Taken

A good vigilante movie takes our primal thirst for revenge and plays on it for all it's worth. Judged on that basis – and that’s the only real basis for an honest judgment of this film - Taken is a very good vigilante movie indeed. Not that it sells itself to us as such: Liam Neeson’s role is simply that of a good father (with a vast array of CIA-honed skills for tracking and neutralising bad guys) who quit his job as an international tough-guy to try and win back the teenaged daughter he barely knows. The bad news is that she wants to go on holiday in Europe and he's the only one who knows (and goes on and on and on) about how dangerous Europe is for sexy teenagers; the worse news is that pretty much the second she steps off the plane all his dire predictions come true as she's kidnapped by sex slavers. The good news for audiences is that this means he promptly gets on a plane, flies to Paris, and starts bashing, torturing, and murdering everyone who he sees as standing between him and his daughter. Of course it's totally ridiculous and borderline offensive clichés abound, including a return of an old favourite in the form of the Sleazy Sheik. But Neeson is always good value whatever the role and as the smouldering symbol of barely suppressed rage he’s both completely watchable and relatively believable considering he's playing an unstoppable killing machine. The action scenes are well staged and gritty (Neeson isn't a young man, but again, he's a believable arse-kicker), and there's a fairly high level of ruthlessness in his actions that keeps things from getting too stale and predictable. There's even a few moments of genuine shock as we see Neeson taking things just a little too far to get the job done. If a line exists, he'll cross it to get his daughter back; in a film like this, that's exactly what we want to see.

Anthony Morris (this review appeared in Forte #433)

The Dark Knight

As superhero movie characters go, Batman has one big problem: he beats up muggers. He does more than that, of course, but at a time when blockbuster movies are expected to feature huge amounts of jaw-dropping CGI, there's only so much you can do with a man who dresses up in a bat costume and punches out criminals. What makes The Dark Knight so good – and it's easily the best blockbuster of 2008 to date, leaving everything else fighting for second place - is that director / co-writer Christopher Nolan (back after directing Batman Begins) knows that Batman can't compete on a spectacle level with guys who can fly or turn into big green monsters, and so doesn't even try. Where Batman can compete, and where The Dark Knight triumphs so spectacularly, is on a human level. So what we get is a 150-odd minute character-based crime drama where one of the main players dresses like a bat, another is an amoral clown who likes to blow things up, and the other two are just regular guys trying to do their jobs. Not that you don’t get loads of action here too: there's at least one really good car chase, Batman gets in plenty of fist-swinging fights, and explosions are pretty much Gotham City's big tourism drawcard. But the story keeps things for the most part at a human level where characters we like strive against evil and from there it simply cranks up the tension: other superhero movies might put the world at risk but here the Joker will simply kill you dead for no good reason. That's a whole lot creepier, especially as time and time again he's successful in carrying out his murderous threats until eventually this becomes a film where you honestly don't know what's going to happen next… but it's probably going to be something bad. If that wasn't enough to keep you watching (and the plotting here is a huge improvement over the occasionally shaky Batman Begins), there are four top-notch actors in the central roles. Christian Bale as Bruce Wayne / Batman might still need to work a little on the gruff Batman voice but otherwise he's rock solid as the playboy by day, crime fighter by night who this time around is starting to hope his day is done. Gary Oldman as Lieutenant Gordon is put to much better use second time around as a cop trying to hold things together and Heath Ledger is extremely good (in a very well-constructed role) as the chaos-loving Joker. Gotham's new DA Harvey Dent is in many ways the film's heart and soul, the one good man in a rotten city, and Aaron Eckhart is totally convincing in the role. The Dark Knight is a big, sprawling film, and occasionally a subplot clunks or a scene feels a little surplus to requirements. But that's part of its charm: it's a truly epic saga, and without such a grand scope the stakes wouldn't seem nearly so high.

Anthony Morris (this review appeared in Forte #432)

The Band's Visit

‘Once, not long ago, a small Egyptian police band arrived in Israel. Not many people remember it – it wasn’t that important.’ So goes the unassuming blurb for this utterly charming and absolutely memorable little Israeli film, the debut feature for director Eran Kolirin. The story opens as the musicians – in fetchingly outdated powder-blue uniforms – arrive at the Tel Aviv airport. They need to catch a bus to a nearby town to play music at the opening of an Arab Cultural Centre. Due to various language barriers and scheduling mistakes, the band ends up in a desolate Israeli town, where there’s no cultural centre – and seemingly no culture at all, as the sexy café owner Dina (Ronit Elkabetz) laughingly tells them.

The band must spend the night waiting for the next bus, and they’re billeted out to various townsfolk. It’s the small moments of humourous connection and subtle miscommunication that make this film a treasure. Band conductor Tewfiq (Sasson Gabai) conveys a universe of sorrow in his solemn face, but there’s also joy. It’s clear that for him, music, however humble, is the answer and the consolation for everything.

Rochelle Siemienowicz

Standard Operating Procedure

Documentary maker Errol Morris (The Thin Blue Line) is usually a name you can trust when it comes to getting to the heart of the matter. But Standard Operating Procedure, his look at the stories behind the torture photos taken inside Iraq’s Abu Ghraib prison in 2004, presents a surprisingly blurry picture.

There’s no doubting his rigor in approaching the subject: there are extensive interviews with almost everyone involved, plenty of atmospheric re-enactments and dozens of the often distressing photos. Gradually a picture builds up of a prison under constant attack from outside, and one where the guards had little idea of where to draw the line. Their superiors were happy to keep it that way.

It’s powerful material and Morris tells a gripping story with it, but he’s severely undermined by the soldiers involved in the torture. They’re basically a collection of – let’s say it – dim-bulb army recruits barely able to understand that bashing and sexually humiliating prisoners is wrong – after all they hadn’t been explicitly forbidden from doing so! Their moral blankness is so unlikable and their actions so unpleasant that it swamps any larger moral to be learnt from their actions.

Anthony Morris

Salute

Everyone knows the iconic photo of the two African-American athletes on the winner’s podium at the 1968 Mexico City Olympics raising their fists in a black power salute. The third (white) man on that podium was an Australian sprinter, Peter Norman, and this documentary, made by Peter’s nephew Matt Norman, tells his story.

Salute is an engaging and well-paced mix of history lesson (vital to explain the racially charged atmosphere surrounding the Men’s 200 metre sprint finals), sports drama, and personal history. Peter himself retells much of the story, and while the many interviews with the two other runners, Tommie Smith and John Carlos, are occasionally of rough quality (they were initially done as background material for a dramatization), the power and humour of what they say comes through clearly.

It’s soon obvious that a): Peter was very much part of the protest alongside Smith and Carlos; and b): everyone on that podium paid a heavy toll career-wise for speaking out. Peter (who died in 2006) never ran for Australia again, despite holding the 200 metre Commonwealth record to this day. This film is a fitting tribute to his life.

Anthony Morris

Wanted

Wanted is an easy movie to admire but a hard movie to actually like - unless you're an angry 19 year old stuck in a crap job, which is pretty much everyone who'll go see this - because while it does have more than its fair share of insanely exciting action sequences, pretty much everything here that isn't an insanely exciting action sequence is as dumb as dirt. Loosely based on a comic by Mark Millar and J.G. Jones (who should take no pride in the fact that everything apart from part of the opening assassination sequence and the schlub central character from their comic was considered not worth 'porting over to this extremely silly movie), the set-up is pure wish-fulfilment: Wesley (James McAvoy) is an a-grade loser with a fat pig boss and a best friend who's sleeping with his bitchy girlfriend. Then Fox (Angelina Jolie) turns up, tells him his father was the deadliest man in the world but now he's dead and Wes has to step up to the top slot before he too gets killed. Which is a worry because he's never even held a gun before, but under the guidance of Sloan (Morgan Freeman) and his gang of killers who get their orders from a loom - yes, a thing that weaves carpets is telling them who to kill - before long he's making bullets curve around corners with the best of them. The first half of this film is great. Wesley's crap life is laid on with a heavy hand but you can't really fail with a downtrodden guy who rises up, and Angelina Jolie (who really should stop trying to play actual human beings) has a lot of fun as a murderous fantasy brought to life. But clearly a film that's blatantly saying that learning to murder other people is the path to happiness can't actually take this idea anywhere coherent or logical. Saying murder is bad takes away all the fun, and saying it's good just might get some people believing you out in the real world. So once Wesley learns to be a man through murder the story fizzles out into a mass of double-crosses that don't really mean anything. Still, the action is often brilliant; seeing cars flip through the air in graceful arcs so the drivers can shoot other people never gets old.

Anthony Morris (this review appeared in Forte #433)

The X-Files: I Want To Believe

The X-Files seems like an odd franchise to revive: after nine seasons and a fairly muddled movie, audiences were (for the most part) glad to see the now diminished show vanish, especially as most of its key elements (the unresolved sexual tension between the leads, the intricate conspiracy plotting) had happily been taken up by other shows that could put them to better use. But it doesn't take long to realise that this movie isn't so much leading on from the series as taking it back to its roots. For the first few years the show was basically a low budget, small scale mix of The Silence of the Lambs and JFK (there's not so much of the JFK this time around) with a slice of Twin Peaks (the weird Northwestern atmosphere mostly) thrown in, and this movie - written and directed by series creator Chris Carter - follow the formula to a tee. For those expecting aliens and UFOs and vast government conspiracies, prepare for a let-down: Scully (Gillian Anderson) is now a doctor at a Catholic Hospital , Mulder (David Duchovny) is still a conspiracy nut but now with a beard, and out in the wilderness a psychic ex-priest (Billy Connelly) is leading the FBI to body parts buried in the snow. Trouble is, the FBI is after a missing agent they think is still alive, and so they contact Scully to get her to contact Fox about helping them focus the psychic on the task at hand. What follows is more low-key unsettling rather than scream-inducing, ticking all the boxes from the series heyday (Scully's religion plays a big part) and serving more as a reminder of what was so good about the series than an attempt to take it anywhere new. It's not afraid to get a bit unpleasant in parts (there's a lingering theme of child abuse and redemption that might irk some), but there's also a nice run of comedy from Fox early on that keeps things grounded. Clearly made for almost no money, this feels like an attempt to turn the franchise into a semi-regular series; based on this first outing, it deserves to succeed.

Anthony Morris (this review appeared in Forte #433)