WANTED
(Review)

“I’m finding it hard to care about anything these days. In fact, the only thing I do care about is the fact that I can’t care about anything.
“Seriously, it worries me.”
-- Wesley

“Insanity is wasting your life as a nothing when you have the blood of a killer flowing in your veins. Insanity is being sh!t on, beat down, coasting through life in a miserable existence when you have a caged lion locked inside and the key to release it.”
-- Sloan


Wesley Allan Gibson (James McAvoy) is a sad, pathetic office drone abandoned by his father a mere seven days after he was born. Plagued by panic attacks and his unresolved daddy issues, Wesley sometimes wonders whether his father had in fact thought this mewling week-old infant was “the most insignificant a$hole of the 21st century.”
But all that changes when the lovely but deadly Fox (Angelina Jolie) enters his life, introducing Wesley to the Fraternity, and what appears to be Wesley’s own personal destiny.
Based on the comic book written by Mark Millar, Timur Bekmambetov’s Wanted takes the age-old tale of a young man’s journey of discovery as he comes into his own—as he realizes that he is, indeed, special—and turns it on its ear in a rollicking, madcap R-rated actioner.


Now, while I enjoyed the visual bravado Bekmambetov displayed in his previous films Nochnoy dozor (Night Watch) and Dvevnoy dozor (Day Watch), their scripts left much to be desired.
Here though, armed with a script by Michael Brandt, Derek Haas, and Chris Morgan (who, collectively, have worked on everything from Cellular to The Fast and the Furious sequels, to the 3:10 To Yuma remake), Bekmambetov manages to create his most solid work to date, fusing his volatile visual style with a narrative—certainly more coherent and propulsive than those of either of his past works—that explores a young man’s desire to find his proper place in the world, and in so doing, fulfilling every son’s need to step out from his father’s shadow, in order to truly find himself.


And helping Bekmambetov capture the rollicking imagery of this post-Matrix action thriller are the solid work of DP Mitchell Amundsen (who shot Transporter 2, Transformers, and, errr, the Hannah Montana and Jonas Brothers 3D concert films) and Oscar-winning editor David Brenner (a frequent collaborator of both Roland Emerich and Oliver Stone; talk about walking both sides of the fence).
Amudsen and Brenner are quite possibly the secret MVPs of Wanted.

“Now I know why I could never care about anything before this. I was living a lie.
“Finally, I have a chance to step into my father’s shoes. Grow a pair. Live the life I was born to live.
“I’ve been pissing it all away like it was another f*cking billing report.
“I have to train harder. I have to be as good as my father.”
-- Wesley


Despite Jolie being the biggest marquee name here, the key performers in Wanted are undoubtedly McAvoy and Morgan Freeman, who plays Sloan, the head of the Fraternity, who deciphers the hidden codes that identify the targets these assassins of Fate need to take down.
While Freeman plays Sloan with his veteran air of articulate self-possession, McAvoy seems to effortlessly nail the transformative arc that Wesley undergoes over the course of the film, from cubicle loser to bullet-bending action hero, informing the character with just the right amount of humour, and nary a trace of his own Scottish accent.


It’s the presence of McAvoy and Freeman, the script’s streaks of wickedly black humour, and the genuine undercurrent of emotion that plays beneath Bekmambetov’s visual bombast, that make Wanted the wild—and ultimately satisfying—cinematic ride that it is.


“We don’t know how far the ripples of our decisions go. Kill one, and maybe, save a thousand. That’s the code of the Fraternity.
“That’s what we believe in, and that’s why we do it.”
-- Fox

(Wanted UK quad courtesy of impawards.com; images courtesy of empireonline.com and premiere.com.)

reVIEW (17)
BATMAN BEGINS

With The Dark Knight currently filming and set for a 2008 release, I thought I’d take this one out of deep freeze.

Since the turn of the millennium, DC Comics has had a nearly null presence in the multiplexes, while their long-time four-color competition, Marvel, following its surprise hit in 1998 in Blade, has littered the pop culture consciousness with X-Men and Spider-Men, Hulks and Daredevils. And while DC attempted to rise to the challenge with last year’s Catwoman and this year’s Constantine, neither were what one would classify as excellent cinema.
Christopher Nolan’s Batman Begins changes all that.

It’s been 15 years since Tim Burton’s hit, Batman, and 8 since the florid, gaudy explosion of Joel Schumacher’s Batman & Robin (which effectively killed the Bat franchise), and Nolan has managed to bring us the first Batman film that really and truly is, about the Batman.
Whereas past Bat films have had the tendency to play up the eccentricities of the Dark Knight’s bizarre villains, casting recognizable, A-list Hollywood names to further that agenda, Begins’ sights are firmly set on the tortured psyche of Bruce Wayne, on the dynamics of his guilt and fear, so thoroughly intertwined in the tragic murder of his parents in front of his little boy eyes.
Excellent choice, Christian Bale, to essay the Dark Knight this time out. The young actor’s physicality, intensity, and commitment (he quickly bounced back from the emaciated insomniac he played in the ultimately disappointing El Maquinista to get into shape for Begins) serve him well, as we see Wayne from more dimensions and angles than we’d previously been allowed access to. What we have is the most substantial, and thus, most credible Bruce Wayne/Batman thus far. It was, after all, Bale’s intent to give the definitive performance of the character(s), and in this, he has succeeded admirably.

Of course, even the best actor can crash and burn if the script and the director are inept. Thankfully, that isn’t the case here.
Sharing co-writing credit with David Goyer (who also penned the scripts for the Blade films, as well as Dark City), Nolan delivers a film that is decidedly more complex—emotionally and psychologically—than past Bat films, and one that clearly has more adult sensibilities. For all their dark subversiveness, Tim Burton’s Bat films had a quirky streak of humor running through them; Nolan’s Begins is far less cartoony, more grounded in the reality of the character, and the seedy, corrupt milieu of Gotham City.

Presented as a tightly-packed, urban sprawl, this Gotham is no less the nightmare of a city than the gothic noir metropolis in Burton’s films (as realized by the late Anton Furst in Batman, and Bo Welch in Batman Returns). Here, Gotham is a city where hope lies bleeding in the filthy gutter, where criminals like Tom Wilkinson’s Carmine Falcone flood the streets with drugs, line their pockets with politicians, judges, and cops, and profit from the misery of the masses. The kind of city whose hero would be a creature of shadow, treading the fine line between justice and vengeance; a hero who isn’t scared of collateral damage (though I had hoped that as Bruce Wayne, he’d have paid for all the property damage the Batmobile caused), a hero whose greatest weapon is fear.
Ideal then, that the film not only feature the villain Scarecrow (28 Days Later’s Cillian Murphy, who was actually on the shortlist to play Batman before Bale drove off with the cape and cowl), who uses a chemical to amplify his victims’ phobias, but that the story focus on Bruce Wayne’s fears as well, not simply of bats, but of the possibility of failing in his dead father’s eyes.
There hasn’t been a comic book film with this much thematic cohesion—of story, plot, and action—since Sam Raimi’s Spider-Man (for my money, still better than the sequel).

With material of this integrity already in hand, Nolan takes the further step of surrounding the lead star with heavy-hitting thespians like Wilkinson, Gary Oldman (as Sgt. Jim Gordon, one of the few good cops left in Gotham), Morgan Freeman (as Lucius Fox, Wayne’s personal Q), Liam Neeson (as Ducard, Wayne’s Miyagi), and Michael Caine (as Alfred, Wayne’s Man Friday). In fact, there’s enough Oscar mojo here for younger cast members Bale, Murphy, and Katie Holmes (as Wayne’s childhood friend/love interest, Rachel Dawes) to get their own gold statuettes through osmosis.

Thus, with the leathery flap of a bat’s wings, and the sturm und drang theatricality of the operatic undertones of Bob Kane’s 66-year-old Dark Knight, DC Comics has snatched silver screen glory back.
And with Bryan Singer’s eagerly-awaited Superman Returns set to take flight on June 30, 2006, DC looks to be seriously flexing its celluloid muscles, something that should give even the mighty Marvel pause.

(Batman Begins OS courtesy of impawards.com.)

(The above review was previously published in 2005 under the title, “Who’s Afraid of the Big, Bad Bat?”)

reVIEW (7)
DANNY THE DOG (aka UNLEASHED)

With Louis Leterrier at the helm of the Hulk sequel, I thought, hey, let’s let Danny The Dog out for a walk. After all, it’s been awhile since the little dude’s been out of his cage…

We all know Jet Li kicks serious butt.
In 2002, he worked with renowned director Zhang Yimou on Ying Xiong (Hero), arguably the thinking man’s martial arts film. In 2005, Li reunited with his Kiss of the Dragon writer/producer Luc Besson (best known for directing the high-octane actioneers, Leon and La Femme Nikita, as well as the gonzo science-fiction epic, The Fifth Element), in Louis Leterrier’s Danny The Dog (internationally known as Unleashed), another wire-fu flick with a difference.

This time out, he shares screen time with Oscar alumni Morgan Freeman (who won for Million Dollar Baby) and Bob Hoskins (nominated for Mona Lisa), to tell the tale of “Danny the Dog,” a man with the soul and spirit of a child, conditioned to have the cold beating heart of a brutal fighter when the collar he is forced to wear is taken off him.
And when fate conspires to take the ruthless Bart (Hoskins) out of Danny’s life, the man-child comes into the care of Sam (Freeman), a blind piano tuner who lives with his stepdaughter Victoria (Kerry Condon, of Ned Kelly and Angela’s Ashes). Sam and Victoria, with their kindness and warmth, begin to deconstruct Danny the Dog, teaching him how to be human, as well as the meaning of family.

Described like that, Danny The Dog sounds curiously like Lilo & Stitch; that is, if Lilo & Stitch had fight scenes choreographed by the Master himself, Yuen Wo Ping (whose Hollywood credits include The Matrix trilogy and the Kill Bill saga). So fear not, action junkies, Danny The Dog doesn’t get all Bicentennial Man on us. What it does though, is present us with a curious paradox.

Like Hero before it, Danny The Dog is a film that puts martial arts squarely at its center, but at the same time has a strong anti-violence (and, in Hero’s particular case, anti-war) stance. But, like Danny, we the audience, have been conditioned to associate Jet Li with serious butt-kicking. Thus, there are times when Danny The Dog seems to be at odds with itself. Violence is equated with dehumanization; that we would be no better than wild dogs if we resorted to guns and knives and fists. What then about the audience member who has unabashedly come into Danny The Dog relishing with anticipation the fancy moves and high-flying kicks Jet Li is sure to amaze us with?
Presumably, we are supposed to take stock of ourselves, of our own innate fascination with the cinema of violence. Yet, unlike Hero, that aspect of Danny The Dog doesn’t quite work as well. Hoskin’s Bart is a little too cartoony, and the story’s resolution a little too pat, to make the integrity of the whole as solid as it could have been.

While Leterrier’s direction is adequate (Leterrier co-directed The Transporter with Corey Yuen, and flew solo on the sequel), ultimately, it’s the script by Besson that doesn’t deliver the goods.
We are made to hear the presumably strong filial bonds shared by Sam and Victoria through lines of dialogue by Freeman, without really being allowed to feel that bond through specific plot situations. And though scenes between Li and Freeman—in which Sam teaches Danny how to shop and cook—are effective, they aren’t enough to capture the feeling of family.
On another note, though I love Massive Attack, I feel their brand of music may be a wee bit laid back, compared to the hard-driving techno cuts that have become the standard soundtrack to films of this sort. (Which was, perhaps, the point, but somehow, Massive Attack’s score just didn’t work for me.)

If, however, you’re in it simply for the butt-kicking, then Danny The Dog delivers on that score. This is, after all, Jet Li. And though some of Li’s past films have been more creative in their choreography, there is still some solid wire-fu fun to be had here.
Still, if Besson had spent a little more time teaching the proverbial old dog its new tricks, if he had worked harder to subvert the wire-fu film (and, by extension, the cinema of violence), much as Sam and Victoria deconstruct Danny, Danny The Dog could have turned out to be much more substantial than it actually is.

(The above review began life under the name, “Deconstructing Danny (Teaching An Old Dog…).”)

(Danny The Dog and Unleashed OS’s courtesy of impawards.com.)