Netflix And Chill: In The Land Of Saints And Sinners (2023)

I'm not one to usually worry about films being offensive. Nothing much bothers me, I'm in the main demographic for characters who aren't used as punchlines, and I've watched far too many Troma movies to be bothered by tastelessness or mishandling of potentially sensitive issues. So I hope you understand how much thought I gave it before I decided that In The Land Of Saints And Sinners feels offensively bad in the way it uses the Troubles in Ireland as a backdrop for what becomes yet another standard Liam Neeson thriller. It didn't personally bother me, but I have a lot of friends over the water I can imagine may be a bit irked by this, to put it mildly.

Neeson plays Finbar Murphy, a man who lives in County Donegal, working as a contract killer for a local crime boss (played by the superb Colm Meaney). Murphy starts off a violent chain of events when he voluntarily helps an abusive prick shuffle off this mortal coil. Unfortunately, that abusive prick was the brother of a strong-willed terrorist (Doireann, played by Kerry Condon), which leads to her, and her accomplices, working to find the killer, no matter who else gets caught up in the crossfire.

While this feels like an accomplished debut from director Robert Lorenz, it isn't. He may not have too many credits to his name, but Lorenz has been around long enough to hone his skills. The same can be said of writer Terry Loane. It's co-writer Mark Michael McNally who is the first-timer, which makes me wonder if he was the person who came up with the sorely-misjudged main premise (although maybe I am just viewing it that way because it feels a bit closer to home than other films that have used similar backgrounds for some kind of redemption story arc).

The cast all do good work, with both Condon and Neeson on top form, and emanating an undeniably powerful energy in the scenes that have them facing one another. Meaney is always a great presence onscreen, Jack Gleeson does a great job in the role of a young man who doesn't consider how he might end up one day regretting his actions, and Ciarán Hinds is a friendly local Garda officer. There are also good performances from Desmond Eastwood, Niamh Cusack, Michelle Gleeson, Sarah Greene, and everyone else filling out the cast of supporting characters.

I'd be very interested to hear from others who watched this, and especially any of my pals over on the Emerald Isle. Am I wrong for wanting this to have been better, for wanting it to justify the use of the events used as the background to the story? It could have been tweaked so easily, and I don't think there would have been anything lost (especially if Neeson had the same background to his character). In fact, it could have possibly even been improved by setting it in the here and now, showing people who refused to let go of some old tactics while the older and wiser heads remembered how many lives were shattered and destroyed by their actions.

Competent, technically-speaking, but fairly incompetent when you consider the decisions made at the writing stage, this is somehow more egregious than the dozen or more Neeson movies that simply try to replicate the success of the Taken series. Or maybe it's just me thinking that way.

4/10

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Unwelcome (2022)

Maya (Hannah John-Kamen) and Jamie (Douglas Booth) are a young couple who we see going through a terrible ordeal at the start of this movie. So when Jamie is informed that he has inherited a house in Ireland it seems as if things are looking up. There’s only one catch, explained to them by a local woman. An offering has to be left out every night for the little people. A bit of liver or some other raw meat, making it a blood offering. Maya and Jamie roll their eyes at this idea, but decide to go along with it. They have just been given a house, it’s the least they can do. And it may end up saving them when they end up inadvertently hiring the wrong family of builders to work on renovating their home.

Directed by Jon Wright, who once again worked with Mark Stay on the script (the two also co-wrote Robot Overlords), Unwelcome is a horror movie laced with moments of comedy that sadly fails to get the balance right. And it’s not as if Wright shouldn’t be able to handle the mix, given how well he did with the wonderful Grabbers. 

The problems start with the script, which spectacularly fails to give you anything that feels plausible, as well as making the main characters too annoying to root for. But you have to root for Maya because she’s pregnant. Okay, the themes of motherhood and protection run through the entire the film, but I still cannot help feeling that making a main character pregnant is an easy and lazy way to force viewers to be on their side.

Things aren’t helped by the weak acting from our leads. I have seen John-Kamen and Booth give decent performances in other works, but they are both quite poor in this, with the latter suffering from the script going too far to show his inability to be the protector that his partner needs. In fact, almost every decision that is made by Booth’s character makes any situation worse, and I spent a lot of the movie hoping to see him be killed off, which I don’t think was the intention of the film-makers. The antagonists do a much better job though, headed up by a fun Colm Meaney. He is the patriarch (“call me Daddy”) and has fun as he weaves between being jovial and menacing. His children are played by Kristian Nairn, Chris Walley, and Jamie-Lee O’Donnell, with the latter being the best of the bunch, and getting away with a bit more inappropriate behaviour as she toys with the new man in the village. Niamh Cusack also has a small role, but she is leading a supporting cast of players who all seem to have been pulled from the “to be sure, to be sure, shamrocks and shillelaghs, every green-eyed Irish stereotype casting company”. The dialogue and character types populating the rest of the movie will have many cringing with embarrassment.

There’s a 5-10 minute segment in the third act that hints at how good this could have been. It feels fun, there are some entertaining bits of bloodshed, and the effects work well enough for what the film wants to show. That’s all you get though, and that glimpse of something better just makes the rest of the film all the worse. It’s really bad. I sincerely hope that Wright gets back on track with whatever he directs next. 

3/10

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Hereafter (2010)

It sometimes frustrates me when it takes so long to get to films that I knew I might be interested in. Seeing Hereafter proved to be more frustrating than usual, mainly thanks to a first act that reminded me of a major recent release with one major difference. Hereafter did everything just a bit better. It's not a great movie, by any means, but there are moments that almost reach that level and that opening sequence, featuring a devastating tsunami, is one of them. The fact that it decided to go down a fictional path in order to best tell its story is the main reason for me preferring it to The Impossible, but it's not the only one.

I'd better clarify just now that the two films then go on wildly different trajectories. I simply couldn't help commenting on the similarities during the powerful first half hour of the movie because, well, that's what will spring to mind for many viewers nowadays. Now I'd better move on to the rest of the film.

Matt Damon plays a psychic, but he's a real psychic. It's not a gift that he has, it's a curse, and he's chosen to turn his back on it all. He doesn't want the money or any fame, he just wants to feel normal. His brother (Jay Mohr) keeps trying to convince him that he should be helping people, and making plenty of money, but "a life that's all about death is no life at all."
Cecile De France plays Marie Lelay, a journalist who finds herself caught up in that aforementioned tsunami and then, understandably, deeply affected afterwards.
George and Frankie McLaren play twin brothers who muddle through life together as their heroin addicted mother often leaves them to their own devices. When one twin is suddenly taken away in a fatal accident it all becomes a bit too much for the one who is left, a young man seeking answers and maybe just another chance to communicate with his brother.
These three people have all been touched by death in some way, but perhaps something good can come out of it.

Directed by Clint Eastwood, from a script by Peter Morgan, Hereafter is a strange mix of the jaded and the optimistic helped by a solid cast. It takes ideas of spirituality and plays them out in a completely straightforward, if sometimes slightly schmaltzy, manner.

I've been a big fan of Matt Damon for a number of years now and, whatever you think of the whole film, he's superb here as someone cursed with what some see as a gift. The scenes with him and Bryce Dallas Howard, as a woman he meets and wants to spend some quality time with, may be obvious and even a bit heavy-handed, but they're also quite affecting. Cecile De France has the least interesting journey in the movie, but she does fine in her role. George and Frankie McLaren are stand outs and the movie actually peaks during the sequence in which the boy visits a number of people who claim they can contact the dead and watches blankly as they go through different nonsensical procedures to convince him that they're communicating with "the other side".

Technically proficient, with a couple of absolutely superb set-pieces (one near the beginning and one at just about the hour mark), the biggest problem with Hereafter is the way in which Eastwood takes something that needs a more delicate touch and proceeds to make everything far too obvious and emotionally moving. It DID move me, but I'm a sucker when it comes to that kind of easy manipulation so all I can really do is warn others about it as it's already too late for me.

There are too many negatives for Hereafter to be a great film, not least of which is the way in which the central subject matter is treated (a way that will put many off), but it has some great moments within it. It's just a shame that they're placed in between scenes of much lower quality.

6/10

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Hereafter-Triple-Blu-ray-Digital-Region/dp/B004MKNOGQ/ref=sr_1_3?ie=UTF8&qid=1360705539&sr=8-3