Allied

Though not a huge devotee of Brad Pitt’s films, I always look forward to anything starring Marion Cotillard so was attracted by the prospect of settling down to this romantic WW2 thriller on a cold and dank December afternoon. I particularly looked forward to judging for myself whether there really was any Bogart/Bergman-style chemistry between the two leads. Was this the new Casablanca maybe?

The action is set in 1942. Canadian intelligence officer Wing Commander Max Vatan (played by Pitt) is parachuted into the Moroccan desert to assassinate a high-ranking Nazi officer at the embassy in Casablanca, helped by French resistance fighter Marian Beauséjour (Cotillard). They masquerade as man and wife, putting on a convincing performance for the locals. Marian decides early on to test Max’s mettle in a quietly seductive scene, but he’s a stalwart professional and doesn’t take the bait. But of course, as in all good romances, he soon finds himself unable to resist Marian’s charms and in the run-up to their death-defying mission they finally succumb to their mutual passion in the midst of a fierce sandstorm (cue much sand, much fumbling and some decidedly vertiginous camerawork!)
Bonnie and Clyde-style, the pair carry out the assassination (undeniable shades of Mr & Mrs Smith here) and then manage to escape in the chaos that ensues. Max invites Marian to come back with him to London - where he’s stationed with British Intelligence – and marry him.  A daughter is born (in a frankly rather hammy air raid scene) and the Vatan domestic idyll is complete, cosy home in Hampstead an’ all.

Then one day Vatan is called in by his superiors to be told that his wife is in fact a German spy, – V-section having already intercepted several messages they think are being sent by her to Berlin. They announce their intention to ‘blue dye’ her, i.e. plant sensitive information which they can then track back to her. Vatan’s role is to act normally - not an easy gig given he is now completely besotted by her. Despite explicit orders not to carry out his own investigations into ‘Marian’s’ background, Vatan is unable to resist pursuing his own enquiries.

The first takes him to a fellow officer Guy Sangster, said to have been smuggled out of Dieppe in 1941 by Marian. Vatan shows him her photo but Guy is unable to identify her, or indeed anyone, as he is now blind. In a second attempt to get at the truth about his wife Vatan goes to see Paul Delamare, a former resistance associate of hers, who has been imprisoned in Dieppe. The drunkard tells Vatan about the real Marian: “she paints, laughs a lot…. and plays the piano”. She was by all accounts renowned for her performances of ‘La Marseillaise’ for the Nazis. The rest of the film hinges on this small piece of info. Vatan takes Marion to the local pub and sits her down at the piano, demands that she play the French anthem. She can’t. Vatan knows she’s an informer, but is still desperately in love with her. He knows that their only recourse is to escape or both be killed by V-section. They collect their daughter Anna, drive to the airfield to catch a plane out of the country but as officers arrive to remonstrate with Vatan, Marian gets out of the car and shoots herself dead at Max’s feet. Vatan is left to bring up his daughter alone…

So… Bogart and Bergman? Mmm, not sure. But there is still more than a hint of Hollywood glamour here. Pitt in a Wing Commander’s uniform is not a bad look and Cotillard is always mesmerizing, managing to smoke those endless cigarettes every bit as languorously as Bergman, Bacall and their ilk! But critics are divided on how convincing the lead characters are together.  Robbie Collin in the Telegraph describes the movie as a “swanky, sexy spy thriller”, while the Guardian critic finds it a “passionless potboiler” (but then what do Guardian readers know of passion, I ask myself?) My view lies somewhere in the middle.

I thought many of the scenes in Allied  were beautifully shot – loved the images of sultry Casablanca – and I liked the clever use of mirrors throughout to point up the contrast, so essential to the film’s theme, between what is and isn’t ‘real’. A nice touch.

My verdict? Allied is a good old fashioned romance. Pitt was ok (though hats off to him for a very passable French accent), but Marion Cotillard for me steals the show. And even if you find the story/their romance a bit far-fetched, there is always the thrill of Cotillard’s to-die-for outfits – très chic. As one critic said: “Espionage never looked so good”!

*Click here to view trailer: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt3640424/videoplayer/vi4001674777

 

 

 

 

The Girl on the Train

Despite being a runaway bestseller, Paula Hawkins’ novel was not enthusiastically received by my book club friends, who complained about its confusing narrative structure and the long and lurid descriptions of the main character’s descent into drunken misery. So I approached the film with some reservations, but liked the title and looked forward to an interesting story. I was not disappointed…

The narrative of the film is told from the point of view of the three main female characters: Rachel Watson (Emily Blunt), Tom Watson’s new wife Anna (Rebecca Ferguson) and Megan, the Watsons’ nanny (Haley Bennett). Rachel is recently divorced and her ex is now happily settled with his new family. The trauma of her failed marriage has driven Rachel to drink – in a big way. For most of the film, she is a hollow-eyed mess, so ‘out of it’ that she regularly blacks out, effectively “losing” chunks of her life, and it is on this that the plot hangs.

Having lost her job (due to her drinking), Rachel takes to riding the train into New York every day, a journey which takes her past what used to be her marital home. However, her attention is focused day after day on a neighbouring house and she begins to be obsessed with the lives of the apparently ‘loved-up’ Megan and Scott Hipwell who live there. One day she spots Megan in the arms of another man and this makes her angry at what she perceives to be another infidelity. Upset at these echoes of her own failed marriage, Rachel goes on a binge and wakes up the next day bloodied and bruised, but with only a blurred recollection of the events of the previous evening. When Megan is subsequently reported missing, Rachel tells police what she saw from the train window. They refuse to take her seriously and so she goes to see Scott to tell him what she witnessed. From this point on, she becomes more and more invested in the case and tries, with great difficulty, to piece together her movements prior to Megan’s disappearance.

The structure of the film, with its non-linear plot, frequent flashbacks and shaky camerawork, at times makes great demands on its audience, but for me the various twists and turns of perspective made it interesting and gave a real sense of Rachel’s physical and emotional disorientation. The creepy, discordant music also helps to ratchet up the tension as the action edges towards its violent conclusion. And I was certainly kept guessing until the end - who killed Megan… her husband, her drop-dead gorgeous therapist, the random man in the street?! I liked the way things (and people) that we take at face value in the early part of the film are turned on their head by the end. All the way through the movie, we’re led to believe it is Rachel who is obsessively calling Tom’s phone late at night – it turns out to be Megan; Tom is not the kind, concerned individual we take him for – he’s the one with a controlling personality… and a murderer to boot. It’s not Megan and her therapist who are having an affair, but her and Tom; Tom didn’t lose his job as a result of Rachel’s drunkenness, but because he was sleeping his way through the list of female staff at his company. Slowly but surely, the scales fall from Rachel’s eyes, she emerges from her drunken fug and is able finally to piece together the jigsaw of what really happened that night in the woods.

Critics are unanimous in describing Emily Blunt’s performance as the lynchpin of this movie, turning in a perfectly nuanced and gut-wrenchingly honest portrayal of a complex and damaged character, but I thought much of the other acting was excellent too. Although well-acted, the character of “the second Mrs Watson” is a bit one-dimensional, but Megan – beautifully played by Haley Bennett - is much more interesting. Yet another damaged individual, she carries lots of baggage, not least the psychological scars of a teenage accident in which her baby daughter drowned and she was subsequently abandoned by her then lover.

Not just any old psychological thriller, The Girl on The Train is an intriguing film which deals with the themes of obsession, betrayal, abuse and personal tragedy, effectively making us (along with Rachel) voyeurs into the complicated lives of others. I also liked the film’s symmetry: the baby link with all three women, the mirroring of Megan’s and Rachel’s visits to the therapist, and the repeated train motif at key intervals in the action. Whether it’s better than last year’s Gone Girl? I’ll let you decide for yourself!

See the official trailer here: https://youtu.be/y5yk-HGqKmM

 

 

Secret in their eyes

This remake of a 2009 Argentinian crime thriller ("El secreto de sus ojos") has been shifted to the US and plays against the high-tension backdrop of a Los Angeles braced for further terrorist attacks in the wake of 9/11.

The film in fact interweaves two timelines. In 2002, while investigating a potentially radical mosque, anti-terror squad cops Ray Kasten (played by Chiwetel Ejiofor), Claire Sloan (Nicole Kidman) and Jess Cobb (Julia Roberts) are called to a nearby murder scene. The body turns out to be Jess’s daughter, who has been brutally raped and murdered. Ray is convinced that a young man named Marzin (Joe Cole), is the perpetrator. Various leads are pursued but the case hits a dead end when the suspect turns out to be an FBI informant in a major sting operation involving a potential terrorist sleeper cell. The film actually opens in 2015 with the return to LA of both Ray and Claire, now a District Attorney. Ray wants his old flame to re-open the murder case on the strength of newly turned-up ‘evidence’ of the new alias and whereabouts of Marzin, the never-prosecuted suspect in the 2002 case. Ray, it seems, has all this time been on a crusade to find and prosecute Marzin. Feeling partially responsible for what happened to the girl (he was supposed to meet her at the baker’s on the day she was killed), he has been obsessed over the case and spent the intervening years trawling through photos of possible suspects. Ray goes out on a limb to find his man, content to break every rule in the book to bring closure for his friend and colleague. But at a climactic moment in the events that follow, Jess reveals that actually the man they’ve been chasing is not the killer of her daughter. She shot him dead 13 years ago. Then, in one more final twist, we learn that Marzin is not in fact dead but that Jess has been keeping him captive all these years in her farmhouse. The movie ends with Ray handing her a gun. We hear the shot ring out as Ray digs a grave. Jess has her revenge… but closure? That’s up for discussion.

So, what did I think of Secret….? Some have criticised the director’s handling of the two time-frames, finding their juxtaposition confusing – this actually didn’t bother me too much. Others have dismissed the film as little more than a bog standard police procedural. I thought it was much more than that. This is a movie that deals with big themes, exploring the hazy interface between justice and revenge, and reminding us of the destructive effect vengeance has on the human soul. The ending took me completely by surprise (apparently it was hinted at throughout the film – missed that!) and this really raised the film’s game for me.

The quality of the acting is generally high. Chiwetel Ejiofor is excellent as a man driven by a desire to bring an end to a case that has haunted him. I found Nicole Kidman less impressive, although she does have a couple of good scenes. One critic said she comes across “like someone floating through a perfume commercial”. There is also the problem of a distinct lack of on-screen ‘magic’ between her and Ray – “Bacall-and-Bogey mismatched”, as one critic describes their pairing. Which brings me finally to Julia Roberts. Having only ever seen her in lightweight romantic comedies I thought her performance here was a revelation. She does her powerful scenes real justice and made the film believable for me… even the crazy ending!

Official trailer: https://youtu.be/N3b0PFCrayE

 

Dad’s Army

Director Oliver Parker was always going to be up against it when he took on the idea of making his Dad’s Army movie. After all, the potential audience was likely to consist of the many thousands of people who have grown up with the iconic TV series (diehard fans continue to feed their habit with regular repeats of the 80 episodes made of the programme). The dilemma? How to convey the mood of the original without tarnishing what is, let’s face it, a much-loved British ‘brand’? Fortunately, rather than try to reinvent the characters, he made the sensible decision to choose actors who closely resemble the originals… and what inspired choices he made!

Because there’s no doubt that a major strength of the film is the excellent casting. Bill Nighy (who else?) is suitably louche as Sergeant Wilson, the role immortalised by that most quintessential of lounge lizards, John le Mesurier. Michael Gambon is also delightful as the bumbling Private Godfrey we’ve come to know and love. But I think the plaudits definitely have to go to the star of the show.  Just as Arthur Lowe was the lynchpin of the TV series, so it is Toby Jones’ performance as Captain Mainwaring that holds this film together. His is a perfect comic performance with nice slapstick touches. I loved the scene where he removes his spectacles in a bid to attract Zeta Jones – my, how we just love to see a man’s vanity punctured! The only weak link for me is Tom Courtenay. Always at or near the forefront of the action in the series, Corporal Jones here has a surprisingly low profile. When he does speak, I feel he doesn’t really capture the boyish enthusiasm of the original character - just ‘not nearly excitable enough’, as one critic put it. Catherine Zeta Jones, as undercover German spy Rose Winters, exudes the requisite degree of 1940s glamour and, though not exactly stretched in the part, fulfils her role well. The hilarious, if rather predictable, reaction of the menfolk of Walmington-on-Sea to her arrival provides a rich seam of humour, though some might find Pike envisioned as Errol Flynn a step too far into the realms of the surreal!

One of the things I really enjoyed about this film was the higher profile given to the female characters. Here they were pivotal to the denouement and I fully approved of this added modern twist, i.e. (hoorah!) the womenfolk saving the day. A strong cast of female actors includes Alison Steadman (as a blowsy Mrs Fox) and the ever-reliable Sarah Lancashire (as Mavis Pike), AND we are treated to an actual, real-life Mrs Mainwaring - never seen in the original - played doughtily by Felicity Montagu. Some critics have argued that the fact that we never meet Mrs M in the original series is kind of the point (a bit like fat Brenda in Coronation Street’s cab office or Samantha the fictional score-keeper in Radio 4’s I’m Sorry I Haven’t a Clue), but I liked this touch.

Critical response to the film has been generally muted. Some really don’t like it. Nick de Semlyen of the empire.com website says: “This is karaoke filmmaking, trading on nostalgia rather than breaking new territory”. My opinion? No, it’s not a masterpiece of filmmaking, but it does keeps the spirit of the original alive and, despite the fact that “there isn’t an edgy bone in its body” (Variety critic Catherine Bray) the film makes enjoyable, undemanding viewing. For viewers looking out for them, many of the series’ familiar catchphrases are there (let’s face, we’d have felt short-changed if they hadn’t been) but they are not laboured. There are a few laugh-out-loud moments, but the comedy is, as with the original, gentle and understated. Ideal Sunday afternoon fare!