Classic Movie Review: Fires on the Plain (2014)

Fires on the Plain (2014)

Directed by: Shin'ya Tsukamoto.

Written by: Shin'ya Tsukamoto based on the novel by Shohei Ooka.

Starring: Rirî Furankî, Tatsuya Nakamura, Yûko Nakamura, Dean Newcombe, Shin'ya Tsukamoto.

 

In 1959, Kon Ichikawa adapted the novel by Shohei Ooka and ended up making one of the great WWII movies from Japan’s perspective ever. It is a film about dehumanization, as the Japanese army has already been roundly defeated in the Philippines, but the army refuses to surrender. The few survivors have to make their way across the island they’re on to get to the one stronghold the Japanese still have – that is, if they still even have that. The film follows Tamura, a solider whose unit doesn’t want him – he has TB and they keep sending him to the field hospital, who keeps sending him back until his C.O. tells him to either stay at the hospital or kill himself with a grenade. Somehow Tamura survives, even when his unit and the hospital are decimated, and he’s stuck with various other members, who become increasingly desperate to survive, and do increasingly depraved things – as Tamura attempts to not only survive but also to maintain his humanity.

 

I’m not sure what current Japanese director could be considered a descendant of Ichikawa – but Shinya Tsukamoto is not him. He is mainly known for his ultraviolent splatter films like Tetsuo (1989) – and that is pretty much what he did in his version of Fires on the Plain. Ichikawa’s film is about the gradual dehumanization of men at war – Tsukamoto takes that dehumanization as a given, and makes his film a vision of hell. He draws out the almost comedy of the opening scenes of Tamura heading back and forth from his unit and the hospital, as he is caught in a Cacth-22 – damned if he does, damned if he doesn’t. Once the attack on the hospital hits – with explosion and violence – he introduces the two other major characters – a sadistic older man who uses a weak willed younger man as his slave – but then has Tamura by himself for a while. This is an almost surreal, nearly wordless sequence that goes on for quite some time, as Tamura wanders through the land he doesn’t know or understand and the locals who both fear and despise him. The film adds more violence to this segment when Tamura kills a young woman who will not stop screaming – an act that haunts him so much he abandons his gun. Soon though, he has found others to join, and starts his trek across the island.

 

This leads to one of the most violent war sequences you will ever see in a movie. The Japanese have to make their way across a wide open field that is covered by the Americans. They wait until the cover to darkness, yet as the dozens of men try to make their way across, the Americans flood the field with light, and slaughter them like fish in a barrel. It is one of the most horrifically violent sequences I have ever seen in a movie – with limbs and heads flying, bodies being blown apart, heads being ripped open by bullets, and the chaos on the ground – where two men fight over an arm that has been blown off, since they’ve both lost one and they don’t know whose this one is. This sequence is long and intense – but at some point it does go a little too far, tries for a little too much splatter makeup that ends up looking a little false. Until then, it was a great sequence however.

 

The rest of the movie is a further descent into hell. The survivors wander through the island, past countless rotting corpses, many with a sickening look and full of maggots. The original movie is famed for its portrait of cannibalism – and this one will be as well. And like everything else in the movie, Tsukamoto takes it farther than Ichikawa did – at least visually – the better for stomach churning visuals.

 

The movie is an effective portrait of war as hell. It doesn’t move you like Ichikawa’s film does – mainly because that isn’t what Tsukamoto is going for. He wants to make the most violent, gory, disturbing and violent war film that he can – and he does that. Whether you want to see it or not, is up to you, but I found the combination of art house and splatter films fascinating. It doesn’t quite work, but it’s an experience to witness.

 

Note: I saw this film at TIFF 2014, and at this point, I have to believe it’s not going to get a proper released in North America – so I decided to publish the review I wrote then anyway.

Movie Review: The Babadook

The Babadook
Directed by: Jennifer Kent.
Written by: Jennifer Kent.
Starring: Essie Davis (Amelia), Noah Wiseman (Samuel), Daniel Henshall (Robbie), Tim Purcell (The Babadook), Hayley McElhinney (Claire), Barbara West (Mrs. Roach), Chloe Hurn (Ruby).

The best horror movies do not just scare you, but tap into some sort of primal deep-seeded fear inside of you. The Babadook, which is among the best horror movies in recent years, taps into that kind of fear – it’s a movie that will be scary to everyone, but will be downright terrifying for parents. The Babadook is classically structured, and Kent directs it with precision and skill – stripping it down to its core elements, and making a claustrophobic horror film in the Roman Polanski vein (think 1965’s Repulsion of 1968’s Rosemary’s Baby). The film is scary, without ever resorting to cheap jump scares or gore, but when it’s all over, is perhaps even more disturbing than we realize. This is a new horror movie classic.

The film stars Essie Davis (in a performance that deserves to be placed along those by Catherine Denueve’s and Mia Farrow’s in those two Polanski movies mentioned earlier) as Amelia – a tired, weary, single mother. Her husband died in a car accident taking her to the hospital to have their son. That’s Samuel (Noah Wiseman), now 6, who is more than a handful. He’s convinced that any number of monsters are under his bed, in his closet, etc. – and spends much of his time crafting crude, but effective, weapons to protect him and his mother from them. The problem is that the weapons cause damage to their small house – and when he brings them to school, it causes concern for the principal and the teacher. They think Samuel is disturbed, and needs special help – and they just may be right. If he isn’t battling monsters, he’s constantly bugging Amelia – and the pair of them are getting almost no sleep. It’s a testament to young Wiseman’s performance as Samuel that we at once feel sympathy for the clearly distressed child – and yet understand completely why he is driving his mother slowly insane.

Things go from bad to worse with the appearance of strange, new children’s book – entitled Mister Babadook. This book isn’t dark in the way of some great kid’s books – but truly, completely dark and horrifying – pretty much threatening the lives of the reader. The drawings are in black and white – they look kind of like Tim Burton drawings – and the title character is some sort of demon, with long, sharp finger nails, wild eyes and a top hat. Samuel becomes convinced that Mister Babadook is real – and is coming for them. And Amelia slowly starts to expect as much herself – she cannot seem to destroy the book, and she starts seeing flashes that may just be him. Then at some point, you start to feel that Amelia herself is the real danger here.

The movie is somewhat ambiguous as to what precisely the Babadook is – and remains so right up until the end of the movie, leaving it to the viewers to decide if he is a shared delusion or a real, malevolent presence (the movie provides enough hints to support either reading, really). What the movie does brilliantly is offer the audience a shifting perspective. In the first half of the movie, you feel sympathy for Amelia, as her son is a handful, she has a tough job, an uncaring sister, and pretty much nothing going right. Samuel really is that annoying – especially when, like Amelia, you have no way to escape from him (when she is given an afternoon off work to go take care of him, tellingly the movie shows us her walking around the mall and eating ice cream, instead of going to get him). But at a certain point, the movie switches gear a little – we stop feeling sorry of Amelia, and start fearing her – and feeling sorry for Samuel, who is now in an even bigger nightmare than even felt was possible.

The Babadook works as a straight ahead horror movie. Writer/director Jennifer Kent knows how to make an audience jump, but does so with more skill and intelligence than most do. The Babadook himself is a scary figure – seen in glimpses, flashes, shadows, but always disturbing and creepy. As the film progresses, Kent traps her two main characters in their small house – a mini-masterwork in creepy art direction, and uses off-kilter cinematography to increase the strangeness of the house. The film is a low budget, Australian horror film – but is more effective as movie with much more money to spend.

But what makes The Babadook is great is how it taps into something greater than just scaring the audience. The movie is an unsettling and disturbing appearance for far more reasons than just the scares in it. This is a portrait of parenting that calls to mind We Need to Talk About Kevin – both the book and the movie – and will be all the more chilling to parents, who will undoubtedly recognize a little of themselves in Amelia.

Movie Review: Bad Turn Worse

Bad Turn Worse
Directed by: Simon Hawkins & Zeke Hawkins.
Written by: Dutch Southern.
Starring: Jeremy Allen White (Bobby), Logan Huffman (B.J.), Mackenzie Davis (Sue), Mark Pellegrino (Giff), William Devane (Big Red), Jon Gries (Sheriff Shep).

If you are making a Texas-set noir, you know you are going too compared to the work of Jim Thompson – the great noir writer, who set much of his work there, among the low level criminals and regular folk who become criminals in an attempt to get out of their dead end lives. Bad Turn Worse, directed by Simon & Zeke Hawkins and written by Dutch Southern, knows they are going to be compared to Thompson – and they don’t try and hide the influence he had on their film. In the film’s first dialogue sequence, Sue (Mackenzie Davis) gives Bobby (Jeremy Allen White) one of Thompson’s books, and tells him to read it. “You’ll like it – it’s about here”, she tells him. The pair of them are in the summer between high school and college – and they cannot wait to get out. Sue is the smartest of the pair – she has outgrown this town a long time ago, and isn’t really trying to hide that anymore. Bobby is not quite as intellectually curious as Sue – but he doesn’t want to stay in town and work in the kind of dead end job that everyone he knows does. Sue’s boyfriend is Bobby’s best friend – BJ (Logan Huffman) – who is a lunk head, but is putting on a brave face knowing that his “best friend and best girl” are about to leave him behind. BJ decides that what the trio really needs is one last blowout before the pair leave him behind – and he has a wad of bills in his pocket that will pay for that weekend in Corpus Christi. Bobby and Sue don’t ask questions about where the money came from – and just go out and help him spend it. We know where BJ got it though – he has stolen it from his and Bobby’s boss, Giff (Mark Pellegrino) – a low level criminal who thinks he’s a little smarter than he really is. But what he lacks in smarts, he makes up for with meanness – returning from their weekend, BJ and Bobby find Giff kicking his Mexican employee who was supposed to guard the money. Even after Bobby – for something his friend did confesses, Giff still shoots the Mexican, who should have guarded his money better. Giff may not be overly smart – but he’s sharp enough to figure out that anything Bobby did, BJ and Sue would also be in on. And instead of killing the trio – he tells them that to make it up to him, all they have to do is rob Giff’s boss – a mobster called Big Red. According to Giff, that will be easy – but of course, nothing goes according to plan.

Bad Turn Worse is by no means a great film – but for its first hour, it is a good modern noir. It is a clever twist to set the movie in the summer between high school and college – which has been the setting for countless teen movies, of course, but never a noir like this (at least to my recollection). What’s remarkable is how easily that oft-documented time suits a noir like this. The three main characters are bored – in different ways – but basically their life is in a holding pattern. Sue knows she is going on to bigger and better things – the types of things she has read about in all of her books. She fancies herself the smartest person around – and to an extent she is, but she isn’t quite as smart as she thinks she is. Bobby is acting the part of a guy excited to leave town – but a scene late in the second act with his family (a quiet one, that happens so quickly, I almost I missed it) suggests that he is hiding more than it seems – and that part of what he is doing is putting on an act to impress Sue, which works, to a certain extent. Neither of them take BJ that seriously – but they should. He isn’t quite as dumb as he seems.

Unfortunately, Bad Turn Worse comes apart in its final act – which has one twist and turn after another, and involves multiple instances of the talking villain featuring them say things like “It was all part of the plan” – and then proceed to explain their plan, only to realize that someone else has double crossed them, and will eventually have to explain what they did. It gets to a point where in all honesty, I just stopped caring, and wanted the film to end.

But the film does work for most of its runtime – and shows real promise from the first time directors and writer. They were smart enough to try not to be overly ambitious their first time out – and basically have constructed a solid noir – with some fine performances. It may not be the most original film of the year – but it’s a fun little noir for most of its runtime.  

Movie Review: Still Alice

Still Alice
Directed by: Richard Glatzer & Wash Westmoreland.
Written by: Richard Glatzer & Wash Westmoreland based on the novel by Lisa Genova.
Starring: Julianne Moore (Alice Howland), Alec Baldwin (John Howland), Kristen Stewart (Lydia Howland), Kate Bosworth (Anna Howland-Jones), Shane McRae (Charlie Howland-Jones), Hunter Parrish (Tom Howland), Seth Gilliam (Frederic Johnson), Stephen Kunken (Dr. Benjamin).

Julianne Moore is one of the greatest actresses of her generation. That she doesn’t have an Oscar already is embarrassing considering just how great she has been in films like Short Cuts, Vanya on 42^nd Street, Safe, Boogie Nights, The Big Lebowski, Magnolia, The End of the Affair, Far From Heaven, The Hours, Savage Grace, I’m Not There, Blindness, A Single Man, The Kids Are All Right, What Maisie Knew and Maps to the Stars. Look at that list of films, and consider the filmmakers she has worked with over the years. Even in projects that were not very good, Moore has always been solid. She looks to finally win an Oscar this weekend for her performance in Still Alice as an intellectual who discovers she has early onset Alzheimer’s, which progresses rapidly over the course of a year – taking her for an intelligent, articulate woman who loves her husband and three grown children, to someone who has no idea what is going on around her. It is a great performance – as you would expect from Moore. It is also the only reason to see the film at all – which is dramatically flat, rather dull and really doesn’t do anything other than show her descent – in scenes that are sometimes awkward in the extreme. Without Moore, there would be no reason to see the movie – with her you see the movie simply to watch a great actress deliver a great performance in an otherwise unremarkable movie.

In the film, Moore stars as Alice Howland – a linguistic professor at Columbia – one of the leaders in her field about how children learn language (which of course, sets up the irony later in the film when she can no longer remember words no matter how hard she tries). Her husband John (Alec Baldwin) is also a professor at Columbia – doing medical research. She has three children – Anna (Kate Bosworth), a married lawyer looking to start a family, Charlie (Shane McRae), a medical school student, and Lydia (Kristen Stewart) who has gone to L.A. to start an acting career. Alice gets her diagnosis early in the film, and the rest of the movie is basically her slow descent. She tries to maintain her teaching career for a while – but she gets lost easily. She wants to spend time with her family – hopes that her husband will take a sabbatical to spend her final months of lucidity with her, but that never happens. She tries hard to connect with her children – making the most progress with Lydia. But for everyone else, no matter how supportive they are, they have their own lives to live – and Alice deals with her descent on her own terms.

It truly is a great performance by Moore – who navigates the series of subtle changes as her mental state deteriorates from one scene to the next. It is a performance full of sadness, as she knows there is no going back, but she fights for as long as she can to maintain some degree of her old self. I admired the movie for following her descent all the way down – many movies would have stopped at a moment where she delivers a heartfelt speech about trying to maintain her life – but this one follows her all the way down. It also doesn’t take the easy way out, as was setup early in the film, so the ending is even more tragic than it otherwise would have been.

 
The film itself is nowhere near as great as Moore is in it. Written and directed by Richard Glatzer and Wash Westmoreland, based on a novel by Lisa Genova, the film doesn’t attempt to do anything other than follow Alice`s descent. That, in itself, is somewhat daring – but it does make the film a rather dull sit at times (especially when the film hits on pretty much every note you expect it to). This isn’t a great film – like Michael Haneke`s Amour, which was also about a woman with Alzheimer’s, which looked at a range of issues, and was a masterpiece. Still Alice doesn’t have the ambition for that. It is precisely what it appears to be. Moore is brilliant – and she will likely win an Oscar for her role, and given her career there are few more worthy of an Oscar win. It’s just a shame that no matter how great Moore is in the movie, she has been just as good, if not a better, in any number of films that are much, much better than Still Alice.

Movie Review: A Most Violent Year

A Most Violent Year
Directed by: J.C. Chandor.
Written by: J.C. Chandor.
Starring: Oscar Isaac (Abel Morales), Jessica Chastain (Anna Morales), David Oyelowo (Lawrence), Alessandro Nivola (Peter Forente), Albert Brooks (Andrew Walsh), Elyes Gabel (Julian), Catalina Sandino Moreno (Luisa), Peter Gerety (Bill O'Leary), Christopher Abbott (Louis Servidio), Ashley Williams (Lange), John Procaccino (Arthur Lewis).

J,C, Chandor is just three films into his directing career, and he has already become someone whose next film I eagerly anticipate. Part of that is that all three of his films – Margin Call (2011), All is Lost (2013) and now A Most Violent Year are all excellent – perhaps he hasn’t made a truly great film yet, but all three are distinctive, well written, well directed and well-acted films. And part of that is because each film is so different from each other – you never quite know what he’s going to do next. Margin Call was more of a writer’s film than a director’s one – one seemingly inspired by Aaron Sorkin or David Mamet, with its large cast of characters, in one location, over the course of one long night and the next day, as a Wall Street firm decides to sell off all of its toxic assets before the rest of the market realizes just how bad they are. All is Lost is the exact opposite – just Robert Redford, alone, on a sinking boat for two hours, trying to survive – barely speaking a word. Now comes A Most Violent Year – a film that is obviously inspired by the films of the 1970s or early 1980s – something by Sidney Lumet (Serpico or Prince of the City) or the underrated Ulu Grosbard (Straight Time and True Confessions).

The film takes place in 1981 in New York City – one of the most violent years on record. It centers on Abel Morales (Oscar Isaac) – who owns a heating oil business. The industry is well-known for corruption, and dishonesty – although Abel tries to run his business on the up and up (at least, compared to his competitors). But someone keeps hijacking his trucks, stealing its product, and beating up his drivers. The Teamsters want the drivers to be armed – but Abel knows that will just lead to trouble – and he already has enough of that. A D.A., Lawrence (David Oyelowo), has been tasked with cleaning up the industry – and he has Abel in his sights for an indictment. On top of that, Abel has just put down a large down payment on a new location – and needs to come up with the rest of the money in 30 days, or he loses the down payment, and perhaps his business. He has a bank loan coming – he thinks – but all the other problems could cause that to fall through.

A Most Violent Year is a slow burn of a thriller. There are a few masterful, suspenseful scenes – a car chase through a tunnel in particular. But for the most part, the movie just buries Abel slowly – brick by brick, as his morals fall away one at a time in order to survive. He is a man who wants to conduct an honest business – but if no one else is willing to do that, what chance does he have.

The performances in the film are excellent. Isaac, who delivered a star making turn in the Coen’s Inside Llewyn Davis, here channels a young Al Pacino. It is a magnificent, controlled performance of slow burning intensity. Isaac is matched by Jessica Chastain as his wife, Anna, who is not the normal shrinking violet wife we normally get in a movie like this. The film, perhaps, goes a little too far the other way with her character – she is basically Lady Macbeth, prodding her husband to do more and more immoral things – and sadly she disappears for much of the latter half of the movie. But in her great scenes – Chastain is as good as she has ever been (like when she faces off against Lawrence, with a calm, cool, polite aggression. Albert Brooks is nearly unrecognizable (it’s the wig), and wonderful as Abel’s lawyer – who tries to encourage him to be realistic about his options. And Oyelowo, while he has a small role, is excellent as the D.A., who is all about his own ambition – not justice.

The film is also brilliantly shot. Cinematographer Bradford Young channels the great Gordon Willis (frequent collaborator with Francis Ford Coppola), with his dark compositions – that get darker as the movie goes along, as Abel falls further away from the man he wants to be. Combined with his work on Selma, and 2013’s Ain’t Them Bodies Saints, it marks Young as one of the most promising cinematographers working today.

If there is a problem with A Most Violent Year it’s that it leans too heavily on its influences – and that Chandor never really does anything new with it. It’s the third film from 2014 that was heavily inspired by the films of the 1970s – Paul Thomas Anderson’s Inherent Vice does the best job, as it comes up with something different and unique. A Most Violent Year is more like James Gray’s The Immigrant (and, if we’re being honest, everything Gray has ever directed) – a film that looks great, is well written, well-acted, etc. – but never quite breaks new ground. That’s a small complaint in a movie that has this much going for it – but a real one. Three films into Chandor’s career, I’m still not sure who he is as a director – but I cannot wait to see what he does next.

Movie Review: The Overnighters

The Overnighters
Directed by: Jesse Moss.

Like a modern day version of The Grapes of Wrath, desperate men from across America (and even some from around the world) have flocked to North Dakota – where the fracking business is booming, and there are well paying jobs to be had. The problem, of course, is that there is not enough jobs to go around to everyone who shows up – and more dire, there is nowhere for the men who show up looking for work to stay. Lutheran Pastor Jay Reinke, who presided over a congregation in Willston, North Dakota, admits that he has trouble saying no – so would rather just say yes and deal with the consequences. This is how his Overnighters program started. He would let the men who showed up and asked for help to stay at his church – he has plenty of floor space after all, and once that was full, opened up his parking lot so that people could sleep in their cars. To him, this is the Christian thing to do – helping out your fellow man. But not everyone in town feels the same way. They don’t like all the newcomers, and want them to leave. They don’t want their RVs and campers parked in town, they don’t want them staying in the church, and they don’t want them around period. The local newspaper is also against the plan – and uses fear to try stir up passions against the overnighters. Some of this fear is warranted – there was a murder of a local teacher by a pair of men looking for jobs, crime has seen an uptick since all these men showed up in town, and some of the men have criminal records – including a number of sex offenders. Reinke doesn’t see it that way – he knows that if he closes the program, the problem won’t go away. Men are still going to show up looking for work, and if they cannot stay in the church, where will they go? The city and the newspaper don’t see it that way.

The Overnighters is an extraordinary documentary that tells this complex story, with some real life twists and turns that no one in the audience will see coming. The film spends the first part simply looking at the issue itself – interviewing many of the men who have shown up from across the country, explaining why they are here, and getting to know them and Reinke. Everything seems to be going fine. After this setup, the movie mainly focuses on Reinke himself – who is kind, affable, ever forgiving and optimistic. I’ve seen a few reviews refer to him as a real life Ned Flanders – and at first, that seems to be just what he is. He admits how hard everything has been on him and his family personally from him having to spend so much time at the church. He deals with complaints from his congregation – who do not like seeing their church turned into a shelter of sorts. He tries to combat what he considers to be unfair press attention by going door-to-door to the neighbors and making his case. He also goes in front of city council to argue for his program – and the rights of these men. He believes that a true, loving community should welcome these men – and if they do not, what kind of community are they living in, anyway?

The film gets darker as it goes along though. Some of the men, who are very complimentary of Reinke – even admiring in their words about him – turn on him, when Reinke turns their back on them because they have let him down. This leads to one of them going to the press about the number of sex offenders around – which threatens to derail the whole program. Reinke becomes increasingly exasperated in trying to keep all the balls in the air. Then, in a scene late in the third act, there is a stunning, personal revelation about Reinke.

Director Jesse Moss went down to Willston with his camera, and followed Reinke around for months to document this story. He could not have imagined the documentary he ended up with – as real life once again proves to be a little stranger, and more unpredictable, than anything a screenwriter could come up with. Reinke, at first, seems like a model Christian –the type who takes the duty of caring for his fellow man seriously, and wants to help out anyone he can. As the movie moves along, it never loses sympathy for Reinke, and is still a rather glowing portrait of him, but he does become more human, and all that entails, as it progresses as well. Something similar happens to The Overnighters program as well – what starts out looking like a hopeful place, becomes something much more complex as the film moves along. I don’t necessarily agree with the community – who is scared and wants things to go back to the way they were (they don’t seem to realize that is impossible) – but I have sympathy for their position as well. Would you want sex offenders living in your neighborhood? The stories of the men themselves – even those who find jobs – also turn darker as the movie progresses, as desperation gives way to optimism when they find work, and turns dark when there are consequences for them being away from home and family.

The Overnighters never answers the question of what is to be done to make this situation more tenable for everyone involved – probably because there is no answer. But what makes the film so great is that while it starts out as a social issue documentary, it becomes something much more human and complex because of the people – especially Reinke – who it portrays. It is a quietly moving – and devastating – documentary.

Movie Review: The Disappearance of Eleanor Rigby: Them

The Disappearance of Eleanor Rigby: Them
Directed by: Ned Benson.
Written by: Ned Benson.
Starring: James McAvoy (Conor Ludlow), Jessica Chastain (Eleanor Rigby), Nina Arianda (Alexis), Viola Davis (Professor Friedman), Bill Hader (Stuart), Ciarán Hinds (Spencer Ludlow), Isabelle Huppert (Mary Rigby), William Hurt (Julian Rigby), Jess Weixler (Katy Rigby).

The Disappearance of Eleanor Rigby: Them is a compromised vision of what may be a far better film (or films). When it debuted at TIFF in 2013, it did so as two different films – The Disappearance of Eleanor Rigby: Him and The Disappearance of Eleanor Rigby: Her – that could be watched in either order and it didn’t matter. The two films apparently told the same story, with scenes repeated from a different perspective, which gave them different meanings – one from his point of the view, and one from hers. So, as star Jessica Chastain explained, in the film Her, she was playing the real character, and in the film Him, she was playing his perception of that character – which isn’t the same thing (and the opposite is true). Harvey Weinstein bought the pair of films, but wanted to turn them into one film – the one I saw, Them – which cuts scenes from both movies into a single film. This was obviously done for commercial reasons – it’s a tough sell to try and get audiences to sit through the same film twice, back-to-back, from different perspectives – especially when the resulting double bill runs well over three hours. I am disappointed I wasn’t able to see the separate films – which is how writer and director Ned Benson intended (although, to be fair, he did the edit on Them as well). It’s now available on iTunes – but while I can rent the combined version, I can only watch Him and Her if I buy it – and I’m too cheap to do that. What I saw in Them is a mixed bag – but interesting enough that at some point, I still hope to see the other two films.

The film opens with a memory – a married couple, Conor (James McAvoy) and Eleanor (Jessica Chastain) are at a fancy restaurant – and then do and a dine and dash. The couple seem in love and happy with each other – which is why it’s odd that we soon see Eleanor jump off a bridge in a suicide attempt. In the aftermath of that, she moves back home with her parents (William Hurt and Isabelle Huppert), and her single mother sister (Jess Wexler). She decides to go back to school, and bonds with her professor (Viola Davis). Meanwhile, Conor is left trying to figure what the hell happened – he doesn’t know where Eleanor is, or the details of what happened. He, as well, moves in with his father (Ciaran Hinds) – as he tries to keep his struggling restaurant open.

Knowing how the film was conceived, and originally shot and screened, is helpful when watching this combined version – which I have to say is kind of a mess. The scenes where the couple are apart work the best – it’s clear whose perspective we are seeing, and how that effects what we see. But the scenes where the couple are together don’t work nearly as well – in part because we cannot be sure whose perspective we are seeing. Without knowing how the film was originally conceived, audiences may well assume that like most films, what they are watching is the “objective truth” of these characters – but that isn’t what is on screen. It’s really about how these characters view themselves – and those around them. That works when they are separate – not so much when they are together, and that opens a void that this version of the film cannot fill.

The film is never less than interesting however – and benefits greatly from Jessica Chastain’s top notch performance. In her scenes, she is aided greatly by subtle work by William Hurt and Isabelle Huppert – who at first seem like typical, clueless, aging hippie parents, but gradually take on more dimensions. She is also aided by a great performance by Viola Davis – who is so good, you can forgive the movie the mistake of including her character at all, since she doesn’t really fit in with the rest of the movie. But this is mainly Chastain’s show – and she is excellent as a grieving woman – a woman in her 30s whose world has crashed down around her and she is trying, slowly, to rebuild. McAvoy is also quite good – but his story isn’t as interesting, and neither are those around him, so he suffers somewhat.

My biggest complaint about the movie is how it withholds information from the audience simply for the sake of withholding it – so it can reveal it at the most dramatic time possible. Everyone in the movie knows the secret – and they seem to be deliberately dancing around it, and only because Benson doesn’t want the audience to know yet. It can be frustrating.

 
But I admired The Disappearance of Eleanor Rigby: Them for everything it tried to do, even if it comes up short. If nothing else, it makes me want to see the two separate films, back to back, because I have a feeling it would better that way. Maybe it does, maybe it doesn’t – but I want to find out for myself.

Movie Review: Leviathan

Leviathan
Directed by: Andrey Zvyagintsev.
Written by: Oleg Negin & Andrey Zvyagintsev.
Starring: Aleksey Serebryakov (Koyla), Elena Lyadova (Lilya), Vladimir Vdovichenkov (Dmitriy Seleznyov), Roman Madyanov (Vadim, the Mayor), Sergey Pokhodaev (Roma), Sergey Bachurskiy (Stepanych), Anna Ukolova (Angela), Aleksey Rozin (Pacha).

Andrey Zvyagintsev’s Leviathan is a modern day take on the Book of Job – about a man who finds out the hard way that you cannot fight City Hall. It is a film about the corruption that is deep seeded in Russia, how the government can pretty much do whatever they want, how they hide behind the Russian Orthodox Church, and the little guy doesn’t have a chance. Early in the film, there is a scene where the main character, Koyla (Aleksey Serebryakov), goes to court to try and fight a land grab by the local mayor. The mayor wants the land, for reasons that aren’t very clear, but clearly have no real reason accept that he can, and he wants it, and is using the courts to push through an eminent domain ruling, that will allow the city to buy the land at a reduced cost. Koyla is in the right, but it doesn’t matter. The court reporter reads the verdict – at rapid fire speed, but still in a monotone voice, and it becomes clear that everyone just wants to get the hell out of there – and that they never really took Koyla’s case seriously. This scene, like much of the rest of the movie, is tragic in its way – but also darkly funny. The verdict is read for so long that it becomes funny with how ridiculous it all is.

Leviathan is clearly an allegory – and quite clearly aimed at the heart of Russian society, where the little guy is going to get crushed by those with power, and they have no chance to win. The film was selected by Russian for the Foreign Language Film Oscar race this year – and it may well win – but has also been condemned by the Russian government, who do not like the way they are portrayed (obviously). The Mayor, Vadim (Roman Madyanov) is an obese, drunken, profane lout – who is corrupt, and everyone knows it, but no one can do anything about it. He is good friends with the high ups in the Russian Orthodox Church – and meets regularly with an ornately dressed member of the clergy, who tells him not to worry. Koyla has tried to fight Vadim and his land grab through proper channels – and failed – so now his friend and lawyer from Moscow, Dmitriy (Vladimir Vdovichenkov), has told him it’s time to fight dirty. He has some dirt on the mayor, and goes to him to let him know that if he doesn’t pay Koyla a lot more for his land, that all his dirty laundry will be exposed. Vadim doesn’t seem all that worried – and the rest of the movie proves just why that is.

But as much as Leviathan is about modern day Russia, it is far from just a political screed, given to grandstanding and speechmaking – both of which are thankfully lacking in the film. It remains a very personal story about Koyla – and how much misery is visited upon him through the course of the movie. But Koyla is far from innocent in his own downfall – he’s as much of a drunk as Vadim is, and has a hair trigger temper that gets him into trouble. While the film may be a modern day take on The Book of Job – Koyla is hardly an innocent being tested from some largely purpose – he’s just a little guy getting screwed.

Zvyagintsev introduces some interesting plot developments in the second half of the film – many involving Koyla’s second wife Lilya (Elena Lyadova), who remains the most fascinating and ambiguous character in the movie – because Zvyagintsev doesn’t attempt to explain all of her behavior – much of which is what sets off Koyla’s downfall. She is younger than Koyla – and a beauty – but she’s working a horrible job at the fish factory, and basically raising Koyla’s son teenage Roma (Sergey Pokhodaev) with little help from him – since he’s always either drunk, angry or away – and sometimes all three at once. The movie is, in some ways, as much her tragedy as Koyla’s – and the film ends with a key mystery not finally resolved.

Leviathan is, in some ways, some fairly heavy going. The film clocks in and two hours and twenty minutes, and there are more misery in the movie than in most films you will see. But unlike some of Zvyagintsev’s previous films, which felt a little too heavy handed, a little too obsessed with all the misery, Leviathan finds the right mixture between that misery, its humanity, its allegorical content and some very dark humor. The film is a dark tragedy – but it also highlights the absurdity of it all. And it’s one of the best films of 2014.

Movie Review: Two Days, One Night

Two Days, One Night
Directed by: Jean-Pierre Dardenne & Luc Dardenne.
Written by: Jean-Pierre Dardenne & Luc Dardenne.
Starring: Marion Cotillard (Sandra), Fabrizio Rongione (Manu), Pili Groyne (Estelle), Simon Caudry (Maxime), Catherine Salée (Juliette), Batiste Sornin (M. Dumont), Alain Eloy (Willy), Myriem Akeddiou (Mireille), Fabienne Sciascia (Nadine), Timur Magomedgadzhiev (Timur), Hicham Slaoui (Hicham), Philippe Jeusette (Yvon), Yohan Zimmer (Jérôme), Christelle Cornil (Anne), Laurent Caron (Julien), Franck Laisné (Dominique), Serge Koto (Alphonse), Morgan Marinne (Charly), Gianni La Rocca (Robert), Ben Hamidou (Kader), Carl Jadot (Miguel), Olivier Gourmet (Jean-Marc).

The Dardenne brothers are perhaps the most consistent directors in the world right now. Every three years since 1996 when they made their debut, La Promesse, they return with another film, which almost wins a prize at the Cannes Film Festival, and almost always deserves to. They are the best of the neo-realists (neo-neo-realists?) working right now, and while many of their films are similar, they are each unique in their own way. Their last two films before Two Days, One Night played with genre a little bit – Lorna's Silence (2008) was a kind of film noir, The Kid with the Bike (2011) a kind of fairy tale. Two Days, One Night doesn’t do that – it isn’t a genre film in any way – and many will compare it to their Palme D'or Winning Rosetta (1999) – as both are about women desperate to work – but the two films share only this superficial similarity.

The new film stars Marion Cotillard as Sandra, who has worked at a factory building solar panels for years, but is now on the brink of being fired. She has been on medical leave recently – because of depression – and although she is ready to return, her boss may not want her. He has held a vote among the 16 other workers where they have to choose between keeping Sandra as an employee, or receiving their annual bonus – 1,000 Euros. The boss says that he cannot afford both. Its Friday, and the vote has come in 14-2 for the bonus – against Sandra. But apparently, there may have been some underhanded dealings, so the boss agrees to hold a new vote on Monday morning. This gives Sandra the weekend – and she goes around to see each one of her co-workers, and make her case for keeping her around.

With the film, the Dardennes have set themselves some interesting narrative traps that they somehow have to avoid. In many respects, this is a movie that repeats the same scene over and over again – Sandra goes to her co-worker by knocking on her door, explaining the situation (the same way), and asking for her vote. The scene only changes when the co-worker gets to respond. To the Dardennes credit, even though some agree to vote for Sandra, and some refuse, there really is only one guy who comes across as an asshole. The rest of the people who vote against Sandra are in need of their money – they feel sorry for her, and her children that she will not be able to support with her job – but they have kids of their own, or a divorce to get through, or a spouse without a job, or are stuck working another job on the weekend as it is to make ends meet. The movie is about worker solidarity to be sure – but also about the limits of that solidarity. The movie doesn’t mention the economic collapse – that has hit Europe even harder than North America – because it doesn’t need to. All of these people are struggling just to make ends meet even with a full time job.  The also set themselves a trap in the ending – because no matter what they choose, there is a danger that it will play like a cliché – either in sentimental triumph or sentimental defeat. The way the Dardennes avoid that trap is masterful – and turns the movie around on its lead character in an interesting way, but doesn’t quite give an answer.

As with all of the Dardennes film, the lead performance is key to the whole movie. They often follow their characters, looking directly at their heads, as a way to get inside. Cotillard is inarguably the biggest star they have worked with – but she delivers on of her best performances – a more natural performance than ever before, that works perfectly in the Dardennes world. We feel sympathy for Sandra – but Cotillard doesn’t always make that easy. She is mired in depression – and although she has an ever supportive husband (one of the undercurrents of the movie is their relationship – which is being tested) – and does things that are somewhat self-destructive. Yet we feel for her anyway – because she seems so real.

That is the key to all of the Dardennes movie – that they don’t stray too far from reality. The characters are not always likable – but they are always real. Two Days, One Night is a difficult film to watch in many ways – Sandra is essentially setting herself up for embarrassment over and over and over again – but she dives in anyway. So do the Dardennes. That is why they are among the most consistent filmmakers in the world right now.

Movie Review: A Girl Walks Home Alone at Night

A Girl Walks Home Alone at Night
Directed by: Ana Lily Amirpour.
Written by: Ana Lily Amirpour.
Starring: Sheila Vand (The Girl), Arash Marandi (Arash), Marshall Manesh (Hossein), Mozhan Marnò (Atti), Dominic Rains (Saeed), Rome Shadanloo (Shaydah), Milad Eghbali (The Street Urchin), Reza Sixo Safai (Rockabilly).

Like many films by first time directors, A Girl Walks Home Alone at Night wears it’s influences on its sleeve. It’s impossible to watch the film, shot in stark black and white in Bakersfield, California, and not think of the early works of Jim Jarmusch – like Stranger Than Paradise (1984) and Down by Law (1986). Or early David Lynch, like Eraserhead (1978). Or, in some of its shots, the work of Sergio Leone. Or the way in which the male lead is made to look like James Dean. Or the presence of a poor, young boy which reminds us of the Iranian New Wave, or even the post WWII Italian neo-realists. And on and on and on the influences go. Written and directed by Ana Lily Amirpour, the movie does lean too heavily on these influences at times – but I didn’t really mind it that much. Amirpour takes her influences it takes them in some new, different directions – making a very odd feminist, vampire, western set in Iran, which is like a lot of films we have seen before – and yet something wholly unique at the same time. I look forward to see what she does next – when maybe she will leave some of those influences behind.

The movie is about two main characters. The first is Arash (Arash Marandi), who works as a gardener and general handyman, has a sweet 1950s hot rod, and has to care for his drug addicted father, who has a weakness for prostitutes – Hossein (Marshall Manesh). He’s deep in debt to Saeed (Dominic Rains), a tattooed pimp, drug dealer and all around horrible human being, who takes Arash’s car as payment for his debts, and then abuses the (apparently only) prostitute in his employ – Atti (Mozhan Marno) – who at 30, is getting old for type of work. The other main character is known only as The Girl (Seila Vand) – a vampire clocked in a chador, who sees all, stalks the streets silently, and will kill repeatedly throughout the movie – but seemingly only men who prey on women. The Girl is odd in many ways – from her cold eyes, to her room, donned with posters and images from the 1980s, and listening to music from the same decade. The movie alternates between these two characters – Arash and The Girl, slowly bringing them together. And the girl isn’t the only one who sees everything – there is also a skateboard riding kid (Milad Eghbali), who knows everything that is going on.

This is a very visual film – Amirpour doesn’t have a lot of dialogue in the film, and doesn’t really need it either. Everything she does is told visually, with some great flourishes (like the way The Girl uses that chador like Dracula uses his cape). The film is set in the fictional town of Bad City – presumably in Iran, since everyone is speaking Persian – but a desolate and lonely place, where there doesn’t seem to be too many people milling around at any one point – most likely a budgetary constraint, and a symptom of shooting a movie set in Iran in California, where Iranian extras were most likely in high supply. The film looks like it was shot on the cheap – and I don’t mean that in a bad way. Like those early Jarmusch and Lynch films, Amirpour uses her low budget to great effect – capturing memorable images throughout. The film is more a genre exercise – but one that crosses genres all over – than a sociopolitical statement about modern Iran – although the feminist bent to the movie does feel pointed and on target (but not just about Iran).

The film is one of the more striking debut films of 2014 – without ever quite being great. The movie drags at times – its 99 minute runtime is a little too long to support what is essentially a bare bones plot. But there is so much style here, that I didn’t much care. The film marks Amirpour is a director to watch. I cannot wait to see what she does next.

Movie Review: The Kill Team

The Kill Team
Directed by: Dan Krauss.

The Kill Team is a powerful, disturbing documentary that unfortunately feels somewhat incomplete. It is about the Maywand District murders – killings that the US Army contends were the work of one rogue platoon who murdered at least three civilians (including a 15 year old boy) in cold blood, then planted weapons on them to make the killings seem like self-defense. The film is told largely from the point of view of Adam Winfield – who wasn’t quite 18, and was roughly 100 pounds when he entered the army. He saw what was going on with his platoon – lead by the cold blooded Sergeant Gibbs – and was both disturbed by their actions, and complacent in them. He started sending his father Facebook messages telling him what was going on – and his father tried to call different Army personnel back home to try and protect his son, but never got anywhere. When another soldier, Justin Stoner, did what Winfield did not – and actually blew the whistle on what was happening, Winfield found himself one of the soldiers charged with the murders.

The Kill Team is a fascinating documentary, as it examines the thin line that exists in war between justifiable killing and cold blooded murder. When soldiers enter a war zone, they are expected to kill if necessary – and are celebrated for doing that – but sometimes they cross that line. The Army wanted everyone to know that this platoon was one rogue outfit – not representative of the army in general. And perhaps they weren’t. But in the words of Stoner, they weren’t the only ones doing this – they were just the ones who got caught.

The movie is a standard issue documentary – mainly made up of talking heads explaining what happened. This by itself is disturbing enough – as we hear Winfield, Stoner and other members of the platoon (some who ended up in jail for murder) describing what happened in grisly detail made all the more disturbing because of how monotone, and matter of fact their voices are. This is true even describing the most heinous of things – like how Gibbs was collecting the fingers of his victims so he could make a necklace out of them. Most, if not all, of these soldiers are clearly suffering from some sort of post-traumatic stress disorder.

But they are also, it must be said, guilty of murder. In their own words, they talk about how they killed three people who had done nothing wrong, and then planted weapons on them to make it look like self-defense. They saw all Afghan in inhuman terms, which is why they were able to do it in the first place. There are photos in the movie of the men – including Winfield – posing with the bodies of their victims.

All of this is disturbing – and this story is clearly an important one to examine in detail. What is frustrating about the documentary is that at only 79 minutes, it feels somewhat incomplete. Gibbs was interviewed at all for the documentary – and the portrait we get of him through the other soldiers paints him as a one dimensional, inhuman monster – and the movie leaves it at that. Although Winfield has the most screen time in the movie – and his family is well represented as well – the movie perhaps goes a little too soft on him in its effort to paint him in a sympathetic light, instead of pushing him a little harder.

 
What we are left with in The Kill Team is a very good documentary that could well have been great – but needed the filmmakers to dig a little deeper, and push a little harder. Perhaps they tried – and just couldn’t get there. If Gibbs didn’t want to be interviewed, there’s not much you can do there. Since the movie admits off the top its relationship with Winfield, and his family, perhaps they also couldn’t push any harder than they did. The Kill Team remains an important documentary – yet another damning portrait of the War on Terror – but it’s not quite as good as it could have been.

Movie Review: Jimi: All is By My Side

Jimi: All is By My Side
Directed by: John Ridley.
Written by: John Ridley.
Starring:: André Benjamin (Jimi Hendrix), Hayley Atwell (Kathy Etchingham), Imogen Poots (Linda Keith), Ruth Negga (Ida), Andrew Buckley (Chas Chandler), Oliver Bennett (Noel Redding), Adrian Lester (Mitch X).

One of the problems in making musical biopics is getting the rights to the music. If the subject is still alive, they may well want to protect their reputation, and not give the rights to their music up unless the filmmakers play by their rules – and even if the subject is dead, the estate may want to do the same. The people who run the estate of Jimi Hendrix have been very protective of his music – some have argued too protective, which is probably why we haven’t seen much in the way of big screen treatments of one of the greatest musicians of the 20^th Century. Not surprisingly, they didn’t grant writer-director John Ridley the rights to Hendrix’s music for Jimi: All is By My Side, which would seem like a death knell to the movie. But while I cannot argue that not having the music helps the movie – I don’t think it hurt it as much as it could have. Ridley has made a film about the period of time right before Hendrix went to the Monterey Pop Festival and became a legend, a time when he is still finding his sound. And perhaps even more interestingly, the film concentrates almost as much on the women in Hendrix’s life as it does on Hendrix himself. Yes, it would have been great if the big musical moment in the film – which comes at the end – was not Hendrix playing Sergeant Pepper for a cheering audience, including the Beatles, but one of his own songs. But that doesn’t kill the movie.

Hendrix would seem to be an almost impossible person to portray – but Ridley smartly casts Andre Benjamin (aka Andre 3000), a musician who counts Hendrix as one of his major influences. Yes, Benjamin is too old to play Hendrix (he’s 40, and Hendrix died when he was 27) – but that doesn’t matter very much. Benjamin plays Hendrix as a mostly peaceful, blissed out, high, womanizing music obsessed genius. There are moments where the world outside of Hendrix and his music encroach on the film – most notably when he meets a man named Mitch X (Adrian Lester), an outspoken black activist, who thinks Hendrix should use his music as a form of protest. Hendrix isn’t much interested in that – and gives an answer you would expect a perpetually stoned musician to give – about the power of love, and the love of power, and flipping the switch, man. And then things will change, you know. Hendrix didn’t much relate to other black artists at the time – he refers to the “cats” in Harlem, where he doesn’t play, as being too strict. He doesn’t dig labels you see – he wants to make music that mixes the blues, r&b, rock and everything else – and the whole scene in America is too strict. Most of the movie takes place in London – where things are looser, and freer. You can see his genius on stage – but off stage, he doesn’t seem too interested in much of anything other than the music – and getting back on stage. He’s mainly easygoing, and likable. But there is darkness in him as well – that pokes out only subtly throughout the film (the way he tells whatever woman he is with at the time to stay home, you wouldn’t like it there, there’s nothing there for you, etc.). There is one scene where that darkness turns to violence – when he beats his current girlfriend with a phone in a nightclub. The scene is ill advised for a few reasons – one, based no one seems to think that it actually happened (including the woman herself who is adamant, and everyone who has researched Hendrix’s life cannot find anything to support any violence against women charges). But other movies have made changes to history that don’t bother me much (most recently, Selma and American Sniper) – the real problem here is comes out of left field. Yes, there was a little darkness in Hendrix throughout the movie – but nothing either before or after that hints that he has that level of violence in him. The scene throws the movie for a loop that it barely recovers from with its big musical moment.

But perhaps the most interesting thing Ridley does in the film is concentrate so much time on the women in Hendrix’s life. Perhaps sensing that a blissed out Hendrix would get monotonous for two hours (he wouldn’t be wrong) – Ridley delves deeper into the characters of three of the women in Hendrix’s life. The first is Linda Keith (Imogen Poots) – best known at the time as Keith Richards’ girlfriend, who sees Jimi in a club and thinks he’s a genius. He doesn’t even have his own guitar at that point – so she gives him one of Richards’ – and encourages him to go out on his own. Their relationship is mostly platonic – but there is a deep love that exists between them. Poots is one of the most promising actresses working together – with just about the sexiest British accent imaginable, and an expert pout, she makes Linda into an interesting woman, trying to define herself as more than just “Keith Richards girlfriend” in a time when that was all a woman was supposed to be. An even bigger revelation (if not necessarily a better performance) – comes from Hayley Atwell as Kathy Etchingham – the red headed, lower class firecracker, who Hendrix gets fixated on, and perhaps falls in love with, even though at times he hates her as well (she is the one he hits with the phone). I would have liked to see a little bit more of Ruth Negga’s Ida – a woman who says she has fallen for “rock stars” before, and knows what they are like. She is the one who brings Mitch X along with her – but she laughs when Jimi basically blows him off. What is interesting is that the three women apart are interesting – but together there doesn’t seem to be the type of jealously or infighting you may expect.

 
Jimi: All is By My Side is not a great movie. In a way, it’s hamstrung a little by Hendrix’s mellowness – there isn’t much of an arch to the movie. But it succeeds as a hangout movie – a movie where you’re happy just to spend with these characters. Yes, I think the scene of violence should have been omitted. And yes, it would have helped to have Hendrix’s music in the film. But in a way, it didn’t need that music. This shows what led up to the moment he become a legend. And if you want to see that legend, just watch Monterey Pop (1968) – or the stand alone film Jimi Plays Monterey (1986). As great as Andre Benjamin is the film – he was never going to top those.

Movie Review: American Sniper

American Sniper
Directed by: Clint Eastwood.
Written by: Jason Hall based on the book by Chris Kyle and Scott McEwen and James Defelice.
Starring: Bradley Cooper (Chris Kyle), Sienna Miller (Taya), Kyle Gallner (Goat-Winston), Cole Konis (Young Chris Kyle), Ben Reed (Wayne Kyle), Luke Sunshine (Young Jeff Kyle), Keir O'Donnell (Jeff Kyle), Sammy Sheik (Mustafa), Tim Griffin (Colonel Gronski), Luis Jose Lopez (Sanchez), Brian Hallisay (Capt. Gillespie), Erik Aude (Thompson), Jad Mhidi Senhaji (Omar), Navid Negahban (Sheikh Al-Obodi), Sam Jaeger (Navy Seal Lt. Martin), Chance Kelly (Lt. Col Jones), Ayman Samman (Father).

It`s always a shame when a film becomes a political football – to be punted back and forth between people who seem to only be capable of seeing things in terms of black and white, liberal and conservative, good and evil. It’s an even bigger shame when that movie is a film like Clint Eastwood's American Sniper – which is a much more nuanced film than many seem to want to think it is. Going into the film, I was confused by the rhetoric being written on both sides that the film was a rah-rah, pro-gun, pro-America, pro-war anti-Muslim, xenophobic screed. It confused me because while Clint is certainly guilty of making himself into a caricature on film, and in his infamous speech to empty chair Obama at the RNC, as an artist he has always had a more nuanced, complex view of violence. This is the man who made Unforgiven with its famous line “Hell of a thing, killing a man. You take away all he`s got, all he`s ever going to have”. The man who made Flags of Our Fathers, which was one of the more complex looks at American heroism in WWII put on film, and then followed it up with Letters from Iwo Jima, which looked at the war from the opposite side without demonizing anyone. American Sniper fits neatly in with those films in that it looks at the consequences of violence on a man who apparently has the most confirmed kills of any serviceman in American history – consequences that he both realizes and doesn’t realize. I’m not going to say that American Sniper is an anti-war film – it isn’t – or that it is a perfect film – it rushes through the post-war years of its main character in 10 minutes when it needed a hell of a lot longer. But while the film doesn’t offer a complex political view of the Iraq war – there are no debates about the rightness or wrongness of it at all, or the enemy – who the main character simply sees through his gun site and kills them – I also believe that is the point of the movie. It locks in on the main characters viewpoint, and sticks with it from beginning to end. There is value in that as well.

The film opens with Chris Kyle (Bradley Cooper) in Iraq, locking his sites on a child carrying a bomb, and his mother who gave it to him. He isn’t sure if he should take the shot or not – he hesitates for a moment, and then the film flashes back to Kyle as a child – being instructed by his father about the way of the world. Kyle is told there are three types of people in the world – sheep, who look away from violence, wolves who use violence to terrify others, and sheepdogs who use violence to protect the sheep. His father isn’t raising any sheep – and he will kick their ass if they become wolves. That leaves only one option left for Kyle. Eastwood flashes forward a little bit more – to 1999, when Kyle, now 30, sees a news report about embassy bombings and gets angry. "They’re attacking us" he says – and he immediately decides that it is time to sign up for the military. He’s already a good shot – and he wants to fight – so he ends up a Navy SEAL. He meets his future wife, Taya (Sienna Miller) and falls in love – and after 9/11 he is sent to Iraq. It’s only then they we get a resolution to the dilemma he faced in that opening scene. Even here, it is more complex than Kyle realizes – he is congratulated for his actions, and immediately tells the person to shut up. When he takes those shots, he is changed – and he never quite realizes it.

The movie will spend most its running time flashing back and forth between Kyle in the field, and his life on the home front – which gets increasingly fragile. His family grows, but Taya starts to think she is married to a stranger. He isn’t there even when he is there. He sees his brother for the first time, and he is simply shell shocked. A soldier he served alongside is killed, and when he attends the funeral with Taya is shocked when the soldier’s mother reads a letter he wrote just weeks before he was killed – expressing doubt about his actions. “It was that letter that killed him” Kyle says – but he wants to believe that more than he actually does.

It is in moments like this, and others, that make me wonder why some people – who either love the film or hate it – think that the film itself is an “America, fuck yeah!” war movie, like last year’s Lone Survivor certainly was. It is there in Bradley Coopers fine performance as Kyle – who outwardly is confident, whose words never betray that he has doubts about what he is doing, that spouts offensive things like the people he is fighting being savages. But Cooper’s eyes tell a different story. He does what he does because he feels he has to – and I find the argument that he didn’t have to absurd – he is a soldier in a warzone, and he was doing his job, whether or not you agree with the reasons America was in Iraq or not (and for the record, I don’t), doesn’t really matter.

Some of the other criticisms of the film are easier to understand, even if I don’t necessarily agree with all of them. It is true that the film doesn’t give any insight into the Iraq war at all and why American went – but does it need to. Don’t you already know that? And if the film never questions that involvement, I think that’s more because Kyle himself never questions it, and the film is locked in on his viewpoint. Kyle doesn’t want to question it – if he did, the whole façade he has built up would come crumbling down. The film is perhaps on shakier ground its portrayals of the Iraqi people itself – given that the film doesn’t really give them any portrayal at all. There is only one sympathetic character – a man who agrees to help the Americans, and pays an awful price for that. The film certainly shows us Iraqis behaving in abhorrent ways (what happens to that man is an example) – but again, I think it’s because the movie is locked into Kyles viewpoint, and this is the way he sees it. The portrayal of a rival sniper – Mustafa, rumored to be a Syrian athlete, is more problematic – because the film never really explores that character in any real way. He’s used as a storytelling shortcut, to give a face to what for the rest of the movie is a faceless enemy. The ending of the film doesn’t really work at all either. There is a moment with Kyle in a bar that would have been a better place to stop the movie – but instead Eastwood plows on for another 10 or 15 minutes, and gives a shallow portrait of Kyles homecoming – that almost gives you whiplash, as one moment he is seemingly stricken with PTSD, and primed to explode, and then the next he is perfectly fine. If Eastwood wasn’t really going to examine that conversion, he shouldn’t have started at all. But he does this in part, because he wants to get to Kyles tragic death in 2013 – where he was killed by another soldier suffering from PTSD, and the resulting funeral. And don’t even get me started on what is probably the fakest looking baby in movie history.

But overall, I think American Sniper is an excellent film – one that resists the various black or white, liberal or conservative boxes that everyone seems to want to put it in. It doesn’t argue that Kyle should not have done what he did – it mostly argues, like many Eastwood films do, that violence is often necessary, but again, like many Eastwood films argues; it does say that the violence does have a cost on those who are forced to commit it. That makes it very much in line with the best Clint Eastwood films he has directed – and even if it doesn’t quite reach the level of a film like Unforgiven – well, most films don’t. This is a film that has haunted me for days now, and will continue to do so – so I think no matter what your thoughts on the war in Iraq or your own political leanings, than American Sniper is a film that should be seen. But it must be seen with a mind opened to be challenged. I don’t need a film to confirm my political ideals to think it’s a great film.