The Libertine – London, the Earl of Rochester

The Libertine (2004) directed by Laurence Dunmore has an incredible cast consisting of Johnny Depp as the Earl of Rochester, John Malkovich as Charles II, Stanley Townsend as Keown, Rosamund Pike as Elizabeth Malet, Tom Hollander as Ethrege, Richard Coyle as Alock and Samantha Morton as Elizabeth Barry and so on and so forth…

The story takes place in an extremely mucky, dirty and smoky 17th century England where John Wilmot, the second earl of Rochester drinks and fornicates his way through a series of women while writing extremely bawdy poetry and hanging around in taverns with this friends and cronies. He is a poet, good friends with the king (when he’s not being banished for his raunchy mouth) and he lives a life of privilege and powdered wigs.

Rochester is a historical figure and he is portrayed here with as a complete and utter scoundrel, which he no doubt was. He died of syphilis and alcoholism at the age of thirty three, something the movie takes it upon itself to show in horrid detail.

Now, Johnny Depp is one of those actors who can scowl with the best of them and he manages to convey Rochesters utter disdain for life with the merest quirk of his brow. The dialogue is witty, fast and true enough to the language of the times. ‘

The movie opens on a prologue in with Rochester says “allow me to be frank at the commencement. You will not like me. The gentlemen will be envious and the ladies will be repelled. You will not like me now and you will like me a good deal less as we go on.” It is the born cynics way of giving the whole world fair warning. The prologue ends with Rochester proclaiming “I am John Wilmot, Second Earl of Rochester and I do not want you to like me”.

That’s a lie, of course. The story is an unending seduction in which the viewer is shown again and again, that yes, Rochester is a cad, but he has other qualities. You come away from it thinking there was a man with so much talent and so many opportunities who did nothing good with all the gifts he was given. Of course you get seduced. It’s inevitable. And you may not like Rochester in the end, but he won’t leave you unaffected.

The movie is shot with a very loose and mobile camera and the environment is non stop mud, rain, dog shit and smoke. It has plenty of nudity and sex and … dildos. But… that being said, it also has tenderness, love and brilliant dialogue, philosophy and politics. You can’t help sympathizing with Malkovich’s portrayal of king Charles II who is beleaguered from all sides by political and financial concerns, which he expresses with lines like “I’m being pissed on from half-a-dozen directions at once and it don’t accord with my majestic dignity”, and still manages to care about his friend Rochester and mourn him.

The acting is of stellar quality throughout, no matter what the subject matter is. The emotional value of some of the interactions between Rochester and his theatre prodigy Lizzy Barry is down right chilling.

There is so much in this movie, so many themes and tropes that I can’t do them all justice in a paltry review like this one. I’ve never had any patience with the Ivory Merchant/Jane Austen type films. This is the diametrically opposite version of the costume drama, so of course it’s going to appeal to me. If you want poetry and roses, don’t even think about this one. If you want extremely high quality acting, good dialogue, dirt, soot, fornication, drunken revels and heart stopping cynicisms… this is the movie.

Mule

La Haine

Directed by Mathieu Kassovitz this 1995 movie centers around three young men, Vinz (Vincent Cassel), Hubert (Hubert Koundé) and Said (Said Taghmaoui).

The action takes place in a French suburb where the three gentlemen have grown up. We enter the story just as a riot has been playing out and there are police in the streets, burning cars and violence all around. The film is shot in black and white which lends a stylized quality to the action and elevates it to something more generally applicable. But the environment is definitely the suburban sprawl of a major city, the “ghetto” landscape with all its huge towering buildings completely dwarfing the actors. It’s not a friendly landscape to live in and you do get the sense that it’s not really meant for people.

During the riots one of the guy’s friends is shot by the police and one of the police has dropped his gun – uh oh. Oops? Well, Vinz is the one who found the gun and in some misguided attempt to even the score between himself and society at large he decides that if his friend dies he’s going to shoot a cop.

It’s stupid and it’s ridiculous and of course it’s not going to help or work or do the least bit of difference or good.

There’s a beautiful line in there somewhere where Hubert tells the story of the man who falls from the fiftieth floor and to calm himself he keeps repeating “so far, so good” for every level he passes. It’s not the fall you have to worry about, it’s the landing.

And that is the overall metaphor for the entire sequence of events.

The frustration and pointlessness of their lives is evident in the way ot all plays out around them, the way the police and reporters and outsiders are seen as a threat, and there’s some pride in “their part of town”, but at the same time they hate it there. Vinz calls himself a street-kid and means it. School never did him any good and he won’t get out of there. Hubert desperately wants to get out, but during the riots the gym where he boxes has been burnt down and that seems to symbolize his hopes of getting away being destroyed. Said’s big brother is something of a leader in the gang-culture we’ve landed in, but Said is mostly a fuck-up and a petty criminal who doesn’t seem to be going anywhere.

There is of course significance in the fact that the three are friends, despite them being one jew, one arab and a black kid, they have more in common in being outcast and disenfranchised than what separates them. That’s not the way these things usually look, but it still makes a point.

Vinz keeps saying he will shot a cop and Hubert keeps trying to tell him how foolish that is, but they never seem to get to the crux of the thing until very, very late in the game when Vinz actually realizes he can’t pull the trigger.

That doesn’t mean there is a happy ending here. Of course there isn’t.

It doesn’t mean there are any clear back and white answers to who is the good guys and who is a bad guy either. The police are not always particularly nice and the fires started in the ghetto actually only target the ghettos own inhabitants, like a rabbit gnawing its own foot while caught in a trap. The pointlessness in hitting out at someone doesn’t really help.

Sadly, there’s a real life tangent here. I stumbled into a documentary about urban city kids and there’s not a lot of distinction between that and this movie. Some of the arguments felt the same, sounded the same, which means this is close enough to realism for it to be of weight. What struck me as particularly poignant was the way media treats anything that happens in this kind of environment. The kids in the documentary and the kids in La Haine said pretty much the same thing – media makes a chicken out of a feather when something happens, they give all the negative aspects a lot of time and room, but never mention any of the many positive things that actually happen too.  It’s that whole art/life thing.

Well worth the time, is what I would say about this one.  Tragic, gritty and actually quite funny along the way.

MULE

Albino Alligator

Albino Alligator (1996) is actually directed by Kevin Spacey.

It stars Matt Dillon as Dova, Gary Sinise as his brother Milo, William Fitchner as Law. These three guys are trying to burglar a warehouse of some description, but trip the alarm. As they try to get away their car is mistaken for another criminal’s and they end up taking refuge in a bar – one that does not have a backdoor.

The botched burglary quickly turns into a siege situation when the police surrounds it.

The few people in the bar are Janet Boudreau played by Faye Dunaway, Danny (Skeet Ulrich), Jack (John Spencer), Guy Foucard (Viggo Mortensen and Dino (M. Emmet Walsh).

This is basically a set-piece. One we’re in the bar, Dino’s, we’re not getting out. It takes place in New Orleans, but we don’t really get to see much of the city, which is too bad, but there you go.

One of the reasons why I mention the cast so specifically is that this is a set piece. It might as well have been played out on stage. It’s got that close and intense ensemble focus. And it is character driven to an extent that really takes a solid cast to pull off. And they do. Oh, boy, do they ever.

I’m not surprised that the material is treated this way at all. You’ve got an actor turned director at work here which means the focus is going to be on the performances and I really like that.

This is not a big action splash, though there is plenty of violence and blood. But the main focus is on the dynamic between the characters and this is one of those things that takes so many twists and loops and doubles back on itself so you can’t really not get sucked into it. The pacing is spectacular. It’s like a tightening fist that eases off a little only to get a better grip to squeaze all the harder.

There’s not a single moment of dull transport anywhere in any of this. Every moment is a moment unto itself and there’s a sense of generosity among the actors where they help build each other up instead of trying to outstage each other.

Fitchner’s portrayal of Law as a sociaopath Lizard-king sprawled and lazy one moment, violent and unpredictable the next it down right chilling. Fay Dunaway’s Janet is the tough cookie who has seen a few things and will do whatever it takes to get herself and her boy out alive. Right from the first get-go when the three outlaws come through the door and wave a gun at her she takes it all in her stride, and it’s no accident that she is smart-mouthing Dillion’s character while framed by a Humprey Bogart poster. She’s got moxy.

The interaction between an increasingly weakened Milo (Sinise) and an increasingly boxed-in and scared Dova (Dillon) is also extremely well played. And they’re starting from a bad place, trapped and growing more desperate by the moment. Now, as brothers they’re obviously different, but they’ve also got that slightly twisted loyalty that means Dova can promise never,  never to hurt his brother in one moment and then point a gun at his head the next. And Milo is the voice of reason the whole way through. Obviously intelligent and with a very clear line between what he will and will not do. He emphatically does not want to kill anyone. Dova is more of a pragmatic moralist and Law, well, he plainly doesn’t give a fuck. He only wants to be sure that he is not going back to prison.

Guy (Viggo Mortensen) is sat in a corner for much of the action, but that doesn’t mean he isn’t there, a sly tilt to his eyes occasionally until you get the next piece of information on his character that sparks the action off in a new direction.

You know right from the get go that this is not going to end well.

That being said you really have to hold on, because there’s really no way of predicting the many spectacular ways in which it will end badly for all involved. You keep oscillating back and forth on who will be left standing, if anyone at all.

Every character has his/her own story and their own back-story which plays into the action in integral ways. Little things that seem like off hand comments about coffee or shooting pool turn into something bigger later down the line with the kind of icy precision you’re used to from Hitchcock. It makes it necessary for the viewer to pay attention. Again, I like that.

Visually, the camera glides around in a overtly scenic way in the opening sequence, but again, once we get inside the bar it pretty much stays out of the way… close-ups are used in a way that focuses on the emotional state of the characters, but it actually keeps to the old rules of decorum, carefully averting it’s eyes from the bloodier scenes. Just as you might suspect, that makes it all worse. It’s stylish and smart and handled with a great deal of intelligence, but for some reason I totally expected that from Spacey.

I like the overall impression and I like the way the subject matter is treated and the actors all do a very good job. I hate to be so damned agreeable about it all, but yeah, it is that good. And then some actually.

Watch it. You kind of have to.

Mule

The Hard Word

The Hard Word (2002) directed by Scott Roberts is a an Australian heist movie starring Guy Pearce as Dale, Damien Richardson as Mal and Joel Edgerton as Shane, the three Twentyman brothers. When the movie starts the three brothers are in jail. The warden, their crooked lawyer, Frank (Robert Taylor) and the police are working together so every once in a while the brothers are let out to rob a bank, or a bookie, or whatever target seems suitable.

To make things a little more complicated Dale’s wife Carol (Rachel Griffiths) is cheating on Dale with Frank. Carol comes across as a misguided gold digger, but with a severly shrewd bent.

Okay, so first of all – I really like the idea of an Australian heist movie. It’s got a different look and feel from the American ones, and that comes across really well. Sydney and Melbourne are the main locations, apart from the prison. The dynamic between the brothers is played well, with each of them true to their specific attributes.

I don’t think I’ve ever seen Guy Pearce look scruffier, and it works really well.

The action is also works well to a certain point. It’s a pretty classic escalation with the three brothers caught in a situation they can’t get themselves out of. The jobs get progressively bigger, hunting that ‘big score’ that’s going to let them retire.

Dale’s treacherous wife and their crooked Frank the crooker lawyer are in no way lovable, but the quality of the acting makes their interaction at least understandable.

The brothers are sympathetic though, all the way through. The reason they’re allowed to continue their activities is basically because they’re good at what they do and no one gets hurt when they rob people. The last big score is one of those things, though, that requires more people and takes place outside their normal zone of operations and it does, predictably, go wrong.

I’m not going to give away the ending, save to say that this is one of those movies that actually ends twice.

The brothers lose their money, they get ripped off by Frank (and to some extent Carol) and that’s where all this could have ended. It doesn’t though. And that’s too bad.

I get the feeling that we like the Twentyman brothers a little too much to leave them high and dry, so there is a happy ending, after a fashion. But it feels more like an afterthought than a planned ending, if you catch my drift.

The strong points are basically the characterizations and the fact that you get the sense that these are actual people rather than stereotypes. There’s not a lot of hard talk without any follow up and there are a million little details that are really great – like the fact that one of the brothers gets food poisoning from sausages cooked special for him on his birthday in prison, and because of that they almost miss the big job in Melbourne. It’s just one of those stupid things that could happen and that adds a sense of reality to a movie like this one.

I’d recommend it for that alone. It manages to give a unique feel to a movie that could have been terribly trite and tiresome.

Mule

Harsh Times

Harsh Times (2005) by writer/director David Ayer stars Christian Bale as Jim Luther Davis, a former Ranger hourably discharged after six years of service. He is currently living in Los Angeles and wants a career in law enforcement. His best friend Mike Alonzo, played by Freddy Rodriguez, just wants a job so his wife Sylvia (Eva Longoria) will get off his back.

Jim has a girlfriend in Mexico, Martha (Tammy Trull) that he wants to marry and bring across the border. That is why he’s so desperate for work.

This is extremely fast paced, skillfully cut and very rough.  It gives an excellent impression of things spinning out of control, which they do for Jim.

While waiting to see if he’s been accepted into the LAPD Jim goes about his business,  which largely consists of petty crime, drinking, smoking pot, waving his gun around and getting his friend Mike into trouble.  Jim has the kind of bad dreams that you wake up from shaking, sweating and screaming, but insists that he’s fine.

Whatever his experiences were in the war they have certainly left him with a bad case of  post traumatic stress but judging from what his friends say about him he’s always been a little wild and this merely seems to add to that.

In comparison to the life Jim’s living in LA, the girlfriend Martha’s place in Mexico is very much a paradise. Low tech, few people, poor, but hopeful.

Watching Bale I am again amazed at how good he really is at this kind of thing. The Spanish is perfect, his accent never slips. He can portray a guy that goes crashing through five emotions in thirty seconds and lands at violence with diabolical accuracy. Jim loses control over small things, but remains disturbingly calm in the face of guns and violence, of which there is plenty.

His friend Mike only wants to get a job and make his wife happy, but you can see how he gets swept up in Jim’s wake. Rodriguez does a good job as well as the “straight man”, not that that’s a completely correct term here. But watching his reactions to Jim you can see how close to the whirlwind he’s standing and how it affects him. He comes close to losing his wife and everything he’s worked for as  a consequence of this friendship.

Right from the get go you get the sense that this is a downward spiral, spinning hard. Jim can’t wait to selfdestruct and the only question is how many he will take with him and that makes it painful to watch.

The brief respite Jim and Mike get in Mexico is as close to idyllic as anything can get, right up to the point where Jim’s demons take over. At that point he has been offered a job by the Feds as a “contact” in Colombia and he refers to himself as “a soldier of the apocalypse”. He has been adviced that he shouldn’t marry, so he’s going to have to forsake the only good thing in his life, Martha, in order to get a job.

His friends tell him that he’s making the wrong choice. It’s obvious to anyone that he’s making the wrong choice.

At the same time there is no way he’s going to be able to hold on to the normal life he thought he wanted, too badly damaged already. He makes the choice most likely to get him killed and even then it can’t seem to happen fast enough.When Martha tells him she’s pregnant, he snaps.

In the end Jim never even makes it to the training facility in Georgia, circumstance eat him alive before then. And it has some very bad ramifications for Mike as well.

All in all, this is a movie for those who don’t have a problem with violence and moral ambiguity, or a lead character who is actually not very likable. The dialogue is rife with derogatory comments on any- and everything, up to and including the law enforcement, which is not portrayed in a very favourable light here.

To me this movie stands and falls with Bale and Rodriguez. Had it not been for these two actors this could have been a total dud.

Mule

Ripley Under Ground

Ripley Under Ground (2005) directed by Roger Spottiswoode stars Barry Pepper as Ripley, Jacinda Barrett as Heloise, Tom Wilkinson as the detective John Webster. The other principals are Douglas Henshall as Derwatt, Alan Cumming as Jeff Constant, Claire Forlani as Cynthia and Ian Hart as Bernard Sayles. Willem Defoe plays the art collector Neil Murchinson.

The story begins with Ripley on his way to an art gallery to see the exhibition of Derwatt’s work. Due to unfourtionate circumstance, a marriage proposal untimely delivered and then refused by Derwatt’s gold digger girlfriend Cynthia and a bad car crash, Ripley becomes involved in an art scam.

The idea is simple. Derwatt’s body is stashed in Jeff, the gallery owner’s country house, in a big freezer. The four friends Jeff, Cynthia, Bernard and Ripley decide to withhold the news of Derwatt’s death until all the paintings have been sold.

On the same night Ripley meets the lovely Heloise, a french student, and falls in love. Or what you will. He is after all supposed to be a psychopath, and if you look at the pathology that is supposed to be a tricky proposition.

The rest of the movie is one long complicated series of circumstance and accidents and bloody deaths all very neatly contrived to increase the sense that maybe Ripley won’t get away with this at all.  He is portrayed as more misfourtionate than mischevious.

The 1999 movie The Talented Mr. Ripley was to my mind a neat, stylish and very dark movie. It had a much more serious tone. I liked it well enough to venture into this one as well.

My response to this movie is not surprising if you take that into account. I find myself watching with a slightly inquisitive tilt to my head. This is a comedy. A very dark, messed up and bloody comedy, but a comedy none the less. Despite the cast, which contains some very good actors, the it feels hectic and contrived. Barry Pepper with his shirt off holds very little fascination for me, and yet the viewer is graced with that view quite a lot. Enough that I would remark on it as being gratuitous.

Not only is it a comedy, but it reverts to slap-stick in a couple of scenes. Ripley going at Derwatt’s frozen corpse with various implements to get him out of the freezer and then falling down the stairs with the corpse in his arms so that various appendages break with a popsicle crunch is a dark kind of slap-stick.

It’s not what I expected, nor frankly, what I wanted out of this movie. Assumptions are of course never a good thing, but like I said I had The Talented Mr. Ripley in the back of my head when I picked this movie up.

I don’t mean to convey that I was not entertained.

But if you want dark, bloody and funny I suggest you watch the TV-series  “Dexter” instead, with the far superior quality psychopath Dexter played by Michael C. Hall. It is put together in a much sharper and frankly more intelligent way.

All in all I find the performances cartoonish and the acting constantly on the verge of being down right silly. There are moments, of course, when it all seems solid, but on the whole I recommend you stick to the first movie.

Mule

The Ballad of Jack and Rose

The Ballad of Jack and Rose (2005) is written and directed by Rebecca Miller and stars Daniel Day-Lewis as Jack and Camilla Belle as Rose.

The basic premise is that father and daughter live in an old hippie commune as the last remnants of a former era. Rose is kind of a naive flower and Jack is her loving father, watching his girl grow up albeit with some trepidation. Amongst other things the couple have to contend with a developer Marty Rance (Beau Bridges) who wants to exploit the land, Jack’s girlfriend Kathleen (Catherine Keener) and her sons Rodney (Ryan McDonald) and Thaddius (Paul Dano) who come to live with the two outcasts once it’s been made clear that Jack isn’t doing well.

Actually the little idyll that the viewer first gets introduced to is besieged from all directions by outside and inside forces. The relationship between father and daughter is on a dangerous path, becoming almost too close, and the illness that has taken hold of Jack threatens their balance even further. Jack’s girlfriend Kathleen and her two sons seem loud and brash and disruptive in their intrusion and Rose rebels by cutting off her hair and making attempts at freeing herself, or making her father jealous, it’s a very fine line.

This is, to my mind, one of the finest performances I’ve seen from Daniel Day-Lewis. Much of the bluster of There Will Be Blood (2007) is missing and this is a much closer set piece, and his portrait of a man who knows his time is coming to an end is worthy of close study. Camilla Belle as young Rose manages to tread that fine line of cruelty and naiveté that a sixteen year old girl is capable of without making it cringe worthy. Paul Dano as Thaddius was a surprise to me personally, because the last role I saw him perform was Dwayne in Little Miss Sunshine (2006) and there he is somewhat oafish, whereas he is definitely the snake in the paradise in this particular movie.

The movies subject matter, the subtext and some of the more overt themes are bound to bother some viewers, but I think its beautifully played, a thorough piece of craftsmanship on all parts. The writing is excellent, the performances are authentic and the setting is well used and cleverly developed.

Just the opening scene where the soundtrack intones “I Put a Spell on You” with Creedence Clearwater Revival shows where this is going and where it has been. The music is just there, pointing to the hippie era and then there are these two last lost survivors, father and daughter in a beautiful, but isolated landscape, in their own little world which is about to be rent asunder.

I really enjoyed this and think it should have gotten much more attention than it did.

MULE

25th Hour

Spike Lee has directed this 2002 movie starring Edward Norton as Montgomery Brogan, Phillip Seymore Hoffman as Jacob Elinsky, Barry Pepper as Frank,  Rosario Dawson as Naturelle and Anna Paquin as Mary.

Spike Lee’s work has certain typical characteristics. He likes to hang around New York and make the city itself a player. That means we get a lot of exterior shots, which is nice and sets the scene beautifully. He also likes to take his time in a scene which delivers dialogue between two characters, giving their body language time to develop and focusing on the interaction. There is of course the obligatory rascist rant at some point, which is calculated to upset, no matter how much in context it might be.

This movie delivers all of that.

Norton’s character Monty goes through nothing less than a moral apotheosis. He has been dealing drugs since he was in high school and gets caught. There are a couple of things going on all at once with this story from a moral perspective. His friends blame themselves for not stopping him, Monty is uncertian as to who turned him in to the police, but suspects Naturelle, the girlfriend, his father blames himself because in the early days Monty has helped him pay off his debts and because he has a drinking problem.

Still, this is all good and fine, but Monty has made his own decisions and it is a difficult quagmire to navigate from a moral point of view. Actions have consequences and that’s about all you can say about this without getting in to some very dodgy territory.

Norton plays the penitent with all the skill I’ve come to expect of him. His entire body language is different, slouchy and laid back. He often portrays morally questionable characters, to say the least, but still manages to wrangle some sympathy for them which I find fascinating. Rosario Dawson as the girlfriend, Naturelle, is the picture of drop-dead gorgeousness all around, but still has depth as well. Brian Cox plays the elder Brogan with the bar and the drinking problem and there’s a whole story right there.

The action takes place in the last twenty-four hours before Monty is due to go to prison for a seven year stretch.

The action follows Monty throughout the day as he walks down memory lane, so we get treated to flash backs and flash forwards as well.

This is where things get interesting. After having followed Monty around for an entire day while he angsts and gets patted on the shoulder the movie takes a very sharp left turn.

As his father drives him to prison Monty gets convinced to run away and recreate himself instead. The movie becomes slightly dream like and abstract at this point. And that’s where I start to feel my forehead crinkle.

Every scenario painted by Monty’s friends and busines associates tells of how a pretty white boy like Monty’s not going to make it in prison and he believes them. Instead of taking his punishment – i.e. the consequences of his actions, he goes off to start a new life. His father names it “the life he was supposed to live”.

That is certainly questionable to say the least. And very dreamlike and idyllic.

It’s well worth watching and it will probably make most viewers foreheads crinkle up like mine did.

Mule

Primal Fear

Directed by Gregory Hoblit this 1996 court room drama stars Richard Gere, Laura Linney, Edward Norton and Frances McDormand.

Gere’s attorney Martin Vail is a vain bastard, that much is obvious right from the get go. He embodies all the characteristics of a lawyer when at the top of his game and obviously his goal here is to defend the innocent, or not so innocent, and look good whilst doing it. He has a conscience somewhere, but he is still basically an ambulance chaser.

When the news of a gory murder hits, Vail is first through the gate to get to defend the young suspect Aaron Stempler. Aaron comes across as sweet, shy and misguided. A young drifter who has been taken in by the local church and then subjected to Archbishop Rushman’s (Stanley Anderson) dubious attention. It turns out that the Archbishop has some interesting habits involving the young people supposedly in the church’s care.

So the altar boy murders a priest and then hides shivering and covered in blood by the railway tracks. The lawyer who normally meets events as a cynical tactician is blindsided by the suspect. Aaron seems to have a mean man in him called Roy. Aaron goes from sweet, stuttering and mild tempered confusion to alpha male in two seconds flat. Roy, the other personality, is the one who takes care of business. He protects Aaron. He killed the priest.

So the defense now switches from “there was a third man in the room” to “there was a third man in the room, but he lives in Aaron’s head”, which is a tricky thing to try and pull off.

This movie has been around for a while and I actually saw it back then and now happened to revisit it. This is Norton’s first big performance and he does pull it off in a way which with the twenty-twenty vision provided by hindsight you can say foreshadows his later performances. It is not particularily memorable movie for any other reason, though, more a basic staple of court room drama, and there has been quite a lot of that.

Strong, solid chracter performances, but not much else. Still very enjoyable in it’s basic bread and butter way.

Mule

Shadowboxer

Director Lee Daniels has done some interesting things in this 2005 movie starring Helen Mirren (Rose), Cuba Gooding Jr (Mikey), Vanessa Ferlito (Vicki) and Stephen Dorff (Clayton).

First things first – Helen Mirren is an acompished actress in her own right. She has had a long and varied career already with a wide variety of roles that include everything from Super Intendent Jane Tennison to the Queen to Shakespear and well,  everything in between.  Here she playes a hit woman with an interesting background, and the odd thing is – the role is perfect for her.

Rose is struggling with cancer and the notion that there is a definite end in sight. She has killed indiscriminantely, or so it seems, for most of her life and is hardened to it in a way that’s down right uncanny. At her side she has Mikey, the son of a man she used to “go with” and whom she sort of inherited when his father was killed. Mikey is the Shadowboxer the title refers to.

On what is supposed to be Rose´s last job the duo is sent to dispatch of a local gansters cheating wife and when Rose is actually pointing her gun at the woman, Vicki, she gets out of bed revealling a very prominant belly – and Rose, the perfect predator professional, can’t kill her. The scene might still have ended bloody if it wasn’t for the fact that Vicki’s water breaks and she goes in to labour right there.

Rose decides to take mother and child with her and Mikey simply obeys, because that’s the way things are.

Okay, so this is far fetched and clearly not an easily classified movie. Whoever came up with the casting suggestion of Helen Mirren has definitely made it a much better movie than it could have been. Cuba Gooding Jr also gives a very good performance, unlike what I’ve seen before. He plays Mikey very quietly, not overly expressive, or ganster tough. The relationship between Rose and Mikey is obviously a very complicated one, made more interesting by the fact that she is dying.

Vicki (Vanessa Ferlito) sort of inherits Mikey and his dubious protection, which turns out to be a bit of a double edged sword. Vicki’s ganster husband who put a contract out on her is played by Stephen Dorff. Ferlito is mostly just a damsel in distress, which is somehow made more obvious by the fact that every scene she has with Rose displays the difference between a strong, competent, grown up woman and a pretty face.

Dorff is one of those actors who has given some spectacular performances (Backbeat, for instance) but mostly I feel he’s been stuck with the bad boy psycho wild card roles. He does that here too, and does it unusually well, but it is not by any means a surprise to see him acting out. Although we do get to see a bit more of him than we bargained for…

On that note, by the way, there seems to be a undercurrent of worship of the male form, which becomes noticable in the slow motion camera panning over Cuba Gooding Jr in the shower, or his strip tease seduction scene.

Estetically this movie borrows soft lens shots from the tritest of romances and a looming, dark atmosphere from introspective film noir and somehow makes it work. It is very pleasing to the eye and you get the feeling there is a definite thought behind every shot, not only in terms of story telling, but also when it comes to the visual aspect.

There is also a philosphical aspect, it deals with how violence is inherited and perhaps inate and with what that can do to people, but it is not dealt with as if it were a moral tale, luckily. You cannot condemn and glorify at the same time without it leaving a bad taste in the mouth of the spectator, and this does not do that.

One point of critiscism could be that it tries to do a little too much, that it is a little too ambitious, but it still works. If you want straight up action this is probably not the best movie to choose. So it is one of those movies easily classified by all the things it is not.

Well worth watching none the less. I mean Helen Mirren sneaking in to the house of the first mark barefoot with a big gun? You have to love that.

Mule