Tag: Guy Pearce

Memento (2000)

Nolan’s Hollywood debut is still a mesmerising, inventive and inspiring noir thriller

Director: Christopher Nolan

Cast: Guy Pearce (Leonard Shelby), Carrie-Anne Moss (Natalie), Joe Pantoliano (Teddy), Mark Boone Jnr (Burt), Jorja Fox (Catherine Shelby), Stephen Tobolowsky (Sammy Jankis), Harriet Sansom Harris (Mrs Jankis), Callum Keith Reinne (Dodd)

Memento is a twisty-turny thriller of man who can’t remember anything that has just happened to him. But it’s also a tragedy of a man who actually can never forget. Leonard Shelby (Guy Pearce) has anterograde amnesia, a condition that prevents him forging new memories. Every few minutes or so, his memory resets and he forgets what just happened to him. But he can never forget what happened to him immediately before his condition: the murder of his wife by a mysterious assailant. Effectively, Leonard lives forever in that last moment he remembers: it has always just happened, and has shaped his life into a relentless search for revenge.

It’s a realisation I made after a watching again Christopher Nolan’s sophomore calling-card, surely one of the most complete artistic statements of intent Hollywood has seen this century. You can see the roots of all that was to come here, from Batman to Oppenheimer, via Tenet, Inception and Interstellar. Memento is a gripping thriller and also a playful and intriguing dance with narrative conventions, largely told backwards (each seven minute or so section in colour occurs after the scene that preceded it) but also featuring a black-and-white parallel narrative that takes place (it is revealed) chronologically, that eventually links up with the other narrative (the film, effectively, ending somewhere in the middle of the story).

Far from a stunt, this is ingenious, exciting story-telling from Nolan, superbly recreating some idea of what it might be like to never remember why you are somewhere, where you have been or whether you have ever met the person you are talking to before or not. You could say the story, once rearranged in chronological order, is simple – but everything is easy to follow with a map.

Memento’s structure reflects part of Leonard’s perspective, forcing you constantly to watch the film in the moment and never be able to apply your wider knowledge of the narrative. No matter how familiar I become with the film, I find I inevitably become as confused and lost as Leonard is, your mind struggling to reorder and reinterpret “later” scenes as you discover the “earlier” ones, the whole film fracturing into mini-arcs (the chase where a bemused Leonard doesn’t know at first whether he’s chaser or chase; the bar conversation that starts in the middle; the mysterious woman who appears in a bathroom, and so on).

Even more ingeniously, we realise Leonard is essentially ‘re-born’ with every cut-to-black. He will never feel anger towards someone who wronged him minutes earlier or fondness towards someone who was kind to him. The Leonard dead-set on a goal one minute will cease to exist the next, with only any notes remaining to guide him. Essentially, Leonard is constantly handing over to himself: even he knows this: that decisions he makes in a moment effectively carry no implications, because he won’t remember them. He will never feel guilt, or regret, shame, pride and delight.

Leonard prides himself on making his life work through a rigorous system of mental conditioning. His short-term memory may be destroyed, but his ability to “learn” has not. He talks proudly of his system: carefully written notes, annotated polaroids of key people, places and objects, certain things always kept in certain places and, of course, a body littered with tattoos of crucial facts about his wife’s murder. What’s ingenious about Nolan’s film is that, like Leonard, we never know the context of any of this. When Leonard makes a note, what prompted him to do it? Like him we don’t know.

That lack of context exposes, over the course of the film, the nonsense of Leonard’s system. Trusting notes – particularly written by himself – implicitly from moment-to-moment, leaves him wide open to manipulation. If he has a polaroid of an object with the note “This belongs to you”, he will assume it is true. If someone produces evidence of a friendship or mutual interest, he will believe it. Even more chillingly, we discover Leonard himself is more than capable of leaving himself breadcrumbs he knows his future selves can (and will) misinterpret. After all he’ll never remember the deception and will never waver in the belief that he would never deceive himself.

Like Leonard we can never know the truth about the people he talks to. Should we listen to the message “don’t believe his lies” about the ingratiating weaselly Teddy – especially since the film “begins” with Leonard shooting him in the head as the killer of his wife. Or is Teddy, played with a perfectly smarmy, smart-alecky wit by Joe Pantoliano, the friend he claims to be? Does Natalie, the quiet but helpful woman who has also lost someone (memorably played with a beautifully balanced mix of the austere and tender by Carrie Anne-Moss), deserve the absolute trust Leonard accords her based on his annotated polaroids? After all, the manager of the hotel he’s staying at (a marvellously droll cameo from Mark Boone Jnr) cheerfully confesses to ripping him off, since he knows Leonard won’t remember it next time they speak.

What becomes clear is that Leonard, for all his surface assurance and confidence is a raw emotional mess, utterly lost in the world he inhabits and trapped forever in an emotional state of raw grief and fury, his politeness a ‘learned’ habit as much as his mantras and endlessly repeated stories. Guy Pearce gives a fantastic performance of a character both deeply vulnerable but carrying reserves of bitterness that are intensely dangerous when unleashed. Pearce’s empathetic performance, low-key and underplayed throughout, helps us build a deep connection with Leonard, making the audience want him to succeed, while never hiding the possibility of danger in a man who knows nothing about the world around him other it has deeply wronged him.

It’s that hidden emotional state Nolan’s twisting film hides in plain sight throughout. After all, we know Leonard is capable of acts of violent rage – its literally the first thing we see him do. Opening the film with a shot of a Polaroid developing, played in reverse (so the image gets fainter), Nolan even shows us at the start that the facts will become less clear as the film progresses. Despite both these things, it’s frequently shocking how what we think of Leonard and those around him changes.

It’s told with a superb streak of film noir, but also a dark wit (after all, a guy who you can be as blatant false to you as you like because he’ll act like your friend five minutes later, is inherently funny) that means sucker-punch moments when we make crucial discoveries about objects, characters and even the story of Sammy Jankis (a similarly afflicted man, investigated by pre-accident Leonard in his old life as insurance claims investigator) land with a real wallop.

Memento is truly unique, a near unrepeatable trick expertly pulled off by a director who even in his second film was able to present a complex, multi-layered narrative with the assurance of a veteran. What’s interesting about Memento is that, away from the mechanics of how it is told, there is very little self-conscious flash or bombast about it. It uses flair when it serves the story, but otherwise lets events speak for itself. And it unfolds like an onion, each layer rewatch revealing a fresh new layer that shocks the senses. Superbly acted and brilliantly made, it’s a modern noir masterpiece.

The King's Speech (2010)

Colin Firth lives in fear of his voice failing him in The King’s Speech

Director: Tom Hooper

Cast: Colin Firth (King George VI), Geoffrey Rush (Lionel Logue), Helena Bonham Carter (Queen Elizabeth), Guy Pearce (King Edward VIII), Timothy Spall (Winston Churchill), Derek Jacobi (Archbishop Cosmo Lang), Jennifer Ehle (Myrtle Logue), Michael Gambon (King George V), Freya Wilson (Princess Elizabeth), Ramona Marquez (Princess Margaret), Anthony Andrews (Stanley Baldwin), Eve Best (Wallis Simpson)

It can be very hard to imagine the fear and pressure of not being able to trust your own voice. In a world where communication is valued so highly, what terror can it bring if you can’t easily express the thoughts in your own head? It’s a fear perfectly captured in the Oscar-winning The King’s Speech. Because in a constitutional monarchy, what purpose does the King have, but to be a voice for his people? And if the King can’t speak, how can he hope to fulfil his duty? The King’s Speech uses its empathy for those struggling with a condition many find easy to mock and belittle, to create an emotionally compelling and deeply moving story that is a triumph not of overcoming an affliction, but learning how it can be managed and lived with.

In the 1930’s Prince Albert, Duke of York (Colin Firth) is second-in-line for the throne. But unlike his charismatic brother David (Guy Pearce), he’s a tense man uncomfortable in the spotlight, whose life has been blighted by his stammer. As pressure grows from his father George V (Michael Gambon) to take on a more public role, he and his wife Elizabeth (Helena Bonham Carter) begin the process of consulting doctors for “a cure”. But the answer might lie with a former actor turned speech therapist Lionel Logue (Geoffrey Rush), whose techniques are as much psychological as they are practical. As he and the future George VI begin to work together, a tentative friendship forms as the taciturn king begins to open up about his feelings and find real friendship for the first time in his life.

The King’s Speech delivers a well-paced, beautifully written (an Oscar winning script from David Seidler) moving story of two unlikely outsiders who find themselves as unlikely kindred spirits. While it’s easy to see its Oscar win for Best Picture as a triumph of the academy’s conservatism (and there is a case to make, with the film’s heritage style and rather conventional structure and story-telling), but that would be to overlook the emotional impact it carries. I’ve seen the film several times now, and each time I find a lump forming in my throat as it sensitively and intelligently tackles themes of depression, isolation and fear and builds towards the heart-warming achievement of a man who learns his afflictions don’t have to define him.

Hooper (who scooped the Oscar for Best Director) draws superb performances from his actors, as well as bringing his own distinctive style to the film. He had already shown with his TV miniseries John Adams that he could shoot period material with all the immediacy and energy of more modern subjects, and it’s what he does here. His unique framing – with the actor’s often at the edges of the frame, in front of strikingly character-filled surfaces – not only grounds the drama in reality, but also captures a sense of the characters own personal isolation, helped by the frequent intimately-close shots. It helps the film avoid throughout from falling into the “heritage” trap, and instead feel (for all its royal family trappings) like a personal, intimate and real story.

And the intimacy is what makes it work so well – especially since so many of the scenes are made up of two characters sitting and talking, gently but with a slowly peeling honesty, about their own thoughts and feelings. The film is hugely successful in building up our empathy for the often over-looked struggles those who stammer go through. The terror that everyday events can bring. The burden of not mastering your own voice. The anger not being able to express yourself can bring. The resentment of how others can perceive your condition as anything from an irritation to a joke to something that with just a bit of help and effort you could brush aside like a sore toe.

The film has drawn praise for its depiction of stammering – although I am reliably told by an friend with an expertise in such things that the film’s connection of stammering with psychological trauma is old-fashioned and far from proven. But it realistically shows the burdens both it, and a troubled childhood, can bring and draws attention and sympathy to the condition in the best possible way.

A lot of this is helped by Colin Firth’s outstanding, Oscar-winning, performance in the lead role. From first seeing him, his George VI is a buttoned-up man with tension pouring out of every pore, who has chosen taciturn aggression as a defensive alternative to actually having to speak. Firth’s observance of mechanics of stammering is spot on (I wonder if he consulted Jacobi, who has had more than his own experience acting a stammer!), but above all he captures the deep pain, frustration and fear it can bring to a person. Firth’s King is a man who has lived a life feeling coldly shunned by most of his family – an upbringing he is clearly working hard to correct with his sweetly loving relationship with his own children. He’s bitter and angry – not only struggling to understand and express these emotions, but allowing them to crowd out his natural warmth, kindness and generosity which emerge as he opens up to Logue, and experiences genuine friendship for the first time.

Firth sparks beautifully with Geoffrey Rush who is at his playful and eccentric best as Logue. A warm, witty and caring man with a sharp antipodean wit and playful lack of regard for authority (the film mines a lot of fun from Logue’s playful teasing of the stuffed shirt nature of monarchy and the British class system), Rush’s performance is excellent. Just as the King has been dismissed by others for his stammer, so Logue has been dismissed as an actor for his Aussie accent and is scorned by his colleagues for his unconventional methods and lack of qualifications. But, by simply listening to a man who has been lectured to his whole life, who is frightened of himself and his situations, he helps him find a voice (in, of course more ways than one). Rush’s performance is essential to the success of the film, both as the audience surrogate and also a character with his own burdens to overcome.

Backing these two is a superbly judged performance of emotional honesty, matched with that take-no-prisoners bluntness we grew to know in the Queen Mother, from Helena Bonham Carter. The rest of the cast is equally strong. Pearce offers a neat cameo as a bullyingly selfish Edward VIII. Jacobi is overbearingly pompous as the face of the establishment. Jennifer Ehle is wonderfully playful as Logue’s put-upon wife. Andrews contributes a neat little turn as Stanley Baldwin.

Historically the film telescopes events for dramatic purposes. In fact, the future King’s therapy had started almost a decade earlier. Timothy Spall’s Winston Churchill – a rather cliched performance – is converted here into an early supporter of George VI during the abdication crisis (in fact Churchill’s outspoken support for Edward VIII nearly destroyed his career). Baldwin has been partly combined with Chamberlain. Other events are simplified. But it doesn’t really matter too much. Because the emotional heart of the story is true – and the relationship between these two men, and the positive impact they had on each other’s life is what make the film so moving.

Culminating in a near real-time reconstruction of the King’s speech announcing the outbreak of the Second World War – a brilliantly handled, marvellously edited and shot sequence with masterful performances from Firth and Rush – the film is an emotional triumph. Sure, it hardly re-events the wheel, with its struggle to overcome adversity story line and tale of royalty bonding with commoner – but it hardly matters when the rewards are as rich as this. With superb performances all round, in particular from Firth, Rush and Carter and sharp direction of a very good script, this is a treat.

The Proposition (2005)

Guy Pearce is given a fateful mission in bleak Aussie Western The Proposition

Director: John Hillcoat

Cast: Guy Pearce (Charlie Burns), Ray Winstone (Captain Morris Stanley), Emily Watson (Martha Stanley), Danny Huston (Arthur Burns), David Wenham (Eden Fletcher), Richard Wilson (Mike Burns), John Hurt (Jellon Lamb), Tom E Lewis (Two Bob), Leah Purcell (Queenie), Robert Morgan (Sgt Lawrence), David Gulpilil (Jacko), Tom Budge (Samuel Stoart)

In the Australian outback at some point near the turn of the last century, a gang of ruthless killers are finally tracked down and killed by the police. The only survivors are Charlie Burns (Guy Pearce) and his younger brother Mikey (Richard Wilson). Charlie is offered a proposition by British émigré police captain Morris Stanley (Ray Winstone): find and kill Charlie’s other brother, the even more ruthless Arthur (Danny Huston), in nine days and Charlie and Mikey can go free. Will Charlie do it? And what view will Morris’ superiors take of his unusual decision? Either way violence and bleakness will ensue in the ruthless world of the Australian outback.

Scripted by Nick Cave – who also contributed the film’s sparse and haunting score – The Proposition is a dark, challenging and difficult film. It’s bleak, nihilistic and lacking in any real sense of hope or warmth. It presents a world where life is cheap and blood flows freely. All of this set in a wild, open-aired, dead, dry and dusty environment that in its gaping wildness and emptiness seems to consume the men who walk into it and leave them unhinged and capable of any depth of inhumanity.

How can there be any hope for mankind in all this? No wonder Stanley’s wife Martha (an intriguing performance of both optimism and disillusionment walking hand-in-hand from Emily Watson) tries to turn their house into a little slice of England, with a nice fence and traditional garden. It’s almost like she’s trying to slice something recognisable and safe from an environment that feels like it crushes everything it touches. It contrasts with every other ramshackle shack we see in the film, or dusty sandstone building – or the homes that most of the characters fashion among the rocks and the outback. What chance does civilisation have in this wild world?

It’s a world of ruthlessness where life is cheap. The local sport seems to be killing native Australians – something both police and gangs brag about. The native tracker used by the police – played by Walkabout’s David Gulpilil – quietly watches on as his drunken employers celebrate the (mercifully off screen) killing of a group of native Australians accused of murdering an Irish settling family. There is no pardon for him – later his throat is contemptuously slit by one of his fellows who now works as a sharp-shooter with Arthur’s gang. Hillcoat and Cave’s Australia has not a single touch of romance or fellow feeling, but instead feels like a waiting room for hell.

Stanley is out of place here, not only by his Englishness, but also because his tough and pitiless policing is dwarfed by the cruelty he encounters. Ray Winstone gives one of his finest performances here as a toughened veteran who slowly realises he has only skimmed the surface of the brutality man can show man. Brutal and determined as he is, he has rules – and a wife he loves and a home he values – and that puts him at an utter disadvantage when going up against the amoral likes of Arthur Burns. Winstone’s Stanley also has a sense of fair play – he will struggle in vain to prevent a lethal flogging for Mikey that obsequious town mayor (a very good David Wenham) wants to inflict to placate the town. He frowns on the persecution of the indigenous people and treats his house servant well. Is it any wonder he isn’t remotely prepared for the bloodletting Arthur unleashes when he rides into town?

Danny Huston does excellent work as the poetic Arthur who lacks any touch of empathy. Softly spoken and chillingly calm at all times, with a lilting Irish accent, Arthur slaughters without any mercy and can charmingly undertake any level of depravity and violence. From mutilation to rape, from sudden slaughter to lingering sadism, worst of all it never seems to be personal with Arthur. More just a way of alleviating his own boredom with the world. Is there something about life in the outback that has turned Arthur slowly and quietly insane? Perhaps so, and it fits with Hillcoat and Cave’s nihilistic view of humanity as a destructive force with very little room for hope.

Guy Pearce’s Charlie perhaps offers what little hope we have – and even he is a murderer. Pearce does quiet, generous work in a reactive role, tipped pillar to post and dealing with conflicted family loyalties as well as some sense of right and wrong. Enough of a sense at least to believe wanton murder and destruction as practised by Arthur is too much. Pearce is a quiet, enigmatic figure in the film – perhaps a man struggling to work out where he sits. It’s a performance that cedes a lot of the fireworks elsewhere, with a moral conundrum that is almost deliberately elliptical, but striking nonetheless.

The Proposition is a tough and difficult film. It has a slightly disjointed narrative that at times skips gently over events or moves swiftly from one to another but missing connective events in between. It has the feel of a fever dream, the sort of bizarre tale you might throw together out of half-remembered nightmares. It allows wonderful opportunities for actors – all mentioned, and also John Hurt quite delightful as a drunken but deadly bounty hunter, his wizened looks perfect for the overbearing wilderness. Sure it’s a western that runs rampant with destruction, but it’s also a dark stare into the evil heart of man. It may end with a slight note of hope, but it’s an obscured and uncertain one and mixed in with more than enough suffering and destruction for the survivors.

The Proposition is still the finest film John Hillcoat has directed, and the best balance between compelling story telling and difficult nihilism.

The Time Machine (2002)

Guy Pearce wastes his time in The Time Machine

Director: Simon Wells (Gore Verbinski)

Cast: Guy Pearce (Dr Alexander Hartdegen), Samantha Mumba (Mara), Orlando Jones (Vox 114), Mark Addy (David Philby), Jeremy Irons (Über-Morlock), Sienna Guillory (Emma), Phyllida Law (Mrs Watchit)

Every so often during this hysterical travesty of poor film-making, it’s worth remembering that it was was directed by HG Wells great-Grandson. If that’s not a reason for HG Wells to invent a time machine and travel into the future, in order to give his descendant a slap, I don’t know what is.

Anyway, with a plot vaguely reminiscent of some elements of the original novel, but just as inspired by a strange mixture of Hollywood blockbusters and Colin-Baker-era Doctor Who, The Time Machine stars Guy Pearce as Dr Alexander Hartdegen. In New York in 1899, Hartdegen is exactly the sort of naïve, floppy haired, genius eccentric so beloved of Hollywood movies, fascinated by time. When his fiancée Emma (Sienna Guillory) is killed in a mugging gone-wrong, obsession to prevent this leads him to invent a time machine – but he finds himself unable to prevent Emma’s death. Travelling forward into the future to find out why he eventually finds himself 800,000 years in the future where the Earth is occupied by the peace-loving Eloi and their brutal hunters, the subterranean Morlocks.

It’s hard to know where to begin with this film, but let’s try. It’s very poorly written. The dialogue clunks to the ground in a way reminiscent of the lumps of the moon that fall to the Earth in the future Hartdegen sees. There is scarcely any logic in the events we see, from the mechanisms of time travel to computers lasting hundreds of thousands of years with no identifiable power source. Characters tend to do things because the plot needs them to do it, rather than for any actual logical reason. Character development occurs with a randomness: Hartdegen starts the film as a buck toothed, shaggy haired “eccentric” and ends it as a ripped, action-hero haired heartthrob. No idea how that progression is meant to work, but you certainly won’t find the answer in the script.

It’s also poorly directed. Wells, working for the first (and only) time with live action actors has no idea at all about how to set a film’s tone or pace. The tone veers wildly from lowbrow comedy to highblown tension from tragedy to farce. Scenes that are meant to pluck the heartstrings will bring out tears of laughter. The actual comic bits will only bring out groans. Action scenes late in the film are shot with a ham-fisted bluntness that reduces them to laughable, cheesy crapness. Bright lights and wide angles frequently make a film that cost over $100 million to make, look like one that cost a tenth of that. I will cut Simon Wells some slack, as he had to stand down from the production, meaning it’s final moments were put together by Hollywood Hack Gore Verbinski, who probably just wanted to be out of there as soon as possible.

Also the whole design is so stupid. It’s a sort of steam-punk cool, but with no logic applied. The time machine never moves from its fixed geographical point, so it’s just as well no one tried to build a house on it or that the moon collapse didn’t drop a pile of moon rock on top of it. The time machine itself is a wonky contraption, full of spinning metal things and odd surfaces but of course Hartgeden doesn’t even consider installing a seat belt or any head protection. The Morlock design is equally bad, bright lighting making them look more like the bastard spawn of the Orcs from Lord of the Rings and Oscar the Grouch from Seasame Street.

At the middle of it all you have the sort of bizarre cast that could only have been assembled by some sort committee asking first “who’s cool?” and second “who needs money?”. Cool is surely the only reason Samantha Mumba (yes that Samantha Mumba) ended up in this film, as a sexy Elio lady who might just make Hartgeden forget all about that fiancée he’s spent four years obsessing about. At the other end, in one of his finest performance of cash-grabbing ham, we have Jeremy Irons. I have to admire his pluck, going through a laborious (Oscar-nominated!) make-up job (albino with a brain growing down his back), but the sort of sub-Scar speechifying the Über-Morlock delivers at the film’s climax (not to mention a bizarrely wonky final fight scene) is the work of a man already mentally spending the money on restoring his new castle in Ireland.

At the centre, Guy Pearce. I think at this time Pearce was going through some sort of career crisis. He’s handsome enough to play rugged, leading-man, action heroes like the type Hartgeden becomes. But in his heart, he’s more at home playing weirdos, outsiders and oddball (witness the happiness with which he embraces the buck-toothed oddness of early Hartgeden). So God knows what he made of this, but you can sort of tell he thinks the whole thing is crap, but doesn’t know what to do other than play it with a straight-jawed commitment (he’d soon learn, as Irons has, to meet crap with ham). Copper-bottomed crap at that, the sort of crap that would normally have you running for the hills. So Pearce sort of gets his head down and just gets through it and clearly hopes to still have a career when he comes out the other side. Which I suppose is more than Samantha Mumba managed.

Events sort of happen at this film, which seems to have some sort of confused message about moving on (“Your fiancée is dead? Man up and get over it!”) and wants us to live a life of individualism even while Hartgeden sets about giving the poor Eloi the sort of post-Victorian education that eventually led to their ancestors cracking the moon in half and wrecking the world. It’s the sort of film that ends things (literally) with a bang, Hartgeden creating some sort of time bomb out of his time machine and then running super-fast away (fortunately much faster than the allegedly super-fast Morlocks. Also the shockwave decides to stop once it’s killed all the Morlocks meaning Hartgeden is only guilty of mass genocide rather than wiping out the world).

It’s all so far away from HG Wells cautionary tale of scientific progress gone awry that you wonder if his grandson even read his book. Did HG envision one day that a film would be made where a Morlock does a head turn double take, like some sort of Seasame Street reject, a few seconds before he blows up? That Jeremy Irons would pale up to play a character who might as well be called Gruber-Morlock? That Sienna Guillory would be saved from a mugger only to be hilariously killed off camera by a horse? That the future would be the singer of Gotta Tell Ya repopulating the planet with a bored Australian actor? If HG did make that time machine, we better tell him 2002 is a year to miss.

“Where would you go?” The poster asks. “To another film” replied the cinema audience.

Mary, Queen of Scots (2018)

Margot Robbie as a particularly dense version of Elizabeth in misfire Mary, Queen of Scots

Director: Josie Rourke

Cast: Saoirse Ronan (Mary Queen of Scots), Margot Robbie (Elizabeth I), Guy Pearce (William Cecil), David Tennant (John Knox), Jack Lowden (Lord Henry Darnley), Joe Alwyn (Lord Robert Dudley), Gemma Chan (Elizabeth Hardwick), James McArdle (Earl of Moray), Martin Compston (Earl of Bothwell), Ismael Cruz Cordova (David Rizzio), Brendan Coyle (Earl of Lennox), Ian Hart (Lord Maitland), Adrian Lester (Lord Randolph), Simon Russell Beale (Robert Beale)

Mary Queen of Scots poster The history of the Tudors has been mined so often by film and theatre that there can hardly be any hidden stories left to tell, barely any twists that can be unveiled or reimaginings that haven’t already been imagined. Mary Queen of Scots certainly fails to find any new angles on its oh-so-familiar tale, and even its attempt to rework events and characters keeps banging its head on those damn, unchangeable real events that spoil the story it seems to want to tell.

And it’s a familiar story. Mary (Saoirse Ronan) returns to Scotland from France after the death of her husband. Naturally many people aren’t keen to see this Queen, not least her half-brother the Earl of Moray (James McArdle) who was running the country, and protestant firebrand anti-feminist John Knox (David Tennant). But Mary is plugged in, sharp and savvy and she’s going to rule the country her way – and also put forward her claim for the throne of England currently held by her cousin Elizabeth I (Margot Robbie). It seems all is set for Mary’s success – until fortune begins to turn with her marriage to drunken playboy Henry Darnley (Jack Lowden). Conspiracy, murder, exile and execution are on the cards.

Mary Queen of Scots is a mess. For starters, Beau Willmon’s script does the near impossible of turning one of the most electric periods of British history into something stodgy, dull and hard to follow. Perhaps wrapped up in his House of Cards background, a show where there is a never ending stream of betrayals, counter crosses and twists for twists’ sake, Mary Queen of Scots is the same. The film is a constant parade of betrayals in Scotland, as lords shift and move sides from scene to scene with such swiftness, such lack of explanation, such lack of exploration of character and motivation, that you end up not only confused by ceasing to care. Decent actors like James McArdle and Ian Hart struggle through with ciphers (Hart literally changes sides every single scene). Martin Compston is given a confused character design as Bothwell that makes Mary’s third husband a hero until he makes a left-field heel reversal and becomes a bullying rapist. What a mess.

It’s even worse in England, where poor Guy Pearce’s every scene is a never-ending stream of exposition and historical context. Every single scene in England at the court drags and claws itself into nothingness, simply a load of dry, dense, uninvolving dialogue with characters whom we are never given any real reason to invest in. Just as the Scottish lords are ciphers who do whatever the plot requires them to do, with no time invested in developing their characters, so it’s the case with the English lords. There are many, many, many people to keep on top of but virtually no characters to invest in.

Willmon’s script also falls wildly in love with Mary herself, desperate to turn her into some genius politician and master of realpolitik, who we are frequently told is playing the game of courtly politics with aplomb and genius. “She’s out-manoeuvred us” one character constantly bemoans. However, the problem Willman has is that he eventually has to deal with the fact that the real life Mary made hideous, disastrous, stupid decisions. And since those decisions are basically the building blocks of the story (who she marries, who she trusts, who dies, where she goes, who she abandons etc etc.), there is no way around them. You are left with a film that tells you all the time how smart your lead character is, while most of the things she does are foolish.

Not least the marriage to Lord Darnley. Jack Lowdon gives a very good performance as a feckless, arrogant weakling. But surely only the densest woman alive could fail to see that Darnley is a hideously inappropriate husband? The film gets round this by stressing his charm and, in one hilariously misjudged scene, his intense skill at cunnilingus as being the thing that pulls the wool over her eyes. (After this first soft focus bit of oral play, Mary bashfully asks Darnley if he would like some “satisfaction” as well. No that’s fine he sweetly says – she really should be suspicious by then.) The film tries to course-correct by having Mary realise literally five minutes into the marriage that she has made a terrible mistake. But she doesn’t learn from it, as the rest of her life is a series of disastrous decisions, promoting the wrong people, snubbing others, leaving her son (the SINGLE MOST IMPORTANT PERSON IN THE COUNTRY) behind when she runs away… need I go on.

As well as trying to make Mary a genius, it also balances by trying to make Elizabeth an idiot. I swear there is not a single scene in this film where Elizabeth is not in tears about something. She shows no judgement whatsoever, struggles with her hormones, blindly follows the advice of her counsellors, spends half the movie making paper roses and stroking horses rather than running the kingdom. On top of which, this film which wants to make a point about the sexism women face dealing with a world of men, turns Elizabeth (the greatest queen England ever had) into a hormonal idiot, blindly led by men and obsessed with the idea of having children (even longingly trying to make her shadow appear pregnant) because, you know, deep down the ladies just be wanting babies.

Now Saoirse Ronan and Margot Robbie do decent jobs with the versions of these people they play, even if none of this rings true. Josie Rourke does a decent job directing the film visually, with its Game of Thrones inspired look and feel (Edinburgh castle is turned into some sort of bizarre Dragonstone structure, half hewn out of a mountain). But its story is, to put it bluntly, really, really BORING. You are never given any reason to care about most of these characters, so the constant stream of betrayals and side shifting eventually becomes utterly unengaging. Every time you get near to thinking Mary is smart, she has to do a terribly dumb historically inspired real event, that actually makes her look even more stupid than she was. Mary Queen of Scots is a stodgy, dense, dull mess of a film that ends up being drier and less interesting than the sort of high-Hollywood epics from the 1970s it’s trying to update.

The Hurt Locker (2009)

Danger awaits round every corner in the shocking The Hurt Locker

Director: Kathryn Bigelow

Cast: Jeremy Renner (Sgt William James), Anthony Mackie (Sgt JT Sanborn), Brian Geraghty (Specialist Owen Eldridge), Guy Pearce (Staff Sgt Matthew Thompson), Christian Camargo (Lt Colonel John Cambridge), David Morse (Colonel Reed), Ralph Fiennes (British Mercenary), Evangeline Lilly (Connie James), Sam Spruell (Contractor Charlie)

There have been few wars in history as controversial as the Iraq war. Despite this, it’s hard to think of a film that really has nailed the complex social, political and military causes behind the war – or managed to engage with the deep unease much of the Western world feels for the campaign. While there have been great films about Vietnam, that other opinion-dividing conflict of the last 50 years, there hasn’t been one about Iraq yet – perhaps because the wound is still so fresh. The Hurt Locker gets closest by far – largely because it is a film that makes war its subject, not Iraq; it could just as easily be set in the fields of France as the streets of Baghdad.

After the death of their Staff Sergeant (Guy Pearce) while defusing an IED in Baghdad, Explosive Ordnance Disposal (EOD) unit members Sgt Sanborn (Anthony Mackie) and Specialist Eldridge (Brian Geraghty) are joined by a new team leader Sgt William James (Jeremy Renner). However, they both – particularly the by-the-book Sanborn – grow increasingly concerned about James’ maverick methods and willingness to take personal risks to defuse bombs. Slowly, tensions rise in the team.

The Hurt Locker makes no comment whatsoever on the controversy behind the decision to intervene in Iraq. Instead, its focus is entirely on the psychology of those who go to war, and the sorts of personalities it can attract, from those with a keen desire to do their duty to others who get a certain “buzz” from risk and conflict that they cannot find elsewhere in their lives. As the film’s opening words say, “War is a Drug”. And there are few characters more afflicted by an addiction to that drug than Sgt William James.

Not that James is a villain. One of the film’s many strengths is that he is far from a lunatic. Played with a career-defining charisma and intensity by a then almost-unknown Jeremy Renner, James takes personal risks (defusing bombs without the huge rubber safety suits, turning off his comms to concentrate, returning to bombsites to collect trophies or lost items) but he also shows concern and empathy for his fellow soldiers and (largely) avoids putting them in danger. With the team pinned down by snipers in the desert, he calmly reassures Eldridge and talks Sanborn quietly through taking down the snipers. He develops bonds with people and later in the film shows great compassion and willingness to put himself in danger to save a man unwillingly attached to a suicide vest.

James’ struggles are to deal with the modern world and its shallow obsessions compared to the thrill of putting your life on the line (as the film brilliantly illustrates with a final vignette of James back home at the end of rotation, staring blankly at a wall of cereal boxes in a supermarket). On campaign, he talks dismissively of his child and claims to not know or understand his relationship with his wife. But this is a front – it’s clear his family life is far more settled than he suggests – and is actually more connected to his guilt at enjoying his time on military posting more than he does the neutered warmth of family life. Renner excels at all this complex psychology, crafting a man who is aware of his addiction, can’t combat it but feels a deep guilt for it.

The Hurt Locker is about how this rush of war can be more compelling and life-affirming than hearth and home. It’s also perhaps a commentary on how we ourselves get a rush from watching action and war films – that it’s only a few steps from enjoying watching the excitement of conflict, to enjoying being in the middle of that kind of action. Is James really that bad? Defusing bombs is a difficult and demanding job – and James knows (rightly) that he is one of the best at doing it. And shouldn’t a man enjoy his job? Renner’s glee at a job well done is balanced by guilty awareness that he shouldn’t be enjoying himself as much as this.

Kathryn Bigelow is in her element directing this burst of male testosterone, assembling a film that is gripping, tense and hugely exciting. It’s essentially constructed around a series of set-pieces, each of them more unsettling than the one before. Bigelow’s direction is impeccable, as each of these sequences is both unique in tone and utterly compelling. Bigelow became the first woman to win Best Director at the Oscars – and her acute understanding of men enamoured with the buzz of adrenalin is what gives the film much of its narrative force.

It also helps that the film she has assembled here is a technical marvel, brilliantly shot by Barry Ackroyd with a scintillating display of hand-held cameras, cleverly focused details and immersive story telling. The Hurt Locker is a film both drenched in sun and darkness, with burning yellows and oppressive greys. It’s a film that captures the incredibly alien, heat-stoked insanity of Iraq, and the journalistic style and camerawork make everything we watch feel even more immediate.

In the middle of this, the psychological drama between the maverick James and the cautious, procedure-led Sanborn (played by an equally impressive Anthony Mackie, whose every moment buzzes with frustration and anger at the dangers he sees James inflict on them) plays out wonderfully. Bigelow has an immediate understanding of how the adrenalin and testosterone of combat quickly bubble up into violence and aggression off the battlefield, with these two men often becoming like rutting stags, struggling to place their own supremacy on the team – with Brian Geraghty’s weaker Eldridge the pawn between the two.

The Hurt Locker does what it does so well that it’s easy to overlook its flaws. Its narrative is so pure that you regret it gives barely a second to addressing the issues in Iraq or how the behaviour and attitude of the soldiers there (mostly angry and abusive towards the local population) may be contributing to the problems. It also struggles to add much narrative originality to the story, beyond its set-pieces – in particular James’ friendship with a young Iraqi boy seems like the forced stuff of movie convention in a film that prides itself on reality. When dialogue takes over from action, many of the psychological points it raises have been seen in countless films past. You could argue that the film is largely at its weakest when it tackles any questions of plot at all, and that what Bigelow has really done here is make one of the finest boots-on-the-ground immersions you are going to see.

And if The Hurt Locker is just that then, you know what, that’s fine too. Because when it does this it’s one of the best in the game. Brilliantly assembled, shot and edited (those many Oscars were well deserved) it’s a gripping war film that relies a little too much on some of the conventions of war and combat films, while also focusing very intently on how war affects the psychology of the men at the sharp end. It gives a truly unique perspective of the dangers (in every sense) and is brought to life by a series of fine performances, with Renner and Mackie outstanding. Wonderfully directed, and smashingly tense, it’s a worthy contender in the upper echelons of any list made of great war films.

The Count of Monte Cristo (2002)

Guy Pearce and Jim Caviezel as friends turned foes in The Count of Monte Cristo

Director: Kevin Reynolds

Cast: Jim Caviezel (Edmond Dantès), Guy Pearce (Fernand Mondego), Dagmara Dominczyk (Mercedès Mondego), Luis Guzmán (Jacopo), Richard Harris (Abbè Faria), James Frain (JF Villefort), Michael Wincott (Armand Dorleac), Henry Cavill (Albert Mondego), Albie Woodington (Danglers), JB Blanc (Luigi Vampa), Alex Norton (Napoleon Bonaparte), Patrick Godfrey (Morrell), Freddie Jones (Colonel Villefort), Helen McCrory (Valentina Villefort)

Alexander Dumas’ novels are beasts. The Count of Monte Cristo is a real mountain of a book, a sprawling story of adventure and revenge. Kevin Reynolds’ film had a near impossible task to turn this into a film – most have gone down the route of adapting the book into a TV series – but triumphantly succeeds by locating in it a very clear, very filmic narrative.

In 1815, Edmond Dantès (Jim Caviezel) and Fernand Mondego (Guy Pearce) are young men serving on a merchant ship, who wash up on Elba where Napoleon (Alex Norton) is in exile. Tricked into taking a letter for Napoleon back to France, Dantès is betrayed by Mondego, who desires Dantès’ fiancée Mercedès (Dagmara Dominczyk) and resents his own envy for the far poorer Dantès. The corrupt magistrate Villefort (James Frain) colludes to protect his own family’s secrets, and Dantès is locked up in the dreaded Chateau d’If for 15 years, during which time he meets fellow prisoner Abbè Faria (Richard Harris) who teaches him politics, mathematics, philosophy and sword-fighting. Faria shares with Dantès the secret of the vast treasure he hid on the island of Monte Cristo – treasure Dantès dreams of using for his revenge.

This is actually a fairly nifty adaptation of a huge novel into something cinematic. Almost every change made to the original book ends up working extremely well – and adds an immediately understandable dramatic tension to it. I’d actually go so far as to say this might be a masterpiece of cinematic adaptation. The decision to make Dantès and Mondego childhood friends and rivals instantly adds a real frisson of betrayal to Mondego’s actions, as well as adding a very personal element to the revenge portion of the narrative. The simplification of the other “betrayers” also works extremely well, while the careful links throughout back to Dantès’ upbringing never let us forget the roots he has come from.

The script is also packed full of fun interjections. The idea of the chess piece, which Dantès and Mondego pass from one to the other, becomes laced with symbolism, while the changing of Jacopo into a sort of Brooklyn pirate works extremely well (Guizmán gets some of the best lines, but also gets to show a touching loyalty and concern for Dantès). On top of which, the pushing to the fore of the swashbuckling sword-fighting excitement sets us up for a cracking final sword fight between our two friends-turned-enemies.

Reynolds also shoots the film extremely well with a host of interesting angles and framing devices showing how Dantès position and confidence change throughout the story. The film’s climactic sword fight is brilliantly staged and the film charges forward with a real momentum (there are of course no sword fights in the book!).

Particularly well handled through is the sequence that is (in many ways) most faithful to the original book – Dantès’ time in the Chateau d’If. What I love in this sequence is that it’s a perfect combination of stuff from the book, Karate Kid style training, and some good old-fashioned warm character building. It’s also got two terrific performances from Michael Wincott as an almost comically dry sadistic guard and Richard Harris as the imprisoned Abbè Faria, the quintessential wise-old-mentor (the relationship between Faria and Dantès is beautifully judged).

The film perfectly balances its sense of fun and adventure with a very real-feeling story of a man who has to learn there is more to life than revenge. The plot that Dantès puts together probably isn’t the most complex piece of chicanery you are ever going to see, but it doesn’t really matter because the focus is the fun of the journey, and the thrill of someone being a few steps ahead of everyone else.

Jim Caviezel is very good as Dantès, just the right blend of forthright moral strength and simmering resentment (few actors do stoic suffering better than Cavizel). There is a really nice questioning throughout the film of Dantès’ motives and whether revenge is really worth the candle, which adds a lovely depth to Cavizel’s performance.

But the film probably gets waltzed off by Guy Peace (who turned down the role of Dantès because he thought Mondego was more fun) who gets to campily simmer, sulk and fume at the edge of every scene. Mondego is brilliantly reinvented as a fearsomely proud, selfish, hedonistic aristocrat with a major inferiority complex, who takes everything from Dantès and still isn’t happy at the end of it. But Pearce has a whale of a time with his cruelty and resentment, and it’s a great reminder of how much he is (as an actor) in love with make-up, Mondego being scruffy, slightly pock-marked and increasingly bad of tooth.

He’s a villain you can scowl at and he’s a perfect counter-point for a hero whose emotional distance is designed to make him at times a difficult man to invest in. The film’s expansion of their personal relationship in its early section works really well, setting up the innate inequalities between them (wealth on one side, bravery and decency on the other) during the film’s cheeky and amusing opening sequence on Elba with Napoleon.

The Count of Monte Cristo is an extremely well structured, hugely entertaining adventure film. It’s very much like a 1930s swashbuckler, and every scene has some delightful moment that you’ll love. There are some very good performances in here as well, working with a very good conversion of this doorstop of a book into a film. Skilfully directed, interestingly shot, well acted – it’s a gem that’s far too overlooked.

Alien: Covenant (2017)

The xenomorph rises again, in prequel Alien: Covenant

Director: Ridley Scott

Cast: Michael Fassbender (David/Walter), Katherine Waterston (Daniels), Billy Crudup (Oram), Danny McBride (Tennessee), Demián Bichir (Lope), Carmen Ejogo (Karine), Amy Seimetz (Faris), Callie Hernandez (Upworth), Guy Pearce (Peter Weyland), Noomi Rapace (Elizabeth Shaw), James Franco (Jacob)

The Alien franchise is a series I’ve always had a lot of time for. Perhaps I just enjoy the carnage and blood letting of these movies, but at their best there is a sinister poetry behind the pure destructiveness of this rampaging beast, with a perfect mix of haunting nihilism and stirring action. In 2012, Scott returned to the franchise to explore its roots. His prequel film, Prometheus, had a mixed reception (and it’s a film I’ve found weaker with repeated viewings) but it still had that mixture of nihilistic poetry and gore. So where does Alien: Covenant fall?

Set 10 years after Prometheus, a solar flare hits the colony ship Covenant. To repair the damage, the ship’s android Walter (Michael Fassbender) wakens the crew, although the captain (an unbilled James Franco) is killed by a malfunction. Command passes to Oram (Billy Crudup), although many of the crew look to the captain’s wife Daniels (Katherine Waterston) as their moral leader. After the damage is repaired, the crew investigate a signal from an abandoned world, where they find the marooned android David (Fassbender again) and a planet with a terrible virus, that infects its hosts to create brutal Xenomorph monsters. But is all as it seems?

Alien: Covenant is a mixed bag. It has a haunting and unsettling tone and gives us plenty of aliens in all their various forms. Many of the sequences of alien attacks are exciting. It’s trying to build a mythology around the creation of the aliens, and tie that in with a thematic exploration of our needs to create and destroy. It wants to explore the potential dangers of artificial life, and how it could judge us and find us wanting. At the same time, it’s a flawed and rather predictable film, which never really surprises you. It might give you some things to think about – but it won’t provoke your interest enough to make you really think about them for long after the credits roll.

Its main weakness is in its large cast. Most of the characters are referred to throughout by non-descript surnames, hammering home their lack of individuality. The film is so resolutely invested in the establishment of its mythology, it has no time to build characters or a story around the crew. They are little more than ciphers, plot tools to deliver specific points rather than for us to relate to them, or feel concern for their fate. Even Waterston’s Daniels, nominally our surrogate character, feels distanced and undefined. Like the rest of the cast, she suppresses the loss of a loved one (there are at least three bereaved partners in this film) with a suddenness that speaks less of her professionalism and more of the film’s shark-like need to always moving forward.

The one exception to the blandness is Fassbender’s dual role as androids David and Walter. It’s an actor’s bread and butter to play different roles, so we shouldn’t be surprised that a great actor like Fassbender executes it here with such skill. But he clearly distinguishes both the loyal, straightforward Walter and the darkly oblique David, and manages to craft the two most impressive performances in the film. This also gives Fassbender several chances to act oddly with himself, including a scene where David (rather suggestively) teaches Walter to play a pipe (it’s all about the fingering) and even a creepily possessive kiss scene between the two androids.

It helps that the film positions David as a protagonist-antagonist, and spends time exploring his fractured psyche (because it is central to the creation of the aliens, the film’s main interest). From its dark prologue, which shows David awkwardly questioning his nature with his creator (a swaggering cameo from Guy Pearce), David carries much of the film thematic interest. He is a creation of mankind, who believes he has surpassed his creators. Learning that Walter, a second generation, has been programmed to be less ‘human’ in his emotional capability as David, only confirms his belief that he is perfect. David is fuelled by a homicidal rage towards his creators, matched with an insane fixation on his own perfection.

The film wheels out a host of literary big guns to suggest a richness and depth to its exploration of these themes, from Milton to both Shelleys, but these points are really window dressing, as David is really closer in spirit to a Mengele crossed with a mad scientist from an old Hollywood B-movie. Despite this though, Fassbender’s David feels like a fully-rounded, absorbing character. His ‘Walter’ performance is equally good – gentler, compassionate, less grandstanding but quietly engaging.

Alien: Covenant is a film that aims high and wants to add some intellectual heft to its “slasher” roots. I think it’s probably a film that “hangs out” with ideas rather than enters into a proper conversation with them, but at least it’s aiming for thematic depth and richness, even if it often misses. I’m not sure it carries the sense of wonder and awe, and near-religious parallels, Prometheus (a deeply flawed, but more haunting film than this) managed. But it wants to make us question our place in the universe, and how our blind overconfidence could one day doom us. These ideas may just be window dressing to the blood and guts that the film delights in, but it at least shows that Scott is trying to make something a little deeper, and trying to make points about human nature.

It may be this focus on philosophical musing and the mythology of the alien’s development, distracted the film-makers from creating a plot to wrap around all this. The characters actions are too are often determined by the requirements of the plot, rather than logic or characterisation. So many dumb decisions are made, it stretches credibility: deflecting on a whim to a strange planet, charging around this alien world with careless abandon, following a clearly demented android you don’t trust into a room full of alien eggs – the plot requires each of the characters to perform various acts of stupidity in order for it to get anywhere.

The plot is also a hybrid that remixes beats from the previous films. No death (and there are loads of them) carries any surprise or shock value, and the alien itself (impressively filmed as the action is) behaves pretty much as you would expect. The familiarity of the events also makes the characters feel (to the audience) even more stupid and careless. There is excitement, but the film never really gets you to the edge of your seat – with its familiar action, and bland characters most of whom are little more than alien-fodder, you just never feel a tension or investment in their fates.

I wanted to like Alien: Covenant more than I actually did – but the truth is that it’s a film that lets itself down. There are moments of awe and wonder in there. It has a very good villain, whose motives and reasoning are interesting and thought-provoking. It has a terrific pair of performances by Michael Fassbender. But it’s also got too much flatness – plot and characters seem rushed and thinly sketched out. It’s clear where Scott’s and the writers’ focus was – and it means chunks of this movie just glide past the eyes and ears. Not the worst Alien film by a longshot – but still someway off the greatness of the first two films.

Rules of Engagement (2000)

Our heroes “Can’t Handle The Truth!” That’s okay though they don’t need to deal with it

Director: William Friedkin

Cast: Tommy Lee Jones (Col Hays Lawrence “Hodge” Hodges II), Samuel L. Jackson (Col Terry L. Childers), Guy Pearce (Maj Mark Biggs), Ben Kingsley (Ambassador Mourain), Bruce Greenwood (National Security Advisor Bill Sokal), Anne Archer (Mrs. Mourain), Blair Underwood (Capt Lee)

Jones and Jackson together! At least that was the cry at the time for this morally repugnant military courtroom drama. On a mission to rescue an ambassador from an embassy under siege, after a few marines are wounded (three are announced later as KIA), Jackson’s Colonel fires on a crowd of protesting civilians (a scheduled protest that has gone out of hand) killing 83 and wounding dozens more. Horrified, the suits at home decide to put him on trial for murder. Jones is his alcoholic (for plot reasons) lawyer, who tries to uncover the truth around a missing surveillance video which may (or may not) prove the crowd was armed.

This was a film that I think I’ve hated more and more since I watched it. In its defence: Friedkin directs the opening embassy siege well. The siege itself (denounced as racist at the time) comes across as enormously prescient considering the Arab Spring etc that we’ve seen since. Jones is pretty good, I guess, despite looking far too old for the part (he’s only two years younger than his supposed mother!). Jackson does the fireworks that are asked of him. It’s pretty well filmed in general.

Everything else in this film leaves a taste like three-week-old field rations. The courtroom dynamics are boring. The film doesn’t want Jackson to be a villain so repositions Greenwood and Kingsley’s characters as villains. Despite their best efforts, any sane person watching this film could not defend Jackson’s character’s actions here. The logic of the courtroom is ridiculous: a non-existent video tape overrules all other evidence, including a complete lack of bullet holes from guns from the street direction? I suppose you could argue the film wants us to make our own judgement on subjective recollections: but its stirring music and heroic worship of Jackson tell us firmly who we should be believing here. Basically the message seems to be: Embassies are American soil, raise a gun at them and you deserve everything you got coming.

The film tries to stack the decks overwhelmingly in support of its central character, but it just leaves an unpleasant taste in the mouth. For a start, our hero is cleared on a technicality – “There must be a surveillance tape and that tape might have cleared the Colonel so you should let him off” – that we are meant to cheer, but is in fact exactly the sort of closed ranks, protect-our-own cover-up that the supposedly villainous National Security Adviser denounces in the first place. It’s not even a good argument: all the actual available evidence clearly shows he’s guilty and Jackson even admits it on the witness stand! Ever heard of the Amritsar massacre? It’s a comparable event to this and one of our most shameful colonial actions. On the logic of this film it should be our finest hour.

On top of that, the film asks us to believe that a proportional response to being under fire from gunmen in a crowd full of civilians (including women and children) is to fire automatic weapons directly into the crowd. But that’s fine because Jackson’s character has a dream where he sees the Yemeni civilians all shooting up at him (didn’t see that the first time you showed it Friedkin!) including the photogenic one-legged girl the film has gone back to several times. So you go Samuel! Shoot up that crowd!

I could go on with the wonky morals of this horrible little film. The first thing we see Jackson’s character do on screen was to execute an unarmed prisoner (our hero, ladies and gentlemen!). Naturally the film has to exonerate him for this, so we have the Vietnamese officer who witnessed this turn up at the courtroom and say he would have done the same, then have the two of them tearfully salute each other outside the courtroom. So that’s fine then. It’s just another part of the film’s unpleasant attitude that you can’t even begin to question right or wrong in combat because, man, you weren’t there. Well I’m sorry but that doesn’t wash.

What is the moral of this unpleasant story? Well it seems to be that you can do almost anything you like so long as you can argue you have in someway saved lives (especially if they are American lives). Oh and that by extension, 1 American Marine’s life is worth just about 28 Yemeni lives. Go figure.

Lawless (2012)

Brothers in crime. You can get a taste of the performances just from this still image.

Director: John Hillcoat

Cast: Shia LaBeouf (Jack Bondurant), Tom Hardy (Forrest Bondurant), Jason Clarke (Howard Bondurant), Guy Pearce (Marshal Charley Rakes), Jessica Chastain (Maggie Beauford), Mia Wasikowska (Bertha Minnix), Dane DeHaan (Cricket Pate), Gary Oldman (Floyd Banner)

Bootlegging, the Deep South, corrupt cops and the honourable code of criminals. It’s the sort of cocktail that’s made up dozens of films, some good, some bad, some ugly. This one definitely falls into one of the latter two camps.

It’s 1931, and the Bondurant brothers (Shia LaBeouf, Tom Hardy and Jason Clarke) run a moonshine business out of their Virginian countryside garage. One day the cops come a-calling, led by a corrupt US Marshall (Guy Pearce). They want a piece of the action. The brothers say no. So war breaks out…

Truth be told, this is actually quite a boring film – a pointless, clumsily constructed shaggy dog story that neither makes a point about the shabbiness of a bootlegging life of crime, nor challenges romantic assumptions about the small time crook challenging the system. There are a couple of random flashy scenes thrown in to allow the film-makers to demonstrate their technical expertise, but it’s all as weightless as a braggart regaling their guests at a dinner table. Hot air masquerading as a lungful of fresh stuff.

The performances dance between underpowered, over stretched and over indulged. Shia LaBouef doesn’t make his nominal lead a fully formed character. Jason Clarke makes no real impact in an underwritten role. Tom Hardy is the best of the bunch, but barely stretches himself as a bearlike family leader. Of the other major parts, Guy Pearce gives the kind of twitchy, pyrotechnical performance that is often mistaken for brilliant acting, all highblown showing off and no depth. Jessica Chastain and Mia Wasikowska are wasted playing contrasting love interests. Gary Oldman pops up for one scene as an overblown crime lord.

These performances drift along in the formless plot. There are nasty moments of violence that serve no purpose and don’t seem to tie into established characters personalities. There are also poorly judged plot developments: at one point Jessica Chastain’s character is raped – mercifully off screen – an event never mentioned again. Characters are brutally dispatched; one has his manhood removed and posted to another character, others are strangled, shot or battered to death with spades. The violence continues on and off until the film ends with a confrontation scene between goodies and baddies. Nothing original or unique happens in this film – we’ve all seen it time and time again. There is no thrust to the story, no feeling that it is building towards a point or that a thematic point is being built. It’s just events happening for the sake of it.

Despite its flash and bravura crashes and bangs this is an empty, tedious movie that goes nowhere, says nothing and has no point. Nearly all the events of the film are predictable, from the fate of the villain to the crippled best friend (Dane DeHaan) who has victim written all over him from the first frame. Its surface sheen (it looks great, has a decent score etc.) and the look-at-me acting is enough to fool you for a moment into thinking “this must be a good film”. But it ain’t.