The Thing (2011)

The Thing is a horrifying and intelligent creature with purpose.  Sadly, the same cannot be said of its new movie.  Much like the horrifying hybrids its eponymous alien becomes, Matthijs van Heijningen Jr.’s The Thing doesn’t know what it wants to be.  Officially, the film is a prequel to John Carpenter’s 1982 classic horror film of the same name.  However, by copying certain elements of the original’s plot* and pacing, the new film is torn between how much it should emulate and how much it should invent.

Carpenter’s film begins with a dog running towards an American science base in Antarctica.  A Norweigan helicopter is trying to gun the dog down, but it fails to do so, the dog makes it into the camp, and the Norweigans are killed before they have a chance to warn the Americans.  The new film shows us what happened at the Norweigan camp and tries to explain the horrors and gigantic spaceship MacReady (Kurt Russell) found at their base.  The Norweigans, with the help of paleontologist Kate Lloyd (Mary Elizabeth Winstead), unearthed an alien they believed was dead but was actually in stasis and waiting for new hosts.  The alien’s M.O. is to infect its prey, imitate their host perfectly, and wait for the right moment to burst into a phantasmagorical nightmare and devour its next victim.  Once Lloyd discovers this pattern, it creates deep-seated paranoia among the survivors.

Heijningen and screenwriter Eric Heisserer’s greatest accomplishment is how desperately they don’t want to lift anything wholesale from the original.  Lloyd is the one who knows what’s going on, but she’s not MacCready with boobs.  There’s a repeat of the scene where every member of the camp is tested to see if they’re the creature, but Lloyd makes her evaluations based on science rather than intuition.  Winstead does a terrific job with the character and once again shows she has a knack for playing a bad-ass.

However, in trying to create a separate beast, the new Thing loses what makes the premise so intense.  The original movie has some horrific moments, but on repeat viewings, it’s really more of a mystery.  We’re tense not just because the monster could pop out and go “Boo!”, but because we have access to clues that help us decipher where the monster could be next.  Heijningen and Heisserer decide to play up the action sci-fi elements of the story, which drains the film of terror other than its jump scares.

More damning is the heavy reliance on CGI effects.  Perhaps Heijningen thought it wasn’t worth trying to outdo the incredible practical effects from Carpenter’s film (effects which still hold up today) and thought that using CG would help his pre-make stand apart.  But almost all of the transformations in the new movie could have been done and should have been done practically.  What makes the creature horrific is that it organically rips apart a human being.  It’s an organism and that biological aspect is removed when coated in the nice sheen of computer effects.  There’s no grit, no grime, and it’s a further reminder that this is a prequel that would rather not sit in the shadow of the original.

It’s an understandable decision, but Heijningen and Heisserer constantly miss the smart opportunities to call back to the original while still setting their movie apart.  Carpenter’s The Thing fills its cast with one-dimensional characters who probably never liked each other very much to begin with.  However, it allows us to project ourselves onto their situation and experience the terror vicariously.  There’s far more camaraderie at the Norwegian camp, but the new Thing doesn’t grow these relationships and seize the horror and despair of the subtext that nobody truly knows anyone.  This approach would also allow the filmmakers an opportunity to add new facets to the creature such as the limitations of imitating personality and memories.  Instead, we get too many characters, hardly any time to care about any of them, and we’re stuck with a lesser version of Carpenter’s movie.

And if Heijningen couldn’t escape Carpenter, he should have imitated him.  It would be a risky move, but the concept at work is that this is the first half of one long movie (which is why they have the same title).  Heijningen has no problem briefly using Ennio Morricone’s terrific score, but then he gets composer Marco Beltrami to devise something new and heavy-handed.  Additionally, shooting on digital rather than film removes the texture and more importantly, the organic feel, of the movie.  Once again, Heijningen and Heisserer seem more enchanted by the sci-fi angle of the story rather than the horror, and they come up short on both.

This time around the alien goes for a more direct and less interesting approach to its victims, the paranoia and cynical themes are exchanged for jump scares and action scenes, and the third act is devoid of tension as we’re taken to a place we could not care less about.  However, some smart ideas manage to sneak through.  Kate Lloyd is a solid protagonist, there’s room for a new but equally terrifying and cynical subtext, and the opportunity to make the story feel like half of a larger narrative rather than making ties to the original an afterthought (half of the explanations come during the credits).  Unfortunately, at every turn, The Thing makes the wrong decision, fails both as a prequel and as a remake, and the result is a pointless and poor imitation.

Real Steel (2011)

 

The greatest achievement in Shawn Levy’s Real Steel is building the world of robot boxing.  The term “robot boxing” sounds incredibly stupid when you hear it and flashes of Rock ‘Em, Sock ‘Em Robots and the failed TV show Battlebots come to mind.  But Levy does a tremendous job for showing not just the hi-tech wonder of the World Boxing Organization (WBO), but he takes us to the back-alleys, run-down theme parks, and country fairs where a punching robot and its owner can make some cash and win some glory.  Paired with well-choreographed fights that wisely make heavy use of animatronics and practical effects, Real Steel almost has an unbeatable combination.  But the clunky storytelling and awful performance from child actor Dakota Goyo stop the movie from landing a knock-out punch (I promise I’ll try to keep the boxing puns to a minimum).

Former boxer Charlie Keaton (Hugh Jackman) has had to step outside the ring to make his living off the boxing robots that basically took his job.  However, his impatience, ineptitude, and poor business acumen have left him heavily in debt and scrambling to find any robot that can put up a fight.  Lucky for Charlie, his ex-girlfriend dies and he finds a chance to make some quick money by selling custody of his estranged son Max (Goyo) to Max’s aunt (Hope Davis) and her rich husband (James Rebhorn).  Charlie cuts a deal to take Max over the summer while the aunt and uncle go to Italy and when they come back, Charlie gets the rest of his money, Max doesn’t have to put up with his deadbeat father, and everyone is happy.  But then Max and Charlie get behind Atom, a sparring robot they found in a dump and they start working him up through the ranks of the robot boxing world.  Unsurprisingly, father and son finally begin to bond with Max providing the voice of reason against Charlie’s general incompetence.

Real Steel gets serious credit for not pulling any punches (sorry) when it comes to Charlie’s character.  He’s a gigantic ass-hole and Jackman and Levy have no qualms about turning us against him at the beginning of the movie.  We’re pushed right up to the line of caring about whether Charlie gets redeemed or not, but by making us root for Charlie’s symbol, Atom—a broken down robot that no one thinks will make it because he’s built to take punishment but not dish it out—we get on board with the Rocky story.

It’s an easy story to tell, but Real Steel has a hell of a time trying to get the words out.  If the movie isn’t walking through the robot-boxing world or showing a fight scene, then we either have to drag our feet through the predictable relationship arc between Charlie and Max, or we have to waste time with Charlie’s unnecessary and underdeveloped love-interest/exposition-machine Bailey (Evangeline Lilly).  The Charlie-Max relationship would at least be palatable if Goyo weren’t so terrible.  He never misses an opportunity to remind you that he’s a child actor.  I didn’t know anyone was looking for the next Jake Lloyd, but they’ve certainly found him.  Jackman deserves a lot of credit for not trying to smooth over Charlie’s rough edges, but Goyo’s performance is a serious blow to a movie that relies on the father-son relationship as its emotional core.

But the story and characters almost become an afterthought when we step into the ring.  Rather than having the WBO dominate and own every part of the robot boxing world, the movie takes Max and Charlie on the road and we get to see them fight in different arenas.  By expanding the world, we believe more in the concept of “robot boxing” and look forward to seeing how fights are set up, the different bots from varying locales, and how each bot has its own fighting style.  The design of the robots is terrific and I particularly liked the look of Atom who has the slightest hint of a smile on his wide-eyed face.  Levy also made the smart decision to rely on practical effects.  CGI tends to make objects look weightless, and that could have killed Real Steel.  Instead, Levy uses CGI when he needs the robots to be quick and light on their feet, but then relies on practical effects for most of the hits and the close-ups.  The only downside to this thoughtfully crafted world is that when we’re taken out of it, we notice that nothing else in the world has advanced in 15 years except for HP computers. Every company will keep same logo and slogans they have now.  It’s a bit disappointing since the production designers could have had some fun predicting what future logos would look like, but the marketing teams for corporations like Sprint and Microsoft have strict parameters on their product placement, so it’s tough to hold the filmmakers accountable on this small issue.

Story and characters are the most important elements of almost any movie, and they’re serviceable enough to make Real Steel function.  There’s not a disinterest in those crucial elements as much as poor execution through sloppy dialogue and an exceedingly poor casting decision for a major role.  Thankfully, the movie plays to its strengths by bringing the audience into a rich and fascinating world filled with exhilarating fight scenes.  Real Steel is much like Atom: clunky and a little flat-footed but charming enough to stay in the fight.

Batman: The Dark Knight (2008)

As faithful readers of this site will note, we generally like to title our reviews with some witty and catchy phrase rather than the generic “Review: Title” format — this helps us fulfill our need to be hip and different. It also helps set the tone for the review, giving you a small inclination as to what we thought up front. In the case of reviewing The Dark Knight, director Christopher Nolan’s follow-up to 2005’s dark, re-inventive caped crusader tale Batman Begins, I have no such witty title, no such pun to earn your click-through. What I do have is a reverence for the fact that a film, for the first time this year, left me with no knee-jerk reaction, no immediate opinion to be had. In a way, it was a stunning, awe-inspiring experience — and in no way to I feel that I will be overselling it.

I would be overselling it however, if I were to call it a masterpiece, a revolutionary piece of cinema or heaven forbid “the greatest movie of all-time” — such determinations can not be made three weeks before a film is released and should always be decided by history. As well, I believe that statements like that create unreasonable expectations for great films, leaving audiences predisposed to disappointment. What I will say is that The Dark Knight is easily the most well-crafted superhero movie that I have ever seen, one that transcends genre, on a scale that is as epic as they come and with performances that will shake you to your core.

The core of the story is The Joker, played by the late Heath Ledger. He has descended on the streets of Gotham, where Batman (Christian Bale) and newly elected District Attorney Harvey Dent (Aaron Eckhart) have been able to curb corruption and mob rule, hell-bent on creating chaos wherever he goes. He is, for the first time in any cinematic adaptation, a character whose actions follow no logic, no reason other than to create havoc and plunge the city of Gotham into a state of peril.

With respect to Jack Nicholson’s portrayal of The Joker in Tim Burton’s Batman, he appears to be merely a caricature of the Joker compared to Heath Ledger’s embodiment of the raw irreverence of the Clown Prince of Crime. In his first moments on screen, we see Heath Ledger, a talented actor who was lost before his prime, only to see him disappear seconds later into the character of the Joker. From there, he delivers one of the most unnervingly good performances since Anthony Hopkins as Hannibal Lector — he becomes a truly terrifying vision of the Joker, one that challenges Batman’s sense of order and forces him to play by a different set of rules.

And between this epic battle of order and chaos is the character whose story arc is the most complex, Harvey Dent. As Gotham’s White Knight, the beacon of hope for a city on the verge of being ravaged by the mob, Dent’s story becomes the most interesting, as he is the character who experiences the most change in the film. While The Joker’s chaotic nature cuts right through the film, Dent’s story is one of great change, as he is transformed by the circumstances of his storyline, becoming something entirely different as the film moves along.

As you can imagine, it is a story with many layers — Batman’s battle with a foe that poses such a great challenge, Harvey Dent’s struggle to find justice in a world of chaos, the Joker’s rule-less existence and yes, even a love triangle between Rachel Dawes (Maggie Gyllenhaal), Dent and Bruce Wayne — but these layers would have just been lost had they not been illuminated by such an impressive cast. The aforementioned performance of Heath Ledger is scary-good, a transformation into a character unlike any that we have seen in Batman films of the past. Should he be nominated for and/or win an Academy Award posthumously, I for one would not be surprised. And it has nothing to do with his passing, or paying tribute to him — his performance is not only worthy of recognition, but downright brilliant.

The rest of the cast isn’t too shabby either. As we experienced with Batman Begins, Christian Bale is as good a Batman as we have seen. Aaron Eckhart comes in as a great surprise as Harvey Dent, carrying much of the weight of the film on his shoulders — for fans who thought Harvey Dent would be a side character, one that Chris Nolan was saving for the future of the franchise, think again — this is as much Harvey Dent’s film as it is Batman’s or The Joker’s. And Eckhart pulls it off, in a surprising way. As does Maggie Gyllenhaal, who takes over for Katie Holmes as Rachel Dawes. She is obviously respectful of the character that Katie played in Batman Begins but also infuses her own strength into Rachel, who is a lot tougher this time around.

And all of these exceptional performances, as well as those of Michael Caine and Morgan Freeman, are just icing on top of the foundational cake that is the epic scale of this film. With the use of IMAX cameras and location shooting in Chicago, Christopher Nolan has created a Gotham City that feels real, feels huge and at certain points of the film, feels as if it is genuinely in peril. Unlike many superhero flicks of the past, where the last big fight scene is fought between hero and villain on the streets of a major city that is oddly void of occupants, every moment of The Dark Knight makes us feel as if the city of Gotham is alive and that it is being held hostage by a mad man. The scale combined with a pounding score from James Newton Howard and Hans Zimmer delivers an experience that is so engaging, so overwhelming that you will easily forget that it is two and a half hours long.

In fact, that is probably the only thing that people may not like about The Dark Knight — it is a bit long. Then again, having seen it, there is nothing that I would have wanted them to cut out. Every layer, every subplot and every character works perfectly to move the story along. As well, said story is dark — perhaps dark and terrifying enough to warrant special consideration by parents. This is a film that is a PG-13 by technicality only, as it has a lack of cursing, nudity and blood — but don’t let that fool you, it is by no means a film for the little ones. That’s not to say that The Joker will give every kid nightmares, I’m just saying that I had a few — so consider yourself warned.

In summation, The Dark Knight is a rarity in Hollywood — a truly earnest adaptation that in many ways exceeds even the brilliance of the work upon which it is based. It is a film that is on a grand scale with larger-than-life characters, but also that is grounded by a plausible story and a very real environment. For the first time, a superhero movie could have us believing that this could all really happen. And whether or not this film will change the way superhero flicks are made in the future is unclear, but should more directors choose to go the route of Christopher Nolan and make films that are as jarring, as epic and as expertly crafted as films, not just as adaptations of a comic medium, then I certainly wouldn’t complain. For as much as The Dark Knight is not a perfect film, it is certainly pretty damn close.

Inception (2010)

“True inspiration is impossible to fake,” explains a character in Christopher Nolan’s existentialist heist film Inception.  If that’s the case, then Inception is one of the most honest films ever made.  Nolan has crafted a movie that’s beyond brilliant and layered both narratively and thematically.  It requires the audience to take in a collection of rules, exceptions, locations, jobs, and abilities in order to understand the text, let alone the fascinating subtext.  Nolan’s magnum opus is the first major blockbuster in over a decade that’s demanded intense viewer concentration, raised thoughtful and complex ideas, and wrapped everything all in a breathlessly exciting action film.  Inception may be complicated, but simply put it’s one of the best movies of the year.

Inception requires so much exposition that a lesser director would have forced theaters to distribute pamphlets to audience members in order to explain the complicated world he’s developed.  During my first draft of this view, I realized I had spent three paragraphs simply trying to explain the plot.  I will simply avoid this exposition and present the movie’s basic premise.  Inception centers on a team of individuals led by an “extractor” named Cobb (Leonardo DiCaprio) who, through the use of a special device, construct the dreams of a target and use those dreams to implant an idea so that the target will make a decision beneficial to the individual who hired the team.  To say that scratches the surface would be an insult to both scratches and surfaces.  But since it takes Nolan about fifty minutes to set everything up, I hope you’ll forgive my brevity.

Why is it so difficult to explain the plot in depth?  First, I don’t want to spoil you.  Secondly, the film layers dreams on top of dreams to the point where a unique keepsake called a “totem” is required in order to inform a character as to whether or not he or she is still dreaming.  Then you have people in particular roles like “The Architect”, “The Forger”, and “The Chemist” in order to pull off the job.  Furthermore, dreams have rules: dying in a dream forces the dreamer to wake up, delving too deeply into a mind can cause an eternal slumber called “Limbo”, using memories to construct dreams is dangerous because it can blur the line between dreams and reality.  In addition, intruding in the dreams of another will cause the dreamer’s “projections” (human representations created by the dreamer) to attack the intruders like white blood cells going after an infection.  And these explanations only represent a fraction of the terminology, rules, exceptions, or details that are necessary for creating the world of Inception.

But it’s not a confusing movie if you provide it with your full attention.  There are a lot of summer movies that ask you turn off your brain and enjoy the persistent-vegetative-state ride.  Inception is not one of those movies. There’s a lot to take in, but the imaginative and thoughtful delivery of exposition keeps the viewer riveted despite the amount of information required in order to understand the premise, setting, and plot.

It tends to be the case that lots of rules create lots of loopholes.  Filmmakers can use these to cheat and let audiences fill in the leaps of logics. But Inception always plays fair.  It will twist your mind but it’s not a film built on twists.  It’s a film built on possibilities and the boldness of pursuing those possibilities.  On my first viewing, the film experienced a technical malfunction where a misplaced reel skipped the movie forward by twenty minutes and then played the scene upside down and in reverse.  Inception had already sent the audience through such a strange narrative labyrinth that almost everyone in the theater wasn’t sure if something had gone wrong or if Nolan had just made another bold decision.

The film deserves, demands, and rewards repeat viewings, but from your first viewing you can grasp the events on screen and how they interact with each other as long as you force yourself to be an active viewer.  But with set pieces so intricate, so jaw-dropping, and so breathtaking, you’ll find that there’s no exertion needed to stay focused.  You’ll already be swept up in the whirlwind.

Inception features one of the best fight scenes of all-time.  Take a moment to consider that: in the entire history of cinema, of every fight scene that has ever taken place, the one in this movie is among the best.  Watching a fight without gravity is incredible.  It’s not like in The Matrix where a character can defy gravity if they choose.  The fight scene in Inception has no gravity to defy and Arthur (played by Joseph Gordon-Levitt), the team’s point man, has to figure out how to achieve his objective while fending off projections.  I can only hope that someday in the distant future, when people with free time are on a space station in zero-gravity, they will re-enact this scene.  In the meantime, Nolan’s spectacular visual effects will have to suffice.

With the exception of one set piece (which I’ll get to in a moment), the action scenes in Inception are spectacular.  Visually lush and imaginative, Nolan transforms car chases into countdowns, fistfights into puzzles, and shootouts into…well, shootouts.  There’s a mission on a snowy mountainside that doesn’t work as well as the other set pieces because there’s a poor sense of location, a lack of visual diversity, and sloppy editing.  But that doesn’t really halt or hurt the film because Nolan brilliantly placed the car chase, the fistfight, and the shootout on top of each other.  You would think this would cause action fatigue, but by cutting between three set pieces and having what happens in one set piece affect the others, the action climax of Inception isn’t exhausting—it’s exhilarating.

You can be the best action director around but you can only get so far if you lack characters worth caring about.  With Inception, every character not only has a particular skill and task, but has a personality that mirrors their job description.

We learn about the characters of Inception not from long monologues about their past or even (with the exception of Cobb) delving into their dreams and memories.  We learn about them by how they interact with each other.  The small moments between Arthur and Eames, “The Forger” (Tom Hardy) indicate years of working on j tolerating each other on jobs but with no animosity between the two.  Neophyte “Architect” Ariadne (Ellen Page) is a total jerk towards Cobb, but she’s the only one who’s willing to cut through his bullshit.  Cobb’s relationship with his wife Mal (Marion Cotillard) is the heart of Inception.  The interactions among the supporting characters are standard for a well-made action movie, but the relationship between Cobb and Mal is yet another reason why Inception stands apart.

DiCaprio will take some flack for playing a similar character to his one in Shutter Island from earlier this year.  Both Cobb and Teddy Daniels have become separated from their families, suffer from unbearable guilt, and have a tough time handling the nature of reality.  Here’s another similarity: DiCaprio is great in both movies.  I wouldn’t worry about him getting typecast as tragic-figure-with-tenuous-grasp-on-reality-as-a-result-of-intense-guilt-and-regret.

Two of the film’s stars will (hopefully) find their careers at the next level after this movie opens.  Their names are “Joseph Gordon-Levitt” and “Tom Hardy”.  Gordon-Levitt has excelled at playing lost boys, tortures souls, and recently a charming male lead in (500) Days of Summer.  You can now add “bad-ass blockbuster action star” to that list.  Gordon-Levitt’s versatility is why I will be excited for any movie that lists him as one of its stars.

Hardy’s critically acclaimed performance in Nicolas Winding Refn’s Bronson brought him to Hollywood’s attention.  His performance in Inception will bring him the attention of countries.  He brings a light-hearted touch to the film and while the script forces other characters to remain serious, Eames takes a more laid back approach to the mind-heist game.  But he’s not comic relief and he’s not around to comment on absurd circumstances.  Like everyone in the cast, he’s there to help the team achieve their goal (although the script functions in such a way that you could see each character as a representation of a specific idea).

The only actor who’s a little shaky is Ken Watanabe who plays Saito, the team’s employer.  His performance is great.  He pulls off the impressive feat of being threatening without being menacing.  The only problem is that Watanabe’s Japanese accent is so thick that it’s sometimes difficult to make out what he’s saying.  In a movie where the dialogue is as delicately crafted as the rest of the film, it’s unfortunate to lose a few lines due to something as simple as pronunciation.  And it’s only noticeable because everything in Inception is so finely crafted.

The physical scope of this movie is astounding.  Worlds fall on top of each other, a freight train can burst onto a city street, hotels can lose all gravity, and everything that we know is impossible appears completely natural.  It’s not enough to say that the cinematography is gorgeous, or that the sound design is sensational, or that this is one of composer Hans Zimmer’s all-time best scores.  There aren’t “supporting” elements in Inception.  Just as the film layers its narrative structure and thematic subtext, so it does with its technical elements.  You will notice the cinematography and the art direction and the sounds and the score.  It’s like hearing beautiful solos mixed together in a glorious anthem.

As you’ve probably guessed, when I said at the beginning of this review that Inception was the first movie in over a decade to mix breathtaking action with thoughtful subtext, I was referring to 1999′s The Matrix.  The comparisons are inevitable.  Both movies deal with the nature of reality combined with pulse-pounding set pieces that will be included in any action-scene highlight reel.  But The Matrix is a freshman level course compared to the doctorate held by Inception, and it has nothing to do with how far special effects have come in ten years.  It’s about taking multiple genres, settings, ideas, emotions, and questions and weaving them into a rich tapestry that will have folks talking long after the credits roll.  But then you throw in those advanced special effects and you have a summer blockbuster that will blow your mind.

Super 8

J.J. Abrams Super 8 is an echo.  It echoes the innocence of Steven Spielberg’s Amblin films of the 1980s, it echoes the imagined purity of small town America, and it echoes the innocence and coming of age through the lens of aspiring filmmakers.  But Super 8 never makes its own noise. While the film manages to capture the fun, adventure, thrills, laughs, and characters of Spielberg’s movies, Super 8 never conjures its own magic.

The film takes place in 1979 in the fictional town of Lillian, Ohio.  Joe Lamb (Joel Courtney) recently lost his mother in an industrial accident and struggles to connect with his distant father Jackson (Kyle Chandler), a sheriff’s deputy who is a good guy but doesn’t know how to relate to his son.  With school out for the summer, Joe and his friends Charles (Riley Griffiths), Martin (Gabriel Basso), Cary (Ryan Lee), and Preston (Zach Mills) work on a zombie movie to enter into a local film fest.  Charles asks Alice (Elle Fanning) to act in their movie and Joe clearly has a crush on her, which is problematic since she’s the daughter of Louis Dainard (Ron Eldard), the guy Jackson holds responsible for his wife’s death.

But these personal troubles fade into the background when the group, while shooting a movie near the train tracks, witnesses a massive derailment.  Certain charges can be leveled against J.J. Abrams but the man is a master of action.  The derailment is the film’s big set piece and it’s absolutely spectacular.  It’s loud, hectic, but well-shot and well-edited so you can always follow what’s happening and where characters are in relation to each other.

The kids are told to keep quiet about what they’ve seen by the man who caused the wreck, their science teacher with a secret past, Old Man Woodward (not the movie’s strongest plot point). But Charles’ Super 8 camera was running the whole time and its footage holds the secret to a mysterious creature that is abducting people and their electrical appliances.  A suspicious military force led by Commander Nelec (Noah Emmerich) arrives, tries to cover up the incident, and recover what has escaped from a sealed train car.

There are aspects of the film that don’t seem to grab Abrams’ interest (even though he wrote the script).  There’s a passion for the action scenes, but he doesn’t seem to enjoy grinding out the plot or adding shading to his adult characters.  Where Abrams puts the heart of the film is with his young cast.  Together, the kids are wonderful.  They come off like friends, they act as you would expect 14-year-old guys to act, and they all have distinct characters although only Joe has a transformative arc, and Courtney does a terrific job in the lead role.  He absolutely sells the Joe’s fears, his anger, his shyness, and his eventual courage.  The only time when the character falls short is when the writing starts to let him down.  While I have no problem with Joe being a hero and a leader, he seems to always solve every mystery and devise every plan.  For a movie that wants to call back the group of friends from The Goonies, Abrams would have done well to remember that every character in that movie gets a chance to shine.

The other performer who does outstanding work in Super 8 is Fanning.  In some ways, she has to play a wider set of emotions than Joe and she does a great job of balancing a character who is developmentally ahead of the boys, but is still willing to have fun on their level.  Fanning and Courtney have great chemistry and more than Joe’s struggle to come to grips with his mother’s death or connecting with his father, his young romance with Alice is the best emotional relationship in the film.

I wish that the other young actors were up to Courtney and Fanning’s level.  Granted, the movie doesn’t make a lot of demands from Lee (Cary is fire-obsessed comic-relief, the end) and Basso (Martin is nerdy, the end), but it desperately needed Griffiths to step up.  He can play a young teenager naturally enough, but when the script calls on him for comic timing or deeper emotions, his performance becomes uneven.  Sometimes he’ll hit his mark and other times his readings come out stilted.  Furthermore, when the scene is just Charles and Joe, there’s not much chemistry between the two and you struggle to believe that they’ve been friends since kindergarten.

The decisions behind the film are just as uneven.  As I said before, Abrams proves yet again that he can create well-crafted and intense set pieces and the way he uses sound both in action scenes and to build suspense is masterful.  There’s a scene that uses the clicking of a gas station meter in such an ingenious manner that I couldn’t help but grin.   And, as always, Michael Giacchino provides an outstanding score.  His work on Super 8 recalls John Williams but manages to be enough of its own beast that it doesn’t sit in the shadows of Williams’ classic work for Spielberg’s films.

Unfortunately, Abrams has difficulty following Giacchino’s lead.  The lens flare that was slightly annoying in Star Trek becomes a serious hindrance in Super 8 because it just cuts the frame in awkward places and serves as a distraction from a story that wants to be grounded in small town Americana and genuine emotions.  As for the fantastical elements, there are times when practical effects would have better served the film (especially in close-ups of the creature when it’s not scuttling around), but that’s a minor complaint.

Super 8 is a loving homage to the early directing and producing work of Steven Spielberg.  Abrams struggles to evoke a feeling rather than making direct references to E.T., The Goonies, etc.  It’s an honorable goal and I respect Abrams for attempting to make a film that stands alongside those beloved movies.  When it comes to creating a spectacular action film that’s filled with humor and honest performances he comes close to achieving his goal, but numerous missteps turn inspiration into imitation.  It’s a sincere form of flattery, but no one would confuse it for the real thing.

I Am Number 4

If you wanted to make Twilight but without the personality, you would have a film akin to the cynical cash-grab that is I Am Number Four.  Sure, Twilight‘s personality is creepy and misogynistic, but it’s genuinely offering something to a particular audience even though I find that “thing” (idolization of possessive stalkers) repulsive.  I Am Number Four, on the other hand, is a vapid shell of a presumptuous franchise.  The film never bothers to establish compelling characters or compelling situations.  Every time I Am Number Four could do something interesting or inventive, it scurries away to the most predictable, bland solution it can find.  There’s nothing redeeming about I Am Number Four, from the script, to the action, to the visuals, to the performances, to presumably the craft services.  It rarely even shows the courtesy to be laughably bad.  It simply carries on and on and on and assumes the audience is enraptured in the adventures of dull, attractive teenagers.

“John Smith” (Pettyfer) is a refugee alien whose planet was destroyed by a race of evil aliens known as the Mogadorians.  Accompanied by his stern, paternal guardian Henri (Timothy Olyphant), John is “Number Four” of nine aliens who escaped his homeworld but is now being tracked on Earth by the Mogadorians.  This information isn’t shown to us or relayed in an inventive fashion, but rather through John’s bored-sounding monologue as he rides in a car with Henri on their way to a new fake life.  This detached, unimaginative description sets the tone for the tiresome movie the audience will be enduring for the next 110 minutes.

 I Am Number Four is devoid of almost any humor, but it does get in an unintentionally hilarious moment when John, feeling cooped up and wanting to go to school, is told by Henri to “keep a low profile.”  So what does John do when he gets on campus?  He throws up his hoodie.  It’s a smart move because now no one will notice the GQ model wandering the halls of the local small town high school.

Unfortunately for John, the hoodie can’t stop the emergence of his powers, namely that he has flashlights for hands.  Henri explains that the nine who escaped the planet have superpowers and that John will learn to manage not only his flashlight hands, but also his newfound super-speed, strength, and agility.  John’s reaction to all of this should be, “Wait—I’m not only ridiculously handsome, but I also have superpowers?  It’s like I’m Justin Timberlake!”  Instead, he continues to mope and grimace while striking up a friendship with the school’s resident bullied kid (Callan McAuliffe) and gorgeous artsy chick (Dianna Agron).

As John deals with the burden of being hot, having superpowers, and receiving the attentions of a drop-dead beautiful bombshell, he’s also being hunted by the “Mogs” (which just made me think of the adorable creatures from the Final Fantasy series, but my nerdiness is no fault of the film’s) as well as a fellow refugee (Teresa Palmer).  Rather than develop the Mogs into an interesting species, they’re simply The Bad Guys.  They have pointy teeth, gills in their face, big black eyes, and enjoy killing.  Their hobbies include mocking humans and scaring fat children.  Their leader (Kevin Durand) doesn’t even get a name.  He’s simply credited as “Mogadorian Commander”.  As for Palmer’s character, she only exists to participate in the giant set piece at the end of the movie.  She is “Number Six” but “Generic Bad-Ass Chick #6784″ would fit just as well.

The movie is loaded with problems.  The effects look cheap, the pacing is a chore, and the direction is uninspired.  But the biggest problem is that I Am Number Four has no characters.  It’s difficult to fault the actors when they have absolutely nothing to work with.  Characters need to have flaws to make them more relatable.  There needs to be some kind of shading to let us know that while John may be from the planet of the Super-powered Handsomes, he’s not perfect.  Instead, the script chooses to waste time explaining how a girl as beautiful as Agron wouldn’t be insanely popular and getting hit on all the time (the answer: she used to be a cheerleader, but got into photography and her ex-boyfriend spread nasty rumors about her.  Also, she wears ugly hats.)

Rather than give us interesting characters in a worthwhile story, I Am Number Four is too busy imagining the glorious franchise its about to open up.  Like the abysmal Vampire’s Apprentice, it’s so busy setting up future stories, it forgets to tell a good one in the movie we’re currently watching.  It’s clear that someone looked at Twilight, assumed that Hot Teenagers + Supernatural = Profit, and that’s how you get I Am Number Four.  If we’re lucky and America doesn’t let me down, there won’t be an I Am Number Four Saga.

Contagion (2011)

"This flu-thing is kinda spooky."

Ok...let's make things clear here. Contagion isn't technically a horror film. It is a Sci-Fi/Thriller with elements of Action and Drama. So, the Sci-Fi/Thriller category makes it eligible for Film Deviant territory. And technically...I'm scared to death of these kinds of premises...so, for me...it's a horror film. Ghosts, demons, zombies, etc...I can usually deal with those supernatural things. Even serial killers and slashers have kinda lost their scaryness to me these days. But, anything having to do with the threat of a virus wiping out the human race usually scares the hell out of me. Especially given the fact that I had that H1N1 virus a couple of years ago. That freaked me out big time. So...Contagion is a horror film of sorts.

It made me squirm and twitch the whole time. I even washed my fuckin' hands 3 times after the film. Not since I was 11 has a film scared me to the point of being physically paranoid. Contagion does a fine job of making you feel like you gotta run out of the theater and buy a case of Purell. And it does have its moments of body gore that do a good job of filling you with unease.

Let's talk about Steven Soderbergh for a moment. The man can pretty much direct anything he wants. I love the way Soderbergh tells a story. He's got a way of setting up tension and suspense that makes his films so unique and enthralling. And the way he employs every character in his films. He's got a keen sense for establishing every character and giving them the heart and soul required for the story he's telling. Every character has his or her own plight. Shit...even John Hawkes (a brilliant character actor), who only has a couple scenes in the entire film, is given his own world to live in. Soderbergh is a true actor's director and even the most technical director can stand to learn a few things from his ability to pull great performances from his actors. He's almost like Tarantino in that way...except Tarantino usually relies on his writing to pull his actors' performances out.

Speaking of actors...Contagion is chock full of 'em. I was almost half expecting to see George Clooney turn up as a doctor. Jude Law and Matt Damon are stand-outs in the film. I especially felt bad for Damon's character who pretty much goes through the entire film as the man with the most burden to bear. Law is great as the conspiracy-seeking blogger who walks that thin line of shining light on the truth and cashing in on that same truth. Gwyneth Paltrow is regulated to being sick. Lawrence Fishburne needs to cut back on the Ho Ho's. Kate Winslet is great.

This film has its many layers and while the main threat is that of an airborne virus killing a large chunk of the world's populace...it is ultimately mankind who becomes the main threat. I mean...seriously, people??! Is this how the world would become in the event of an out of control killer virus?? Selfish, angry mobs of assholes fucking each other over for limited supplies of rations?? I'd like to hope that we are a much more evolved species. However, common sense tells me that mankind is the real virus that the world needs a cure for. Perhaps that's just me mixing my own psycho-babble into a review of a film about a mutating virus threatening the world's population. In any case, there's quite a bit of material to debate over when the film's credits role and most films don't allow that these days. Especially in a world of brooding CGI superheroes over-crowding the cineplex.
 

I guess the only real flaw that Contagion possesses is that it has nothing new to bring to the cinematic table. I mean, Romero explored these same social elements in his earlier films. And this is almost a kind of quasi-remake of Wolfgang Peterson's Outbreak  if you really think about it. All the government cover-ups, A-list actors, CDC vs. Virus and social commentary stuff are all present as was in that 1995 film. So, there's nothing really new to see here.


Contagion is a good film. It's not really ground-breaking or original...but, it is a good example of what a great director with indie roots can do with a dark, real-world premise such as this. I'm on my second bottle of Purell since posting this review.
 

Jane Eyre (2011)

When I was at school, I had a lot of trouble with the classics. Not all of them though, Bram Stoker, Lovecraft and Mary Shelly weren’t a problem, but Daniel Defoe, Jane Austin and Charlotte Bronte I struggled with.

Why? I’m not quite sure, especially after seeing Cary Fukunaga’s adaptation. It’s given me an entirely different perspective on this 19th century novel, visualising it in such gothic splendour that there wasn’t a moment during the film’s 120 minutes that my heart simply didn’t skip a beat.

Jane Eyre

Mia Wasikowska plays the title role of Jane who flees Thornfield Hall, where she works as a governess for Edward Fairfax Rochester’s (Michael Fassbender) young daughter, Adèle Varens. Despite her reclusiveness and Rochester’s impulsive nature, the two fall in love, but unknown to her is the dark secret he has kept hidden. It’s inevitable revelation waiting to destroy them both.

Jane finds shelter in the home of a kind clergyman, St. John Rivers (Jamie Bell), and his family. There she takes on a new job while she recuperates, but knows only too well that one day she will have to face it all, including her beloved Rochester.

Told in flashbacks, Fukunaga pieces together a story I couldn’t tear my eyes away from, not even for a second. Although he moved the time period up by a few years to improve on the costumes, Jane Eyre emerges as the film I always wanted to see in my mind when reading the book.

It’s just so hard to contain the emotions as we see Jane making her way back to Thornfield Hall, only to discover the horror of what happened during her time away. It’s a breathtaking film, based on a story I am only now starting to understand and appreciate.

The performances are stunning; Wasikowska is everything you could ask for here and Fassbender is magnificent as the frighteningly charming Rochester. I was captivated by the cinematography and score as well. Never have the grey skies and wet fields looked as achingly beautiful as they have in Jane Eyre and as Dario Marianelli’s score worked its magic it was Jack Liebeck’s masterful violin playing that moved me quietly and peacefully to tears.

Needless to say, Jane Eyre has renewed my interest in classic literature and in no time at all I was thumbing through the fiction section at my local library under “B” to relieve those moments I had only just experienced on the screen.

The Holding (2011)

We all make decisions every day; they help us shape our lives to work towards our expectations. Sometimes we have to make drastic ones which can change the lives of our loved ones and the course of our futures forever. For every action is a consequence that we must live with.

It’s the age-old question of ‘How far would you go to protect your family?’

The Holding

No, this isn’t the latest film in the Saw franchise, but Susan Jacobson’s directional debut, The Holding. Cassie Naylor (Kierston Wareing) made the decision to kill and bury her husband, Dean (Christopher Brand), with the help of her aging farmhand, Cooper (David Bradley). This wasn’t an unprovoked cold-blooded murder. Dean had been sexually abusing his 16-year-old daughter Hannah (Skye Lourie) before his unplanned departure from the family home; Cassie had to do something to protect her loved ones.

Eight months later, she’s struggling to keep her dysfunctional family together and their small debt-ridden cattle farm afloat. “Everyone has secrets. It’s how the world works,” suggests youngest child Amy (Maisie Lloyd). Cassie tries to hide her secret from her daughters although she is still suffering with guilt. Unbeknown to her, Amy has a secret of her own. She witnessed the murder from her bedroom window.

Nearby neighbour Karsten (Terry Stone) and his son Noah (Jake Curran) offer to buy the farm but then a stranger named Aden (Vincent Regan) appears, claiming to be an old acquaintance of Dean. Amy believes he is an angel sent down from heaven to protect or avenge them. Little do they know that he is harbouring a few secrets of his own.

With a script written by James Dormer, The Holding could have taken the predictable Hollywood route and created a British retelling of The Hand That Rocks the Cradle (1992), Cape Fear (1991) or Single White Female (1992). It does have an essence of Fatal Attraction (1987) in the third act, replacing a bunny hot pot for the slaughter of a bull, but this has more reference to the story than a jilted lover extracting revenge. 

There’s a very strong sense of femininity in this film. The Naylor women aren’t the usual characters we see portrayed in thrillers. They are strong and level-headed – they don’t just get the power to overcome the enemy at the end of the film. This brings me to wonder why Cassie would allow a random stranger into her home when she has coped on her own for the past eight months. Was it her way of dealing with the guilt?

Regan’s role reminded me of Terry O’Quinn’s role in The Stepfather (1987) with a hint of Glenn Close mixed in. It’s interesting to see how Hannah and Aden develop as he tries to become a father figure, mimicking a scene from Stepfather when he objects to her having a boyfriend and taking drastic action.

The Holding has a very strong theme of domestic abuse, although it doesn’t particularly manipulate this theme for the shock factor. We are given unpleasant descriptions, but the way which this is covered raises the issues about the effects abuse has on people and how they are scarred for life.

Jacobson’s setting of a remote farm in the Peak District is perfect, creating the feeling of isolation and being so far from civilisation. This desolate setting does exactly the same as the Outback does for Australia in films such as Wolf Creek (2005). The harsh sounding wind adds to the tension.

The Holding is a moralistic thriller, which doesn’t seem to have succumbed to the Hollywood method of filmmaking. It has a hint of Fatal Attraction and The Stepfather but keeps its British roots firmly in the ground. The themes of domestic abuse are executed effectively leaving the unpleasant aspects of the world deeply stored in your head. Jacobson is a director to look out for.

A Horrible Way to Die (2011)

“A Horrible Way To Die” tells two parallel stories. One of them is rooted in the fear of the mundane, following Sarah (Amy Seimetz), a recovering alcoholic trying to put her life back together. Her alcoholic past can directly be attributed to an abusive relationship, one that had borderline stripped her of her identity. She may have a job, a car, and a house, but Sarah is a ghost, invisible to those around her, floating through life without vice, but also without virtue. And why would there be either? Director Adam Wingard takes a vampiric attention to detail, featuring a world of almost constant nighttime or downshifted cloudiness. The walls of her home are drenched in shadow, her AA meetings are in barren basements. The outdoor world seems to exist only to provide empty parking lots. You’d be forgiven for expecting a twist that reveals she’s been dead this whole time.

The other strand of this narrative concerns Garrick (A.J. Bowen), who we slowly realize is the abusive ex in question. It does seem like Sarah has made the right decision, as we meet Garrick during a particularly violent prison escape. Garrick seems to be struggling similarly to Sarah, in that he no longer understands his purpose. He doesn’t kill out of joy, but rather out of systematic compulsion. Not killing people seems like a completely irrational idea, and so he kills, his unremarkable features, (a patchy black beard and wandering eyes) in a doughy perma-scowl.

Garrick isn’t just any serial killer, of course. As the news informs us, he’s generated a large following on social networking sites. The significance of this is lost on him, as his behavior has ceased to be an emotional response and is simply an instinctual one. When he kidnaps a hostage, his gentle, even uncertain words suggest she won’t be in danger, but they offer a stark contrast to what we later see is her horribly mutilated body. So graphic are these murder scenes that it feels as if Garrick isn’t acting out physically, but spiritually. It’s positively Cronenbergian—the physical manifestation of this anger and frustration is more frightening than any on-screen effect or prosthetic.

These two plot strands are destined to clash, but the film keeps you guessing as to how this might occur. Sarah finds a kindred spirit in Kevin (Joe Swanberg), a cherubic fellow AA member who provides, at least, a sexual partner, and at most, someone to help her cope with the loneliness that is recovery. “A Horrible Way To Die,” as lurid as its title may be, is remarkably compassionate towards those who walk the line of sobriety completely alone.

Garrick, meanwhile, follows a carrot on a stick. He’s coming for Sarah, though for what we are uncertain. For her, the recovery seems genuine. For him, the escape is a relapse, the detox of prison purifying his desires. The old adage is true for Garrick: hell is other people, and he’s drawn to the flame. While he leaves behind a trail of blood, flashbacks suggest there was some tenderness between the two, and the hope that he’s coming to make amends flickers like a candle inside a dark attic.

“A Horrible Way To Die” is a familiar type of independent picture, one that works almost entirely on atmosphere, in lieu of details. Character motivations are purposely sketchy and minimal to better allow the audience entrance into a fractured headspace. As per genre demands, however, this leads to an ending that’s less mood piece and more plot dump, as the answers spill out like a lazily-written “Lost” Wikipedia entry. It’s a misstep in that it feels the need to clarify exactly what type of film this is, and carries none of the confidence of the earlier moments. What’s more, it’s clearly a horror movie ending, but it’s nowhere near as scary as the ennui of these two characters during the film’s first and second acts, their desire to belong to something, to be deemed people of value. “A Horrible Way To Die” at least lives up to its title in those final moments, but otherwise, it’s a horrible way to end a movie.

Shame (2011)

It seems almost paradoxical that there appear to be so few films that successfully probe into the life of the contemporary male. That is to say: the great majority of filmmakers are male; male actors topline most movies; most successful screenwriters are male. Yet there is a distinct shortfall in the number of movies that directly tackle the question of manhood in the new century. Steve McQueen’s stunning follow-up to Hunger, which reunites him with that film’s star, Michael Fassbender, exploits what seems at first to be a straightforward – if unconventional – story of addiction in the ultimate service of exploring just what it is to be a man.

Brandon (Fassbender) is, by all possible metrics afforded by men’s magazines and popular culture, an exemplary creature. He’s tall, striking, handsomely framed, wealthy (and steadily employed), lives in New York, and beds beautiful women on a more-than-regular basis. In fact, and in marked contrast to his bumbling boss (James Badge Dale, late of Rubicon), he seems to have a preternatural gift for seducing women. As Shame opens, though, the voice we hear on his answering machine doesn’t belong to some booty call, but rather to his endlessly troubled younger sister Sissy (Carey Mulligan), a struggling cabaret singer with a tremulous voice and old scars marking time along her arm. As she tries to insinuate herself into his life, Brandon struggles to balance his overdriven sex life and his sense of responsibility – however slight – as an older sibling.

If Brandon has any true corollary in the popular depiction of men, it’s Mad Men‘s Don Draper, but even Draper is meant to be seen as a relic from some bygone era. Brandon is unquestionably a sex addict, in that he doesn’t seem to differentiate at all between legitimate dates, encounters with prostitutes, online encounters, and masturbating in the shower – all are merely a means to an end. Brandon therefore can’t help but play into the notion of women as objects, even if his state of mind isn’t that outwardly contemptible. And so it follows that the film’s tenderest scene of would-be lovemaking, between Brandon and a comely co-worker (Nicole Beharie) is also its only aborted one

McQueen’s long-take-driven style, so memorably showcased in Hunger, is here translated in a very modern setting, and Shame even features a variation on Hunger‘s extended conversation piece, here reprised in the form of a perpetually interrupted date. (Another memorable take tracks Brandon on a late-night jog through the city to escape the unseemly goings-on in his apartment.) McQueen and Fassbender’s continued, intense collaboration helps to keep Brandon human even in the face of some truly monstrous behavior, particularly late in the film, wherein Brandon’s pent-up frustrations culminate in a marathon of depravity. As Brandon struggles with his urges – how many times has he shamefully discarded his porn collection, we’re left to wonder? – so we are left to struggle with where his lack of advancement leaves the object he symbolizes, the modern man, for whom unfettered access to outlets for base pleasure has only left him utterly inaccessible, even to himself.

Warrior (2011)

Is there anything sadder than a movie that never achieves its potential? Like a university star athlete who fizzles in the majors, Warrior is a film with a great foundation that wastes a great beginning and a talented cast with an impossible third act.

The cast is amazing. Nick Nolte steals the show as Paddy Conlon, a 1000-day sober, alcoholic wrestling coach who has alienated both of the sons he trained to be fighters. Tom Hardy brings a brooding marble-mouthed intensity to the younger son, Tommy, a former Marine who is fighting for money to send to the widow of his best friend – killed in Iraq by friendly fire. Hardy plays Tommy as an inarticulate man of deep feeling, who channels the emotions that he cannot express into his fists. While he hates his father for beating his mother, he respects Paddy as a man who can train him to greatness. To honor his dead mother (and conceal his relationship first to Paddy and later to Brendan) Tommy fights under the name Tommy Riordan. Joel Edgerton’s Brendan is the calm, articulate mirror to Tommy. A physics teacher with a wife and two daughters he adores, he is also a desperate man on the verge of losing his house. Once an unremarkable UFC fighter, he now makes extra money fighting on weekends in unlicensed “smokers”, shooting on the tough guy dreamers whose only Mixed Martial Arts experience is buying Pay-Per-Views. When he collects a shiner winning $500 from a winner-take-all MMA tournament held in the parking lot of a strip bar, Brendan is suspended without pay from his teaching job.

It is a measure of Brendan’s lack of trust in his own father that, when he decides during his forced sabbatical to get serious about MMA again, he never even considers asking Paddy for help. (There is also some simmering resentment from Paddy having spent more time training the more naturally talented Tommy when they were young.) Instead, Brendan seeks help from his old trainer Frank Campana (Frank Grillo).

Campana is a bit of an odd duck. He preaches sportsmanship and respect. He uses classical music (mostly Beethoven) to help his fighters learn timing, precision and serenity. He trains his fighters to stay calm and wait for their opportunity. In a key character moment, when Brendan comes to him and asks for help, Campana immediately reaches for his wallet, but when Brendan refuses his money and asks for training help instead, Campana’s eyes initially narrow: he can afford to lend money, but has no time to spare for an old stubborn Irish fighter who has wasted his time before.

Brendan and Tommy are both men who value family above everything, after watching their family disintegrate when they were boys. The rage that fuels both men is their inability to provide for their families, for Tommy to support his friend’s widow and for Brendan to save his family’s house. The difference is that Brendan considers both Tommy and Paddy family (even if he does not trust his father around his daughters), but Tommy’s only family is the adopted family of his dead Marine buddy. Tommy irrationally believes that when his mother left home -  taking Tommy with her – Brendan should have come along, leaving behind the girlfriend that eventually became Brendan’s wife.

This is all fantastic set-up. Great, real characters with human stakes and real-life problems. The film even manages to create fighting styles that reflect the personalities of the main characters. Despite being an unbeaten wrestling champion as a teenager, Tommy’s anger has turned him into a ferociously strong striker. Brendan’s need to finish amateur fighters quickly, without taking much punishment in return, has turned him into a shooter in every sense of the world, able to turn any position into a submission attempt. Both fighters’ styles are also deceptive, revealing hidden depths. Tommy’s striking conceals his grappling past, while Brendan’s submission style conceals his ability to take a punch and keep moving forward.

The difficulty comes with the plot engine that will lure the brothers into conflict by giving them a solution to their money woes: a 16 man middle-weight MMA tournament called Sparta, held in Atlantic City, with a winner-take-all purse of 5 million dollars.

The first problem is that Gavin O’Connor directs the tournament fights with the same herky-jerky, extreme close-up style that he uses to film the claustrophobic dynamics of the Conlon family. The film generally feels like it was the result of a Nick Nolte bet that he could emote more with just his nostrils than most actors could with their whole body. (A bet Nolte would win by the way.) This is fine when the film is studying the facial crags of Hardy, Nolte and Edgerton out of the ring, but in the tournament O’Connor’s allergy to medium shots makes it impossible to figure out how the fighters are winning or losing.

This is a problem.

Especially because we really want to see the fights, particularly the ones involving the “unbeatable” Russian Sambo champion, Koba, played with frightening intensity by Kurt Angle. Even if Koba executes more power-bombs and suplexes in one tournament than the entire sport sees in a year.

The Sparta tournament itself, while inspired by the beginnings of UFC and a mild exaggeration of tournaments that take place in Japan now, could never happen in the United States and especially never happen in New Jersey, whose athletic commission helped write the “Unified Rules” that currently govern MMA in the United States.

When the UFC started in the United States, its’ first events were unsanctioned 8 men tournaments. pitting fighters from a variety of different martial arts disciplines against one another. What should make MMA perfect for film material is that the sport began as an attempt to answer the questions that had launched hundreds if not thousands of Kung Fu flicks: Whose style is strongest? (As it turned out the surprising answer was Brazilian jiu-jistu.)

Eight men tournaments work really well as a one night event and as a Pay-Per-View. You need seven matches for the tournament with an extra non-tournament match between the semi-finals and the main event final to give the successful fighters a rest between fights. The problem is that it requires the best two fighters to fight three times in one night. Part of the price of MMA becoming a sanctioned sport was giving up one day tournaments.

If one-day, 8 man tournaments are no longer possible, Warrior‘s two-day, 16 man tournament is even less likely to be sanctioned, especially in New Jersey. The State Athletic Commission would also be unlikely to approve a winner-take-all purse. The increase from 8 fighters to 16 feels like padding in the film as well. Its main purpose seems to be to allow room for out-of-ring plot between the first day of the tournament and the second.

(Just as a scheduling problem, 16 man tournaments are impossible. The film suggests that the first night has 12 matches which would mean at least a 4 hour event, while the second night has only 3 matches – barely more than an hour.)

Complaints about the impossibility of the Sparta tournament may seem like nit-picking, but they are evidence that the filmmakers don’t understand or care to understand the current reality of MMA and fighting sports. This is a problem because sports films exist on a plane of heightened implausibility built on reality. When you ignore reality, you make dramatic implausibility completely impossible.

Beyond this point, in order to properly explain where the film goes wrong, we will need to discuss key elements in the film’s plot. In other words, beware, HC SVNT SPOILERS, Here There be Spoilers.

*****

Between the first and second day of the Sparta tournament, the film makes two huge blunders. First, it has Paddy Conlon fall off the wagon in such a way that Nick Nolte is essentially eliminated from the film, sidelining the film’s strongest actor and character from the climax.

Second, it reveals that Tommy is a deserter from the Marine Corps, having left the Marines after his entire unit was killed by friendly fire. This works dramatically, but in the context of the film, it is completely impossible that the secret could be concealed as long as it is.

It would be hard enough to conceal that Tommy Riordan is Paddy Conlon’s son and Brendan Conlon’s brother. Forget CNN. Odds are that an MMA blogger would do some quick research, figure out that Paddy Conlon had two sons who were both high school wrestlers, one (Brendan) who became a UFC fighter and one (Tommy) who disappeared. A little extra research would reveal that the maiden name of Brendan and Tommy’s mother was Riordan. Tommy Riordan’ true identity would be on the Internet within hours of his name appearing on the card.

More importantly, in order to have a fighter’s license in any US State with an Athletic Commission, especially in New Jersey, fighter’s have to allow themselves to be finger-printed. The reason for this is to protect against fighters who try to fight under multiple aliases.  Tommy Riordan/Conlon would be arrested by the Marines before the tournament even started.

As a friend of mine, Brian Dermody, remarked, “a tournament like [Sparta] you’d have to have in some wild west crazyperson cartoon world. Or Arkansas.”

The film goes completely off the rails in the final match that pits Tommy against Brendan with Military Police poised to arrest Tommy as soon as the fight ends. First, the film changes the format of the fight from 3 rounds to 5. This is normal for MMA main events, but by not explaining the change, the film creates false drama in the third round of the fight, particularly since all of Brendan’s previous matches have left him needing a knockout or submission in the 3rd round to win the fight. (There were audibly puzzled audience members during my screening of Warrior when the fight continued into a 4th and 5th round.)

Worse, Brendan actually does win the fight in the 3rd round, popping Tommy’s shoulder out of its socket. When Brendan tells his trainer Campana this, Frank snarls back, “Pop his other shoulder!” This is not just wrong, it is a complete betrayal of Frank Campana’s character. A trainer who preaches sportsmanship and respect for one’s opponent, one who has built his career and his fighter’s careers on finding a calm centre, would never snarl like that. More importantly, he doesn’t need to. If Tommy’s shoulder is dislocated, he can’t defend himself. All Frank Campana has to do to win the match for Brendan is have the referee ask Tommy to raise his arms. When he can only lift one, the fight is over, Brendan wins. There is no need to force Brendan to literally choke his brother out to win.

I could live with the film betraying the reality of MMA for dramatic purposes. I can not forgive Warrior for betraying the truth of the characters that it did such a good job making me care about.

If you want to see a great film about two warring brothers who settle their differences in an MMA match, avoid Warrior, find and watch Brawler instead.