Review - Brotherhood (2004 - Dir. Je-gyu Kang)

Undeniably epic, Brotherhood is a second dip into the dark, vast pool of Korean cinema and an enjoyable enough experience it is too. As with all war films, you’ve got to ask where it sits in relation to Band of Brothers, Private Ryan and Days of Glory? The film aspires to this level of greatness, but somehow fails, with the end result something weirder and at times more interesting, but not always in a good way.

There’s a definite touch of reality on show here. Soldiers, civilians, children and animals are blasted with bullets, bombs and copious amounts of blood. The only people immune from the flying shrapnel are apparently the two brothers at the heart of the film. They walk through the battlefields seemingly invincible, like east Asian versions of Robert Duvall in Apocalypse Now. It makes for a preposterous viewing experience and adds a sense of unreality that permeates the whole film.

And here lies the main problem with the film. On the one hand it attempts to illustrate the true horrors of war (and for the extras it certainly succeeds), but on the other hand there’s the epic almost supernatural tale of the two brothers that veers from over the top joyfulness usually only witnessed in musicals, to full scale anti-communist propaganda. It’s an odd mix of fairy tale, human drama and bloody conflict that almost never gels.

That’s not to say that there aren’t plenty of positives; the scale of some of the battle scenes is awe inspiring for starters. The acting of the two brothers (Jang Dong-Gun and Won Bin) is over the top, but never less than convincing, with younger brother Jin-seok displaying excellent character development as the film progresses. There’s moving scenes, especially when the anti-communist vigilantes grab Kim Young-shin, there’s dismay in the hospital scenes and complete abandonment in the finale. It’s enough to power you through the film without questioning the overarching oddness of the experience.

It’s not a great film, but it’s interesting and definitely different from the standard combat offerings. With low expectations and a pinch of salt it’s more than moderately entertaining and thought provoking. However be prepared for the ‘there’s something not quite right here’ feeling from beginning to end.

4/10
Doccortex

If you like this you could also try:
Days of Glory, Assembly, My Way.

Review - Outside the Law (2010 - Dir. Rachid Bouchareb)

Outside the Law (or to give its original title Hors la loi which sounds like it's from a way dirtier genre) is the entry of cheery rank outsider Jamel Debbouze in this year's FA Cup of Actors. Debouzze was entered into the competition by Doccortex because he'd seen him in Days of Glory and quite liked the little fellow. I have to say that I was a bit sceptical, mainly due to this picture:

But the lad's done well. Outside the Law is a pretty decent film. In fact, a very decent film. Well above the standard of film making that I'm used to. Everything about it reeks of professionalism. Let's start with the script. It is based on the real events surrounding Algeria gaining independence from France. It does so through the eyes of three brothers: Abdelkader, a local leader of the FLN, determined to free Algeria, Messaoud, a soldier who comes back to be Abdelkader's right hand man in an honourable struggle, and Said (Debbouze) who starts off as a pimp then graduates to owning his own cabaret theatre and boxing empire. He's not too bothered about independence, he's more concerned with wearing a nifty hat and smoking big cigars. 

The director has an unintrusive style that draws the viewer into the events. No fancy tricks here, he just cracks on and tells the story. Despite being 138 minutes long my attention was held throughout, which is pretty good considering my threshold is normally 90 minutes. The only problem I had was my own ignorance of these events which made some of the early scenes quite hard to follow. But it's not the film's fault that I'm a thick northerner.

I do actually have a couple of legitimate problems with Outside the Law though. Firstly - and this is a picky "matter of taste" technical issue - I didn't think that there was enough contrast in the image. I had recently watched To Catch a Thief on blu-ray and the textures looked so crisp and, well, textured that I was mightily impressed for such an old film. Outside the Law meanwhile looks a tad pale and washed out in comparison. The textures in the shanty town are all present and correct but didn't wow me. A little tweak to the contrast during the grading process would have sorted this out. Other people may like this look but I wasn't too keen. 

Secondly, it was not as emotionally affecting as I thought it was going to be. I had empathy for the characters but I didn't care for them as much as I should. The only scene that helped to endear them to me in the slightest was at a wedding where the three brothers do an amusing dance. Funny, but not quite enough to make me really bothered about them.

Now let's get to Debbouze. I've really warmed to him and his cigar smoking ways. The other two brothers are generally very serious and Debbouze adds a touch of lightness to the proceedings, although he's still able to turn on the emotion when he needs to. All in all he's a likeable fellow who I think has earned his place as part of the obscurendure family.

You may feel that my final rating is a bit on the harsh side and you'd be right. It's a really well made film with an engaging story that many people will rate more highly. So why the low score? It's just not my cup of tea. Even with the above problems fixed it would have had a limit of 8/10. Doccortex meanwhile, will probably like it a lot more than me. I've no doubt he'll give it a watch and tell you in a comment what he thinks about it.

Nevertheless, it's a very respectable score for Debbouze and Jennifer Jason Leigh has certainly got her work cut out. (I'm secretly hoping that Debbouze makes it through so I can watch another of his offerings, but we'll see...)
7/10
evlkeith

If you like this you could also try:
Days of Glory, Waltz with Bashir.

Review - Mrs. Miniver (1942 - Dir. William Wyler)

I was initially a little disappointed by this. This Happy Breed tells a similar story but from a working class point of view. Mrs. Miniver is all silly posh hats, flowers shows and the Lady of the Manor. All very middle/upper class and to me this felt less real.

As time went on and the film unfolded I began to see that regardless of class, the people alive during World War II all lived through similar situations and emotions. My heart was warmed slightly by this revelation. (It's now at 0.01 degrees above absolute zero. Toasty.)

Mrs. Miniver (Greer Garson) is the mum in your average middle class family of the time. She has a husband Clem (Walter Pidgeon) and three children. One of the children Vin (Richard Ney) has just come back from Oxford University and has plenty of ideas about the world. They also have a cook and a nanny, so Mrs. Miniver was free to play 'Black Ops II' all day against her buddies in the Women's Institute.

The film doesn't kick off until about forty minutes in when the inevitable war starts. This should have created a pretty dull first section. Instead we get to know all of the characters and two sub-plots are introduced to keep our attention: Vin's blossoming relationship with the granddaughter of the Lady of the Manor, Carol (Teresa Wright) and the peculiarly interesting tale of the rose competition at the local flower show. By the time the war begins in earnest we are fully invested in these characters, forty minutes well spent.

When the war starts, Vin joins the RAF as a fighter pilot and Clem dodges about in his little boat at Dunkirk. We get to see life from the person-left-behind's point of view (in a similar way to Since You Went Away). There is a brilliant scene of life in an air raid shelter that is cleverly recreated through the use of sound effects and some big burly blokes shaking the set. Not that you get to see the large rotund fellows, that's all part of movie magic.

It is clear from the start that this could be a tear jerker, but the writing is so good the tears (admittedly more a tear in my eye rather than full blown histrionics) come from unexpected places. One emotional moment is from the climax of the flower show. (I never thought I would think those words, never mind write them.) I won't spoil the other scene.

Although, Mrs. Miniver won me over I still prefer This Happy Breed, but it is a solid film. One of the character's arcs is particularly pleasing and appealed to my sense of fairness. Again, I won't spoil the moment for you. Also it has one of the most rousing church services I've ever heard. (That's something else I thought I'd never write.) Definitely recommended.
7/10
evlkeith



If you like this you could also try:
This Happy Breed, Since You Went Away.

Review - R-Point (2004 - Dir. Su-chang Kong)

A mysterious radio message is received by a South Korean base in Vietnam 1972. Problem is, the message is from a unit long assumed to be dead. Lieutenant Choi Tae-in (Woo-seong Kam) is sent to investigate accompanied by a group of eight other soldiers...

Early on, a gravestone acts as the film's 'Crazy Ralph', warning quite cheerily, that everyone is going to die. Good news for Co-op Funeralcare then. But is the threat psychological or supernatural? Have the horrors of war affected the soldiers so entirely that their paranoia and mental trauma cause them to start offing each other (sounds dodgy) or is it a ghostly presence hell-bent on vengeance?

My main concern about R-Point is the virtual complete lack of characterisation. Apart from the Lieutenant and Sergeant Jin (Byung-ho Son), who are barely sketched, the other characters are so ill-defined that you lose track of who is who and why you should care about them. From watching the Special Features it is clear that the actors knew their characters but it doesn't come across in the final edit of the film. The script seems to revolve around the soldiers calling each other 'assholes'. I counted at least 15,000 uses of the word. In one minute. 

Given that, there are some genuinely creepy moments: the first shot of an abandoned mansion wreathed in mist is absolutely gorgeous and the sight of a silent unit moving steathily (and ghostily) through long grass before disappearing into the ground hints at some spookiness to come. It never really delivers on this promise though, with the final third descending into a blood-bath, with not too much blood: it is only rated 15 after all (I know, the cover at the top states 18, but my version is definitely 15 and it doesn't warrant being an 18). The ending doesn't answer all the questions I had and actually seems to confuse the issue. The Director wished that he had included an epilogue to answer some of these questions. Me too.

R-Point has potential but ultimately fails due to its lack of characterisation and scares. It's not all doom and gloom though: there is a scene of some quality crazy dancing which goes some way towards justifying the cost of the DVD. The Special Features are fairly extensive detailing the film-making process and showing the heat that the crew and actors had to work in. As a whole package it's quite enjoyable, but the film on its own...
3/10
evlkeith



If you like this you could also try:
Deathwatch, Outpost, The Bunker.

Review - Flesh + Blood (1985 - Dir. Paul Verhoeven)

Whoops. Soz.

Flesh + Blood starts off like a highly inappropriate pantomime. The acting is shocking; even Rutger Hauer suffers from a severe case of over-the-top, back-slapping camaraderie and raucous flaughter (definition - false laughter). Brion James is the worst offender, but then again, he always is. (See Tango and Cash for more of his comedy antics.)

The initial section of the film makes for uncomfortable viewing. Rutger's merry little band of mercenaries are cheated out of their rightful spoils by Arnolfini, a noble lord. Then they are run out of town. They soon get their own back. They ambush said lord and nick his treasure, inadvertently kidnapping his son's bride-to-be, Agnes (Jennifer Jason Leigh - Last Exit to Brooklyn). By this point you are firmly on the side of Rutger and his little chums, cheering them on in their humorous shenanigans and malarkey. Then they brutally gang rape Agnes. 

Flesh + Blood takes a good long while to recover from this, but as it develops, it transpires that you should be siding with Agnes and the lord's, initially irritating, son. You have to give Verhoeven the benefit of the doubt that this was always his intention, to usurp your expectations. Then the plague makes a guest appearance and things start to pick up.

There are some cracking quotes in it. A band of soldiers come across an old lady, accompanied by a young lady. They question them. The young lady won't talk. The old lady explains that, "Some soldiers, big fellows like you, raped her when she was a child and then cut out her tongue for fun." To which, one of the soldiers comments to his boss, "Come, my friend. We'll learn nothing here." Cheers, mate. Very sympathetic. Good luck in your job at The Samaritans. Another pearler is: "Knives and forks are part of our lives." Don't ask.

Mr Hauer is just made for iconic shots. Put him in the rain, mist or against fire and film him. Instant great shot. There are at least three such shots within Flesh + Blood. Worth the asking price alone. The small matter of a hot tub scene adds value too.

After the shaky start, Flesh + Blood grew on me and by the end I actually quite enjoyed it. Not Verhoeven's best. Not Hauer's best. But not bad.
4/10
evlkeith



If you like this you could also try:
Salute of the Jugger, Blind Fury, Excalibur.

Review - The Sky Crawlers (2008 - Dir.Mamoru Oshii)

Not to be confused with the more specialist title The Kerb Crawlers, The Sky Crawlers is a traditional anime/CGI mutated hybrid type thing. Where this worked really well in Summer Wars and The Girl Who Leapt Through Time, due to the separation of the disparate worlds the animation depicted, it doesn't work so well here. In fact it is seriously jarring when the film leaps from a quiet hand-drawn scene to a full-on sky battle with fully rendered planes and landscape. It could have gone down the Vexille route of the whole shebang being CGI but The Sky Crawlers ends up as a mish-mash of styles that doesn't suit the tone of the story.

That's my rant out of the way. What's the pesky thing about then? Yuichi is an ace fighter pilot talking part in a staged war. But he's a child. And he'll never grow up. But not in a sugary-candy-floss-sick (try it, it's a right laugh) Peter Pan kind of way. He is one of a strange subset of humanity called Kildren, destined to stay young forever and fight in wars just for a laugh.

The majority of the film is a mystery, centred on the mysterious death (?) of the last pilot to fly Yuichi's plane. Clues are drip fed to the viewer slowly. This is mildly engaging, but if your telly suddenly exploded you wouldn't be too bothered about finding out what happened to the missing pilot. The Sky Crawlers doesn't shy away from asking some tricky questions that I'm not sure I know the answers to. Maybe I can't be bothered to think, or (more likely) I'm too much of a thick northerner to work out the possible ramifications of their philosophical musings.

If the smoking product manufacturing industry ever wanted a cracking advert, they couldn't do better than The Sky Crawlers. The characters are so desperate to have a quality smoke all the time, it's like the scenes surrounding football grounds around the country at chucking out time (or in the toilets during the game).

I vaguely enjoyed this quiet film (in both meanings of the word - vast swathes are musicless). Don't expect Appleseed: Ex Machina and you'll be okay.
5/10
evlkeith



If you like this you could also try:
Vexille, Appleseed: Ex Machina, Summer Wars, The Girl Who Leapt Through Time.

Review - Buried (2010 - Dir. Rodrigo Cortés)

This is a high concept film (helpfully, the concept keeps the budget nice and cheap). The whole idea is: 'Let's take a bloke, slap him in a box, bury him and stick a camera in there for 95 minutes.' It's taken me a while to get round to watching it, but I knew I would have to at some point.

Ryan Reynolds (who must have taken up most of the budget) plays Paul Conroy, a trucker working in Iraq. He gets hijacked by insurgents and held to ransom. Luckily, he has a handy little man bag in the box with him, full of useful trinkets: a phone, a lighter, a torch, alcohol, tablets of some description and some of those green glowy stick things.

Just as mobile phones seem to have scuppered horror films to a certain degree, with writers coming up with comedy ways of making the phones inoperable, lost or left behind, this film wouldn't have worked without their invention. It would have been fairly tedious to watch someone getting giddy in a box for the running time, so it was fairly necessary to let him talk to the outside world. He contacts relatives, the company he works for and the U.S. government to try to get out of his predicament. If Reynolds had been useless, Buried would have followed suit. But, as luck would have it, he's surprisingly good. Half an hour in an MRI scanner was enough for me, I don't know how he coped being in that box for however many days. He deserves a big Ginsters for being such a trooper.

Like another high concept film, Cube, the director makes it visually interesting for the viewer using different light sources. Hence the contents of his bag. Even within the confines of a box, we are still treated to some cracking images. The final scenes of sand pouring in are particularly effective (and harrowing) but my favourite shot is when the camera is looking down on Conroy and then slowly pulls up. I know it's not realistic, but it accurately conveys his isolation.

Starting this film, my thoughts were that it had to stick to the plan: you couldn't have any shots of the outside world. It would also have to have a satisfying ending. Buried scores on both points, so I came away happy. Films of this type surely have a ceiling of how good they can be and this is about as good as it gets.
6/10
evlkeith

 

If you like this you could also try:
Cube, Frozen, Devil.

Review - Ice Cold in Alex (1958 - Dir. J. Lee Thompson)

The first thing that hits you about Ice Cold in Alex is the music. I think that a slight bit of cheeky tributing has been done by John Williams when composing the Star Wars score. Just have a listen to the trailer at the end of the review and you'll hear what I mean. Dirty little homager.

Anyway, on with the film. I know this wouldn't have been obscure at the time, but I'd never heard of it until a colleague at work told me to give it a look (along with the quality This Happy Breed). Captain Anson (Sir John Mills) is given the unenviable task of driving two nurses to Alexandria. Doddle. He's setting off from Tobruk though. Okay, still not too bad. Nazis are lurking about around every sand dune shooting at them, they have to cross mine fields and quicksand, and they're driving an old clapped-out ambulance with limited supplies of water and food. Ah. Rather you than me, mate.

Anson is ably assisted by Tom Pugh (Harry Andrews), a very affable sort of fellow, the kind of bloke you'd like to have a pint with, get him to fix your car and then have a game of darts with him. Also along for the ride is the slightly more unsavoury Captain van der Poel (Anthony Quayle), a South African hitchhiker with a bag full of gin that Anson, being a big alcoholic, covets like his neighbour's ox. 

The story is very linear. It's basically a road trip without any side quests. Just keep going until you get to Alexandria. This means that you can disengage your brain (quite easy for me) and enjoy the ride. Even if it is on a bumpy ambulance. You get to fully appreciate the four leads and the numerous scrapes they get themselves into, including a beautifully lit run-in with the aforementioned quicksand. (One of my major fears, surely one of everyone's major fears?)

Bear in mind that this was made in 1958 and you can let it off for having slightly dubious gender politics. Sister Diana Murdoch (Sylvia Syms) is told at one point to stop worrying about her make up and get pushing the ambulance. I won't spoil one of the top calamities of the film but have a guess who's responsible. The fellas soon put her in charge of the bags, metaphorically speaking, and sort the problem out in a very stoic British kind of way. Then they get her to make sandwiches and butter the malt loaf while they have a game of cricket. And while they all go down the pub for pints and back slapping, she does the washing up. Er, maybe not. I think that scene was cut out of this version.

(Image not taken from the film - funnily enough.)

All in all a quality Sunday afternoon kind of film. Gently paced for the majority of the time, with a smattering of excitement and tension along the way. Granted, there's a completely unnecessary (and preposterous) romantic entanglement but you can forgive this minor slip, due to the film's uncomplicated, clear storytelling. (It's also quite funny that the best beer in the whole of the Middle East turns out to be Carlsberg. They may as well have made it Strike lager for the local Happy Shopper equivalent.)
7/10
evlkeith



If you like this you could also try:
This Happy Breed, Since You Went Away.