The Gunman (2015) Review

Lucas Versantvoort / March 28, 2015

*big sigh* You know what the main problem with The Gunman is? The expectations it creates. You’d think that casting Sean Penn, one of Hollywood’s most intense actors, as your lead, and even having him co-produce and co-write the damn thing, that your film would at least be marginally interesting and not just a mindless action flick…which makes it all the more terrible when The Gunman turns out to be precisely that.

            The film starts out with all that news footage (so many films like to use) of Congo, presumably to establish that The Gunman aims to be a political thriller (by the way: it’s not). Protagonist Terrier’s part of a mercenary team currently operating in Congo. Penn’s instructed to kill a minister with a sniper rifle which he does, after which he’s forced to leave the country, but in doing so, leaving his mistress behind. Eight years later, Terrier returns to Congo to work for an NGO, but suddenly finds himself hunted down by mercenaries. He realizes someone must’ve leaked that he killed the minister. This kick off his quest to discover who betrayed him.

Sounds like it could be pretty god, right? Right, except the execution is miserable. The film wants so badly for us to take Terrier’s relationship with his mistress seriously, but just showing them all lovey-dovey doesn’t come within a country ass mile of getting the job done and neither does letting her act like a classic damsel in distress. Seriously, the only ‘active’ thing she does is fleeing from the bad guy’s grasp. The action is occasionally quite engaging, especially during a Jason Bourne-esque fight scene towards the end, but the plot never really makes sense. The film wobbles along during its opening half hour when I suddenly wondered what the ever-loving point was. It takes a while before the film settles into its main mystery and it’s nice when it does, but even there you never risk becoming even mildly intrigued, which also makes the film’s half-assed attempts at sociopolitical commentary even more pathetic.

When I later discovered The Gunman was directed by the guy who did the first Taken, I realized where the film went off the rails. You see, Taken was straightforward up until the moment it introduced the whole underground human trafficking side of things, but it made the smart move by not spending too much time on it. The Gunman on the other hand pays so much attention to Congo and Penn’s character—not to mention the presence of Javier Bardem and Idris Elba—that you start to think, “hmm, maybe this film isn’t just some random action flick, but is actually trying to say something meaningful.” Taken didn’t have this problem, but because The Gunman raises this expectation within the audience, it’s all the more crushing when you realize again and again the film’s got nothing substantial to offer. I mean, take the clichéd scene where the lovers reunite after eight years. Is it done with subtlety, some  modicum of taste? No, don’t be ridiculous! Let’s just have her enter his apartment while he’s shirtless (of course!) and have them gnaw each other’s faces off like in so many a Hollywood film. Are Bardem and Elba given anything interesting to do? Nope, of course not. And don’t even get me started on the countless scenes specifically designed to show off Penn’s bulky torso. I mean, what is the point of that surfing scene? That was precisely the moment when I started to question the type of film I was watching. Penn assassinates the Congolese minister, flees the country and before you can say ‘Baywatch’ we’re greeted with sumptuous footage of Penn riding the waves…uhh wait, what!? Is this a (political) thriller or a rom-com!?

            It’s obvious the director tried to do for Penn what he did so successfully with Liam Neeson and what Matthew Vaughn succeeded in doing with Colin Firth in Kingsman, turn him into an action hero. Naturally, The Gunman fails miserably, but I do think Penn’s got the intensity to pull off action quite well, if only the end product exudes some quality as well.

The Imitation Game (2014) Review

Lucas Versantvoort / March 28, 2015

I admit that when I saw that the Weinsteins were involved with The Imitation Game, I was half expecting this to be this year’s The King’s Speech, tailor-made Oscar bait. Although this is partly true, the fact is that, despite some flaws, The Imitation Game is compelling cinema dedicated to one of the founding fathers of what we today call computers. You know, nothing major…

            The film starts with a voice-over of Cumberbatch as Alan Turing telling someone, and of course symbolically us, to only judge him once we’ve heard the whole story. The film then proceeds to cross-cut between three time periods: Turing as a college kid, Turing cracking Enigma during WWII and several years later as he’s being investigated by the police for some reason. The film tends to cross-cut between these periods in meaningful ways, emphasizing for instance how his OCD and autism that troubles him in daily life are rooted in his childhood. The film is as much about cracking Enigma as it is about cracking Turing the human being.

            In 1939 Turing visits Bletchley Park and, after an awkward job interview, is brought onto the team tasked with cracking Enigma, the encryption device used by the Germans. If you can crack Enigma, you’ll intercept all German communications which would give you a pretty substantial advantage in the war to say the least. Cracking it, however, would take roughly twenty million years, but Turing goes ahead and starts making a machine that should crack Enigma. His relationships with his colleagues and his superiors are another matter entirely however…

            Biopics like this will always be judged from a historic point of view: how closely does it stick to what really happened? Judging a historic film on that basis, however, would be a great mistake. A film doesn’t succeed when it follows history to the letter; I believe that a biopic succeeds when it makes history come alive. The Imitation Game sits somewhere between these points of view. On the one hand, the film succeeds in making you feel for Turing and experience the pressures he was subjected to. On the other hand, some of the ways in which the film deviates from history seem unnecessary and for the sake of artificially enhancing the drama. For instance, the grandchildren of Commander Denniston have stated the film unjustifiably portrays Denniston as a bad guy, while there are no records stating this to be have been the case. Conveniently, this provides the film with some added tension, as Denniston lacks the patience to wait for Turing’s machine to work. There’s also a subplot involving a Soviet spy that likely didn’t take place either. The portrayal of Turing’s autism was also probably exaggerated, again obviously for dramatic reasons (his uncomfortable relationships with his colleagues), the list goes on.

            Despite these unfortunate deviations from history, the film does succeed in making Turing come alive and conveying the significance of his contribution to WWII and the development of computers in general. The casting of Cumberbatch also works, not just because of his stellar acting, but because his, well, ‘unique’ looks make his social exclusion more believable. If there’s one other complaint I’d level at the film, it’s that the scale of the narrative is too big for its own good. The film shows Turing’s younger years, the WWII years and his arrest around ’51. As if that isn’t enough, there’s also the subplot involving the spy, his relationship with Joan Clarke, etc. Trying to cram all this into two hours makes some of it feel rushed.

            All in all though, The Imitation Game is compellingly made. And though I take issue with some of the deviations from history, that responsibility also lies with us cinemagoers. After all, only a fool would watch The Imitation Game and think: “well, that was surely 100% accurate. I now know everything I need to know about Turing.”

Wild (2014) Review

Lucas Versantvoort / March 21, 2015

Wild is a film where you know what to expect. As soon as you read about the dramatic, road trippy nature of the film, you already know it’s really more about the protagonist’s tragic past than the trip itself. You already know past and present will meet in more ways than one and that by journey’s end, the main character will have dealt with her issues somewhat. As such, the film contains zero structural surprises, but the journey is still quite entertaining.

            The film opens with Cheryl (Reese Witherspoon) arriving at one of the many hills that dot America’s landscape along the PCT route. She takes off her boot to find that her big toe nail has gone loose. As she tries to, well, take care’ of it, her boot falls off the cliff. In her anger, she tosses the other boot right along with it, producing a hearty “fuck you, bitch”. As she screams at the top of her lungs, the film produces a flurry of images from her past that have brought her to where she’s now, screaming in the middle of nowhere. As she travels, we get a constantly growing idea of what her past was like, how past experiences have defined her, her curious relationship with her mother (Laura Dern), etc. She also meets a lot of other people along the way, some of them travelers, others not so much.

            Despite the lack of surprises, structurally speaking, the film’s still an entertaining ride. Only occasionally does the film feel long, although that’s inevitable in a film about an 1100 mile journey. The biggest pleasure is how the film steadily gives away more hints about Cheryl’s past in the form of flashbacks and how you get to decode some of it of early on. The only downside is that some of the symbolism can be heavy-handed, like when a dead character suddenly stands before Cheryl or when blood drips on her face when she remembers a bloody part of her life. I guess the film’s trying to make up for what is essentially a slow film, but a bit more subtlety would’ve been preferred. On the other hand, the way the film treats memory is quite interesting. I like how Cheryl tends to remember bits and pieces instead of the entire memory and how a memory can be triggered in a very Proustian way, through smell and so on.

            I suppose a film like this, which offers no real answers, might make some ask, “what’s the ever-loving point?” Maybe there is no point. Maybe coming to grips with the past isn’t something that fits within the 2-hour confines of a single film, but lasts a lifetime. All I know is I enjoyed watching Cheryl make her journey and trying to come to grips with her past.