ATOMIC BLONDE

I know it’s not the point, but one of the things which annoyed me about the TV show Stranger Things was that the music was wrong.  All that John Carpenter-esque analogue synth music was from the late-70s, not 1983, which is when the show was set.  It damaged the credibility of the show for me, from the get go.  It told me that the film-makers had a limited knowledge of their period.  It turned out they weren’t even born in 1983.

I had the same problem with Atomic Blonde.  We are told, at the beginning, that this film is set in 1989, in the days leading to the collapse of the Berlin Wall (we are also told that, if you want a film about the celebrations surrounding the wall coming down, this isn’t that film); yet, in its first few minutes, its soundtrack gives prominence to David Bowie’s Cat People (Putting Out Fire) and Peter Schilling’s Major Tom, from 1982 and 1983 respectively.  If you’re going to create a year, and employ music as part of your mise en scène, at least choose music from the right year.  Is that really so difficult?

Remember the good old 1980s?  No, it seems some people are a bit hazy about the details ...

The film also has a very punk aesthetic, from the stencil and spray-can titles to the Mohican-wearing extras in the crowd scenes.  I’m happy to accept that this late-seventies look was still a thing in Berlin in the late 80s, and the use of the Ministry song Stigmata (albeit in a cover version featuring Marilyn Manson) is perfectly in-keeping with that look.  It’s also bang-on for the period.  As is Depeche Mode’s Behind the Wheel.  These are the sounds that I associate with the wintery days of the late cold war.

Setting this film in that period, and right on the border between East and West at a moment of crisis, at least makes this action movie stand out from the crowd - As does director, David Leitch’s visual fingerprint, which he first planted on John Wick (2014), his (uncredited) directorial debut.  Here he features chilly 80s blue neons and stop-light reds.  The night-time street scenes are bathed in yellow and the nightclubs are livid with vivid greens and purples.

I'm just going to roll my stylish collar up here, to hide my face, so they can't tell it's me.  I could be any statuesque blonde with elite martial arts skills.

I suppose the film had to be stylish, as it features Charlise Theron as the British super-spy, who brings a wardrobe of glamorous (and occasionally wildly impractical) outfits with her.  She is frosty and emotionless throughout, which is not inappropriate, given the subject-matter.  And, as you might expect from a film directed by an award-winning stunt man, the fight scenes are quite something.  Most-especially the mammoth sequence which seems to have no edits, lasting fully ten minutes, and encompassing several running shoot-outs and fist fights, down three flights of stairs, then out into the street; and it even includes a car chase - all shot seamlessly so as to create the illusion of real-time, edit-free verisimilitude.  Of course, much of the film’s pre-release publicity told us to look out for that scene - which, as spoilers tend to do, somewhat reduces its impact.

Ms. Theron, kicking ass and not bothering to take names.

Theron is magnificent in these fight sequences, one can barely imagine the amount of work she put into preparing for them.  Now, I’m only too happy to see an action film - a traditional male province - in which a woman gets to be the protagonist and doesn’t need rescuing by a man.  Such films have been far too thin on the ground for far too long.  And, with the empowerment women have finally been experiencing in Hollywood this year, if it is not time for a female action lead now, then when?  I was not unmindful of the fact that Theron’s first fight takes place in a kitchen, and she takes out villains with everything from a frying pan to a freezer door.  No one’s keeping this lady in the kitchen.

But, when we first meet her, she is lying naked in a bath.  We get to see this several times.  At one point, the camera pans, penetratingly up her body as she slowly sticks a microphone wire to her Victoria’s Secrets.  Really?  Is that really necessary?  Yes, Daniel Craig and Matt Damon both had to get topless as, respectively, Bond and Bourne, to show off their muscles and give their female fans something to drool over.  But this is typically quite rare for the men in action films - beyond the inevitable muscle flexing - yet it is typically very common for the females in action films.  If we are to accept Theron as a protagonist, a woman who can cope for herself in the cruel world, do we really need to see her being so vulnerable and passive and naked?  Is that an essential part of her powerful woman persona?

See, John McClane tends to look like this at the end of his adventures ... Ms. Theron starts hers like this, naked, battered and bruised.  Girl power, y'all!

Anyway, back at the cunning plot, James McAvoy is having fun playing against type.  Those pretty blue eyes of his could have ensured a lucrative career as romantic leads and naive heroes but, instead, he plays far darker and more complex characters.  Have you seen his turn in Filth (2013)?  Having shaved his hair off for X-Men Apocalypse (2016), he left it off when playing the fractured psychopath in Split (2016).  Here, with a few weeks’ growth, his ‘Sinead O’Connor hair’, scrubby beard and permanent cigarette-smoke-squint are part of his disguise as the deep-under-cover English spy who may, or may not, have gone rogue.

Put your feet up, Jimmers.  This role isn't gonna tax you too much.

When the unique action scenes, and spectacular visuals, are out of the way, what we’re left with is a common-or-garden cold war spy film and, just like every other cold war spy film, everyone is betraying everyone else.  There’s always a mole betraying the other spies, and it’s always bleedin’ obvious who that mole is (to everyone except the other spies, of course).  It would be nice, just once, to see a film where that is not the case; but this isn’t that film.

Just so we're clear, gentlemen, I'm not Sharon Stone, this isn't my first barn dance, and I won't be uncrossing my legs.  Okay?

Dir: David Leitch
Script: Kurt Johnstadt (based on 'The Coldest City' by Anthony Johnson & Sam Hart
Cert: 15
Dur: 115 mins

CELLULORD SHORTS: AMERICAN ASSASSIN

American Assassin begins with a gut-punch, as innocent holiday-makers are mown-down by Islamic terrorists.  It’s a sequence disturbingly similar to the Tunisian beach shooting of 2015.  If that was the starting-point of a film which looked seriously and intelligently at that event and its repercussions, then fair enough, but, instead, it is used as the inciting incident in the creation of a CIA assassin (as the title suggests). 

I’m uncomfortable with a real tragedy being used, then discarded like this, especially as the film goes on to build from this gritty, uncompromising beginning to become a globe-trotting yarn that builds in scale to a show-down that dwarfs the ambitions of a Bond movie and would not be out of place in a Marvel superhero film.  The Bourne films at least had the decency to make their villains generic and keep their tone realistic.

And what the film certainly has is an inordinate amount of pointing guns to the left.

Once the story proper gets underway, it involves stolen weapons-grade plutonium from Russia finding its way into the Middle East so, suddenly, we’re on familiar American paranoid spy-movie territory.  Dylan O’Brien plays Mitch, the innocent-victim turned angel-of-vengeance, who attracts the attention of the CIA; he’s very convincing in what is, I suppose, his first adult role.  He gets put in for some training with off-the-leash super-Yoda, Stan Hurley, played by Michael Keaton.

This training sequence is dealt with quickly, and we’re soon off to follow him on his first mission.  The film has a stark, economical style, with little dialogue and an impatient narrative; but this is because the film-makers know that everything here is familiar, that the audience understands the rules of engagement, so they don’t need to waste time explaining or introducing things.

So, Michael, key skill for this role ... Can you point a gun to the left.  Okay?  Okay.

I was curious why Oscar-dodger Keaton took the role as the humourless, no-nonsense senior spy who gets to drill some discipline into Rapp.  It’s a familiar role any once-famous actor of a certain age could have played, really.  I was surprised to see Keaton take it, though, now that his career arc has put his name back above the title for the first time in 20 years.  He's not once-famous ... He's just famous.  Then we got to the sequence where he meets his previous protégé, Ghost (played by Taylor Kitsch); that’s the standout scene in the film, that’s what it builds to and that, I imagine, is what appealed to Keaton.  It’s just one scene - but he gets to dominate it - just as he does in the car scene in Spider-Man Homecoming.  That one scene makes the whole enterprise worthwhile. 

As is generally the case with contemporary spy films, this one doesn’t quite emerge from the overlapping shadows of Bourne or Bond.  The fights are impressively brutal, the camerawork and editing are sufficient to the task, and the special effects are sufficiently credible - especially during the explosive finale - but it’s all so very familiar.  American Assassin doesn’t really say or do anything we haven’t seen before.  Shame, really, cos a lot of good work has been done in telling the story well.  I look forward to seeing director Michael Cuesta getting to direct something a bit more inspired and inspiring.

Anyone else wanna join in with the -? Ah, Mr. Kitsch.  Excellent form, there.

CELLULORD SHORTS: DESPICABLE ME 3

There’s barely a weekend goes by when one of the first two Despicable Mes (2010, 2013) doesn’t turn up on TV.  It’s even more ubiquitous than those Ice Age films (2002 - 2016).  Initially, the popularity of the first film perplexed me, since its 80s pastiche was clearly just a pallid impersonation of Pixar’s The Incredibles (2004).  The quality of the animation isn’t even in the same league as, say, Kung-Fu Panda (2008); let alone Pixar.  Its humour doesn’t have the cunning wit of the Shrek films (2001 - 2010) and its characters aren’t as cosplayable as Disney’s.

           

So, what does it have?  Charm!  Buckets of charm.  There are the three girls, each cuter than the next ... There’s Steve Carell’s borderline racist comedy Bond-villain voice ... What else?  Oh, yeah ... The Minions!  Writer/Director Pierre Coffin very quickly realised that they were a potential gold mine, so significantly bolstered their involvement in the second film - they went from Santa’s Little helper types (with a scatological sense of humour) to being a central part of the plot.

           

Then, of course, there was The Minions Movie (2015) - which achieved the near impossible feat of having its triumvirate of protagonists drive the narrative and sustain the whole movie - whilst still talking gibberish.  It’s worth mentioning that the bulk of the Minion voices are provided by Coffin himself.

           

So, the first film had charm and mischievous yellow people.  The 2^nd Despicable Me, predictably, had even more of both.  The Minions Movie increased their profile.  So, how was the third film going to up the ante on all this?

           

Well, they’ve gone with having a script that’s a shapeless mess, featuring several unconnected stories all jostling for screen time.  There's the wacky super-villain plot, from Despicable Me 1 and The Incredibles, there's the Minions-wander-off-by-themselves plot, from the Minions Movie.  There’s the teenage-girl-discovers-boys story from ... Well, just about everything.  Oh, and there's the 'I suddenly have a brother?' plot from The Addams Family (1991), Star Trek V (1989) and, y'know, Return of the Jedi (1983). 

           

The film is also peppered with almost as many digs at Disney as it is with over-familiar 80s pop songs, all of which feel very tired now.  The whole project feels oddly under-baked.  The second film achieved the near impossible, by being better than the first.  The spin-off movie (also with Coffin in charge - as co-director) succeeded in being different enough, that it still retained that all-important charm.

           

But this time, it felt like they really needed to think it through a lot more ... Work the ideas harder ... Come up with something different.

           

Wiig has fun with her enlarged "momma bear" routine.  It’s also worth mentioning that some of the Minions scenes are worth the price of admission alone. 

           

But, over all, this film feels like focus-free film made by a committee.  And not a very talented committee at that. 

           

Hopefully, for the next one, Coffin will let some of that Gallic weirdness out of the box again and come up with something genuinely unexpected.

           

That said:  here’s something unexpected ... I never thought I’d find myself missing Russell Brand, but the absence of the mostly-incompetent and entirely-pointless Doctor Nefario in this film, was a significant disappointment.  Who knew?

No, it's not a Blu-Ray, It's my Deja-Vu-Ray ... It gives you an overwhelming feeling that you've seen this all before.

CELLULORD SHORTS: THE MUMMY

Gonna try something new.  Well, new to me.  It's called Getting To The Point.  Let's see if I write reviews that don't take ninety minutes to read.

Let's start with the latest rehash of The Mummy, out now on Bluray and DVD.  

So, basically, the pitch for this was something like: We'll take the Indiana Jonesy feel of the Brendan Fraser Mummy films and add back the good-natured horror of the original Universal horrors. 

Not the worst idea ever. Add in the still-likeable-despite-all-that-Scientology-twaddlle Tom Cruise and you've got a bankable movie idea.  After all, with 2013's Oblivion and 2014's Live, Die, Repeat (!) behind him, he's got form in off-the-wall SF, why not give off-the-wall horror a whirl? 

Yes, this film is supposed to launch the Dark Universe universe ... Cos every studio has to have its own universe now, thanks to the success of Marvel.  Maybe that’s why the story becomes so convoluted.  That, and the fact that no fewer than six people are credited with writing it (which means that far more were likely involved).

Basically, Cruise plays a mercenary type out in Iraq, who calls in an airstrike and unearths the tomb of Ahmanet.  She (for, surprisingly, this mummy is a she) isn’t as dead as several millennia underground would suggest, and curses Cruise.  He dies, but that doesn’t stop him causing all kinds of trouble for her.  He is recruited by The Prodigium, a group of ghost busters overseen by Dr. Jekyll (yes, that one) - here played by Russell Crowe.

No, Tom, we don't know what the hell's going on, either.

No-matter how crazy things get, Cruise is never less than 100% committed and deadly serious; while Crowe is clearly having a ball taking the mick out of himself and the whole silly affair.

Despite being American through-and-through, this film has a very English feel, and reminds me more of Hammer horrors than the Universal films it's following on from.  There's also a splash of American Werewolf (1981) and a dash of Lifeforce (1985).  Yeah, I know.

Tommy gets to do some running too (I think he has that written into his contracts), Russell Crowe gets to flounce around as a camp Henry Jekyll and then chew the furniture as evil Eddie Hyde,  and London fills up with the medieval dead.  Also, to her credit, Sofia Boutella makes much more of her role as Ahmanet than Cara Delevingne or Oscar Isaac got to do with their versions of, essentially, the same villain in last year’s Suicide Squad and X-Men Apocalypse.

There are creepy moments, chucklesome  moments, great stunty moments and, to keep the gamers happy, running zombie moments.

It's big and it's daft and I have not the first clue what they thought they were doing.  But it's fun watching them find out.  The Mummy is a proper old-fashioned popcorn movie.  Put your brain in neutral and enjoy the ride.