Tom Hardy

DVD/Stream of the Week: LOCKE – a thriller about responsibility

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lockeThe thriller Locke is about an extremely responsible guy (Tom Hardy) who has made one mistake – and he’s trying to make it right. But trying to do the responsible thing in one part of your life can have uncomfortable consequences in the others. The title character drives all night trying to keep aspects of his life from crashing and burning.

In fact, he never leaves the car and, for the entire duration of the movie, we only see his upper body, his eyes in the rearview mirror, the dashboard and the roadway lit by his headlights. All the other characters are voiced – he talks to them on the Bluetooth device in his BMW. Sure, that’s a gimmick – but it works because it complements the core story about the consequences of responsibility.

Locke is written and directed by Steven Knight (Dirty Pretty Things, Eastern Promises). The story is actually a domestic drama – there are no explosions to dodge, no one in peril to rescue and no bad guys to dispatch. But it’s definitely a thriller because we care about whether Locke meets the two deadlines he will face early the next morning.

It’s a masterful job of film editing by Justine Wright (Touching the Void, The Last King of Scotland). After all, her cuts help keep us on the edge of our seats, despite her working with a very finite variety of shots (Locke’s eyes, the dashboard, etc.).

Hardy, who’s known as an action star, is excellent at portraying this guy who must try to keep his family, biggest career project and self-respect from unraveling at the same time, only armed with his ability to persuade others. It’s a fine film. Locke is available on DVD from Netflix and to stream from Amazon, iTunes, Vudu, YouTube abd Google Play.

THE REVENANT: authentic and awesome

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Leonardo DiCpario in THE REVENANT
Leonardo DiCaprio in THE REVENANT

Not just a compelling movie, The Revenant is an experience for the audience and a marvel of filmmaking.  Oscar-winner Alejandro Gonzalez Iñárritu (21 Grams, Babel, Biutiful, Birdman) may be the director doing the most groundbreaking work in today’s cinema, and The Revenant, with its long shoot in hostile conditions, is his triumph over the seemingly impossible.

The Revenant is based on the historical episode of mountain man Hugh Glass, who was fur trapping in the Missouri River watershed of the Dakotas in 1823, when the area was completely unspoiled and inhabited only by nomadic bands of Native Americans.  Glass was severely injured in a bear attack, left for dead by his companions and crawled 200 miles to safety.   A “revenant” is a re-animated corpse, and Glass essentially returned from the dead.

Leonardo DiCaprio plays Glass, and his performance is extraordinary.   For one thing – the most obvious – DiCaprio is a human piñata who actually must stand and then submerge in a freezing river, get bounced around by a CGI bear, chew on raw bison liver, crawl across uneven ground, and on and on; he takes a licking and keeps on ticking.  And, in at least two-thirds of the movie, Glass either isn’t able to speak or has no one to talk to.  So DiCaprio must convey his terror, grief, determination to survive and seek revenge with his physicality.

There are also solid performances by Tom Hardy (being villainous) Will Poulter and Domhnall Gleeson (a good year for him – also Ex Machina, Brooklyn and Star Wars).

There probably isn’t a more overused word in the current culture than “awesome”.   But it’s precisely the right word to describe the depiction of Glass’ ordeal.  The dazzling scenery as photographed Iñárritu‘s equally brilliant cinematographer  Emmanuel “Chivo” Lubezki is awesome, as is the overall filmmaking challenge.  In particular, the bear attack and an extended one-shot of a Native American attack with the camera moving by and forth among the combatants are brilliant and unforgettable. Showing off, Iñárritu even throws in an actual avalanche as a background shot.

The result is an utterly authentic film.  Now I think I know what it looks like when a bear attacks and when an Indian band raids. DiCaprio shows us convincingly how it looks when a man grieves.

The Revenant is also exhausting – in a good way.  As the film opens, we see men creeping through a primordial forest that has been flooded by a river.  They are tense and so are we.  We can’t tell whether they are hunting or hunted or both.  We soon come to understand that their heightened alertness and intense concentration is required to survive a dangerous environment.  That level of intensity remains throughout the film, and it wears down the characters and the audience.

History buffs will appreciate that Glass was part of Ashley’s Hundred, an enterprise that included many mountain men (Jim Bridger, Jedediah Smith, Kit Carson) who would later become guides and explorers with central roses in the history of the American West.

I also recommend Sheila O’Malley’s insightful comments on survival movies, in particular the very compelling Touching the Void.

This is one of the very best survival movies.  See The Revenant, and make sure that you see on the Big Screen.

 

MAD MAX: FURY ROAD – mobile battles and little else

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Charlize Theron in MAD MAX: FURY ROAD
Charlize Theron in MAD MAX: FURY ROAD

For some reason, the critical consensus on Mad Max:Fury Road has been pretty favorable. It’s 120 minutes long, of which at least 105 minutes are chase scenes that are really mobile battles. They are remarkable battles, but they are just battles. Writer-director George Miller has produced an adrenaline-filled thrill ride with some unique elements. But there just really isn’t anything exceptional – characters, dialogue, plot, setting – besides the action.

Charlize Theron and Tom Hardy are just fine as the good guys. Poor Hardy has to wear a steel mask for a third of the movie like he did for the entire The Dark Knight Rises. Theron is a fantastic actress, but all she has to do here is glint over her shoulder a lot (and she’s looks great doing that). I really loved Nicholas Hoult, who was so engaging in Warm Bodies, here as a Takes A Licking But Keeps On Ticking pawn-of-the-villain.  Zoe Kravitz rides along with Theron and Hardy, looking adorable.

If you feel the need for a simplistic rock ’em, sock’em action movie, this will fill the bill.  Don’t expect any more.

DVD/Stream of the week: LOCKE: a thriller about responsibility

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lockeThe thriller Locke is about an extremely responsible guy (Tom Hardy) who has made one mistake – and he’s trying to make it right. But trying to do the responsible thing in one part of your life can have uncomfortable consequences in the others. The title character drives all night trying to keep aspects of his life from crashing and burning.

In fact, he never leaves the car and, for the entire duration of the movie, we only see his upper body, his eyes in the rearview mirror, the dashboard and the roadway lit by his headlights. All the other characters are voiced – he talks to them on the Bluetooth device in his BMW. Sure, that’s a gimmick – but it works because it complements the core story about the consequences of responsibility.

Locke is written and directed by Steven Knight (Dirty Pretty Things, Eastern Promises). The story is actually a domestic drama – there are no explosions to dodge, no one in peril to rescue and no bad guys to dispatch. But it’s definitely a thriller because we care about whether Locke meets the two deadlines he will face early the next morning.

It’s a masterful job of film editing by Justine Wright (Touching the Void, The Last King of Scotland). After all, her cuts help keep us on the edge of our seats, despite her working with a very finite variety of shots (Locke’s eyes, the dashboard, etc.).

Hardy, who’s known as an action star, is excellent at portraying this guy who must try to keep his family, biggest career project and self-respect from unraveling at the same time, only armed with his ability to persuade others. It’s a fine film.  Locke is available on DVD from Netflix and Redbox and streaming from Amazon, iTunes, Vudu, YouTube, Google Play and Xbox Video.

Locke: a thriller about responsibility

by

lockeThe thriller Locke is about an extremely responsible guy (Tom Hardy) who has made one mistake – and he’s trying to make it right.  But trying to do the responsible thing in one part of your life can have uncomfortable consequences in the others.  The title character drives all night trying to keep aspects of his life from crashing and burning.

In fact, he never leaves the car and, for the entire duration of the movie, we only see his upper body, his eyes in the rearview mirror, the dashboard and the roadway lit by his headlights.  All the other characters are voiced – he talks to them on the Bluetooth device in his BMW.  Sure, that’s a gimmick – but it works because it complements the core story about the consequences of responsibility.

Locke is written and directed by Steven Knight (Dirty Pretty Things, Eastern Promises).  The story is actually a domestic drama – there are no explosions to dodge, no one in peril to rescue and no bad guys to dispatch.  But it’s definitely a thriller because we care about whether Locke meets the two deadlines he will face early the next morning.

It’s a masterful job of film editing by Justine Wright (Touching the Void, The Last King of Scotland).  After all, her cuts help keep us on the edge of our seats, despite her working with a very finite variety of shots (Locke’s eyes, the dashboard, etc.).

Hardy, who’s known as an action star, is excellent at portraying this guy who must try to keep his family, biggest career project and self-respect from unraveling at the same time, only armed with his ability to persuade others.  It’s a fine film.

Lawless: good looking, well-acted and completely predictable

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Lawless is a good looking, well-acted and completely predictable crime drama among moonshiners in Prohibition Era Appalachia.  The filmmakers were careful to enrich the film with all kind of period detail – not just the cars and the clothes, but down to the advertisements at the gas station and the footwashing and the Sacred Harp singing at the Church of the Brethren. However, we always know that [minor spoilers] the good guys will defeat the villain and Jessica Chastain will fall for Alpha male Tom Hardy.

The story by musician Nick Cave is based on a real family of Virginia bootleggers and, as typical for Cave, is severely violent.  Hardy grunts and snorts, but is convincing as the leader of his brothers, played by Jason Clarke and (why is he a movie star?) Shia LaBeouf.

But the best acting is by the supporting company.  As the villain, Guy Pearce plays a lethal dandy.  Gary Oldman sparkles as a gangster ally. Mia Wasikowska, looking like she stepped out of a Dorothea Lange photo, is perfectly cast as a teen girl with an eye for bad boys.   And every time Jessica Chastain is on camera, she commands the screen and elevates the entire film; her beauty is especially breathtaking in Lawless, particularly when naked.

The Dark Knight Rises: Unfortunately, over 2 hours when Catwoman is not on the screen

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Well, there’s 2 hours and 44 minutes that I’ll never get back. First, the good news about The Dark Knight Rises.  Anne Hathaway excels as the best Catwoman ever, and the banter between her and Batman crackles.  There are some exceptional CGI effects of Manhattan’s partial destruction. There’s a cool personal hovercraft, the Bat, and an equally cool combo motorcycle/cannon, the Batpod.

Unfortunately, that’s all the good stuff in director Christopher Nolan’s newest chapter of the Batman saga.  The problem is the screenplay, dotted with the corniest of dialogue and laden with pretentious Batman mythology.  When Catwoman tells him “you don’t owe these people any more! You’ve given them everything!”, Batman solemnly replies, “Not everything. Not yet.”

The plot simply exists to transition from action set piece to action set piece.  There are too many times, when a good guy is in peril, that another good guy pops up utterly randomly and just in the nick of time – too many even for a comic book movie.

With her bright wit and lithe sexiness, Hathaway fares far better than her colleagues.   Christian Bale continues his odd husky growl as Batman.   As the villain, an uber buffed Tom Hardy glowers from behind a fearsome mask.  The hackneyed screenplay wastes the rest of the extremely talented cast:  Joseph Gordon-Levitt, Marion Cotillard, Michael Caine, Gary Oldman and Morgan Freeman.  We barely glimpse Liam Neeson.  The captivating Juno Temple is apparently dropped into the story just enough to set her up for the sequel with Gordon-Levitt.

I saw The Dark Knight Rises in IMAX, which worked well for the long shots of NYC and made the fight scenes more chaotic.

Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy: John le Carre’s great whodunit

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Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy is the new film version of the classic John le Carre spy novel.  The British have learned that the Soviets have planted a mole – their own double agent – near the very top of British secret intelligence service.  Only the old spymaster George Smiley, having been forced out to pasture, is beyond suspicion.  Only Smiley has the intellectual brilliance, institutional knowledge and ruthless doggedness needed to ferret out the traitor.  Gary Oldman plays George Smiley.

It’s a great tale, and the movie is good.  Oldman is joined by an impressive cast, inlcuding Colin Firth Tom Hardy, John Hurt, Mark Strong, Ciaran Hinds, Benedict Cumberbatch and Toby Jones.  Tom Hardy and Mark Strong are especially good.

I would be more enthusiastic about this film, but I harken back to the 1979 television miniseries version of the same book, starring Alec Guinness in perhaps his best role. That miniseries had even better performance by Guinness, of course, and Ian Richardson, Sian Phillips and Patrick Stewart.  It’s available on DVD, and I recommend that you rent it.

DVD of the Week: Inception

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Inception was the year’s best Hollywood summer blockbuster.  Because it’s written and directed by Christopher Nolan (Memento, The Dark Knight), we expect it to be brilliantly inventive and it exceeds that expectation.  The story places the characters in reality and at least three layers of dreams simultaneously.  A smart viewer can follow 85% of the story – which is just enough.  Then you can go out to dinner and argue over the other 15%.  The Wife said it was “like The Wizard of Oz on acid”.

Leonardo DiCaprio leads the cast, but the supporting players give the best performances: Ellen Page, Joseph Gordon-Levitt, Michael Caine, Marion Cotillard, Pete Postlethwaite, Cillian Murphy, Ken Watanabe, Tom Berenger and Tom Hardy.