Movie Review: 'War Horse'

If only the magnificent opening shot of Steven Spielberg’s War Horse was followed up with a story half as profound, then disappointment would not be so tangible. Shot with a truckload of affection by Janusz Kaminski, and intentionally evoking the films of John Ford, the imagery is the most compelling feature of War Horse, a maddeningly schmaltzy movie.

The elements are all in place - superb casting (newcomer Jeremy Irvine, Peter Mullan, Emily Watson, David Thewlis, Tom Hiddleston and Sherlock’s Benedict Cumberbatch), gorgeous cinematography, John Williams’ lovely score; unfortunately the story never connects. War Horse falls into the clutches of long, intense ‘Spielberg Stares’ from nearly every character in the movie, inducing little drama that feels tiring and shallow. God’s rays could not have done a more admirable job of lighting War Horse, but the film’s aesthetic beauty doesn't compensate for the lack of a rewarding story.  

Based on a popular 1982 book by Michael Morpurgo, War Horse revolves around Joey, a remarkable horse who is cared for by Albert, a young farm boy in England. World War I breaks out and Joey is taken away from Albert to be used in battle. The book focused on Albert's search throughout Europe to find Joey but the film only follows Joey's harrowing journey, where he is befriended, claimed and used by several different people across the continent. As Joey is passed from Albert to a soldier to a general to a little French girl to another soldier, War Horse plummets from sweet eye candy to agonizing melodrama. The conflicts are predictable and all the actors speak in frustratingly over the top histrionic dialogue. And by the hundredth beautifully crafted trail of smoke and explosion of artistic splendor, War Horse loses more than a little steam.  

Spielberg employs a visual style that is a throwback to classic John Ford movies. Every single shot is meticulously framed and flawlessly lit, but the movie completely fails at the human level. Most of the characters remain strangers to us, and it gets difficult to sympathize with any of them. Spielberg is the grandmaster of milking themes like family, home and longing, but unlike in his other films he offers too few moments of genuine emotional power. Even the leitmotifs of loss and moving on seem too labored and superficial. The attempts at wrenching out tears are unbelievably corny - one plot point contains the horse being mercilessly snatched away by soldiers from a sickly young French girl who lives with her grandfather.

The battle scenes are astounding, and a reminder of how talented Spielberg truly is. Long, uncut shots pretty much throw you into the nightmarish trenches and the battlefields. But however admirable the film’s sense of foreboding may be, it is impossible not to be put off by a story that’s increasingly contrived, saccharine and schmaltzy. 

War Horse is a ho-hum affair, watchable but not the least bit memorable. At two and a half hours it is too long and predictable, when 90 minutes would have been plenty. By the time it reaches its passionately sappy ending, it succeeds in making us remember it as dispassionately as possible.

(First published in Mid Day)

Movie Review: 'Chronicle'

Chronicle is an astonishing achievement, as enigmatic as its title, and absolutely razor-sharp entertainment. First-time director Josh Trank combines intricate handheld live-action camerawork with CGI wizardry to stunning, if often baffling effect. This found footage thriller rises above the genre dreck like Apollo 18, and offers a distinctive visual perspective that confirms that there's art left in the genre after all.

The story of Chronicle is similar to the X Files episode ‘Rush’ where a school kid finds a cave that gives him superpowers, except it doesn’t have the gauche allegorical monochrome of the show. In Chronicle the kid is Andrew (Dane DeHaan), whose dreary life consists of a drunkard dad, a sick mom and constant humiliation from society. His cousin Matt (Alex Russel) sometimes visits him out of pity. Andrew’s only friend is his video camera which he uses to record everything that goes on in his life. Things take a turn when Andrew accompanies his cousin and his classmate Steve (Michael B Jordan) to investigate a mysterious underground cave in the woods, where they discover otherworldly crystals and develop telekinetic superpowers. As any human adolescent would do, they use their powers for mischief and before you know it the film turns into a wild mirror image of X-Men.  

Director Trank’s imagination and vision is terrific - he immediately eliminates the contrivance of the POV camera and effortlessly balances all kinds of aesthetics like dark surrealism and compositional thingamajig. His work recalls Matt Reeves’ in Cloverfield but there's pizzazz in what Trank attempts. Chronicle arrives a full 12 years after The Blair Witch Project which put found footage on the commercial cinema map and the genre has since been littered with all kinds of tripe. Yet Chronicle, thanks to its optical and creative fertility manages to rub shoulders with the genre’s best offerings like Rec and Monsters.  Trank uses every inch of every frame to fill scenes with exciting tidbits, mixing natural light with colorful characters and barn-burning action to deliver a truly unforgettable experience. Some of the visual effects look like big money Michael Bay sequences, yet have been achieved with an astounding one-tenth of the budget. 

But it’s not just all eye candy razzle-dazzle, because Chronicle does a fantastic job of putting us inside the heads of socially rejected teenagers who acquire powers to destroy lives – it is astonishing to realize that such a painfully clichéd theme can be thrillingly provocative if done right. It is possible that this film could’ve worked without the found footage gimmick and shot naturally, but the apparent realism of the characters and their existential rumination would’ve taken a beating. 

Chronicle cleverly merges handheld action and CGI with quirky storytelling, stylish lensing and assured performances. The result is an extremely inventive film, a special kind of visual ecstasy. I’m tempted to find comparisons to other more electrifying films, but the simple truth is that there’s nothing out there that's anything like this.

(First published in Mid Day)

Movie Review: 'Man on a Ledge'

Five minutes in, Man on a Ledge loses believability and devolves into near-farcical amusingly ludicrous improbability. If that’s the sort of braindead farce you’re likely to enjoy, watch the movie. For the rest, it would be a shame to see rising star Sam Worthington reduced to taking part in such grotesquely formulaic drivel. 

Man on a Ledge is just heavy handed schlock that balances unrealistic action movie howlers with painfully contrived dialogue, its only redeeming factor being the relatively short running time of 100 minutes. The film fails to generate any real excitement, though loads of ‘faux thrilling’ music is provided by Henry Jackman. All the characters here are numbingly unbelievable throughout the hackneyed script, even the scantily clad Genesis Rodriguez fails to distract from the predictable story.

Sam Worthington plays Nick Cassidy, an honest NYC cop who is wrongly accused of stealing real estate tycoon David Englander’s (Ed Harris) diamond and is sent to jail. Angered, Nick stages a prison break, makes his way to the ledge of a hotel’s high rise and threatens to jump to his death unless the cops produce Detective Mercer (Elizabeth Banks). Simultaneously, a few blocks away Nick’s brother Joey (Jamie Bell) and his girlfriend Angie (Rodriguez) attempt a reverse-heist to break into Englander’s vault to prove the diamond wasn’t stolen. Will Nick jump? Is there another twist? It’s all neither fun enough nor intelligent; instead it just slogs on without offering any real thrill.

The film is written by Pablo F. Fenjves, who won director of the year from the Directors Guild in 2008 for his documentary Ghosts of Cite Soleil, but Man on a Ledge seems like it was written by school kids. The trailer frustratingly gives away the biggest twist, and the final surprise, although obvious after the first half doesn’t make its appearance until the end, leaving plenty of time for the film to detour onto annoying avenues. The characters and the Mission Impossible-esque heist action are so flat that you can almost feel an invisible barrier that keeps you from any emotional involvement in them. There are also clumsily improbable twists of fate, some of which include the same cops being dispatched to every police action in the whole of New York. Things even go from implausible to completely absurd - nobody ever notices that Nick is wearing an earpiece to chat with his accomplices the whole time. 

But the most shocking thing to come from this film is the fact that Sam Worthington is a stunningly flavorless leading man. Worthington has done half a dozen films since his breakout role in Avatar, none of which showcased his dramatic skills. In Man on a Ledge he struggles with his accent so much that you can’t tell if he is American or British or Australian. Complimenting Worthington’s bland role are the unintentionally comedic offerings by Edward Burns and Elizabeth Banks as the police negotiators. The talented Ed Harris, Jamie Bell, Anthony Mackie (who plays Nick’s former partner) and Kyra Sedgwick (who plays a reporter) behave as if this movie was just another paycheck.

Man on a Ledge is a snoozy film – it has no great stars to show off, yet has the nerve to not even offer us any decent thrills.

  

(First published in Mid Day)

Review: 'Journey 2: The Mysterious Island'

Why would a studio go to the trouble of conceiving and producing a sequel to a slipshod movie that received mixed reviews? The answer: a gigantic 3D-bumped box office. Journey 2: The Mysterious Island is an uneven, painfully silly, yet amiable mess that has more adventurous intentions than actual assets. The film is supposed to be a fun entertainer but it does not have, despite its pretty look, an interesting story to really take off as a 21st century family flick. 

The first Journey to the Center of the Earth was pretty bad - the big effects were masked by the lousy 3D and there were two paltry action scenes. Journey 2 is marginally better partly because of the accepted system that the second movie in a series is always bigger and more bombastic than the first. In reality Journey 2 is unsure whether it's a campy comedy or a big screen comic – the film dabbles in both and does neither one very well.  With its over the top CGI monsters Journey 2 in fact plays like a dorky Ed Wood homage. The acting is alternately wooden and hammy but the special effects are epic and mildly amusing. Simply put, kids would probably dig this film, as would overgrown infants who consider it a huge thrill to munch popcorn through retro science fiction baloney.  

There isn’t much of a story - Josh Hutcherson returns from the previous film as Sean Anderson, who is now a rebellious spoilt brat who feels imprisoned in his home. He had discovered Jules Verne's mystical world at the center of the earth with his uncle (Brendan Fraser), and all he wants now is to locate his grandfather (Michael Caine) whom he believes is somewhere on an obscure South Pacific island. Sean sets off on the quest along with his stepdad (Dwayne Johnson) and a father-daughter tour guide team (Vanessa Hudgens and Luis Guzman) where he encounters scary volcanoes, CGI tornadoes, gigantic reptiles and the toughest foe of them all – life lessons.

One would expect a clichéd premise like this to turn into a stinkbomb of a movie, but there are several titles worse than this. What Journey 2 lacks (and it lacks a whole lot), it makes up for in cheesy good charm. I can easily imagine Journey 2 being a movie I saw as a goofy 10-year-old and really enjoyed.  There is a lot of dumb humour on display, and the absence of an exciting story and overdependence on slapstick will limit its appeal to giggling easily distracted school kids. The special effects are seamless, but everything else about the filmmaking is sloppy. The 3D is alternately overwhelming and patience-testing, though consistently gimmicky. All the characters, including the bodacious buff Johnson are thoroughly annoying, even the great Michael Caine who is supposed to be delightfully peculiar comes off as an irritating old fart. 

Journey 2: The Mysterious Island is a better quality sequel than dung heaps like Spy Kids 4. The original was one of the worst 3D movies of 2008, and while this sequel won’t win any awards, it’s (mostly) less annoying than its predecessor.

(First published in Mid Day)