The Revenant

TheRevenantPosterGeorge Miller made a movie this year that is little but a chase scene, with themes of survival, revenge and a showcase for hyper violence and cinematic spectacle. The film has virtually no story, but the nature of its editing and its use of color, movement and staging made it an exhilarating experience, brutal and devastating but also cathartic and purely entertaining.

Alejandro G. Inarritu’s “The Revenant” is a similar revenge fantasy, stripped to its bones in all its animalistic nature and fury, but Emmanuel Lubezki’s cinematography blunts the impact. The Malick-esque way that Lubezki plays with the elements to create something spectral and naturalistic give “The Revenant” an overstated sense of importance, and watching it is hardly entertaining but dreary, disgusting and devoid of purpose.

Set in early frontier America, Leonardo DiCaprio plays Hugh Glass, a navigator part of a hunting party gathering pelts. Natives ambush the entire squadron and reduce the team from 45 people to just 10. The scene is ravishing, but immediately numbing. Arrows fly in and impale the Americans from beyond the frame, creating a sense early on that danger is not imminent but seemingly omnipresent. The mise-en-scene is cold and silvery and makes a stark backdrop for fiery streaks of arrows flying through the sky.

Lubezki has the camera dive underneath the water to witness one man being strangled to death, and we realize that despite the camera’s pivots and surveying, it’s more of a godly spectator rather than a human eye. The camera here is far less a gimmick than in Inarritu’s “Birdman,” and the way the camera is freed from a fixed axis is not unlike how Lubezki’s cinematography floated and tumbled in “Gravity.” But seeing it in this way isn’t visceral but bleak, violent, bloody and full of agony.

Glass escapes the natives only to be attacked by a bear. This scene too is an endless, torturous and dispassionate sight done in a single, unbroken shot. The bear claws and stomps on his back and whips him like a doll. It exists seemingly out of time and even ends on something of a grim punch line, a final knife in the back as Glass tumbles down a hill only for the slain bear to roll on top of him.

Miraculously, Glass survives, but just barely. Captain Andrew Henry (Domhnall Gleeson) demands the remaining troop care for him and keep him alive as long as possible. When they’re unable to transport the wounded Glass further, Henry assigns John Fitzgerald (Tom Hardy) to tend to Glass and Glass’s half-breed son Hawk (Forrest Goodluck) until Glass dies. Instead, Fitzgerald kills Hawk and leaves Glass for dead. “The Revenant” starts as Glass’s fight for survival against nature, a cold look at how the world is vengeful and how the wilderness governs all. But it eventually morphs into a more simplistic revenge fantasy, Glass’s quest to return from the dead and kill the man who murdered his son.

We see flashes of Glass’s past, of his native bride being slaughtered and skulls being stacked high in a mountain. Except Glass’s remaining existence is no less bleak, and his past plays as a morbid form of adding insult to injury. He survives by eating hunks of bloody, raw buffalo meat and by cutting open the guts of a horse and crawling inside its open cavity for warmth. The film’s gore is disturbing, but the subject matter itself is not the problem. “Mad Max: Fury Road” was no less shocking, and even “Star Wars: The Empire Strikes Back” involves Luke killing an animal for warmth on the ice planet Hoth.

The difference is how Inarritu lingers on the gruesomeness and screams each shot’s importance, not for their ingenuity but their stark reality. The score pounds with thundering drums that signal each moment’s weight, and the way “The Revenant” evokes God as a theme continually burdens us with the idea that this is Glass against the world.

DiCaprio is a victim of the film’s agony, grunting and moaning his way through the entire film and crawling on the cold ground for much of it. There’s only so much of an actual performance here. Tom Hardy is more effective as the dissenting and ruthless Fitzgerald, complete with a thick, broken Americana accent and wide eyes that show his madness.

While Lubezki remains the more interesting entry point to “The Revenant,” the blame for the movie’s depressing and exhausting slog rests on Inarritu’s shoulders. Like how the film treats Glass, he does all he can to drag us through hell but little catharsis or solace to bring us back.

1 ½ stars

Mad Max: Fury Road

George Miller has updated his cult classic The Road Warrior and made an all time great action film.

MadMaxPoster“Mad Max: Fury Road” is insane. It is batshit crazy. In a blockbuster age when CGI superheroes battle untold hoards of robots, monsters and aliens in a chaotic blur, there are just about no modern action movies that are purely mad.

George Miller’s movie is a disturbed fever dream, addled and excitable to the point of delirium. The images, the stunts, the stark blue and orange colorings and the constant, accelerated sensation of being pursued scream that this is an action movie for a future generation. Like the endless car chase that consumes the heroes and villains of Miller’s bleak, post-apocalyptic world, “Fury Road” is so far ahead of every contemporary action movie today just waiting for everyone to catch up.

“Fury Road” itself moves at a faster pace. At times Miller seems to be playing with the frame rate to send his characters into a frenzy and make the chase seem ever more pressing. The shaved and ash-painted War Boys spray chrome over their mouths and feel a rush of adrenaline. Our anti-hero Max (Tom Hardy) is twitchy, nervous and paranoid but always intense. And John Seale’s cinematography zooms, slows and tracks like someone is playing with the remote.

This is a movie always in motion, and that movement is the core of “Fury Road’s” story. When we’re first introduced to Max (Tom Hardy) he smashes a scurrying two-headed lizard and promptly inhales it before being captured by raiding warriors. They imprison him in a massive skull temple carved into the face of a desert cliff, where workers toil below and go mad for momentary floods of water. The man turning the faucet is Immortan Joe (Hugh Keays-Byrne), a warlord more machine than man. His pale body and warts are covered by demonic body armor and his crossbones respirator gives him a dangerous vibe not unlike that of Darth Vader.

Joe sends his greatest general Imperator Furiosa (Charlize Theron) out on a convoy to raid Gasoline Town, only to realize that she has smuggled out Joe’s breeding wives, a half-dozen pristine beauties in scantily clad white garments. Their presence in the film is so radically unexpected from the ruin on all the denizen’s faces. Furiosa herself is shaved bald with a prosthetic arm and a fierce demeanor. Max eventually breaks free from the hunting party looking for Furiosa, and in a survival attempt ends up working together with her to reach salvation in “the Green Place.”

Max shares the film’s namesake, mainly because Miller’s film is an extension, or a 30 year late sequel, to the ‘80s Mad Max trilogy starring Mel Gibson. But as a hero he’s deeply untrusting, impenetrable and a loner. Theron and her company of girls (including Rosie Huntington-Whiteley, Zoe Kravitz and more) end up becoming “Fury Road’s” champions. The women all stand out, get the best lines, kick the most ass and feel the most pain. They’re the human entry point amid the madness.

But “Fury Road” is nothing if not bananas. The film’s car chase consumes nearly the whole movie, and yet it never gets stale. It takes us through an otherworldly sandstorm that spawns a great red spiral of thunder, lightning and chaos. As one of the film’s War Boys, Nux (Nicholas Hoult), enters the storm, he shouts “Fury Road’s” scarily ironic tagline: “What a lovely day!”

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So much of the film though is accomplished largely without CGI, and the resulting explosions, the animalistic, vehicular muscle and carnage on display, and the terrifying stunts are all real examples of Miller’s crazed vision of the future. We see a clan of motorcycle warriors leaping over gorges and hurling bombs down at the convoy. We see men grasping onto giant, flexible poles that extend out, place an explosive and whiplash back into place. And this is a movie where for no particular reason a soldier rides on a truck bed suspended by bungee cords and thunders out heavy metal on a flaming guitar. It is an image so incredible and needlessly awesome that movies without it are instantly lesser as a result.

The original “Road Warrior” film (actually the second in the trilogy) instantly became a cult classic. It was weird, apocalyptic and was a new kind of action movie in a wave of gun-toting, macho war movies all concerned with Vietnam. It was from Australia and may as well have been from another world.

“Fury Road” on the other hand is everything contemporary action movies are and so much more. It is purely focused on spectacle over story but doesn’t forget the cinematics that make it unforgettable. It’s crazy and unrealistic as so many are, but it takes everything over the top and outdoes them all. “Fury Road” is the best action movie in a decade because it has the vision, the style and the courage to be truly mad.

4 stars

Locke

Tom Hardy gives a fiery but misguided performance in Steven Knight’s minimalist experiment of a drama.

When Roger Ebert wrote that he could watch a Fellini movie on the radio, he meant it as a compliment. Steven Knight’s “Locke” feels like it was designed for one. It’s a labored, 85-minute long experiment in audio-visual (mostly audio) storytelling in which a man gets into a car, takes incessant phone calls, and drives. What aims to be a test of minimal storytelling ends up feeling like one long trailer. The headlights along the road always dance and try to set the mood, but “Locke” ultimately never arrives anywhere.

The man driving the car is Ivan Locke, played by Tom Hardy, and he is the only person who will appear on camera throughout the film’s duration. Upon leaving his job at a construction site as a foreman for pouring concrete, he makes a last minute decision and sets off driving from Birmingham to London, never looking back.

His destination? Locke is traveling to a hospital to visit a woman having his baby. Along the way he will speak with his wife and family waiting for him at home, his boss and colleague freaking out over how he’s abandoned a major job, and his mistress going through labor pains in the hospital. Continue reading “Locke”

Lawless

There are enough movies about moonshining and the Prohibition Era as there were crime families getting rich off the swill. John Hillcoat’s “Lawless” is just another one of those burning cellar lights in the Virginia countryside, and it’s hard to see why this particular story is worth telling.

“Lawless” is a dusty, brown-looking film about the three Bondurant brothers in 1931 Virginia. The oldest brother Forrest (Tom Hardy) is a legend ‘round these parts because everyone believes he’s “indestructible.” He and his brothers make an honest living of dishonesty. Legendary gangsters roll in from Chicago with Tommy Guns, and they put up with it as part of their daily routine. Even the appearance of a ruthless federal officer (Guy Pearce) doesn’t seem to phase them, as they get richer, fall in love and live like kings.

It’s more of a character drama about people with different disciplines and convictions for violence than something with a stirring plot, but you wish they had more sense and purpose in life than to just start a blood war.

Hillcoat’s film is a super violent affair that glamorizes the bloodshed without pretense or reason. They slit throats, tar and feather bootleggers, cut off people’s testicles and walk blindly into gunfire, but the characters don’t act out of family values or morality, just a misguided sense of rage and maintaining a way of living. Continue reading “Lawless”

The Dark Knight Rises

The bat signal is lit. Since 2008’s “The Dark Knight,” the world needed another proper superhero movie, one that tested our minds and rattled our core.

Christopher Nolan’s follow-up, “The Dark Knight Rises,” is more of an enduring challenge than some will expect. For others, it will even feel little like a superhero movie. But its heavy themes of untapped emotion and social anarchy dwarf the flimsy blandness of “The Avengers” and “The Amazing Spiderman.” It does the Batman franchise proud. Continue reading “The Dark Knight Rises”

Warrior

“Warrior” is an ugly, jittery, annoying and contrived film that never relents in beating you.

The Fighter” isn’t exactly “Raging Bull,” but it’s a better film than most give it credit for. To call “Warrior” just a Mixed Martial Arts “Fighter” set in Philly however is giving “Warrior” way too much credit.

Watching “Warrior” I realized all the things “The Fighter” actually does not do. It has no split screen montages, no wives telling their husbands fighting is the wrong life for a family man, no shaky cam fight scenes, no unbeatable foreign behemoth, no money problems, no dark pasts conjured out of thin air, no legal issues, no dead mother, no washed up father lamenting his glory days, no fake SportsCenter clips and most of all, no parables.

“Warrior” has all of these things, and yet lacks a minute of the fun in watching Micky Ward’s train wreck of a brother, his posse full of trashy sisters, his tart and sexy girlfriend or his commanding and memorable mother. Continue reading “Warrior”