Red Sparrow

Nate N’ Sparrow

Red Sparrow
2018 USA Directed by Francis Lawrence
UK cinema release print.

Red Sparrow is a Cold War spy thriller based on a novel, the first part of a trilogy, by ex-CIA agent Jason Matthews. So I guess you can certainly say the writer of the source material knows where he’s coming from in terms of the nuts and bolts operating procedures used in the story and this certainly, I think, comes through in the filmed version.

Now before I go any further, I have to say that I went into this movie knowing it was pre-cut for release in the UK... which is something I almost never humour or entertain. However, the trailer really intrigued me so I made one of my rare ‘window shopping only’ cinema trips. If I liked this ‘selected highlights’ version of the movie then I would buy the full, uncut version from the US market when it comes out on Blu Ray. Which I will be doing, as it happens. However, I really wouldn’t consider the UK presentation the same as being able to actually watch the movie itself. Why? Because I consider even a single frame (one 24th of a second) excised from a movie to be an incomplete edition and not the full work of art. I remember well the old late 1980s TV showings of Blade Runner (reviewed here) where, just the removal of one single swear word totally changed the underlying atmosphere of a specific scene and gave a different emotional hit from it. So... no... watching a movie with cuts is not the same as watching the actual film and I’m both ashamed and offended that censors in this day and age still exist. And I am certainly not giving any respect to the studio who released this and allowed it to be cut just to get a lower rating. Forget the money, guys, it’s about the art... let it lose money, it’s not that important. Art is more important. Entertainment is art and art is not a business. I know that’s a totally naive and less than credible thing to say about the Hollywood money machine but I don’t care... unless we strive to reach that ideal then we’ll never, ever get there.

So anyway... Red Sparrow is not the film I was expecting it to be.

It looked, from the trailer, like an edgier version of the film the Marvel Black Widow movie... if that ever sees the light of day... should be but, although it certainly is edgier than I would imagine Marvel would let their Natasha film be, this one isn’t an ‘action’ thriller by any sense of the expression and if you’re looking for a ‘high octane’ guns and explosions kind of movie, you’re definitely in the wrong place.

This film is actually a proper spy thriller.

It has an edge to it for sure but it’s more like a brutal version of something that John Le Carre or Len Deighton might have written so, oh yeah, I’m definitely a big fan of this film (or what little I saw of it... one of the cuts made is clumsy and obvious so I'm looking forward to seeing the ‘Jean Rollinesque’ pay-off to a certain, early sequence in the film).

Jennifer Lawrence is an actress who impresses me more and more with every film I see her in. I didn’t see her Hunger Games films by the same director (who is no relation to her, despite the surname) because the Young Adult nature of the source material put me off but everything I have seen her in, I have sat up and taken note. I hated Aronofsky’s Mother! (reviewed here) for example but, even in that, you can see what a great and dedicated performer she is and my respect for her deepens with Red Sparrow because, well, it’s a really brave part to take on and she really runs with it. Considering you have some real acting heavyweights in the cinematic ring with her on this one, such as Jeremy Irons and Charlotte Rampling, she does a really good job and more than holds her own. Watching her career now with a lot of interest.

The film is about her character, Dominika Egorova, once a world famous ballet star but now recruited, due to circumstances I won’t spoil here (even though they’re on the trailer), to the secret government division of agents code named the Red Sparrows. It’s specifically about a plot concerning US intelligence operative Nate Nash (played by Joel Edgerton) and the identity of a Russian mole he is trying to keep secret. The film tells the story of the grey areas where the lives of these two agents overlap and penetrate each other. It raises the obvious questions about whether Dominika is committed to the Russians or whether she is really helping the Americans and, any weaknesses in the story come, I think, from the writing more than anything else. For instance, there’s a scene where you will definitely find out one way or another, whose side she is on  but I was pretty sure the way it has been set up to make you think the opposite of the truth of the situation was, in itself, giving the game away. Another slightly problematic thing is the identity of the mole, who I was pretty sure I had guessed correctly from the outset and when the reveal came later... again, it was the obvious choice. That being said, there is a nice bit of shenanigans with that character right near the end of the film where Dominika pulls her own trump card which is a moment I didn’t quite see coming... although it makes perfect sense with the way the recruitment of her character is pitched at the start of the piece.

However, these little obvious things really don’t stop this movie from being a tight spy thriller and I really enjoyed this one a lot more than some of the other, recent attempts to juggle the expectations of ‘action thriller’ as opposed to ‘spy thriller’ in modern cinema. There’s also some really great stuff going on with the way the film is put together too... asides from the nude scenes with Jennifer Lawrence which, of course, are already leading this movie into ‘great’ territory. ;-)

For instance, there are some nice things done with the sound in certain sequences, such as the boiling sound of a whistling kettle transmuting into the squeak of an opening door in the next scene. Also, the crosscutting of the plot set up with Nate and the introduction of Dominika’s character in the pre-credits sequence, long before either of these characters meet in the chronology of the story, is handled really well and could have gone completely wrong but it’s edited very competently and doesn’t lose the atmosphere of two things coming to a simultaneous, mini climax.

Another thing the director seems to like to do is to set up expectations of a sequence by showing you what happens with a different character earlier in the film and then upending that expectation the second time around. Such as showing the presence of another character’s nasty demise in a similar situation before leading up to it again with a slightly different denouement. This is something which another great spy thriller, The Quiller Memorandum (reviewed by me here), does in its opening phone booth sequence, setting the audience up for a similar moment much later in the film. In Red Sparrow, this technique almost takes on metatextual proportions when one of the characters uses a video of a sequence to deliberately foreshadow the possibilities of ‘what comes next’ to one of the other characters in an interrogations scene. So the film really wears its foreshadowing on its sleeve here and demonstrates an awareness of how those same, subconscious tricks used on the audience can also be brought into play in the context of the movie itself.

Another thing which got me into the cinema to see this was the promise of a new James Newton Howard score. This composer has grown on me over the years and my appreciation increased after I saw a London concert last year. This isn’t, as I’d initially expected, in the same kind of mode as his excellent score for Salt (movie reviewed here) but is a much slower score with a lot of Russian flourishes (or possibly the Westernised perception of Russian musical phrases) peppered into the mix. I suspect it will take me a few stand alone listens to fully get into but it will be getting a proper CD release at the end of the month so I will, at least, get a chance. There’s some stuff in it, especially in a later scene where Dominika meets Nate in his apartment, which plays out like something Bernard Herrmann might have written for it so, yeah, definitely looking forward to the physical release and it certainly works in the context of the movie itself.

The film has a wonderfully ambiguous ending too. I am in no way spoiling it but, now that I know the source material is a trilogy of novels it certainly makes more sense that things aren’t so ‘spelled out’ for the audience and I can only hope (although somehow doubt) that the director and actors reunite for two sequels. Time will tell, I guess.

Red Sparrow is definitely a solid recommendation from me, especially to fans of spy movies which don’t just limit themselves to the action packed confections of the James Bond or Jason Bourne movies. A proper espionage thriller with a very cold sting to it and something which deserves to do a lot better at the box office than I expect it to. Absolutely go and see this one because it’s rare these days that movies like this are let out the gate, so to speak. Stupid plot holes for sure (like how can a world famous ballerina go under cover by dying her hair blonde?) but a top notch thriller, nonetheless.

It Comes At Night

Going Postal

It Comes At Night
2017 USA Directed by Trey Edward Shults
UK cinema release print.

Warning: Very minor spoilers... if such a thing is possible with this kind of movie.

It Comes At Night was called by a critic last week... a ‘post-horror’ movie... and there was an immediate backlash on Twitter about this term, which I can understand totally, although I expect a fair number of people who were then going on to defend the genre of horror (and the genre certainly doesn’t need anyone to defend it as far as I’m concerned) had probably not even seen this movie themselves. Otherwise they’d know the truth of this film which is this...

It Comes At Night is certainly not a ‘post-horror’ movie. However, neither is it in any way a horror movie... by any stretch of the imagination. The only ‘post’ going on here is that it’s a movie which is set after an unknown post-apocalyptic event has wiped out a large population of the planet. This is, if anything, a fairly straight forward survival drama with heavy doses of suspense thrown into various places in the movie. I am, however, loathe to write it off completely because it is an astonishingly well crafted work and it pretty much had me at the edge of my seat.

I remember back in the mid to late 1980s to early 1990s, one of the major criticisms of certain kinds of movies being released was that they were films made with a lot of style but no substance. Well, it pains me to say it, in some ways... but this movie has got to be one of the most ‘style over empty content’ movies I’ve seen in a very long time. However, like I said, it’s an extremely well put together piece of nothing and so... some people are probably really going to love this one.

Some of the reasons I think people have got it stuck in their minds to expect some kind of horror film from this movie are quite obvious and, like the content of the film itself, all on the surface.

The trailer doesn’t help things and the title of the movie, It Comes At Night, certainly doesn’t help matters when it comes to audience expectations either... especially since, as it turns out, the title seems to be totally irrelevant to the content of the actual film. At the end of the movie we have no idea what It is, nobody is actually waiting in anticipation of any It in the film and, whatever the title thinks It is... it certainly doesn’t seem to come at night. Pink Bunny Rabbits At Sunset or My Dinner With Jellyfish would be just as equally an appropriate titles to the picture, I would say... and no, there are no rabbits or jellyfish in this picture either. They must be hanging out somewhere with the not so mysterious It I would imagine.

The film’s director, while making a beautifully suspenseful movie, is also somewhat to blame for the setting up of audience expectations throughout the movie. He does use horror tropes like the ‘undead re-incarnation of a loved one’ when one of the characters does frequently have bad nightmares during the progression of the movie but, honestly, they are in no danger of turning this film into a horror movie in any way, shape or form. The opening sequence of the movie does, it’s true, have some similar content to the opening of Lucio Fulci’s Zombi (aka Zombi 2 aka Zombie Flesh Eaters... reviewed here) but the resemblance ends with a gunshot and there are certainly no zombies, for example, in this movie either.

However, the film does weave quite a spell, being about two families trying to share a dwelling and keep the outside world well and truly locked outside and it’s more about the tension and paranoia induced by the situation that these people find themselves in which makes for the suspense and unease. Plus, of course, the audience expectation that it’s going to turn into a horror movie at any moment... which, alas, it certainly doesn’t.

There’s also a dog thrown into the mix which... isn’t so good in terms of tipping the hat to the audience as to where the story, such as it is, is heading. I absolutely love dogs but, honestly, if you see one in a film in this kind of situation you know that the darn thing is either there to inadvertently rain down trouble on the main protagonists or is going to get itself killed (or sometimes an unsettling combination of the two). And, yes, sure enough... the four legged friend is what ultimately brings destruction to at least some of the characters in this movie, for sure.

It’s a brilliant ensemble piece, though, in terms of the acting. When you get this kind of minimal cast in this kind of claustrophobic situation you need people who can really get the job done in terms of body language and expression and you want people who aren’t, necessarily, reliant on the written dialogue of the scene. You need actors who can bring an honest edge to what’s not in the dialogue and the director certainly got himself a group of thespians who can give fantastic and quite harrowing performances here. Special mentions go to the always fascinating Joel Edgerton who plays Paul, the father figure of one of the two families who end up living together and, also, to the extraordinary Kelvin Harrison Jr, who gives an absolutely electrifying performance as Paul’s son Travis.

Another nice thing to add to the edginess of the acting here is the quite unsettling score by Brian McOmber. I don’t know this guy's work but it’s certainly effective here and provides a lot of the tension, I suspect, in various scenes. Luckily, the powers that be have decided to release a CD of the score so I’ll be putting that one on the ‘to get’ list at some point soon... it deserves a listen away from the visuals it was intended to accompany, methinks. Glad it’s wisely not just a stupid download release, this time, for sure.

It Comes At Night is... really not a movie I’d want to see again and, to be honest, if I’d have known the kind of piece it was then I probably wouldn’t have bothered to go and see it in the first place. It is though, as I’ve said, extremely well put together and I think it’s probably worth seeing if you like tightly paced, suspenseful, small scale yarns... if you don’t mind the lack of substance in the picture. Personally, I found the 1962 movie, Panic In Year Zero!, directed by and starring Ray Milland (and reviewed by me here), to be a more interesting movie of roughly the same kind of story. This movie will have its fans though and it’s certainly loaded with ‘edge of your seat’ suspense, if you like that kind of thing. So maybe give it a try... but don’t expect too much, would be my advice.

Midnight Special

Eye Hopes

Midnight Special
2016 USA Directed by Jeff Nichols
UK cinema release print.

I’ve been waiting to take a look at Midnight Special since seeing a clip and then a trailer for it on the internet sometime last year. I’m not familiar with the work of Jeff Nichols because I’ve never really been all that interested in the subject matter of his previous movies but this one looked like it was a kind of Steven Spielberg style sci-fi movie with a darker edge. After now having seen the film, I can confirm that this is exactly what it is... at least that’s what it seemed like to me.

The film is very much one of those stories which relies on the audience and key players trying to figure out just exactly what is going on as the writer/director holds back on the specific details of the mystery at the heart of the movie. That mystery being the enigma of an eight year old boy called Alton Meyer, played by Jaeden Lieberher, who has eyes which light up, like one of the kids who lived in the Village Of The Damned, and has strange stuff happen around him when this occurs.

This one is very much a road movie, in that it focuses on the boy fleeing with his natural birth father Roy, played by Michael Shannon (aka General Zod in Man Of Steel), and Roy’s friend Lucas, played by Joel Edgerton (who some of you may best remember as the younger version of Owen Lars in the Star Wars prequels). They hook up with Alton’s natural birth mother Sarah, played by Kirsten Dunst, because they need to get the boy to specific coordinates by a certain time. The film is presumably called Midnight Special because the boy can only stand to be up and about in the hours of darkness... as far as we know at the start of the movie.

However, the four are 'fleeing' to these coordinates because they are being aggressively pursued by two factions who want the boy. One faction is The Ranch... a religious group whose chief, played by Sam Sheppard, uses the boy’s words when he has ‘lighty up eye fits’ for his sermons. The people in The Ranch believe that the boy is the new messiah who will keep them safe if he is with them when Judgement Day comes... which they think is just a few days away.

The other faction who are pursuing, not as aggressively but certainly more effectively, is the FBI. They want the boy because the words he has been blurting out when he ‘goes into one’ and which Sam Sheppard has been using for his sermons, contains top secret information and they want to know just how the young ‘un got the intel and what the heck he is. They’re actually better at their pursuit because a young specialist called Sevier, played by Adam Driver (aka Kylo Ren in Star Wars - The Force Awakens), has joined them and has figured out that part of Alton’s words are coordinates.

And so we have a road movie with a mystery at it’s heart as the family and their friend try to survive and get Alton to where he needs to be in order for... something... to happen. Is it the approaching Religious apocalypse? Is it some alien weirdness? Or is it... something else? Well I’m not going to spoil that for you here but I will say that the writer/director certainly doesn’t cop out on the ending of his film. You will see... stuff. And if you think about it a little afterwords and dwell on the last second or so of the very last shot, it does all make a certain kind of sense, although one or two interpretations could come into play here. I’m still puzzled by one specific aspect of something that happens three quarters of the way into the movie so... maybe I should watch it again at some point.

In terms of performances, the film is terrific, with Shannon, Edgerton, Dunst and Lieberher all doing a terrific job. As does Adam Driver, who I completely hated in Star Wars - The Force Awakens but who does an outstanding job playing an immensely likeable person here. So I feel a lot better about seeing this guy in stuff from here on out. The acting is all very low key too and the cinematography and the way the camera rambles smoothly around the scenes matches this. In fact, it’s so low key that, despite the gripping mystery at the film’s fiery heart, I noticed it was having an almost soporific effect on me in some places. It’s kind of interesting actually because it reminded me of something I saw years ago in a fake Steve Martin documentary. Paul Simon asked him if he thought a sad subject in a song works better in an upbeat tempo, or some such thing. It got me thinking about the relationship between the message and the messenger and how a seemingly inappropriate delivery style can actually enhance the original message. I guess another cinematic equivalent might be the invocation of Singin’ In The Rain in Stanley Kubrik’s version of A Clockwork Orange.

Well I think that’s one of Midnight Special’s strengths... and it’s a very common approach in certain strands of science fiction, although that doesn’t negate it’s impact here... is that the acting and shooting style are quite dialled down in order to give a certain weight or credibility to the extremely fantastical concept it’s trying to sell to the audience. If you want people to suspend disbelief and buy into these kinds of concepts without any irony so the drama of the subject can be brought into play, then downplaying the absolute gobsmacking premise of your story springboard is as good a way as any of doing it. Not the only way but, it’s obviously the way Nichols' has chosen to go here and it works very effectively.

Another thing which contributes effectively to the overall atmosphere of the thing is the score by David Wingo. It’s fairly stripped down and not something which relies on dense orchestration... I would definitely call it transparent writing... but it does have a main theme which hooks you in right from the start and keeps coming back at certain points in the movie to cement everything together. It’s a pretty good score and, although it’s not the kind of score I would normally listen to, I’ll probably be picking up the CD to this one at some point in the future, to be sure.

So that’s about all I’ve got to say about Midnight Special. It’s a short review for a short film but I was surprised by just how effective it was and I certainly didn’t feel cheated by the solution, such as it is, of the mystery of Alton Meyer. There’s even a hint of how the story could possibly carry on contained at the very tail end of the very last shot... although, again, that shot is open to interpretation and I certainly wouldn’t want to see the producers wreck the memory of this movie by making a sequel, at any rate. However, if you’ve got nothing better to do with your time at the moment, I would say that Midnight Special is one of the cooler films playing at your local cinema at the moment. So maybe give it a go if you are at a loose end. After all, with General Zod and Kylo Ren in the movie... anything could happen.