Movie Review: Serenity

Serenity * ½ / *****

Directed by: Steven Knight.

Written by: Steven Knight.

Starring: Matthew McConaughey (Baker Dill), Anne Hathaway (Karen Zariakas), Diane Lane (Constance), Djimon Hounsou (Duke), Jason Clarke (Frank Zariakas), Jeremy Strong (Reid Miller), Rafael Sayegh (Patrick).

 

Everyone involved in Serenity is immensely talented. Writer/director Steven Knight has directed one great movie (Locke) and written a few others (Eastern Promises, Dirty Pretty Things). The cast has two Oscar winners, and a couple of nominees, and strong people in it besides. I have always loved film noir – and the sun baked film noir can great as well – a way to visually contrast all the darkness of the story. Assemble all these elements again, and I would still be excited. But boy, is Serenity a bad movie. In a way, you have to give it some credit for the sheer audacity of what it attempts – but the resulting movie is bonkers in all the wrong ways. As I mentioned when I reviewed Glass a couple weeks ago, the reason why people remember the great twist endings Shyamalan has come up with is because they are very hard to pull off. When you try for one and fail, the result is something like Serenity – which is just plain goofy. (Warning, there will be spoilers below, but I’ll mark them off).

 

The setup of Serenity is pure noir. Baker Dill (Matthew McConaughey) is an Iraq war veteran, hiding on a small tropical island, where he barely scraps by as a fisherman, and taking tourists out on his boat alongside first mate Duke (Djimon Hounsou). He isn’t exactly happy, but he’s getting by – and surviving, has a friends with benefits situation with Constance (Diane Lane), and is basically just letting life go by. Onto his island steps a woman from his past – Karen (Anne Hathaway) – the mother of Baker’s child, Patrick, that he hasn’t seen in years. Karen left Baker years ago for another man – Frank (Jason Clarke) – who is rich and mob connected in Miami, and ever since he has been abusing her. Karen has a proposition for Baker – when her husband arrives in a few days, she wants Baker to take him out on his boat, and just let him fall in – an accident – to be cleaned up by the sharks. For his trouble, he’ll get $10 million – and perhaps get to see his son again. On the island there is also the very strange Reid Miller (Jeremy Strong) – a bespecled man who is constantly trying to get a hold of Baker, and always a step slow.

 

The early scenes of Serenity are intriguing – not good exactly, but interesting. It’s clear that Knight has studied film noir, and he is trying to give his dialogue that old school noir ring to it – you know the way no one really talks, but it sounds great in the mouths of Humphrey Bogart, Robert Mitchum or Barbara Stanwyck. It is a stylized dialogue, and some of the actors do better with it than others – McConaughey is fine, Hathaway is awkward and Diane Lane absolutely nails it. When he swaggers onto the island, Clarke is also quite good – he seems born to play this type of role, and he gives probably the best performance in the movie – although he has the advantage of being a one note lout.

 

Spoilers Ahead – Kind of. I don’t spoil the twist, but I do discuss it.

 

But about two-thirds of the way into the movie, the movie pulls out its big twist. It has been hinted at throughout the film that something is not quite right here – there is something more going on than a simple film noir. If you really wanted to have a generous reading of the film, this twist could even explain all the awkward dialogue, and even some of the more awkward performance moments, as if Knight put them in their deliberately. But that would be a pretty generous reading. And the twist brings up some other questions about the plot that given the latest twist seem even more implausible.

 

End Spoilers

 

Basically, from the point of the twist to the end of the movie, Serenity becomes increasingly ridiculous and impossible to take seriously, even as Knight and his cast still take it very, very seriously. I’m not even sure what to make of the final scenes in the movie, which basically make no sense if you spend time thinking about them.

 

So, yes, Serenity is a bad movie. A really bad movie. But it’s the type of bad movie that talented people sometimes make. A blander, less ambitious filmmaker than Knight never would have attempted this film, and very well would have made a better film, but also could have easily made a film you would forget as soon as it ends. You won’t forget Serenity, that’s for sure.

Movie Review: Locke

Locke
Directed by: Steven Knight.
Written by: Steven Knight.
Starring: Tom Hardy (Ivan Locke), Olivia Colman (Bethan), Ruth Wilson  Ruth (Katrina), Andrew Scott (Donal), Ben Daniels (Gareth), Tom Holland (Eddie), Bill Milner (Sean), Danny Webb (Cassidy), Alice Lowe (Sister Margaret), Silas Carson (Dr. Gullu), Lee Ross (PC Davids), Kirsty Dillon (Gareth's Wife).

You could hardly have a simpler premise for a movie than the one in Steven Knight’s Locke. The entire film takes place inside of a BMW SUV driven by Ivan Locke (Tom Hardy) who makes a series of phone calls in the film’s 90 minute runtime. A lot of these conversations have to do with a concrete pour happening the next day – apparently the largest “non-nuclear, non-military” pour in European history. Locke was supposed to oversee this pour, but now he won’t be able to. He has a “family problem” that he has to take care. When he’s not talking to his boss or his underling or any number of other people about concrete, he’s talking to his wife or one of his two sons and trying to explain what is going on. Finally, there are various conversations about the cause of all his troubles (which I won’t reveal). And that’s it. There is no action, no car chases or shootouts. The film is 90 minutes of Tom Hardy talking on the phone. And it’s wonderful.

Much of the credit for the success of the movie is due to Tom Hardy – who has become one of those actors who I look forward to in every movie he’s in. He can singlehandedly make a movie as forgettable as John Hillcoat’s Lawless memorable, if only because of his strange, mumbling performance. He was able to make Bane into a truly frightening villain, and then in the end much more a scared little boy than anything else. He reminded me of Brando with his small role in Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy, being a sensitive tough guy. And he can over the top brilliantly like in Nicolas Winding Refn’s Bronson. He has the looks and charm of a movie star – but the skill of a character actor. In Locke, he delivers one of his best performances. He plays a man whose world is crumbling all around him, but he tries to remain calm and focused – he has to drive, first of all – but he also needs to keep his head to ensure that those he’s talking to keep theirs. He only allows anger to seep through when he’s not on the phone at all – but is instead talking to his father in the backseat (who isn’t there) as he explains that he will not become the man his father was. He refuses to lie – because after all, lies got him into this mess, and he doesn’t want to be that person anymore. He made one mistake but he’s not trying to avoid responsibility – but instead trying to ensure he steps up and behaves in a moral way, after behaving in an immoral way. It’s a rather complex performance in many ways – he has to convey a wide variety of emotions, without leaving the driver’s seat of his car – but he also has to be interesting enough that the audience doesn’t get restless watching the film. Hardy nails it.

But credit must also go to writer/director Steven Knight as well. One could argue that the film is a gimmick film – and they wouldn’t exactly be wrong – but credit goes to Knight for embracing that gimmick, and riding it all the way. Do you remember the Wes Craven film Red Eye with Cillian Murphy as a psychopath on a plane and Rachel McAdams in the seat next to him? That movie worked wonderfully right up to the point where they abandoned the confines of the aircraft and then it became a typical thriller. Knight follows through on his premise right to the bitter end – and it works so well, that even if the last moment in the film isn’t overly original, it still had me shedding a few tears. Knight is mainly known as a screenwriter – for film as brilliant as Stephen Frears’ Dirty Pretty Things (2002) and David Cronenberg’s Eastern Promises (2007). This is his second directing effort – following last year’s Redemption with Jason Statham (which I didn’t see, but sounded like it may be somewhat different, at least as far as Jason Statham movies go). Along with cinematographer Haris Zambarloukos, Knight finds an interesting way to shoot the movie – and editor Justine Wright works wonders at subtly building the tension in what is nothing more than Hardy and the voices on the other on the other end of the phone. Dickson Hinchliffe’s score is never overbearing, but helps set the mood at every stage.

A movie like Locke is proof that you don’t need big special effects or a large cast to make a great movie. Locke is modestly scaled, and yet it works better than most movies do with far more money being spent. It’s a film that concentrates on writing, directing and acting above everything else. Its stakes are small, but it’s so well done you don’t care. This is an antidote to all those blockbusters we’re already seeing – and that will dominate theaters this summer.