Mubi Monday: Julia (2008)

It's not often that you can watch a movie starring Tilda Swinton without appreciating the acting skills of Tilda Swinton. Julia doesn't change that. It gives Swinton a lead role that may well rank up there with her very best. It is just a shame that the film around that performance isn’t as good as her work deserves, although I have already noticed that I am seriously in the minority with this opinion.

Julia (Swinton, of course) is an alcoholic about to lose everything. Her job, her home, maybe even her life if she keeps blacking out and ending up in the bed of whatever stranger is most responsive to her. Things look set to change, however, when a woman asks for help to get her son (Aidan Gould) back in her life. The young boy is apparently in the custody of family on his father’s side, and Julia can get a big payday if she effectively kidnaps him to return him home. You can imagine how well this plan unfolds, but each extra “wrinkle” ends up changing Julia, perhaps changing her into a better person.

Director Erick Zonca, who also co-wrote the screenplay with a number of different collaborators, has a good handle on where he wants this cinematic journey to take us, and also where he wants it to take the main character. Unfortunately, many of the scenes in between the more impressive moments don’t work half as well as they should. For all her great work, Swinton is left adrift in situations that feel messy and pointless. I get that the style of the film may be signifying the very messy and unhealthy mental state of Julia, but it’s difficult to sit through without becoming frustrated and/or bored, especially when those scenes make up so much of a movie that runs for just over two and a quarter hours.

In fact, let me put it this way; the film only ever hits the heights it aims for in the scenes that focus on Swinton and Gould. Everything else feels like white noise, with the exception of a scene or two stolen by Saul Rubinek.

I started this review by praising Swinton, I have JUST mentioned how good she and Gould are together, and that’s all I have to do. Julia is a weak film that is lucky enough to be hung on some excellent performances. There’s nothing else to really praise here, despite those involved trying to use some thriller genre tropes to help disguise what may have worked better as a more straightforward character study. It’s particularly telling that the very best moments here could be removed from the film and displayed as a short, with very little or no context, and they would work just as well. All thanks to Swinton, Gould, and Rubinek.

Hugely disappointing in many ways, but absolutely worth your time if you are a fan of the lead. The good doesn’t manage to outweigh the bad, but it helps to raise my final rating to absolutely average.

5/10

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No Good Deed (2014)

Idris Elba is a horrible person. In this movie. In real life, from what I have seen of his many public appearances, he seems like a lovely guy. But in this movie he's playing a horrible person. It's just a shame that the film is also quite horrible.

Elba plays Colin, a man who is hoping for parole after serving five years in prison on a manslaughter charge. His parole is refused, with at least one board member reminding everyone that Colin was also the main suspect in the murders of five different women. Heading back to prison, Colin escapes and immediately heads out to get revenge on his ex-fiancée (Alexis, played by Kate del Castillo). He also ends up losing control of his car, and inveigling his way into the home of Terri (Taraji P. Henson), a neglected wife and busy mother of two. And so begins a tense game of cat and mouse.

Well, that's what should happen. What you end up getting is a bit different.

Director Sam Miller has a career full of some quality TV work (including Luther, another show that did great things for Elba), but he tries to maintain a cinematic sheen to the predictable dross here. There's nothing too showy, and he can often let viewers simply enjoy the leads interacting with one another, but there's nothing too static and "stage-bound" either.

Writer Aimee Lagos, with one short and one other feature to her credit (both of which she also directed), is the person who lets everyone down. Her script is trite, drawn out, despite the brief runtime, and often almost outright laughable. The fact that Elba and Henson make the thing even remotely watchable is testament to their talent. Make a list of everything you see in thrillers that make a lead character seem dumb, often just to sustain things until an established end point, and you can check off every item while watching this.

I don't need to go on any more about how good the leads are. I at least knew that I was a fan of both actors before I started watching the film. I didn't expect greatness, but I was hoping for some fun. There are some fun moments, and all of them happen in the scenes that have Elba and Henson working opposite one another in a fluid and flirtatious manner. Leslie Bibb does well in a supporting role (a best friend named Meg), the kind of role that means you just know what's going to happen as soon as you see her billing, and the few other players do perfectly fine, including the young children.

It's not as bad as some ridiculous thrillers, granted, but this is bad. There's not enough room for the plot to have any decent twists and turns, even if Lagos could have been bothered to try harder, and every minute of runtime makes things feel less and less plausible. It's not a painful experience though. It's just a sadly unenjoyable one.

4/10

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Bad Boys For Life (2020)

I went to see Bad Boys in the cinema when it first came out. That was twenty five bloody years ago. It was great fun. The film itself didn't do anything new, not really, but it worked so well because of the pairing of stars Will Smith and Martin Lawrence, as well as some great supporting players. I cannot recall when I first saw the second movie. Taking things up a level, it was a bombastic and entertaining flick, making the two movies a great double-bill. But nobody seemed to be crying out for a third, especially this far down the line. Well, nobody except maybe Martin Lawrence (who seemed to pretty much disappear after a number of star vehicles that showed how he worked best when paired up alongside someone more talented).

Life is pretty much the same for Miami detectives Mike Lowery (Smith) and Marcus Burnett (Lawrence). The former is still a cool ladies man, the latter is settling more and more into the content family life he hopes to embrace fully when he retires. Everything changes for them, however, when a mother (Kate del Castillo) sends her son (Jacob Scipio) on a mission to target and kill a number of people she has a vendetta against, including Lowery, who is to be left until last, after he has watched the others die.

It may no longer be Michael Bay at the helm (nice cameo though), but this has a touch of his style here and there to ensure that this third instalment fits perfectly alongside the others. You get plenty of shots that feel almost filtered directly through the Miami sunshine, you get at least one "Bad Boys" shot (you know the one, camera looking up at the main characters, moving around them as they grit their teeth and silently agree that shit just got real), and the action isn't afraid to pile up the bodies while anything flammable gets ready to explode. There's nothing here quite as over the top as the action set-pieces in Bad Boys 2, but that's not necessarily a bad thing. Every main sequence is very well put together, and the finale delivers something very satisfying.

Directors Adil El Arbi and Bilall Fallah do a great job of working the familiar elements into something both entertainingly familiar and yet also fresh enough to make it worth your time. The script, by Chris Bremner, Peter Craig, and Joe Carnahan, has the blend of action and humour you expect, and also brings in a main story strand that forces the main characters to rethink their whole approach to things.

Smith and Lawrence slip very easily back into their rapport, with both bringing out the best in one another, and a number of actors return from the previous two movies, not least of which is the great Joe Pantoliano as the put-upon Captain. There's a new team tasked with working the main case, headed up by Paola Núñez, and featuring Vanessa Hudgens, Alexander Ludwig, and Charles Melton. All of them do well alongside the more seasoned stars. Scipio is a very believable threat at all times, and Del Castillo is a scarily single-minded mastermind behind the death and destruction.

Some people really LOVE the Bad Boys movies, and I'm not sure if they will enjoy this one as much as I did. I have tended to like them all about the same, each one has strengths and weaknesses, and this allows it to now be a superb action comedy trilogy. Will they go for a fourth one? Possibly. Will I watch it, despite reservations? Definitely. Whatcha gonna do?

7/10

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