Review: The Day The Earth Blew Up: A Looney Tunes Movie

The Looney Tunes characters aren't quite as moribund as (ducks aside) Disney's stable of animated stars, but they definitely have the vibe of big name stars waiting for a big project that's never going to come. Which The Day The Earth Blew Up seems very much aware of: it's just an old fashioned movie, not an event (*cough Space Jam 2 cough*) and is all the better for it.

Focusing firmly on the Porky Pig - Daffy Duck relationship - though it's a slightly earlier version of the double act than you might remember, with Porky in the lead and Daffy just that little bit too daffy to be trusted - our loveable duo are forced to deal with a bubble gum related alien invasion when all they want to do is fix up their family farm.

This isn't quite as manic as you might expect. A feature length film needs a very different tempo than an eight minute short (though one segment of the duo's adventures is basically presented as such), so for every frantic battle with body-horror alien goo there's a slightly more sedate scene to let everyone catch their breath.

Unfortunately the material isn't always strong enough to ride out the quiet patches, creating a few moments where kids (and adults) might start fidgeting. They're brief - this does a surprisingly good job of piling on the twists and turns, with the plot still throwing up surprises right to the end - but it does mean this doesn't quite hit the high energy high notes associated with the Looney Tunes brand.

As the voice of both Daffy and Porky, Eric Bauza does a first class job of capturing the personalities of both, which goes a long way towards making this feel like a real movie complete with character development and emotional ups and downs. Also there's evil bubblegum, so it all evens out.

For a relatively low budget effort this looks great; a solid gag early on has Daffy and Porky's adoptive dad only ever appearing as a painted background (trust me, you'll know the difference when you see it), and there's plenty of life and movement in every scene. It may not be right up there with the classics, but what is?

This isn't an updating of the characters (it's a 1950s style alien invasion at best), and it's not the kind of film that'll have you leaving the cinema shouting "the Looney Tunes are back!". It's decent kids entertainment with plenty of charm and wit, the kind of thing that Warners should be punching out at least once a year and making a tidy return both financially while boosting the visibility of these still viable characters.

 Oh wait, they just took all the Looney Tunes shorts off streaming. Guess that's all, folks.

- Anthony Morris

 

 

Review: A Working Man

It's not strictly true that the fashion is the most interesting thing about A Working Man. But it is noticeable that while Jason Statham's Levon Cade and his friends all consistently wear solid workman gear, all his enemies both personal and professional are constantly putting on outlandish and flamboyant outfits when they're not just straight-up hosting costume parties where everyone is dressed like it's pre-revolutionary France.

This kind of blatant signalling - seems bad guys are rich and decadent, who knew - is something this film could have done with a lot more of. It's not like Statham is any stranger to going over the top: his best films and most memorable roles have usually backed right up to being silly, if not gleefully danced on top of it.

Sadly this particular film seems to have taken all the wrong lessons from Statham's recent surprise hit The Beekeeper, an often deeply strange film that audiences gleefully took to because for once the righteous vengeance these action films deal in was focused on a real world villain (online scammers preying on the vulnerable). Turned out people really enjoyed seeing specific dirtbags being punished rather than the usual vague arms dealers and human traffickers and Russian mobsters.

Surprise! Here Cade is tracking down human traffickers, though at least they're home grown and not the evil foreigners from Taken. Though they are weirdly incompetent: their scheme seems to involve kidnapping young women to order and then just keeping them in a basement for a week or so to give Cade time to get on their trail. 

A slightly more thought-out movie would have had someone - possibly Cade's police friend, who gets one scene to contribute almost nothing to the plot - say something like "these guys fly a plane full of girls to Dubai once a week, you've got five days" and hey presto, ticking clock.

Instead, this film (based on a novel by former Punisher comic book writer Chuck Dixon, with a script co-written by Sylvester Stallone) uses the traditional and somewhat plodding structure where Cade, once set on the trail of his bosses' missing daughter, murders his way up the food chain until he runs out of people to kill. Only here, because the kidnappers are actually minor thugs, Cade ends up wiping out half the Russian mob because the movie has almost two hours to fill.

The problems with this structure - which is basically a detective story, only the detective can't go back to re-question anyone because he's killed them and there's no mystery to solve - is that you either get a string of forgettable goons or you get a decent bad guy but he only gets two scenes before he's killed and oh look, there's Jason Flemyng as a Russian mobster turning up far too early in the story to stick around for long.

Despite the obvious flaws, director David Ayers knows what he's doing and everything here is solidly competent in a way that, say, some of the more recent Liam Neeson films can't quite manage. The action is decent, the story doesn't dawdle, and there's just enough colour in Cade's numerous antagonists to make them noticeable (highlights include a Russian goon seemingly toting around an anti-aircraft gun and a couple of corrupt cops who are constantly apologising for handing people over to murderous thugs).

The result feels at times like an attempt to tap into the Jack Reacher audience, which might make sense if you've never actually watched Statham act. Statham's big strength as an actor is his sense of humor; the more a film tries to make him into a bland generic thug pummeling bad guys, the less impressive the result. In his best films he brings a touch of levity to taking out the trash, whether it's through implausible action, some decent quips, or just being in a film that doesn't take itself too seriously. 

Which brings us back to the fashion. The Beekeeper hit big by having real-world bad guys; this turns the dial the other way and works hard to make Cade, a down-home construction worker and vet trying to hold his family together, a blue collar hero for today. And yet, the one scene where Statham really stands out is the one where he has to go to a business meeting in a suit. Turns out looking good works for him.

- Anthony Morris

 

Review: The Alto Knights

Nominally based on the true story of New York gangsters Frank Costello (Robert De Niro) and Vito Genovese (Robert De Niro again) as they waged war for control of the mob in the 1950s, what The Alto Knights mostly resembles is some kind of half-remembered dream. 

Things happen, then they didn't happen or didn't happen the way they were meant to happen and the whole thing is named after a club that plays no real role in the story anyway; best to sit back and enjoy the old familiar cliches washing over you.

Opening with the brutal murder of Costello by a gunman working for Genovese, only to have it revealed that Costello didn't actually die as the bullet bounced off his skull, the story then bounces around in similar fashion filling in the backstory in piecemeal fashion, at times narrated by an older Costello years after the fact. 

The pair grew up as friends despite their markedly different worldviews - Costello was a dealmaker who flourished during Prohibition, while Genovese was a thug who was only interested in collecting, not investing - so when Genovese fled the country to avoid a murder rap he left Costello in charge as the boss of bosses. 

Bad move: WWII broke out, Genovese was stuck in Italy for the duration, and by the time he came back there'd been fifteen good years under Costello's rule and a lot of the mob didn't want Genovese back in the top job. Costello tried to fob him off with a piece of the pie, Genovese wasn't happy with that, then when his whirlwind marriage went sour Vito's wife (Katherine Narducci) named names in a divorce court and suddenly a big fat spotlight was on Costello. 

If there's a theme here it's that sunlight is the best disinfectant, as the more the media and government focuses on the mob the tougher things get for them. You're damned if you plead the fifth, you're damned if you don't.

Running parallel to that is Costello's constant efforts to placate the volatile Genovese even after he tried to kill him, making this feel like a gangster movie where one of the leads thinks and acts like he's in a different kind of film entirely. Rational thinking? From a mobster? Forgettaboutit.

The result is a story that (probably rightly) assumes we know all the gangster cliches and tropes so well there's no real need to tie things together when we all know what we really came to see: a double dose of De Niro playing mobsters who are constantly having circular conversations around topics whether they be deadly serious or wondering if the Mormons were stupid enough to only dig up one gold bible before moving directly to Utah.

De Niro himself does a good job of differentiating his two roles (helped by some relatively subdued prosthetics - Costello has the nose, Genovese has the top lip), but he's not given a lot to work with aside from Costello rarely being angry while Genovese almost always is. His characters only get a couple of scenes together; as an acting partner, De Niro makes sure to never overshadow himself.

But look, you don't care about any of this. You're here to see De Niro play gangsters one more time, and it's just as much fun now as it ever was. Sure, it'd be nice if it was in a film that added up to something, but his performance is worth the ticket price on its own - and during the final act, when this finally finds its feet and gives us both a solid barber shop wacking and a big scene where mobsters flail about like clowns, it even manages to become a solid mob film in its own right.

- Anthony Morris

Review: Black Bag

In Black Bag a personally restrained, glasses-wearing British spy named George whose private life is a matter of public conjecture is secretly tasked with the job of uncovering a high-level mole in his organization; hang on a second, John Le Carre's lawyers are on line two. 

Here Steven Soderberg (in only his second film so far this year) is both riffing on and borrowing from Tinker Tailor Solider Spy, in a way that updates the otherwise familiar material (spy satellites!) while answering a question hardly anyone's been asking: what if this particular George had a wife who was also a spy?

To get the obvious out of the way, Soderbergh's many, many skills as a director are perfectly suited to a spy thriller, and this is one of the most polished installments of the time-worn genre in years. Working from a script by David Koepp, the result provides all of the expected thrills with just enough of a fresh spin to make the whole thing worthwhile.

George Woodhouse (Michael Fassbender) works for an unnamed branch of British Intelligence, where his job largely seems to consist of making sure everyone around him in their fancy office stays in line. His wife, Kathryn (Cate Blanchett), seems closer to the core businesses of doing what it is they do - she's the friendly face, he's lurking in the shadows.

Yes, the mole: after being tipped off that nobody's to be trusted - including his wife - George starts sniffing around. The rest of the staff are rapidly revealed to be flawed in one way or another after a Woodhouse-hosted dinner party in which he's secretly dosed everyone with an inhibition-lowering chemical that makes them increasingly unhinged. Relationships break up and make up, though not the ones you might expect. 

The usual mystery pleasures are once again on offer, as everyone turns out to be a plausible suspect. Salt-of-the-earth Freddie (Tom Burke) is a bit frayed around the edges, while his (much younger) partner Clarissa (Marisa Abela) seems to like pushing things. Colonel Stokes (Rege-Jean Page) acts like he's on the ball, but his relationship with the more emotionally open team shrink Dr Vaughn (Naomie Harris) seems like a weak link. And what about Kathryn?

The element that promises to blow this collection of genre cliches wide open is the leads' commitment to each other. George's love for Kathryn (and hers for him) is so strong - we're told more than once - that it overrides everything, even loyalty to their country. The reason why George is running this investigation so hard is because he needs to know if his wife has gone rogue so he can protect her; much of the tension here comes from the threat that at any moment this could turn into a far more unpredictable film.

Suffice to say that whether your expectations are met or shattered, you'll enjoy the ride. This is a solidly satisfying spy thriller that ticks all the boxes with panache, anchored by a range of memorable supporting performances - including, in yet another slice of meta-fun, Pierce Brosnan as the unit's cranky chief.

Fassbender is the main course here, perfectly playing a man who's all icy restraint on the surface and seething passion underneath as he - and to a lesser extent, his wife - prove to be more interesting characters than the story they find themselves in. Usually that'd be a call for sequels; in this case, those wanting the further adventures of a slightly uptight and buttoned-down spy-catcher named George don't have far to look.

- Anthony Morris

 

Review: Mickey 17

Mickey (Robert Patterson) has the kind of problem that sounds like it'd be a good one to have: he can't be killed. Well, to be accurate, he can be killed - and often is - but he's then promptly restored from backup into a freshly printed new body. You'd think this form of immortality would be restricted to the elite of society; in Mickey 17, it's reserved only for the dregs.

On the run from gleefully murderous loan sharks on a pretty crappy future Earth, Mickey signed onto a colony mission as an "expendable" - someone who could be sent to do extremely dangerous jobs "safe" in the knowledge that after he died a new copy would be printed out. Most of these jobs involve being a lab rat of some kind; the death that opens the film has him alive but at the bottom of a frozen crevice where retrieving him falls into the category of "eh, why bother".

Shock twist: that version of Mickey survives, and makes it back to the colony - which is now firmly established on a frozen planet - only to find another version's been printed out. Good news for his security officer girlfriend Nasha (Naomi Ackie) who's into the idea of two lovers, bad news for the Mickeys as the existence of two copies makes him a "multiple" who will have all copies (and his backup) destroyed on sight.

There's a lot more going on, in, and around the fairly straightforward plot; at times it feels like this might have worked better as an episodic series. There's Mickey's grim existence on the journey to the planet, the Trump-esque hucksterism of the colony's dictatorial leader Kenneth Marshall (Mark Ruffalo) and his sauce-obsessed wife (Toni Collette), a possible love triangle between Mickey, Nasha, and Kai (Anamaria Vartolomei), a dinner party that involves a lot of vomiting and a possible mercy killing, the loan sharks haven't given up on collecting (they'll take a bespoke snuff movie over cash) and there's an alien life form out there the colonists have dubbed "creepers" which may or may not be a threat to every human on the planet. 

Writer-director Bong Joon-ho (working from the 2022 novel Mickey7 by Edward Aston) is not taking any of this seriously: mostly it's a romp, though the comedy can get a little dark at times. It's following in the tradition of any number of frantic, over-the-top science fiction tales, and like most of them it's a bit hit and miss. 

Seemingly promising directions are skimmed over or ignored, supporting characters vanish (then later reappear, or don't), long stretches are given over to sidebars that don't really pay off, occasionally it's time to dip into some pretty blunt satire (Marshall hosts his own tonight show) and the general texture is of one long shaggy dog story where the point never quite comes into focus. Don't go in expecting to love everything you see.

That said, the performances are largely kept in check. Even Patterson strikes the right note of goofy charm, while Ruffalo - who does get to go very big - is at least playing the kind of grandiose buffoon that history manages to serve up on a semi-regular basis. The events are larger-than-life, but the characters mostly stay human, which is probably the right note to strike.

Mickey 17 is a film that spends a hefty chunk of its run time exploring the horrors of being a clone that can't die, and then loses interest in all of that once there's two identical (or are they?) people running around arguing with each other. Maybe a bit more soul would have made it something more than just an unevenly entertaining SF comedy - but then, after 17 times through the printer anyone's soul would be a bit tattered.

- Anthony Morris