Silent Night (2023)

I can imagine the excitement that director John Woo must have felt when he was given the option to make an action film in which the lead character didn't speak. Maybe there was an earlier script draft that had some other characters speaking, maybe there wasn't, but Woo surely relished the opportunity to deliver his trademark visual flourishes with no pesky dialogue dragging things down. It's certainly a strong central idea, but it's one that cannot be maintained for the length of a feature. Nobody wanted to tell Woo that, however, which leaves us with this.

Joel Kinnaman plays Brian Godlock, a man we first see chasing after some gun-fighting gangsters. He manages to deal with some of them before being shot, and left for dead, by Playa (Harold Torres). He somehow survives though, although his voice doesn't. After time spent recovering in the hospital, Brian starts on a path of revenge. It turns out that those gun-fighting gangsters accidentally killed his son. Getting himself armed and learning techniques from online videos, Brian doesn't care if he survives his quest. He only cares about taking the life of the man who killed his son. Oh, and there are some Christmas trimmings scattered here and there, seemingly just to work with the film title, like all of the non-speaking characters.

Written by Robert Archer Lynn, someone who must have been extremely grateful to have grabbed the interest of Woo, Silent Night has infrequent moments that hint at a much better film, but it’s generally a woeful experience. The fact that the central concept won’t actually work becomes clear quite early on, leaving viewers hoping for some patented Woo action, but Woo seems to have more faith in the script than it deserves.

Although there are some action sequences, none of them really hit the dizzyingly high bar set by Woo throughout many of the previous highlights of his filmography. In fact, the gunfire is particularly weak, Woo instead doing a much better job this time around with some car-based carnage. The varying quality of the action may not be so bad if alongside some strong dramatic performances, but the cast are all hampered by the lack of standard dialogue.

Kinnaman can be a great actor in the right roles. This is not one of the right roles for him. Watching him attempt to yell out in rage with no sound coming from his voicebox is just one of many poor, occasionally laughable, moments. Kid Cudi, billed here as Scott Mescudi, is a cop who ends up drawn into the trail of violence, but his character could have been played by almost anyone. As for Torres, he is a generic villain with no real charisma or personality, basically waiting around to be confronted as the “final boss”. None of those people are treated as poorly as Catalina Sandino Moreno, who has to play the suffering wife who also chooses not to speak to her voiceless husband (for no reason other than the script requires her to, because . . . Silent Night).

Many fans of Woo may have been waiting for his return to American movie-making, but I think this just proves that he continues to do his best work in his home country. I love both of his Travolta-starring movies, and I actually don’t mind Paycheck, but it remains obvious that fans of his action and style would be better off revisiting his impressive back catalogue than awaiting any new mainstream offerings from him. Each one offers disappointingly diminishing returns.

3/10

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Sympathy For The Devil (2023)

You are not in for a good time if you park up somewhere and end up with someone sliding into the back of your car and telling you to drive. Things would be more tense if you were due to join your wife while she was in the throes of labour. And it would really be mad if that passenger was a red-haired Nicolas Cage. Don’t worry though. You are unlikely to be put in this situation. Joel Kinnaman is though, and this film is all about his fateful encounter with an unwanted passenger who seems convinced that he is someone else entirely. Is Cage right? Is he human? Will Kinnaman survive this car ride and reunite with his family?

Directed by Yuval Adler, Sympathy For The Devil is a fun thriller that is elevated by Cage being perfectly cast in a role that allows him to deliver the kind of fun and quirky performance that fans often love. It may not be in line with the previous films helmed by Adler, from what I can surmise, but it’s certainly in line with a number of great Cage films.

Writer Luke Paradise probably couldn’t believe his luck when the leads were cast. His script is good, especially for a film-writing debut, but it’s far from perfect, and every piece of dialogue is improved by the leads delivering it. It’s just a shame that the actual destination doesn’t feel as enjoyable as the journey, making the finale a bit hard to care about, especially when it means the ultimate end of such a great and tense dynamic between the two main characters.

Cage is an absolute blast, and seems to know that this is a perfect role for him, but Kinnaman ensures that he plays off him perfectly, channeling his inner John Hawkes as he personifies a mix of nerves and apparent bad luck. Others appear onscreen occasionally, with Alexis Zollicoffer a highlight as a friendly/sassy diner waitress, but the film generally stays tightly focused on Cage and Kinnaman. Talk about playing to your strengths.

I would have like just a bit more here, wishing the film had gone even darker and possibly stayed more ambiguous in the third act, but what we get is a lot of fun. The technical side of things is all on point, and the visuals are accompanied by a perfectly complementary score from Ishai Adar, and those who see the trailer for this, or read a plot summary, and think they will like it, shouldn’t be disappointed by the end result.

8/10

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The Suicide Squad (2021)

There's an extra factor at play here, something that makes The Suicide Squad feel like it deserves to be relished more than perhaps any previous superhero movie within the recent selection of DC adventures. Because writer-director James Gunn got this gig after some idiot attempted to lose him work with Marvel/Disney, which temporarily worked, allowing him to deliver this film . . . before returning to Marvel/Disney for the third Guardians Of The Galaxy movie. So thanks to that idiot, with a name I have already forgotten, for allowing us to receive even more fun from Gunn.

The plot is relatively simple. A squad is assembled for a mission that doesn't seem to have much chance for survival. That squad includes Harley Quinn (Margot Robbie), Bloodsport (Idris Elba), Peacemaker (John Cena), Ratcatcher (Daniela Melchior), King Shark (voiced by Sylvester Stallone), Polka-Dot Man (David Dastmalchian), and one or two others. They wade into the hostile territory of Corto Maltese, where they end up plotting to apprehend an important figure named Thinker (Peter Capaldi).

If there's one word you could use to describe The Suicide Squad it's gleeful. Gunn gleefully throws around bucket-loads of blood and gore, mixing laughs in with the action to provide the most twisted and anarchic superhero film since, well, Super. Strangely enough, that sense of anarchy still manages to feel very calculated and formulaic. The film is wild fun when compared to other movies within this subgenre, but it's not all that surprising when you know the kind of film it is aiming to be, and Gunn makes that pretty clear from the opening sequence (with great use of the song "People Who Died", by the Jim Carroll Band). Thankfully, the set-pieces are entertaining enough to keep your spirits high, and there are also one or two moments that allow viewers to remember that Gunn is good at giving his high-budget fare a good bit of heart and soul.

Robbie remains arguably the most valuable jewel in the crown of this movie universe, and is once again excellent, while Elba makes effortless cool again look . . . effortlessly cool. Cena is a lot of fun in his role, Melchior and Dastmalchian are both wonderful, and Stallone's vocal work is a lot of fun. But it would be very easy to criticise these characters for obvious parallels, considering the direction from Gunn. King Shark may have more words in his vocabulary, but feels quite Groot-ish, and Cena is as humourless as Drax. Consider Harley Quinn as an equal to Rocket, and that just leaves you wondering whether Elba would be Peter Quill or Gamora. It might seem unfair to think of those comparisons while the film is on, but Gunn practically invites them by the fact that he seems to be drawn to the same kind of ragtag bunch of lovable rogues. 

Each main act here has enough inventiveness and energy to blow away that feeling of over-saturation that many film fans have been experiencing lately. Superhero movies aren't going away any time soon, but that's not a problem when we get some more variety from the films being released. And if that variety sometimes comes from focusing on "the villains" then all the better, because I enjoyed this more than I enjoyed Suicide Squad. And I liked Suicide Squad well enough.

8/10

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Sci-Fi September: RoboCop (2014)

Despite my love for the original movie, and my worry at the sanitisation of the material in an attempt to reach a wider audience, I was willing to give this new version of RoboCop a shot, I really was. Let's be honest, despite the intense violence of the original movie, the main character was eventually watered down and repackaged for kids anyway, in everything from TV shows to action figures to computer games. Yes, I have fond memories of that side-scrolling shooter that I played on my chunky little ZX Spectrum, and I'm sure many others of my generation have similar recollections.

Anyway, here's the thing, RoboCop starts off quite well. It's taking a different tack from the original movie, deciding to focus more on the idea of free will than the struggle between man and machine parts, although that also plays a big part in the film. Joel Kinnaman is the main character, Officer Murphy. He is seriously injured when he gets too close to some major criminals, and OCP gain permission from his wife (Abbie Cornish) to give him a second chance to live, albeit in a robotic shell that will house the small remains of his organic body. Gary Oldman is the doctor in charge of the project, Michael Keaton is the man looking for a return on his invested money, and Jackie Earle Haley simply seems intent on appearing in as many piss-poor remakes as possible.

Jose Padilha is a great director, he has some titles that are well worth checking out, but I won't list his filmography here. Unfortunately, you wouldn't know that from his work here. He's saddled with a lame script by Joshua Zetumer, Edward Neumeier, and Michael Miner, but that's not really an excuse for how badly he starts to fumble and drop the ball after the first 20-30 minutes. A sequence showing RoboCop going through an evaluation test, accompanied by a Focus song, Hocus Pocus, holds up as the first major low. It's bloodless, unexciting, messy, and far too similar to just watching a videogame, albeit one far more advanced than my ZX Spectrum games. And most of the scenes that come along afterwards just stick to that level.

Kinnaman is far too bland in the lead role, unfortunately, and Cornish is stuck with the same motivation for 80% of the movie - to get near her husband and feel that he's still the man she knew and loved for so long. Thankfully, there are other performances that help to make the whole thing bearable. Samuel L. Jackson is a lot of fun as an opinionated TV presenter, Jay Baruchel is enjoyable in a small role, and Haley actually does his best with the character he's given. But it's Keaton and Oldman who are the undoubted highlights, with the former able to rise above shallow characterisation simply thanks to his natural charisma, and the latter benefitting from the fact that he has the best character in the whole film. He may do what he's told by Keaton, but it's always clear that he struggles with his own urge to help his fellow man.

As everything meanders to an unexciting, and entirely predictable, finale it's all too easy to start agreeing with the many people who cursed the movie before it was even released. Many expected the worst, due to the rating and redesign of the central character. They got it. We all got it. This is a stinker. So bad that I wouldn't even recommend buying it for a dollar.

3/10

http://www.amazon.com/Robocop-Blu-ray-Joel-Kinnaman/dp/B00JL6L4WC/ref=sr_1_3?s=movies-tv&ie=UTF8&qid=1411245934&sr=1-3&keywords=robocop

The Darkest Hour (2011)

There's a decent idea or two in The Darkest Hour. Indeed, there's a decent set-piece or two, and I enjoyed a fair bit of the movie. It kept me nicely entertained for about an hour or so. Unfortunately, that's only two thirds of the movie. The other half hour just doesn't do much at all, leading up to a grand finale that it's difficult to find exciting and enjoyable.

Emile Hirsch and Max Minghella play two young men who are in Moscow to try and get backing for their super duper app that they think will take the world by storm when a bunch of aliens land to . . . . . . . . . . . . . . take the world by storm. The lads end up accompanied by Olivia Thirlby, Rachael Taylor and Joel Kinnaman as they try to stay alive and figure out how to fight back against an unseen enemy. Oh, that's right, these aliens are invisible, although their presence can be detected by electrical components (usually light bulbs, but sometimes phones and radios) that experience a power surge when they are nearby.

The screenplay by Jon Spaihts may be weak, laughably so at times, but it does what's needed to quickly sketch out the characters, sketch out the situation, and get everyone up to speed with the science being used throughout the movie (which I am assuming is movie science, as opposed to real science). In other words, it's capable enough, but lacking any decent dialogue that isn't exposition.

Director Chris Gorak has some fun, especially in one or two set-pieces that will remind viewers of how much better the movie could have been, and he certainly tries to keep everyone entertained with a mix of tension and spectacle. He may not succeed with the former aspect, but the spectacle works, whether it's on a large scale or just showing the aliens killing individual victims by making them dematerialise in a swirling cloud of pain and puzzlement.

Hirsch, Minghella, Thirlby and Taylor make for an okay band of survivors, with Kinnaman adding to the fun as someone who proves early on just how selfish he is. Veronika Vernadskaya joins them in the second half of the film, and there's a couple of good attempts to convince viewers that nobody is guaranteed to make it to the end credits, nobody is safe from the invisible invaders.

Dumb fun, that's all this is. I enjoyed it while it was on and I'd watch it again. But, then again, I'm easily pleased, so do bear that in mind.

6/10

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Darkest-Hour-Blu-ray-Digital-Copy/dp/B005ZCBT4E/ref=sr_1_6?ie=UTF8&qid=1389612777&sr=8-6&keywords=the+darkest+hour