There are certain movies which I would classify as perfect. Now I realize that perfection isn’t actually possible in any art form, especially film, but sometimes there are those certain pictures which, when scrutinized over years of repeated viewing, prove to be bulletproof. One of the few films to fit this classification is Joseph Sargent’s The Taking of Pelham One Two Three.
The Taking of Pelham One Two Three is the story of the hijacking of a New York subway train by a group of mustachioed men who demand a hefty ransom in exchange for the lives of the hostages aboard. The negotiations take place between their leader Mr. Blue (Robert Shaw) and the always entertaining Walter Matthau as the tough, but measured Lt. Zach Garber. Shaw--who most of you will know as the grizzled shark hunting Quint in Jaws-- is an icily authentic villain, almost robotic in his resolve. He plays perfectly against Matthau’s humanistic and humorous hero. These two characters provide sturdy bookends to a film filled with a colorful cross-section of 1974 New Yorkers. The attention given to the melting pot makeup of the cast could possibly provide some measure of social commentary to the subtext of The Taking of Pelham One Tow Three, but I’ll just leave that to you. I find this movie satisfying enough as a perfectly plotted thriller.
Adapted by Peter Stone (Charade), from John Godey’s Novel; The Taking of Pelham One Two Three’s scriptis as airtight as an aluminum can. Every minute of this film works towards the end; whether it’s accelerating the action, crafting character, or slowly setting up the payoffs which surface in the last act. Many of these potentially mechanical moments are coupled with elements of unexpected humor or even shocking severity, which work to round out the rough edges of the plot and make the story natural and human. Beat for beat, this script is about as good as it gets.
The Taking of Pelham One Two Three is a breeze. It’s uncontrived, entertaining, and alive. Do yourself a favor and check it out. It’s on Netflix Instant.
If you’ve been reading my blog entries of late you’ve probably noticed that I have a bit of an issue with timid filmmaking. I went on about it in my review of Duncan Jones’ inauspicious and gutless sci-fi failure Source Code, and have shown a tendency toward heaping praise on risky flicks like Dogtooth and Four Lions. Of course those independent, low budget films are of a different ilk from a movie like Source Code with its sizable price tag and lofty set of box-office expectations. When it comes to crafting a massive, studio funded, action oriented, release there exists a certain pressure to come through with a widely appealing crowd pleaser likely to show some financial returns. And as we all know, this is not an approach aligned with creating a climate ideal for any artistic adventurousness. Most of these pictures end up very much the same: bland, brainless, and ball-less.
Hanna, the newest entry from Brit director Joe Wright, is a surprising exception to this rule. An ambitious globetrotting adventure tale, Hanna is an example of a film whose makers seem unafraid of pulling out all the stops for the sake of style and service to the story. It’s a sensory feast, packed with an excess of kinetic energy attained through the utilization of all the cinematic tools at a filmmaker’s disposal. There’s crafty camera work, a kitchen sink of editing technique, and an equal parts atmospheric and energetic score form The Chemical Brothers. There’s also an abundance of underlying intelligence; an element often elusive to the action genre.
Hanna opens in the bleak landscape of northern Denmark. Hanna (Sairse Ronan) is hunting elk. She is like a phantom, appearing and disappearing among the trees at will and easily striking down her prey with a homemade bow and arrow. When the wounded elk wanders off and falls to the snowy ground, Hanna coldly aims a Luger (at the deer and at the audience) and fires. She’s a stone killer.
Soon after we meet Hanna’s father Erik (Eric Bana) who we see is more drill sergeant than daddy. Eric spars with Hanna, trains her in multilingualism, and teaches her of the “world beyond” from the pages of an encyclopedia. When the subject of music comes up Hanna, unfamiliar with the concept, asks Eric what music is; but instead of humming a few bars or drumming his hands rhythmically, he turns the page and reads her the definition. It’s a cold, closed-off world where Hanna’s from. But as one would expect, this girl wants to see what she’s missing. So she flips the switch on a locator beacon and makes her presence known to the evil, witch-like CIA operative Marissa (Cate Blanchett), and the globe-trotting chase begins.
This inciting incident is a bit contrived and unbelievable, but I feel that it speaks to the overall thematic design of this film. Hanna is a children’s story about the death of childhood. Like a traditional fairy tale, the action is painted with a broad brush. With this in mind, one can disengage their reality detectors and go along for the ride. This isn’t a story told from an adult’s point of view. It’s to be viewed through the eyes of a nubile world watcher. One of the things that makes the story of Hanna fresh is the ability of the filmmakers to not only create a technically proficient and lively action film, but to successfully meld that tricky genre with one that is no less difficult to pull off: the coming of age story. This balancing act is reliant on the filmmaker’s success in getting the audience to invest in the characters somewhere between the shootouts and chase scenes. In this case, they got a lot of help from their cast.
Much has been said about seventeen-year-old Saoirse Ronan’s acting abilities, and for damn good reason. She’s nothing less than a revelation. Ronan carries this massive action epic as naturally as Harrison Ford in his heyday. Her graceful style is so truthful that it gives this other-worldly character the nuance needed to make us believe every scene. The fact that Hanna is a super-soldier is incidental to the fact that she’s a very sheltered teenage girl wandering the world for the first time. The wide eyed wonder Hanna possesses is beautifully accompanied by her somewhat savvier friend Sophie (Jessica Barden). It’s in the scenes shared by these two characters where the bulk of humanity lies in the rather cold and calculative world of Hanna. The two young girls forge a real relationship which is sometimes touching, often humorous, and ultimately sad in its inevitable resolution. Hanna, being who she was made to be, can have no friends, no childhood, and no life as we know it.
The heartbreaking fact of Hanna’s destiny is made evident in the visual tapestry of the latter part of the film. After finally making her way to the rendezvous her father had set out for her, we find that it is a rundown, Grimm’s fairy tale-inspired theme park where she finds a small Hansel and Gretel like cabin inhabited by an odd and aged clownish character. When I first saw Hanna I actually found this segment to be a bit much. The fairy tale theme had been so prevalent throughout the film and I felt that the literal visualization of that element was a bit on the nose. But after a second (and third) viewing I came to see this motif as a manifestation of the girl’s lost childhood. When Hanna comes across a deer during the final standoff with Marissa she makes the same realization. She stops and stares at the deer and sees that she is back where she began. After everything Hanna has gone through in order to leave the forest, go out into the world, and try to become a human being; she is really just the hunter she was made to be. And when she coldly takes aim at a wounded Marissa (and again, at the audience) we see that she has accepted her fate.
Wright’s choice to use such a visual metaphor as the theme park set-piece is one of the many things that makes Hanna such a refreshing and audacious departure from the bulk of today’s action adventure films. In this age of relatively naturalistic action like the Bourne films or the Daniel Craig Bonds, it’s nice to see someone unafraid of going back to the wellspring of fantastical cinematic possibilities without plummeting into the abyss of the ridiculous like the Transformers movies or some other such crap. Hanna isn’t a perfect movie, but its flaws are forgivable in light of its intelligence and adventurous attitude.
Check it out if you get the chance. As of now (May, 6) it’s still in theaters.
Terrorism is one of those words that elicit a distinct reaction in everyone who hears it. It’s a hot button if there ever was one. I would dare say that when an American reads or hears the word “terrorist” images of falling towers, grainy videos of hooded hostage holding Muslims, and a certain long bearded, recently(?) deceased, trust-fund kid come straight to mind. These images have become so pervasive within the media that they overshadow and incidentally simplify any actual discourse on the true reason for terrorism and the people are who have been dubbed terrorists. This approach to the topic of terror has convinced us all of a fiction; terrorists are not people; they’re cartoon villains.
Ironically, the responsibility for the defictionalization of the realities of the world often falls into the purview of the creative arts, especially in the fields of fiction and film. In the case of Christopher Morris’ directorial debut Four Lions, the task of casting a human light on the concept of terrorism rests on the shoulders of a straight-up, farcical comedy.
Four Lions is the story of three young Brits of Middle-Eastern decent (and one angry Islamic white boy) who have decided to become suicide bombers for the Mujahedeen. They do all of the things one would expect a radical Jihadist to do: they travel to Pakistan to attend training camp, they make explosives, and they videotape themselves claiming responsibility for the devastating bombings they’ve yet to commit. This would be some delicate subject matter to tackle if this film didn’t stay so true to its comedic tone, but this farcical approach softens this edgy content to a point where the filmmakers are able to enter into any situation they wish. We can easily enter into the inner working of the radical Muslim world as long as the Muslims behave in a manner reminiscent of the Marx Brothers or the idiots from Dumb and Dumber.
Watching Four Lions is an odd and oftentimes confusing experience. It is a comedy about a very serious subject, and while you will find yourself laughing at the absurdity of these characters’ behavior only to realize what you are laughing at and find yourself considering the reality of it. Some may have trouble swallowing this somewhat contradictory approach, but I do think that the result succeeds in serving a higher purpose.Morris and his collaborators aim for the laughs first, but they use the funny to lubricate the audience and force them to consider the reasons why one might be fooled into such extreme actions as declaring Jihad and blowing oneself up in a crowd of people. Their success in this endeavor is due in part to the careful crafting of characters that are just like you, or somebody you know, or somebody you used to be before you grew up and realized that inclusion in some group is not intrinsic to your identity or destiny. These guys are not treated like sick individuals or radical idealist, but like hip-hop wannabes or football fans. They are Jihad nerds. More like gamers or Trekies than soldiers.It’s not they who create the climate of radicalism; they are just the ones who fall for the idea and get their buddies to do the same.
Everyone is susceptible to influence in one way or another. Often, those who influence are so influential because they are able to tap into the human instinct to want to belong. Sometimes it’s something relatively harmless like a music movement or fashion. Other times it’s something more severe. The characters in Four Lions don’t seem to be into this terrorist thing because they’re overtly religious but because it’s something for them to identify with. They only speak of the deeper beliefs that fuel what we think of as the motivation for Islamic martyrdom in passing, as catch phrases or prods for peer pressure. The intellectual Islamic elitists who feed them these lines are not the ones blowing themselves up; they’re the ones getting the brainless sheep (like these characters) to do it. It’s no accident that one of the many bumbling incidents in this film involves the explosive destruction of a man and a sheep, as well as the inability to distinguish one from the other in the bloody aftermath. Morris and Co. are saying in no uncertain terms that the act of killing yourself along with a score of innocent bystanders can be blamed as much on the influencer as the influenced, with the influenced being as much a victim as those victimized by the act itself. We are all susceptible to this kind of sway. Maybe you and I don’t blow up buildings, but many of the things we are convinced to do on a daily basis are equally destructive in subtler ways. This train of thought is the reaction that Morris and Co. are going for with Four Lions. That and a lot of laughs.
I’ve heard it said before that comedy is the great humanizer. I would say that with Four Lions that is certainly the intention. It’s a film that successfully takes one of the more generalized and generic characters in our modern narrative-the ‘terrorist”-and turns him back into something real. It’s this realization that may make it easier to understand one of the things that’s so wrong with the world. Four Lions is a comedy with a higher purpose; a satire that lives up to the influential potential of cinema. And it’s damn funny.
