Sinners and Saints (2010) – What Was I Thinking?

You know how sometimes you look at the specs for a movie and it has some decent actors in it and it’s set in a pretty good local and seems to have a somewhat trite, if still viable plot and you think to yourself ”well, this could be an okay way to spend an hour and a half” only to find that once you start watching you begin to question what the heck you were thinking? Yeah, this is one of those.

Sinners and Saints (2010) directed by William Kaufman stars Johnny Strong as Sean Riley, Kevin Phillips (Will Ganz), Costas Manylor (Raymond Crowe), Sean Patrick Flanery (Colin) Tom Berenger (Captain Trahan), Method Man (Weddo), Kim Coates (Dave) and Jürgen Prochnow (Mr. Rhykin).

You can find the rest of my vitriol here: Sinners and Saints

Mule

Dead Man’s Shoes – An Eye For An Eye, But With A Brain

Article first published as Movie Review: Dead Man’s Shoes – An Eye For An Eye, But With A Brain on Blogcritics.

The opening credits of Dead Man’s Shoes (2004) are a collage between old home movie-type footage and a scene where two men are walking through the British countryside. One of them is carrying an army duffel and the other is wearing one of those slick material sports jackets. The one with the duffel is the returning soldier Richard (Paddy Considine) and the one tagging along is his brother Anthony (Toby Kebbell). Richard’s voice over says “God will forgive them. He will forgive them and allow them in to heaven. I can’t live with that.”

The “they” he is referring to are a gang of local toughs, namely the ring leader Sonny (Gary Stretch), Big Al (Seamus O’Neill), Herbie (Stuart Wolfenden), Tuff (Paul Sadot), Gypsy John (George Newton) and Soz (Neil Bell). This motley crew are barely even gangsters, rather a bunch of bullies and low level drug dealers.

This is a revenge movie, let’s be very clear about that. Right from the first moment the viewer is made aware that something has gone terribly awry and that it involves Anthony, who is mentally challenged. Richard left for the army and Anthony started hanging around with Sonny and the rest of his merry band of lowlifes. Something very, very bad happened, but the viewer is only given that story in short flashback instalments until the very end of the tale where the whole truth is revealed.

Up to that point, though, Anthony keeps Richard company as he goes after the thugs, one after the other. Richard is very methodical, well put together and organized. It takes him less than a week to accomplish his goal.

The villains in this story will feel familiar. They are bullies, no more, no less. Sonny is the leader and he always takes things too far. They pick on Anthony, coerce him into taking drugs, sexually molest him, mess with his mind and his emotions in cruel and deliberate ways. Even if Sonny is the worst one, the one that eggs the others on, the others are all followers, not necessarily blind, or mindless, because once they figure out who Richard is they very quickly cotton on to the fact that something bad is going to happen to them. The dynamic, as such, is seen in every school yard in every country on a regular basis, only here it is taken to the extreme.

Richard is clearly driven by more than just his need for revenge, even though that is what lies closest to the surface. He starts by intimidating the gang, but that very quickly escalates to him picking them off one by one. There certainly seems to be some satisfaction in the actual revenge for him, but it is a melancholy feeling in the more traditional Shakespearian sense. The very last scene more than makes up for any kind of genre cliché, of which there really are surprisingly few in effect here.

What I also appreciate about this particular tale is that there are moments of gruff humour, mostly in the tragicomic nature of the band of thugs, an unflinching approach to the scenes that show the actual bullying and how it all escalates and pulls all the participants along with it’s own inexorable momentum. It is devoid of any flash and remains realistic despite ghosts and connotations of the Golgata when we are shown Anthony’s last torment. The sense of intimacy derived from that makes it all more immediate.

The actors all give spectacular performances, from Paddy Considine, who is clearly unhinged in a very controlled and banked-down way, to Paul Hurstfield (Mark), who is the only one of the bullies with an actual conscience in effect.

This is a revenge tale, yes, but a complex one. It is hard to not feel that Richard is in some ways justified after having seen what was done to his brother. The very notion that you would pick on someone who is inherently weak and defenceless in such a cruel and sadistic way justifies Richard’s ire, if not his violence. And there is more to it than that, a cruel in-turned barb that you have to stay with the movie to catch. The true moral of any revenge tale, and this is why I brought up Shakespeare, and I can be even more specific and say Hamlet, is that nobody ever really wins.

I really recommend this one, for its intelligence, for its tragicomic qualities, for the very good performances and for the fact that it doesn’t flinch away from the group dynamics of bullying and that over and through all this there are deep biblical themes of old school eye-for-an-eye vengeance and the tolls that takes.

Dead Man’s Shoes (2004) directed by Shane Meadows and stars Paddy Considine (Richard), Tony Kebbell (Anthony), Gary Stretch (Sonny), Seamus O’Neill (Big Al), Jo Hartley (Jo), Stuart Wolfenden (Herbie), Paul Sadot (Tuff), Paul Hurstfield (Mark), Emily Aston (Patti), George Newton (Gypsy John), Neil Bell (Soz), Craig Considine (Craig) and Matt Considine (Matt).

A Prophet – Prison Like You’ve Never Seen It Before

Article first published as Movie Review A Prophet – Prison Like You’ve Never Seen It Before on Blogcritics.

The movie A Prophet starts when the nineteen year old Malik (Tahar Rahim) is sentenced to six years in prison. Almost immediately Malik, who is of French-Arabic decent, gets caught up in prison politics between the two major groups the Corsicans and the Arabs. Malik has no friends on the inside and no one on the outside to help him out and send him money and whatever else he might need. He is basically unprotected and even if you have just gleaned your understanding of how things work in prison through movies you know that can’t be a good thing. The Corsicans, lead by the white-haired patriarch César Luciani (Niels Arestrup) make a bid for Malik’s services to kill a witness transferred to the prison for a trial involving one of theirs.

The witness Reyeb (Hichem Yacoubi) has already offered Mailk weed in exchange for sexual favours and that is how Malik pings the Corsicans radar. Malik has no choice other than to comply or he will be killed himself. Luciani tells him that he will either murder Reyeb and wind up under Corsican protection or they will kill him. The murder itself is portrayed very differently from what we are used to in this genre. It is messy and complicated and very up-close and personal. Malik manages to do it, but the desperation and fear is so obvious that you, as a viewer, really feel it in the pit of your stomach. That’s where this story really takes off.

Malik has to walk a tightrope between the Arab clique in the prison and the Corsicans who have taken him under his wing. The hard-eyed and very palpably dangerous Luciani is, at the start of the movie, the main power in the part of the prison where Malik finds himself. He is surrounded by about twenty henchmen, fellow Corsicans, and he is completely in command. He is suitably paranoid and suspicious. He is also palpably dangerous, despite his age, and beats on Malik at more than one occasion. His hold over the prison stretches to the prison staff who he obviously has either bought or coerced. This character is is the archetypal “old king” of the realm and Malik starts as his dogsbody, cleaning his cell and making him coffee. Slowly Luciani’s power gets diminished, first by the fact that several of his lieutenants get released due to a political amnesty. It also becomes obvious that Luciani is never getting out, since he has committed what his lawyer calls “foolish acts” in prison.

Malik is on an opposite trajectory. He starts out as a nobody who has nothing, no money, no connections, no friends. He is a survivor and he adapts to his circumstance doing whatever is necessary. There is never any sense that he is a hardened criminal to begin with, but once he has killed a man, something changes for him. To me, the main point seems to be that he does not want to be powerless, like he is when he first enters the prison, and is forced into doing things against his will. Malik can neither read nor write but he gets the chance to learn in prison. He also picks up Corsican by hanging around the Luciani and his men. He is clearly intelligent and I get the sense that he uses his time to think about what to do next instead of just drifting along on the current of violence, drugs and drudgery.

Malik also gets into business for himself with one of his inmates “The Gypsy” (Reda Kateb) selling drugs to the other inmates. This in possible in part because of Luciani who uses his contacts to get a day-pass for Malik on the condition that Malik does some business for him on the outside. Malik takes care of Luciani’s errand, which involves one of his Corsican cronies and a gun pointed at Malik’s head.

The thing is that Malik is seen as an Arab by the Corsicans and a Corsican by the Arabs. He is in-between and trapped, but he continuously works on getting to a place where he has some kind of leverage and autonomy.

This is a low-voiced and understated tale that takes its time, spanning the six years Malik spends in prison. It has no voice-over, no exposition other than the bare-bones background given in dialogue. It never underestimates the viewer’s intelligence. You have to make up your own mind on what you are supposed to take from this. It is also cinematographically well done, portraying the claustrophobia of prison life through the mise-en-scène. The rare occasions when Mailk is let out for a day are in such stark contrast with the day-to-day in prison that you can sense the impact it must have on Malik, and the double-whallop of the violence he is forced to execute on Luciani’s behalf when he is nominally free is all the worse for it.

Malik rises to power through his dealing on the outside and his promotion to Luciani’s lieutenant on the inside. He knows that he could not have been where he is if not for the Corsican’s protection, but he never really stops chafing against the bonds and you get a very clear idea that he learns from his mentor, even if the relationship between them is volatile, to say the least.

There are subtle little details in this when it comes to the cinematography that really enhance and augment the narrative, like the shaky fade that happens a couple of times when Malik is badly stressed, or the fact that Reyeb stays with Malik, haunting him until they develop a strange kind of friendship. These things are never at the expense of the story being told and the story is rich and many-layered. There is the fall of the old king and the rise of the prince in the face of adversity, yes, but there is so much more going on that this story stays with you and the relatively realistic way in which it is told makes it all the more interesting. There are lots of prison-move stereotypes, but even when they are used they are used in new and inventive ways that makes it feel fresh. I particularly like that the fact that the tired cliché of the evil prison warden is completely absent here. The prison staff are just doing their job and they mostly do it politely.

I can’t recommend this movie strongly enough. It is so sharp, so intelligent and made with such care that is lingers well beyond the first watching. The actors give splendid performances, especially Tahar Rahim and Niels Aresturp and there is a lack of trite and tired genre-clichés that make it easy to stay on your toes as a viewer and that makes the story hit harder.

A Prophet (original title: Un Prophète) (2009) directed by Jacques Audiard stars Tahar Rahim (Malik El Djebena), Niels Arestrup (César Luciani), Adel Benecherif (Ryad), Hichem Yacoubi (Reyeb), Reda Kateb (Jordi), Jean-Phillippe Ricci (Vettori), Gilles Cohen (Prof), Antoine Basler (Pilicci), Pierre Leccia (Sampierro), Foued Nassah (Antaro), Jean-Emmanuel Pagni (Santi).

Eastern Promises – So much more than just a gangster movie

Article first published as DVD Review: Eastern Promises: So Much More Than Just a Gangster Movie on Blogcritics.

First, a confession. I am a huge Cronenberg fan. I like his violently red vision in classics like The Brood (1979) and Scanners (1981), but even more the eerily disturbing Dead Ringers (1988), Crash (1996) and Spider (2002). Naked Lunch (1991) and Videodrome (1983) have their own hallucinogenic lunacy that disturbs in a different way.

Eastern Promises begins with a birth and a death, coinciding and overlapping. Tatiana (Sarah-Jeanne Labrosse), a young Russian girl, stumbles into a pharmacy begging for help. She promptly passes out in a puddle of her own blood. She is rushed to the hospital where the midwife Anna Khitrova (Naomi Watts) is one of the medical team working on her. Tatiana does not survive the birth. She leaves behind a child and a diary written in Russian which Anna tries to use to track down any family the girl might have.

Anna unwittingly stumbles into the violent criminal Russian underworld of London. She enlists the help of a seemingly respectable Russian restaurant owner, Semyon (Armin Mueller-Stahl) to help her translate the diary. Little does she know that Semyon is actually responsible for Tatiana’s condition and that he is a part of the Vory v Zakonye (“thieves in law”) a criminal organization.

Nikolai Luzhin (Viggo Mortensen) is working as a driver for the organization, and he is close to both Semyon and his son Kirill (Vincent Cassel). Anna lands herself squarely in the middle of more trouble than she can handle when she starts getting involved with Semyon, not knowing that Tatiana was working in one of his brothels and that Semyon is the one who impregnated her.

Nikolai is actually not what he seems to be at first glance, either. It turns out that he is working under cover to try and infiltrate the Vory, an operation that has been a long time in the making and which is now in part jeopardized by Anna’s involvement.

This could so easily have been another bad-accented gangster exploitation movie if handled by another director, but instead it has depth and weight. Every action is underscored by a wealth of background work and there’s a fullness to the telling that shows how much is left unsaid.

Viggo Mortensen and Vincent Cassel both impress and come across as completely plausible Russian gangsters. The lines spoken in Russian sound true enough and their broken English rings just as true, which is a relief. The interaction between their two characters Nikolai and Kirill is underscored by a kind of romance and seduction that is really interesting to watch. Kirill’s troubled relationship with his father is of the variety you would expect to see in a Greek play, and all this comes into play in the action, but with the sliding subtlety of a master craftsman’s handling. Naomi Watts is completely believable as a midwife and her character has depth and a richness to it that isn’t common for either the genre, nor for female characters as a whole.

The action starts in medias res and it ends the same way and it actually took me a while to settle on why. This is not Anna’s story, or Kirill’s, or even Nikolai’s. This is the story of the fourteen year old Tatiana, whose diary runs as a red thread in her voice-over through the action and even rounds it off when we get the closing shot of Nikolai at Semyon’s restaurant. But even more than that, this is actually the baby’s story. Tatiana’s child is the main focus here, and that is actually so cleverly done that it underscores the violence and gives it a human resonance. Kirill’s moment of anagnorisis comes when he is gently persuaded to not kill the child and gives in to Nikolai.

There are many things to commend this movie, little moments like when Semyon demonstrates his ability to play the fiddle to two of his young nieces, or when Nikolai handles the post-mortem dismemberment of a rival gangster with the ease of someone who has done it all before, or the fight sequence in the Turkish bath where Nikolai takes on two fully dressed rival gangsters completely buck naked making him so blatantly vulnerable you wince for him when he gets thrown across the room. There are other things too, like the young man who is obviously of diminished capacity, but who kills and gets killed because he can’t grasp the full extent of his situation. There are many things like that and that is more than enough to make this a well above par gangster movie.

Eastern Promises is directed by David Cronenberg staring Naomi Watts (Anna), Viggo Mortensen (Nikolai), Vincent Cassel (Kirill), Armin Mueller-Stahl (Semyon), Josef Altin (Ekrem), Mina E. Mina (Azim), Aleksander Mikic (Soyka), Sarah-Jeanne Labrosse (Tatiana), Sinéad Cusack (Helen), Jerzy Skolimowski (Stephan).