Film Review: The Secret Life of Walter Mitty

The Secret Life of Walter Mitty. Rated PG (mild themes, action violence, sexual references and coarse language). 114 minutes. Directed by Ben Stiller. Screenplay by Steve Conrad, based on a short story by James Thurber.

Verdict: Romance and adventure go head to head in this uneven tale about daring to live the life you always dreamed of.

As ideas for potentially fascinating films go, Thurber’s short story (published in 1939) about a day-dreamer who escapes into the fantasy realm to escape his mundane existence is inspirational source material.

Previously adapted for the screen in 1947 with Danny Kaye in the title role, Conrad (The Pursuit of Happyness) has a bet each way on just how interesting the story will be in 2013. By setting his very loose adaptation in the headquarters of LIFE magazine as it faces imminent closure, Conrad surrounds the fantastic central premise of the story with too much baggage. Walter (Stiller, in a fine, understated performance) becomes the butt of too many workplace bullying jokes, and his romance with co-worker and single mum Cheryl (Kristen Wiig) feels awkwardly contrived and takes up far too much screen time.

But once the second act kicks in, Conrad and Stiller’s vision for the story finally takes flight, as Walter sets off on an adventure to retrieve a missing negative that world-renowned photographer Sean O'Connell (Sean Penn) was supposed to have provided for LIFE’s final cover.

The sequences in Iceland, where Walter finds himself confronting the wild and unpredictable environment are beautifully realised, and Stiller’s performance as a mild-mannered geek from New York forced into previously unimaginable heroics is wonderful to watch.

Problematically, the film ultimately appears to duck the profoundly personal message at the core of its source, which is that is possibly more liberating to convince yourself of just how capable you are of living the life you always wanted, than by obsessing about what others think of you.

This review was commissioned by the West Australian Newspaper Group.

Film Review: Gangster Squad

Gangster Squad. Rated MA 15+ (strong violence and coarse language). 113  minutes. Directed by Ruben Fleischer. Screenplay by Will Beall. Based on the novel by Paul Lieberman.

Verdict: Gangsters by the numbers eventually suffers from a serious case of bullet fatigue.

When the ruthless mobster Mickey Cohen (Sean Penn) decides to make Los Angeles his base, a squad of undercover operatives, led by Sgt. John O'Mara (Josh Brolin), are given permission by the city’s Chief of Police (Nick Nolte) to bring Cohen’s burgeoning reign of terror to end by whatever means are necessary.

Plagued by the killings inside a Colorado movie theatre and the more recent slaying of 20 children and six adults at an elementary school in Connecticut, it is difficult to know how to begin to appreciate a film that purports to be nothing more than a monumental shoot-em-up extravaganza.

Quite apart from the bullet-induced fatigue that sets in about half way through this mercilessly violent gun fest, Gangster Squad’s artful, film noir pretensions are short-changed by Fleischer and Beall’s steadfast determination to provide nothing even remotely new or particularly interesting to the celebrated ‘gangster movie’ genre. The granddaddy of them all – The Godfather (1972) – casts a long, vastly superior shadow over every attempt to make an involving gangster flick, and this film’s over-reliance on weaponry galore as opposed to any kind of meaningful character development, results in a less-than-satisfying experience.

What is impressive, however, is production designer Maher Ahmad’s glorious recreation of Los Angeles in the 1940s, Mary Zophres’s (True Grit, Iron Man 2, A Serious Man) perfect costumes, and the work of Australian-born cinematographer Dion Beebe’s (Green Lantern, Memoirs of a Geisha, Chicago) who captures the evocative, richly-illuminated world in which the story unfolds perfectly.

Buried deep within all the gun-toting are some interesting performances – particularly from Emma Stone as the wanna-be actress trapped in Cohen’s vicious world, and Mireille Enos as O’Mara’s pregnant wife Connie who helps her husband put ‘the squad’ together with a wonderful lightness of touch. From the first scene, an over made-up Penn sails well over the top and stays there, while Brolin and the rest of the squad (including Ryan Gosling) all end up being little more than stylish, well-meaning and equally well-dressed caricatures.

This review was commissioned by the Geraldton Newspaper Group.