A Fresh Point of View: End of Watch (A Movie Review)

Tags

Buddy Cop Dramas, Cinema, Cinema Reviews, DVD reviews, End of Watch, entertainment, Film Reviews, Films, Found Footage Films, Jake Gyllenhaal, LAPD, Michael Peña, Movie Reviews, Writing

I can’t say I’ve ever been a fan of US cop dramas, films or otherwise. Hill Street Blues is probably the last example of the genre I ever watched and that was a bazillion years ago. Showing my age. After that, in film at least, US buddy cop dramas in particular were a common trope from Lethal Weapon to Bad Boys and everything inbetween, and realism was never high up on the list of priorities.

End of Watch surfaced last year and I ended up watching it the other night as a random choice, purely because I’d heard it was supposed to be quite good and the film we wanted to watch (Django Unchained) was unavailable.

Firstly, this film is chock full of cop-movie clichés, from the banter between the leads played by Jake Gyllenhaal and Michael Peña, to the feats of heroism and in particular the overly-intense Mexican gangster types. But it doesn’t matter (well it does in some instances…) because the film is shot from such a fresh point of view that it completely engages you. The banter is shot from a dashboard camera in the faces of the two leads, and these scenes anchor the film with believable humour and interactions, often with no relevance to the plot, but this film cares more about its characters than the loose plotline involving Mexican drug cartels.

And it’s the characters and their developing story that set this film alight. It’s not long before we find ourselves utterly invested in their lives. They are an incredibly likeable pair, and not without flaws, but the camaraderie and the close attention to their personal lives draws us in and makes us worry all the more for their safety. There is a feeling to this film, in the realism of most of the situations, that anything can happen. The outcome is never certain. Life is cheap on their watch, and death always close by.

There is a found-footage aspect to the way the film is shot and it sets its stall out that way, but doesn’t stick to it. A shaky, roving camera is still employed in scenes where there couldn’t possibly be a camera. That struck me as a little lazy and inconsistent in terms of style, even when I was still enjoying it, but it did draw me out of the movie when Gyllenhaal and Anna Kendrick are enjoying some ‘alone-time’ and we are still seeing it as though someone is standing in the bedroom shooting them with a handheld camera (which they are – it’s a film after all, but I don’t want my attention to be called to this fact). That said, it’s the camera-work that makes the film so special, putting the viewer right in the action, whether it’s a car chase and shootout or a mundane street scene, it creates a convincing point of view that makes you look over your shoulder.

South Central L.A. is the stage for the film, and while there is surely some realism in the way it’s portrayed, it’s so difficult to transcend the tropes set up by the glut of films from the 1990s that were set there. Boyz n the Hood, Menace II Society, South Central and so many others. There is some mention of how the neighbourhood has changed, which could potentially have been an interesting sociological angle – looking at how Hispanics have moved in large numbers, but in the film, it’s the Mexicans who end up being the bad guys instead of black people. That’s a little unfair, as they do balance it out with Michael Peña showing the flip-side of Mexican culture in L.A., but the stereotypical gangsters are a little ridiculous at times with dialogue that consists of saying ‘fuckin’ at a machine-gun rate.

I really wasn’t expecting to enjoy the film as much as I did, and by the end I was utterly gripped and absorbed in the lives of the two cops. The point of view is so deep that at times you do feel like a silent participant, sitting in the cop car with them listening to the wonderful dialogue exchanges; in the choking miasma of a burning building with them as they rescue some kids from a house fire; eavesdropping on a late-night drunken conversation at the end of a wedding, the kind fuelled by alcohol as well as emotion.

Doubtlessly, the film will not appeal to everyone, and perhaps some people will only see the flaws; the clichés. Maybe even some people might find it boring as its random, directionless nature–which so well represents the highs and lows of a typical work shift–leads them into one drug-den or conversation about relationships too many.

All I’ll say is, even if US cop dramas aren’t your thing, try a fresh point of view and give it a chance.

Cosmopolis (A Movie Review)

Tags

Apocalyptic Fiction, Cinema, Cinema Reviews, Cosmopolis, David Cronenberg, DVD reviews, entertainment, Films, metaphor, Movie Reviews, Paul Giamatti, Robert Pattinson, Sarah Gaden, Writing

Here’s an opening gambit. You probably won’t like this film. In fact, you shouldn’t like this film, as it goes out of its way to make itself unlikeable. Why, then, did I find myself enjoying it so much?

Here’s why you won’t like it.

The main character is a blank, an automaton who doesn’t engage your emotions or sympathy. It’s a wilfully obscure film with a glacial pace and dialogue that deliberately obfuscates, spinning in circles around itself and being delivered in stilted, glib epigrams that are weighted with apocalyptic portent but ultimately say nothing and add little to the plot (such as it is). And it has Robert Pattinson in it. Okay, that was a cheap shot – Twilight aside, he is a decent actor.

The plot is fairly slight, following Eric Packer, a young finance wizard who decides to ‘get a haircut’. The film consists of the entire journey across Manhattan in the back of his stretch limo to the barbers, with various little stops on the way and a procession of aides and flunkies dropping in to impart their nuggets of wisdom. All the while Packer’s Chief of Security is continually updating him about ‘credible threats’ to his life and society seems to be breaking down around the limo with increasingly violent protests happening, but never penetrating Packer’s insular bubble. Packer is only vaguely human, conducting his business like an alien trying to figure out human interaction, especially in his dealings with his new wife. I think it was a blatant choice on director David Cronenberg’s part to choose Robert Pattinson and play on his vampiric, inhuman persona.

The emotion and humanity in the film is really only to be found in the various cameos by the likes of Juliette Binoche, Samantha Morton and Paul Giamatti as they pass through Packer’s day, although many of them are as inscrutable as Packer himself. Packer gains no pleasure from anything and everything is an analysis to him. He treats his sexual encounters as no different to his daily rectal exam or discussions of financial theory, all of which takes place in the back of his limo.

The theme of this review is why did I like it? What was it about this impenetrable, stagey, slow drama that I enjoyed so much? Because I did enjoy it. I found it gripping to watch, even when the dialogue is almost abstract and impossible to follow there was a hypnotic quality about it. Like a metronome, the tick-tock procession of characters and situations set abstract notions spinning in my brain that I try but fail to fathom, although it doesn’t matter, because in a sense the film plays like a road movie and we start to wonder what each new character is going say or do. There is also an unresolved, tense atmosphere that permeates the entire film, becoming more and more apocalyptic and surreal. The interior of the limo becomes a place separate from reality, feeling almost like a spaceship or underwater craft moving slowly through the world, unaffected by it. There is a huge structural metaphor at play here, of the financial world and how it continues to move like a sleek shark no matter what forces assault it, but I think metaphors in film or literature shouldn’t be there to be understood, unless you’re a film student, so I don’t always like discussing them. Whether you see or don’t see the layers of metaphor is irrelevant. You should still be able to enjoy the film on any level, so if understanding the symbolism and metaphor and multi-layers of meaning is the only way to enjoy the film, in my opinion the film is a failure. Film is image-based and no matter the intention of the film-maker, those images should be able to create meaningful associations in the mind of the viewer. Those associations will differ from person to person, but each person should be able to get enough out of it to satisfy them.

That’s some explanation on what it was about the film that I enjoyed, but still doesn’t quite clarify why I, in particular, enjoyed it. Why does one person enjoy a film and not another watching the same film in the same circumstances? I know I’ve always had a peculiar patience for unconventional films; films that are thunderously slow; films with little or no plot to speak of. David Cronenberg’s films are often divisive and Cosmopolis falls firmly within the realms of Crash and Spider and Existenz, two of which were also novel adaptations – Cosmopolis being adapted from the Don De Lillo novel of the same name. I also enjoyed those particular films, each of which have their own layers of difficulty in engaging with the story and I wonder sometimes if Cronenberg does that on purpose, putting up obstacles and making a film difficult to like. Cosmopolis certainly does a grand job of that, defying the rules of making a protagonist even a little bit sympathetic, or making the building drama actually go somewhere. Maybe, in terms of enjoyment for me, it comes a lot down to atmosphere and Cosmopolis is dripping with it. An apocalyptic atmosphere where the real apocalypse isn’t the violent protests or people setting themselves on fire, but the apocalypse on the inside (of the limo in this case), in the tiniest of details, in Eric Packer’s self-seeking mission of understanding, or in the fractured mind of Paul Giamatti’s wronged employee. Where is Packer going anyway? What is he really after? Is it a depiction of his own personal collapse? Who knows? And that guessing game is something else that turns me onto a film like this. The performances are also excellent. The dialogue is highly unrealistic and consists of sequences of statements and questions with no direct responses or answers, and most of the time is impossible to follow, but when it’s being spoken with the intensity of Paul Giamatti, or the icy aloofness of Sarah Gaden it’s mesmerising.

Do I recommend you see it? Yes, and no, because I think I’ve explained why you’ll either like this or not like it. Either way it’s bound to create a strong opinion in one direction or the other.

 

Moonrise Kingdom (A Movie Review)

Tags

Bill Murray, Bruce Willis, Cinema, Cinema Reviews, Coming-of-age Films, DVD reviews, Edward Norton, entertainment, Films, Moonrise Kingdom, Movie Reviews, Wes Anderson

The genre map of the coming-of-age film is a well explored country. Off the the top of my head I can think of a few classics that I have enjoyed over the years. Lasse Hallström’s ‘My Life as a Dog’; John Duigan’s ‘Flirting’; Nic Roeg’s ‘Walkabout’ (yes I would describe it as a coming of age film); Shane Meadows’ ‘This is England’; Fernando Meirelles’ ‘City of God’. By no means a definitive list – just a few examples that popped into my head. Funnily enough, not a single American film on there, which wasn’t a conscious choice, but is perhaps representative of how non-US cinema handles the subject matter and how they have rooted themselves in my head.

Recently out on DVD in the UK is Wes Anderson’s latest film, Moonrise Kingdom. And I think it is perhaps the best example of the coming-of-age genre to emerge from the USA. Wes Anderson’s films are no doubt an acquired taste amongst the average film-goer with their mannered, deadpan quirkiness. They are often accused of being style over substance, but I strongly disagree. Each one is quite different in tone, although there is always a deep sadness in many of the main characters, hence Anderson’s frequent use of sad-sack extraordinaire Bill Murray. What some might perceive as artificiality in the perfectly-composed shots and direct-to-camera addresses, I often find is a tremendously involving device. The worlds that Wes Anderson creates are often places you want to crawl into and snuggle up.

Moonrise Kingdom is the kind of film that I just want to eat with a spoon. Never cloying or false. Not clichéd or mawkish. It’s funny and touching and achingly sad in equal measure. Bruce Willis, Bill Murray and Edward Norton all play characters with similar degrees of quiet desperation, although each is very different and they play well against the two kids as an example of reality vs expectations. Jared Gilman and Kara Hayward as Sam and Suzy, the pair of damaged dreamers at the centre of the story are magnificent and so watchable, carrying a story that is as believable as it is dreamlike and idealised. This is a 1965 that we would all like to occupy, a fantastical version of nostalgic memory, but it cuts to the bone as well. The kids are not perfect little angels. Their problems are real and both particular to the era and relevant to modern issues of psychological difficulties and childhood abandonment.

This is also very much a fairytale. With its gnome-like narrator carrying dire portents of the storm to come, which we know is going to affect the outcome in some dramatic way. There is even a wicked witch in the form of Tilda Swinton as Social Services. Everything about Sam and Suzy’s journey into the woods and their ‘Moonrise Kingdom’ on the beach reeks of fairytale. It’s wish-fulfilment fantasy sharpened by the hard edge of reality. We want to be Sam with his enviable scouting skills, but we don’t want his hard upbringing amongst the foster homes of 1960s USA. We want to be Suzy in her cosy island house so well shot in the opening of the film, but we don’t want her anger issues and feelings of alienation.

Everything about this film is thought out to the tiniest detail. The cinematography is lush and stark, warm and foreboding. The comedy balances perfectly with the drama, and the film moves along at a fair clip so it never feels slow. Sam and Suzy’s predicament is always engaging and we are rooting for them the whole way even when it looks like everything is going to end badly. And it isn’t just about the kids. The adults have rounded character arcs and are given plenty of screentime. Bruce Willis and Edward Norton are particularly good. Willis communicating a deep sadness and regret along with warmth (reminded me of his best performance, in 12 Monkeys), and Norton child-like and eager, but also hiding an emptiness that leads to some great scenes from him near the end.

I’ve seen most of Wes Anderson’s films now (only Bottle Rocket and Fantastic Mr Fox have slipped past me), and I think he’s found the perfect vehicle for his style with Moonrise Kingdom. It’s defiantly different from the mass-produced Hollywood fare and works so well for it. No matter what you think of his previous films, I defy you to watch this and not smile at least once. Me, I had a slowly widening grin through the entire film.