Review of The Hateful Eight (2015)

It almost seems daft, really, given that Quentin Tarantino has effectively made a career out of mining his own idiosyncrasies for profit, to level the criticism of "too odd" at his latest effort and eighth film, the bounty-revenge-Western-thriller-sorta-whodunit-but-more-whowilldowhat "The Hateful Eight". And odd is the wrong word anyway. Maybe... Idiosyncratic? Oh dear.

To point; this film, which runs to three hours long, has been shot in a long-retired 70MM format, has a new score from maestro Ennio Morricone, and has a cast billing that reads like a who's-who of Tarantino's greatest hits (Kurt Russell, Samuel L. Jackson, Michael Madsen, Philip Roth, Bruce Dern and more). It's maybe Tarantino's most 'mounted' film in terms of the prestige and craft that has been utilised to bring it to the screen, and the truly odd thing is how slight and insular the story it's telling is. If I were the kind of critic prone to making trite references to Shakespeare, I'd say something about this film being much ado.

A harsh blizzard is threatening the mountains and valleys of Wyoming. Kurt Russell's John "The Hangman" Ruth has captured Daisy Domergue (Jennifer Jason Leigh) and is bringing her in to collect the $10,000 bounty on her head and also to watch her hang, since that's his thing (he claims it's because he likes to keep hangmen in business, but since he says this to a hangman he's just met we assume this could be out of politeness, and also the film makes a point of making us distrust what characters say. I suspect it's another idiosyncrasy and also a device to keep Leigh alive).

On the way to the town of Red Rock, where Ruth can collect his bounty, they are stopped by Major Marquis Warren (Samuel L. Jackson) who manages to talk his way onto the coach through charm and the fact that the two have met before. Then they're stopped by Chris Mannix (Walter Goggins), a racist gang-member who claims to be the new Sheriff in Red Rock; Ruth doesn't believe him, but can't risk it, since Mannix would die in the snow and leaving him out there would constitute murder otherwise. There's also the coach driver, O.B Jackson (James Parks), but he seems fairly calm and non-violent, almost friendly.

This takes about half an hour. They arrive at "Minnie's Haberdashery" to shack up for the night, where they meet Oswaldo Mobray, aforementioned hangman (Tim Roth), Joe Gage (Michael Madsen), General Sandy Smithers (Bruce Dern), and Bob (Demián Bichir). All the characters embody types; Mobray is British, sardonic, overly polite. Gage is grouchy, distrusting and monosyllabic; Smithers is a racist veteran who doesn't leave his chair; Bob is also distrustful, but at the same time tries to be neutral. Minnie and her husband are nowhere to be seen.

As the film goes on it's pretty clear people are playing people and everyone is not quite who they seem. Of course, it's not long before blood starts to be shed; and in true Tarantino fashion, it pours. The most obvious structural reference point is, fittingly, "Reservoir Dogs"; this basically has the same structure as that film but with a half-hour prologue, and the gunfight at the end lasts for over an hour this time, and with a lengthy flashback for good measure.

The fact that it is so long and the length in service of so little is the first and most pressing of the film's issues, but far from its only one. For a start, there's the treatment of Leigh's character. There's an easy defence of the violence perpetuated towards her in that she is a murdering outlaw who has stepped into a man's world. But too often she's hit in the face (in brutal, thwacking, look-away-now crunches) and it feels like the punchline to a joke. Of course violence is often a joke in Tarantino-land (think of Marv from Pulp Fiction), but this feels a little too exaggerated and dwelt-upon for it to actually be funny. It feels like Tarantino is too often making a point of the fact that it's her being treated so cruelly, and this I found troublesome (I also felt the same way about Tarantino's persistent use of the n-word, which feels like he drops it in just so he can; why?)

This is also, to me, the film where Tarantino's vaudeville brand of comedy falls flattest. There's one protracted sequence involving a letter Warren has from Abraham Lincoln that probably runs to ten-plus minutes that grows steadily more risible by the second (although the payoff, where Warren explains the true origins of the letter, is maybe the only time the film gets at something more than just what's onscreen). But so much is made of the exaggerated delivery of words and the humour is so crude that it failed to take off; the levity it could have bought to the film felt heavy in itself.

Also... Once more, it's redundant to say that a Tarantino film goes too far, since he makes his films not so much in spite of but because of those kinds of criticisms, but there is one midway sequence involving a scene of cruelty that would get another less renowned film-maker into trouble. And there is so much of that violence for violence's sake attitude to the film that it becomes wearying. Django Unchained at least had the main character's established desire for revenge, and Inglorious Basterds seemed to be making a genuine statement (or as much as Tarantino can) about Jewish attitudes towards the cruelties enacted towards them in World War 2.

Here... People distrust each other, and then they die. We can never tell who's telling the truth to who, and they occasionally explode. The usual narrative tricks are played, including a voiceover halfway through which was as subtle as a brick through a window. There's no real sense of paranoia, or tension, just the ceaseless knowledge that at some point we're going to be expected to enjoy some death.

Maybe it sounds like I've expected things from a Tarantino film that he was just never going to deliver; too uneven, too violent, too unsubtle, too ultimately meaningless. The point is what's onscreen, he'd (probably) say. But there is no escaping the fact that this story is not worth the effort that has gone into the telling of it. It ultimately comes across as an Agatha Christie novel, if Agatha Christie had a penchant for ruining her twists halfway through and also a fetish for watching people get soaked in other people's brains.

It was too well-made for me to hate it with every fibre of its being (the score and cinematography saw to that), but inside this is by far Tarantino's most morally bankrupt work, and underneath the pretty artifice there is a putrid rotting corpse, at which Tarantino seems to want us to point and laugh.

Forgive me for looking away this time.

Review of Sightseers (2013)

It reads like some kind of bizarre story you'd get in the back pages of a shady pulp magazine; or perhaps more like something you'd find plastered on the front pages of one of those glossy, grotesque "True Life Stories" magazines you assume no-one buys, yet someone must. A happy couple, in their mid-30's, on a caravanning holiday, which would end in a string of senseless murders.

He is Chris, played by Steve Oram, an amiable, bearded man, the kind of bloke you'd happily chat to down the pub. Bearded and opinionated in that way that British men in their mid-30's often are, he seems sensible, friendly, and almost remarkably normal. She is Tina, played by Alice Lowe, and her character is a bit more complicated. She's cute, pretty, but we sense a supreme loneliness inside her. Perhaps Chris is the first guy who's paid attention to her in a while. That she lives with her demanding, overbearing mother Carol (Eileen Davies), feels like a clue.

The very first scenes, with Tina preparing for the holiday, are like Mike Leigh on downers, as Carol bitterly spits in Chris' face "I don't like you" after he promises to bring back Tina safely. It's an odd opening, lacking any big laughs to hook the audience in, but funny enough to let us know we're watching a comedy, and it does set up the characters very well. The early scenes with the holiday itself work too; Chris and Tina are genuinely in love, and seem to complete each other in quite an endearing way. I liked them both throughout.

But all is not quite right; a man drops a Cornetto wrapper (a nod to the Cornetto Trilogy, I imagine, since Edgar Wright produced this film) on a tram, and Chris gets unduly enraged. Later he runs the man over with his caravan, in front of the man's wife and child, in what appears to be a terrible accident, although you can't help but notice Chris' little smirk...

Perhaps you can see where this is going. It is not long before Chris has pushed a man called Ian (Jonathan Aris) off a rock-face, seemingly for no other reason than Chris really didn't take to him. Tina finds out, but seems nonplussed at Chris' confession; "You can't do that... You'll ruin our holiday!." The bodies begin to mount up after that, but this is not some caravanning slasher flick. It's quite a hard film to peg, actually, but certainly a very intelligent one, and that's what I loved about it. Think a British "Badlands", where the characters have doubled in age and are prone to worry about not finding the right pasta sauce in a different town..

The film has a commitment to mundanity which is quite remarkable. It was quite uncomfortable to watch in places, actually, because it skewers a number of things which are very accurate about British life. Buying mints at petrol stations; holiday itineraries; the National Trust; the Daily Mail; the way some people get really, really funny about dog crap. Again, Edgar Wright's influences are writ large, but where his Shaun of the Dead poked fun at British life, director Ben Wheatley seems to dissect it and lay it bare. The film is so effective because you could probably edit out the killings, and you'd be left with quite a touching, romantic little love story.

But the killings are there, and this marriage of the macabe and the mundane becomes more pressing as the film goes on. It would, weirdly enough, make a fantastic double bill with John McNaughton's "Henry: Portrait of a Serial Killer", a film I admire very much, which intercut scenes of brutality with scenes of the killers shooting the breeze and drinking coffee. I watched this film with my father, who made a fair observation halfway through that this is, probably, what a fair few serial killers live like. Certainly, the perverse normality of it all made me relate to Chris and Tina, which made me creep-y and crawl-y, and there's something to be said for Chris' complete and utter lack of guilt, or remorse, and the way he treats all this as just a fact of life.

The film goes to some darker and deeper places later on, and I won't ruin how, but I will say to keep a very close eye on Tina and her behaviour in the final act. The film itself retains a mordant, unrepentant eye on the pair's actions, and as an audience we almost feel like accomplices ourselves. It is also very funny, never in a particularly laugh-out-loud way (although there are some good laughs), but it's more... Amusing. Constantly dancing on that knife-edge between discomfort and hilarity. And that works quite well. Perhaps if it had been too funny, that would have distracted from the bigger things at work under the surface.

A final note must also go to Laurie Rose's brilliant cinematography. She worked on Wheatley's "Kill List", which was a cultish, psychedelic hitman movie, and utterly unforgettable, in no small part due to her downright freaky shot arrangements. Here she keeps the creepy compositions down to a bare minimum, but allows for a few moments of beauty. The moment where Chris kills Ian has the most effective use of chiaroscuro, and is just fancy enough to let the audience know that the rest of the films' look, which has a kitchen-sink, warts-and-all feel to it, was a conscious choice.

This is a subversive, discomforting film, hilarious in the right places, gruesome in others, and has that quality that means it grows in the mind as you think about it. The script, credited to the principal actors, has that very British ad-libbed feel to it, which is perfect here. It's just vague enough to interpret, but overt enough to let you know it knows what it's doing, and it has a peculiar mood which is hard to describe but very easy to feel. In short, it's just right, and if that sounds like damning with faint praise then think about how many films you've seen which don't put a foot wrong from the first frame to the last. This is one of those films, and it's a rarity, and it deserves to be seen.

Review of Hercules (2014)

Brett Ratner's Hercules opens ominously with a voiceover delivered by Ian McShane, in which he informs us that we "know nothing" (admittedly about the myth of Hercules). Immediately I was put at a sense of unease as this kind of address towards an audience more or less sums up the attitude of the blockbusters currently in our cinemas; ones which treat the audience as if they're idiots. Does this signal Hercules to be yet another dumb movie?

The answer is yes, but that's not as bad a thing as it could have been. Don't get me wrong; this film is dumb. It's also cheesy, predictable and formulaic to an almost unreasonable degree. Yet it embraces its inherent boneheaded-ness and whiteknuckle-ness head on, and despite not delivering the purported "truth" about Hercules (the end cheerfully asserts that the truth, whatever it is, doesn't matter), it nevertheless provides a diverting, relatively good-natured and rompy 98 minutes, and sets itself above the likes of Transformers and the similarly revisionist "I, Frankenstein" from earlier this year by not allowing itself to get bogged down. It's light, and zippy, and it works well.

The plot is a break from the usual Hercules myth, and comes after his 12 Challenges, which serve as the films' slightly irreverent prologue, and also set the tone. Shortly after, Hercules and his group are confronted by Ergenia (Rebecca Ferguson) to help her father, King Cotys of Thrace (John Hurt doing what John Hurt does), to purge Thrace of some Centaurs (in one of the films' more subversive moments, the Centaurs are revealed to just be men on horses).

That's about it in terms of plot, aside from some requisite u-turns and double crosses and the like which I won't spoil, although you could probably guess. The most interesting fact of the film is, in fact, the presentation of Hercules himself. Instead of being the solitary demigod legend of yore, he is in fact the leader of a team, who does not necessarily possess superheroic powers and certainly plays up to his role of celebrity. As the film begins with his 12 Challenges over, we discover that he is a self-titled "mercenary", looking to get together some money and retire in solitude.

The inclusion of some kind of team for Hercules is an interesting point, and the film references the fact that without them, he would simple be dead. Comprising Tydeus (Aksel Hennie), Atalanta (Ingrid Bolsø  Berdal), Iolaus (Reece Ritchie), Amphiaraus (Ian McShane) and Autolycus (Rufus Sewell), they are all saddled with the fact that they are playing second fiddle to the feature attraction, and yet all bring something small yet memorable to their role. Tydeus is reminiscent of the mute Viking warriors of legend; Atalanta has some memorably salty lines ("your tongue is as inadequate as your manhood"); Iolaus is Hercules's nephew, and a gifted storyteller; Amphiaraus converses with the Gods, and is convinced that his doom is imminent at every opportunity. Perhaps the only weak link is Autolycus; ironically, given the mythological origins of the film, his character is reduced to deus ex machina in the final act.

Yet we never forget who their leader is, and an enormous factor in the films' success is the star presence of Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson. After performing in the truly odious "Pain and Gain" from last year, it was a relief to see him working in more innocent fare. He carries that swagger, smile, and cocksure attitude that audiences tend to respond to, and I warmed to him myself as the film went on. His character, the eponymous Hercules, suffers from underwriting, and also is saddled with a slightly ham-fisted back story which is too neatly resolved. He goes from being the amoral "mercenary looking for gold" to suddenly developing a conscience when the film needs it, although these quibbles are somewhat stymied by the fact that Johnson convinces. He's the real deal. He brings the necessary muscle. The fact that the film is one big play on the nature of celebrity ("that might have been exagerrated a little", when a child expresses awe at fighting a boar for three days and three nights), is something he pulls off well.

There are little niggles here and there; one sequence involving the threat of decapitation goes on a touch too long and is far too distressing for a 12A rating (although the film is generally pushing the edges of this category anyway; it's rather bloodthirsty in places). There are some dodgy moments in Ryan Condal and Evan Spiliotopolous's script, based on Steve Moore's graphic novel, and some of the dialogue consists of the kind of plateaus I honestly thought had been phased out of modern moviemaking- "Fighting is the most important thing in battle; other than surviving". And as I have said, the film is so formulaic it resembles a join-the-dots book that's already been filled in by a toddler.

And yet, the battle sequences are memorable and don't ruin themselves with an overly frenetic editing style; things such as overhead shots and establishing shots keep us rooted in the here and now. Johnson is a captivating presence. The supporting cast excel. And it's got to the point now where I'd happily take a simpler plot over one that's needlessly complicated. The film looks good too; Dante Spinotti's cinematography has some keen composition, and some of the locations are memorable and exciting, overcoming their computer generated origins.

It doesn't add up to much, but there's just enough here to warrant a trip to the cinema. It's undemanding, unassuming, good ripping fun, and whilst it doesn't overcome its shortfalls, it sidesteps them with enough finesse to retain its dignity.