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

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