewell’s” script. And Carion benefits from Kusturica’s masterly performance, which finds a winning balance between Grigoriev’s warmth and candor and his darker, more transgressive impulses. Performances remain strong across the film’s main roles, and it’s only in the secondary roles that troubles arise: As Reagan, Fred Ward (a generally fine actor) fumbles his way from parody to platitudes to just bad imitation. He never suits the role, and the actor never finds his footing.

For a story rich with such dramatic potential, “Farewell” is a conscientious, but surprisingly dull affair. Whether deliberately or not, Carion elides any and all opportunities for suspense, danger and paranoia, all crucial elements if any espionage drama is going to succeed. Instead of an intelligent thriller in the vein of “All the President’s Men” or “The Parallax View” – both of which, at first glance, seem like “Farewell’s” natural peers — the film stumbles towards more or less predictable domestic soap opera. And that’s a shame, given a subject widely considered one of the pivotal episodes in the demise of the Cold War.

Grade: C+

Directed by: Christian Carion
Written by: Christian Carion, Eric Reynaud
Cast: Emir Kusturica, Guillaume Canet, Alexandra Maria Lara, Ingeborga Dapkunaite, Oleksii Gorbunov, Dina Korzun, Philipe Magnan, Niels Arestrup, Fred Ward, Willem Dafoe, David Soul, Evgenie Kharlanov, Valentin Varetsky

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Red

January 20, 2012

Director Robert Schwentke ought to be thankful for the offbeat, talented cast he scored for “Red,” his big-screen adaptation of the DC Comics graphic-novel series. Without the combustible mix of Bruce Willis, Mary-Louise Parker, John Malkovich, Morgan Freeman and Helen Mirren, “Red” would’ve been just another disposable actioner on Hollywood’s production slate. But the deadpan, sometimes hilarious chemistry between Willis and his co-stars give this stylistically half-baked venture a likeable twist.

Retired black-ops operative Frank Moses (Willis) lives in self-imposed suburban exile till two unrelated events happen: He takes a fancy to Sarah (Parker), a service rep at his pension firm, and he’s attacked in the middle of the night by a team of assassins. After dispatching his attackers, Frank takes it on the lam, bringing Sarah along for the ride. Yearning for exotic adventure, Sarah doesn’t mind the abduction once she realizes that Frank used to be the CIA’s most lethal and effective agent. While Frank and Sarah investigate why they’re being targeted, they’ve got to keep one step ahead of the tenacious Agent William Cooper (Karl Urban, who deserves his own action vehicle judging from his steely-eyed presence here).

One by one, Frank rounds up his veteran team of cohorts – Joe (Freeman), Marvin (Malkovich) and Victoria (Mirren). In between extended, generally unremarkable action sequences, they discover that the CIA – under orders from a Presidential hopeful (McMahon) and a defense contractor (Dreyfuss) – is eliminating anyone with knowledge of a covert Central American massacre perpetrated decades ago. Frank and company are, of course, tops on their list.

The actors bring their individual, trademark strengths to the material, and their dynamic together is where “Red” gets all its mileage. Willis’ wry, stone-cold self-assurance pairs with Parker’s high-strung, neurotic charm for a blend that’s comically pleasing, even pleasant by action-movie standards. The same holds true for Morgan’s sage charisma mixing with Malkovich’s antics as a paranoid lunatic and Mirren’s icy British elegance.

This motley cast is clearly having fun as members riff off each other, especially after Brian Cox gets in on the act in a somewhat farcical turn as a seasoned KGB operative. Urban, meanwhile, gives Cooper a deadly, laser-guided hyper-competence. The cast’s efforts go about halfway to compensating for “Red’s” lack of inspiration elsewhere. Schwentke aims for a John Woo-esque celebration of clever staging and stylish action, but we’re miles from “Hard Boiled” or “A Better Tomorrow” as sequences frequently have a falsely anarchic, been-there-done-that staleness about them (one in which Frank slides out of a spinning car, firing bullets without missing a beat is a brief exception). Given its lauded comic-book pedigree, one might expect the energy and confidence behind “Red” to be a class apart. But as it builds to its good guys vs. bad guys climax, the movie’s generic sensibilities hobbles the promise offered by a spirited cast.

Grade: C+

Directed by: Robert Schwentke
Written by: Jon Hoeber, Erich Hoeber
Cast: Bruce Willis, Mary-Louise Parker, Helen Mirren, Karl Urban, Morgan Freeman, John Malkovich, Brian Cox, Rebecca Pidgeon, Ernest Borgnine, Richard Dreyfuss, Julian McMahon

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Point Blank

January 19, 2012

Save for its title, Fred Cavayé’s “Point Blank” is unrelated to the 1967 Lee Marvin lone-gun thriller. The new movie certainly deserves it’s in-your-face title for the sheer velocity of its pacing but viewers familiar with the Lee Marvin classic will pine for its style and intelligence while shaking their heads at the ludicrousness of Cavayé’s namesake movie.

This new “Point Blank” gets off the blocks fast with an opening montage of a foot chase through Parisian streets as gangsters stay on the heels of a mysterious fleer. The nifty sequence ends with a gunshot and motorcycle accident that leaves the fleer wounded and whisked off to the hospital. The nervy yet smooth filmmaking on display in “Point Blank’s” opening showcases a filmmaker in sure command of the nuts and bolts of action sequences. That sureness doesn’t let up in the following scenes in which Cavayé and co-writer Guillaume Lemans introduce us to Samuel (Gilles Lellouche), the male nurse caring for the wounded fleer, Hugo (Roschdy Zem), who happens to be a criminal. When Samuel’s very pregnant wife Nadia (Elena Anya) is kidnapped by Hugo’s gang, Samuel finds himself in a Hitchcockian pickle as he has to do the bidding of the kidnappers or risk certain danger to his wife and unborn child.

It’s a dynamite setup and Cavayé does right by it up to a point, infusing panache and style in every scene. The sequences in which Samuel must smuggle Hugo out of the hospital, evading suspicious police, and deliver him to his gang hideout pack suspense in classically effective ways. As Samuel, Lellouche has both a believable physicality to carry him through the story’s demanding action as well as the vulnerability of an innocent man that wins our sympathy. And Sartet instills Hugo with just the right mix of a killer’s business-as-usual approach to, well, killing and a redemptive charm that makes his chemistry with the harried Samuel fairly combustible.

But Cavayé and Lemans spoil a good thing when they dump all manner of double-dealing and good cop-bad cop intrigue into what could have been a wonderfully streamlined, character-driven thriller about an innocent man forced to do the bidding of criminals to save his family. The plotting becomes hopelessly busy once crooked cop Werner (Gérard Lanvin) complicates the police pursuit because he’s in cahoots with the same criminals who were pursuing Hugo at the movie’s outset. In one clunkily handled scene that screams “Exposition!” Werner’s entire cover is blown when a dying hitman reveals the crooked cop’s involvement in the murder of a wealthy businessman.

The evidence of Werner’s involvement, of course, in a safe back at police headquarters, the setting for the film’s noisily protracted finale. The second half of “Point Blank” is simply the plot machinery working overtime: With Samuel in tow, Hugo arranges for the infiltration of police headquarters while Werner locks horns (and steely stares) with Fabre (Mireille Perrier), the good cop who suspects that Samuel is not a fugitive but a victim of circumstance.

All of these moving parts collide in a third act that makes mincemeat of all the suspense elements that held our attention in first act, exaggerating them to absurd – even dopey – proportions. To be fair, Cavayé and his team come up with a brisk, watchable climactic set piece. But the elements themselves are too predictable and absurd to be involving and, what’s worse, they betray the riveting simplicity of “Point Blank’s” arresting set-up.

Grade: C

Directed by: Fred Cavayé
Written by: Fred Cavayé, Guillaume Lemans
Cast: Gilles Lellouche, Roschdy Zem, Gérard Lanvin, Elena Anaya, Mireille Perrier, Claire Perot, Moussa Maaskri, Pierre Benoist

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The Double Hour

April 14, 2011

When a movie goes by the tagline, “Nothing Is What It Seems,” you know you’re in for a long guessing game. For much of director Giuseppe Capotondi’s 96-minute “The Double Hour,” the viewer is wondering whether what’s unfolding up on the screen should be believed or not. What’s more, reviewing the film is an inherently dodgy exercise since one can’t really discuss or critique the movie without giving away its central conceit. Suffice it to say that Capotondi tries for a romantic mystery/thriller in the vein of Christopher Nolan’s structurally snarled “Memento” and “Inception.”

The fundamental difference between “The Double Hour” and the Nolan movies, however, is that, in “Memento” and “Inception,” the puzzle-box plots have real bearing on the larger story; they reward the viewer’s investment in them with third-act payoffs. That crucial lesson is lost on Capotondi and his screenwriters Alessandro Fabbri, Ludovica Rampoldi and Stefano Sardo. Because most of “The Double Hour” doesn’t really need to exist in order for the viewer to process the impact of the finale, when – after following its heroine for ninety minutes – the movie momentarily breaks its point of view to follow its male protagonist. And it’s through the male’s point of view, arguably, that we cash in on the entire pseudo-tragic nature of “The Double Hour’s” story and theme.

The story: A lonely, pretty Slovenian woman, Sonia (Rappoport) living in Turin, Italy meets a roguishly handsome ex-cop, Guido (Timi), now working as a security guard at a lavish estate. The two begin a tender, tentative courtship that comes to sudden, shattering halt when they fall victim to a violent robbery. During the robbery, a gunshot seriously injures Sonia. Guido’s fate is bleaker – supposedly.

Thereafter, the grieving Sonia can’t focus on her duties as a hotel housekeeper. She’s increasingly distraught and panicky, especially after Dante, a nosy detective (Michele Di Mauro), starts snooping on her. Dante suspects that Sonia was in cahoots with Riccardo (Gaetano Bruno), the mastermind behind the robbery – a charge she firmly denies.

There are teasing ambiguities as the movie accommodates two parallel storylines: There’s the actual version of events that reveals itself in due time competing with Sonia’s own version, in which characters from the former re-appear in different roles in the latter. Capotondi and the screenwriters do a neat and precise job of assiduously playing Sonia’s story without showing their hand – that is, neither confirming nor negating the parallel story. But all the movie’s psychological spookiness and breathless attempts at suspense amount to little since two-thirds of what’s on-screen is not the plot, but a plot within the plot, and, hence, of little real consequence.

For their part, Rappoport and Timi execute their roles effectively (both won acting prizes at the 66th Venice Film Festival). Timi is suitably mysterious and lovelorn, while Rappoport gamely sustains the question of whether it’s grief or guilt that motivates Sonia. Rappoport’s skillful sleight of hand hardly matters, though, since “The Double Hour’s” bogus parlor-trick of a screenplay set matters straight on its own. So straight, in fact, that you could’ve left the theater at the 15-minute mark, played arcade games in the lobby for an hour, and come back for the third act only to miss…nothing.

Grade: C

Directed by: Giuseppe Capotondi
Written by: Alessandro Fabbri, Ludovica Rampoldi, Stefano Sardo
Starring: Ksenia Rappoport, Filippo Timi, Antonia Truppo, Gaetano Bruno, Fausto Russo Alesi, Michele Di Mauro

Posted in All Reviews Archive, Crime, Drama, Foreign, Romance, Thriller | Leave a Comment »

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