Film Review: After Earth

After Earth. Rated M (science fiction themes and violence). 100 minutes. Directed by M. Night Shyamalan. Screenplay by Gary Whitta and M. Night Shyamalan.

Verdict: Deep space Smith and Son has its moments.

The first time we saw Will Smith and his (then eight-year-old) son Jaden in a film together was The Pursuit of Happyness (2006), a story about a man taking custody of his young son as he pursues his ambitions for financial security and independence. Smith Snr was nominated for a Best Actor Oscar (he lost to The Last King of Scotland’s Forest Whitaker), but the real-life father and son bond was beautifully transferred to the big screen and provided the film with a valuable layer of familial authenticity.

In After Earth, that same level of authenticity serves as both an asset and a distraction, as father and (now 15-year-old son) go head-to-head for screen time in a film that is only ever about a father and son relationship – even in spite of its far too literal, seen-it-all-before, sci-fi pretensions.

A cataclysmic environmental disaster has seen the human race abandon Earth for the planet they now call home – Nova Prime. Cypher (Smith Snr) is a celebrated general in a peace-keeping organisation that keeps the inhabitants of the new world safe from the marauding Ursas – creatures that hunt humans by sensing their fear. Kitai (Smith Jnr) is trying desperately hard to be just like his father, even though he feels responsible for the death of his sister Senshi (Zoë Isabella Kravitz), who was killed by an Ursa in their home. When Cypher and Kitai are the only survivors of a spaceship after it has crashed on the now quarantined Earth, Kitai must race against time (and the planet’s hostile predators), to retrieve a distress beacon that will save both his severely wounded Dad and himself from certain death.

Veteran cinematographer Peter Suschitzky (Star Wars: Episode V – The Empire Strikes Back, The Rocky Horror Picture Show) brings real class to the proceedings, especially in the penultimate, particularly impressive sequences atop a volcano, when Kitai takes on his greatest fear. They are also the only scenes in which Smith Jnr appears to be entirely comfortable in front of the camera. Smith Snr takes the sombre route all the way through, and his usual lightness of touch is sacrificed to a deadly earnest performance of one-note seriousness.

Shyamalan (The Last Airbender, The Happening, The Village, Signs, The Sixth Sense) delivers it all to the screen with occasional flourishes of originality, but his and Whitta’s (The Book of Eli) otherwise passable rites of passage screenplay is almost ruined entirely by their ‘Little Golden Book of Movie Endings’.

This review was commissioned by the West Australian Newspaper Group.

Film Review: Fast and Furious 6

Fast and Furious 6. Rated M (action violence and infrequent coarse language).130 minutes. Directed by Justin Lin. Screenplay by Chris Morgan.

Verdict: The Fast and Furious franchise reaches top gear.

When a film can’t even make up its mind about what it has to be called, you know the people responsible are at the very pinnacle of a certain kind of success. Fast 6, Furious 6 (as it appears on screen in the opening title credit), or Fast and Furious 6, this is the latest instalment in a ridiculously successful franchise that has defied the laws of cinema. Or re-written them completely. Whichever it is depends entirely on your own point of view.

Beginning with The Fast and the Furious (2000), this series of films about fast cars, gangs, covert undercover operations and an international array of locations usually reserved for movies about that certain secret agent 007, the (arguably) niche market to which these films speak has embraced them wholeheartedly. And it is not that difficult to understand why. While they might not be works of art, they are superbly produced action films about the true spirit of comeraderie, and this instalment will have you staring at the screen with a certain amount of jaw-dropping awe.

The Fast and Furious ‘family’ have split up around the globe to enjoy the spoils of their bank heist in Fast and Furious 5. But when Hobbs (Dwayne Johnson) brings Toretto (Vin Diesel) photographic evidence that the love of his life Letty (Michelle Rodriguez) is still alive and working for an opposing gang, Toretto reunites the team to take the weapon-stealing gang on and bring Letty back to the fold.

It’s impossible to fault the acting on show here because there isn’t any. As any Fast and Furious Fan knows, it’s all about the car-related stunts, and Morgan’s screenplay – a brilliantly engineered piece of ‘let’s get the talk out of the way so we can get back to the car chases’ – is embraced by the cast, who share his aspirations without question.

The irony is that they’re absolutely right to do so. The big action set pieces are simply gob-smacking, and Lin (Fast 3) and his Australian-born cinematographer Stephen Windon (Fast 3, 5 and 6), nail them with breath-taking precision. The final sequence, which takes place on the longest airport runway known to mankind, is an instant classic, and the post-credits scene sets up Fast and Furious 7 with this series’ signature confidence. Just remember, as the film-makers wisely mention in a closing title screen, don’t try any of this at home.

This review was commissioned by the West Australian Newspaper Group.

Film Review: The Hangover Part III

The Hangover Part III. Rated MA 15+ (strong coarse language, nudity and crude humour). 100 minutes. Directed by Todd Phillips. Screenplay by Todd Phillips and Craig Mazin.

Verdict: The Hangover series limps over the finish line.

It often pays not to have high expectations for the cinematic delights a film promises to deliver. ‘The buzz’, such as it was, for this third and final instalment of Phillips’ Hangover trilogy, was keen anticipation for how the creators would farewell the characters we had come to know, love and instantly recognise within ourselves and people we know. Sadly, this vacant, somnambulic offering is not so much a finale, than it is a slowly deflating balloon that only ends up making you question how they got it so right the first (and arguably the second) time around.

When Alan (Zach Galifianakis) agrees to go into rehab, Phil (Bradley Cooper), Stu (Ed Helms) and Doug (Justin Bartha) agree to drive him there. Travelling across country, they are run off the road by a gang of pig-mask-wearing thugs who are working for a gangster called Marshall (John Goodman). Marshall, who has had his gold bullion stolen by the irascible Mr Chow (Ken Jeong), takes Doug hostage until the guys can find Chow and the gold and bring them to him.

This flimsy premise simply doesn’t stand up to too much interrogation, and much of the time is spent waiting for Phillips and Co to go for broke. Jeong, who has always been the touchstone for the series’ appallingly bad taste, is catapulted into leading man territory here, and it just doesn’t work. Neither does the dramatic tenor of Phillips and Mazin’s pedestrian screenplay, which even with the presence of the brilliant but wasted Goodman, appears to have absolutely nothing further to add to the exploits of the first two films.

It is easy to imagine why the film-makers thought it might be an interesting idea to depart from the hugely-successful formula of the first two films. What they have replaced it with, however, is a kind of inert, soap-operatic dramedy that, with the exception of a fine funeral sequence early on, falls flat and never recovers. The final conceit is a post-credits scene that is the film we wish they’d made – and why they didn’t will forever have to remain an unforgivable mystery.

This review was commissioned by the West Australian Newspaper Group.

Film Review: Snitch

Snitch. Rated M (drug use and violence). 112 minutes. Directed by Ric Roman Waugh. Screenplay by Justin Haythe and Ric Roman Waugh.

Verdict: A terrifically intense thriller about how far a father will go to save his son.

This tense and tight thriller about just how far a father will go to save the life of his imprisoned young son absolutely scorches across the screen – wasting no time whatsoever in taking us into the murky underworld of drug trafficking.

When construction company boss John Matthews’ (Dwayne Johnson) son Jason (Rafi Gavron) is imprisoned for trafficking drugs, John decides to help the law enforcement agencies – led by Susan Sarandon’s US Attorney Joanne Keeghan – snare bigger fish in return for having his son’s sentence reduced. With the help of one of his employees Daniel (Jon Bernthal), who has a conviction for trafficking narcotics, John risks everything he has and the lives of everyone he knows to right a terrible wrong.

With its heart on its sleeve and a truckload of moral dilemmas to resolve, Haythe and Waugh’s terrific and efficient screenplay plays with almost impossibly high stakes. Every character has something incredibly important to gain or lose, and the way in which Jason is in worse and worse shape when John regularly visits him in prison is an extremely powerful motivator.

Wrestler turned actor Johnson (aka The Rock) delivers a solid performance as the indefatigable John Matthews, but it is the supporting cast assembled around him that really delivers the goods. Bernthal (The Walking Dead), in particular, is outstanding as John’s co-conspirator and delivers one of the best and most interesting performances of the year so far. Gavron (The Cold Light of Day) is excellent as the young man struggling to hold it together in jail, and as we watch him slowly deteriorating as a result of relentless assaults, it is not difficult whatsoever to appreciate why his father is taking the terrible risks he is to save his son’s life.

Antonio Pinot’s (Love in the Time of Cholera, The Host) score constantly powers the increasing tension and becomes a critical part of the film’s overall effectiveness, while Dana Gonzales (Empire State) continues to build his reputation as a cinematographer with some fine work, beautifully accounting for the film’s many changes in mood and tone.

But ultimately, this is stuntman turned director Waugh’s film, and with a powerful screenplay and precise direction of his excellent cast, he has successfully marked himself as a director to watch out for.

This review was commissioned by the West Australian Newspaper Group.

Film Review: The Great Gatsby

The Great Gatsby. Rated M (mature themes and violence). 142 minutes. Directed by Baz Luhrmann. Screenplay by Baz Luhrmann and Craig Pearce. Based on the novel by F. Scott Fitzgerald.

Verdict: A magnificent achievement from start to finish.

It is curious to consider that F. Scott Fitzgerald died believing his seminal work The Great Gatsby to have been a failure. Only posthumously did his novel become considered as ‘the great American novel’ – such was the impact of the cracked mirror Fitzgerald held up to those in pursuit of unimaginable wealth and glamour, which is all too conveniently referred to as ‘the American dream’.

It is not quite as curious that it should be one of Australia’s big picture dreamers who takes the novel on. Luhrmann’s preposterous ambition for this film incises the novel’s grand themes of hope, optimism and the desolation of a life-long infatuation and lays the threads that both unite and divide us bare in scene after scene of artfully considered cinematic mastery. The finely-wrought screenplay, written with his constant collaborator Pearce, is flawless – and utterly enthralling for every one of its 142 minutes.

The production and costume design from Catherine Martin, Luhrmann’s creative soulmate and constant collaborator, is magnificent – recreating the 1920s with such an alarming level of dazzling, hyper-realistic creativity that it is, at times, simply overwhelming. Martin’s world for this film is both lovingly and carefully considered, and as true to the era as it is possible to imagine for people who never experienced it.

Leonardo DiCaprio, (who first worked with Luhrmann in Romeo and Juliet) delivers a beautiful performance as the mysterious millionaire Jay Gatsby, whose obsession with winning back the love of his life, Daisy Buchanan (a perfect Carey Mulligan), leads him and everyone involved in his pyrotechnical life to the brink of emotional ruin.

Tobey Maguire is outstanding as the narrator Nick Carraway, delivering a performance of wide-eyed wonder in the face of the increasingly disconcerting influence of the obscenely privileged people that surround his innocent, uncomplicated existence. The standout performance, though, is that of Joel Edgerton, whose morally-bankrupt Tom Buchanan strides and procrastinates through the story like a raging bull from a bygone age. And as his self-righteousness suffocates everyone around him, the real sting in Fitzgerald’s tale becomes less about the perils of soul-less wealth and glamour but more about who it is in our lives who would prefer to see us absolutely fail than succeed beyond our wildest dreams.

This review was commissioned by the West Australian Newspaper Group.