Jolt

Shock Around
The Clock

Jolt
USA 2021
Directed by Tanya Wexler

Jolt is a new movie, sadly not in cinemas where a film of this quality belongs, starring Kate Beckinsale as Lindy, who has a problematic mental disorder. The central mechanism which allows that disorder to be diminished and leave her as someone who can function within the realm of social interaction has led some people to make comparisons to this with the Crank franchise. Well, it’s nowhere near the silliness of the brilliant Crank films but I can understand were the comparisons come from. They both use a personal gimmick to modify the central protagonist as the story moves along and they both also contain a lot of action.

Lindy, as we discover in a very humorous set up sequence which takes a little while and starts from when she’s a kid to the present - where she has to see a psychiatrist played by Stanley Tucci every week - has a problem in that, if she sees anything which she perceives as vaguely irritating or unjust, she just snaps and does a lot of violent damage to any individual in question perpetrating this kind of behaviour. She’s liable to hospitalise the person who has captured her ire and this makes her virtually unemployable so, despite her lovely flat, she’s ‘between jobs’ as the film opens. What this means is she’s tried every kind of extreme sport, combat or various other highly adrenalised hobbies (not to mention her time in the military where they threw her out for getting 'too enthusiastic' in fights) and this is an important part of her background because, it’s the excuse the writers need so that, when she goes into action later in the film, you at least feel she’s got a little training or experience to be able to do what she does.

However, now she’s back out in the wild and no longer in a mental hospital, her psychiatrist has invented her a kind of wire vest which gives her a big jolt of electricity. Whenever she feels the building desire to completely tear someone apart for being rude or whatever else they’ve done, she just presses a button in her hand and jolts herself back down. The director uses a visual cue in these moments which she keeps coming back to, to fill the audience in on Lindy’s mental state. When she gets angry the pupils of her eye become constricted... when she jolts herself back out of her murder rage the pupils dilate again. A useful bit of cinematic shorthand to let the audience in.

One day, she finally goes on a date with an accountant played by Jai Courtney and actually has sex with him without killing him in the process. She is completely loved up but then, the next day, she finds he’s been murdered and that he was an accountant for a mob king pin (who’s ultimately revealed as being played by the great David Bradley, in a role you might not quite associate him with).
So she steals police evidence and goes looking for his killer, causing carnage along the way and making mincemeat of the professional criminals and assassins set to stop her. She also has to contend with keeping from being found and arrested by two cops (a nicely written duo played by Bobby Cannavale from the Ant Man films and Laverne Cox) while she’s out for justice.

And it’s a great film although, it has to be said, it does kind of give away its surprise reveals of the last ten minutes about 20 to 30 minutes into the movie. There’s a certain element written into the script during her first scene at the police station which really gives things away as to what she’s going to discover at the end of her journey... both in terms of a character appearance and also the implications of that character knowing all about her. It was kind of a sloppy, ‘run through the wet paint of the corner we just painted ourselves into’ moment which annoyed me a little. But, honestly, the film is so nicely put together that I really didn’t mind being ahead of the central protagonist for an hour. The dialogue in the things is really wonderful and the casting of this is spot on.

The cinematography is pretty nice too, with some beautiful colour lighting in some sections, such as a scene in Lindy’s apartment where bright pinks and blues are pitched against each other. The whole thing looks very slick and it’s definitely one of those new breed of action movies like the John Wick franchise, where the attention to the way the frame is lit and designed is obviously as important to the director as getting the fight choreography right... and I appreciate that level of commitment to a project.

There are some nice visual details in here too such as when, for example, the number 9 of Lindy’s apartment dislodges when she goes in to have sex, twisting around on its axis to make a 6 while leaving the impression of the nine still there, signalling some of the night’s activity inside. There’s also a huge painting of Brigitte Helm taken from one of the Metropolis posters as a wall in a restaurant bathroom, which got me excited.

Above all, though, despite the obviousness of some of the plot developments, the film is a well made candy confection of a movie (like Gunpowder Milkshake was, review coming soonish when I'm allowed) and kept me entertained for its not overlong running time. If you like action movies with strong female personalities causing violence and carnage with a blatant disregard for law and order, then Jolt should be right up your street. Stay a little way into the credits for a short bonus scene finishing off a throwaway shot from earlier in the movie. I’d really like a Blu Ray of this one so I can see it in much better quality... but I expect it won’t get a physical release and so the film will never quite look as good as it should. 

Total Recall 2012

First Among Recalls

Total Recall 2012 USA 
Directed by Len Wiseman
Playing at UK cinemas now

The year was 1990.

8 years since Blade Runner came out in cinemas.

8 years since I read between 30 to 40 of Philip K. Dick’s second hand novels and short story compilations over the space of a year.

Total Recall, directed by Paul Veerhoven was released into cinemas and I was really looking forward to it because it was alleged to have been based on one of my favourite of Dick’s short stories, We Can Remember It For You Wholesale. The title of the new movie bothered me though... after all, with such a great title on the short story, why couldn’t the movie just follow suit (and why call a movie Blade Runner, for that matter, when the original novel’s titles is just so darned cool? Do Androids Dream Of Electric Sheep?).

So there I was, sitting in the cinema in 1990 with my friends and the credits on Total Recall roll and, within about 15 seconds I am absolutely furious! This is ****ing plagiarism right here. This movie is scored by Jerry Goldsmith, one of my all-time favourite composers and I just want to strangle him and never before, or since, have I actually fought this hard to not jump up in front of an audience and knock some sense in to their lack of reaction and lead them in an orderly mob to the projection room with pitchforks and lighted torches.

I look around at my friends and none of them seems particularly worried or as angry as I am and... I just can’t believe it. But I am so enraged I want to spit and stamp my feet. Jerry Goldsmith’s opening title music to Total Recall is, as anybody with half an ear could tell you, a rip off of Basil Poledouris’ opening title music, Anvil Of Crom, from the 1982 Arnold Schwarzenegger adaptation of Conan The Barbarian. I am restless and fidgety in my seat. How am I supposed to enjoy a film when it’s being all copy-cat on Schwarzenneger’s arse.

Of course, what had happened was that the films producers, or possibly director, or anyway... some idiotic suit who wouldn’t know the difference maybe... had wanted to recapture the glory of the earlier Schwarzenneger movie with this one and asked the great Jerry Goldsmith to ape the style of the Conan The Barbarian main titles... probably by way of creating a sound temp track for the movie, a practice Jerry Goldsmith always hated and never really mellowed to (especially after working with Sir Ridley Scott a couple of times, is my understanding), which included Anvil Of Crom over the rough cut.

So I can’t blame Jerry for doing his job and I’ll forgive him... but I won’t forgive the people in charge of this production for doing that to both Jerry and Basil. How awful for them both!

This major felony of artistic taste-crime was further compounded when the film decided it was only going to take the basic kernel of the idea of Dick’s story and, rather than treating it in an intelligent, witty and, frankly downright funny presentation like the writer did, instead turn it into some kind of horrible action movie with a bunch of, frankly, lame special effects (even for the time), and generally destroy all that was good and enjoyable about the original short by cloaking it in a miasma of boring, couldn’t-care-less, chase fests. It was not good and, so far, I’ve never been that tempted to take another look at it and, the few times I’ve tried to get into the score, I’ve always started seeing red and flying off the handle every time I fire up the opening title music. I just can’t get through it when that red mist of angry musical deja vu pours into my ears.

I found out just recently that one of my favourite living directors, David Cronenberg, was developing that original film for a year, attached as the director, before being dropped from the project by the producers. Apparently, he was fired for attempting to make a movie version which was fairly close and respectful to the original PKD source material... when all that the producers wanted was, and I quote, “Indiana Jones on Mars”. I think David Cronenberg’s extremely “Phildickian” inspired movie eXistenZ, which even contains some specific references to Dick’s The Three Stigmata Of Palmer Eldritch in it, if I’m remembering it right, is far superior to what the makers of Total Recall ended up with in every way possible and is a testament to Cronenberg’s ingenuity, skill and ultimately, suitability to this kind of project.

Then I heard they were “remaking” Total Recall.

That’s how they put it. Remaking Total Recall.

Not doing an adaptation of PKD’s We Can Remember It For You Wholesale. Which rankled me somewhat, as you can imagine.

Furthermore, I then heard that Colin Farrell had been picked up for the movie. Now I’ve never quite been able to stand Colin Farrell for very long. He was in a fairly cool movie by Spielberg, inspired by Dick’s story Minority Report, but he wasn’t in it much and that’s about as long as I can handle him for. Which is why I wasn’t all that keen in ever going to see this new incarnation, which hit the cinemas a couple of days ago over here (why are a handful of films now suddenly coming out on a Wednesday or a Monday over here at the moment?). That was until I saw the trailer for it in front of a couple of movies over the last few weeks and liked what I saw in those trailers enough to go and see this on its opening night (in the UK).

I have to be honest... it’s not so much a straight remake of the original movie, thank goodness, but it still significantly “deviates from the brief” so to speak, if that brief was indeed to make a version of We Can Remember It For You Wholesale. You still don’t get the humour of the wild, weird and varied scenarios as the company in the story tries to give the central protagonist a new memory... opening like a set of Russian dolls to reveal that the character has had many lives, all of which match the wildest inventions of the scenarios they are trying to create for him (secret agent, superhero etc., it’s been a while since I read this, obviously). However, having said that, I did rather enjoy this movie on a purely “this is a piece of modern action cinema which works quite well” kinda level and I think a lot of people would like this if they gave it half a chance...I understand lots of people in the US stayed away in droves for this. I think it will make some cash when it gets a DVD release, however.

So... there’s a couple of references to the 1990 version, at least a couple I could pick up on given my relative inexperience of the original and this will probably bring a smile to the faces of fans of the first. But, unlike both Dick’s original work and also the Schwarzenneger vehicle, this particular film is taking itself very seriously most of the way through and it lacks any real humour.

Colin Farrell’s performance is quite good and I was able to suspend my disbelief and allergic reaction to him for, just about, the full duration of the film. Can’t really fault him as an actor... just one of those personalities on screen who I personally have trouble with. He’s excellent in this, as are most people in it, and that should be good enough for me.

Jessica Biel, who is another old hand from a Philip K. Dick movie (Next, inspired by PKD’s The Golden Man) is also on hand and she does a great job here but unfortunately she’s kind of overshadowed a bit by the absolute powerhouse villainess performance put in by Kate Beckinsale in this one as Colin Farrel’s wife/baby sitter. I usually find her a bit hit and miss, although I loved her in Van Helsing and Whiteout, but in this one she really outdoes herself. It’s a real “action woman with confidence” tour-de-force and she seems to have inherited that great ability to really look like she actually could do it all in real life (Nobody could but, hey, she looks like she could, okay?).

The editing in this one is fast and furious and the emphasis really is on action. There’s not a heck of a lot of screen time with people standing around talking... it’s pretty much one big long action chase lasting roughly two hours. There’s also not a lot of let-up to the pacing but that’s just the kind of movie it is. Fortunately, although the editing is pushing through the images at a frantic rate, it’s quite competent on this one (they’re pulling back and getting better again in Hollywoodland with this kind of stuff, I think) and it’s pretty clear throughout the stacked-in-a-row action set pieces just what is going on and when. It’s very easy to comprehend the choreography of the crash, the bang and the wallop.

Harry Gregson-Williams, another composer who I find a bit hit and miss, pulls off a techno augmented score which perfectly complements the thrills on screen and hits all the right notes... all the right notes, that is, if the movie was going to be called The Total Bourne Recollection. It has to be said, the score is excellent, but one of the problems with the movie is that it does seem, in a fair few places, to be trying to capture the zeitgeist of the Jason Bourne franchise and there will be a fair few scenes in this one which might take viewers back to The Bourne Identity... which seems to be the mind echoes that this movie is trying to hit quite often. Consequently, although the score doesn’t have that strongly defined set of bass lines and melodies that the Bourne series has, the orchestration and general style of it is definitely, I suspect, trying to remind you of those films on a sub-conscious level. That being said, though, I loved this score and wish the company had chosen to release a CD of it instead of letting it wallow in some “unreleased” list.

The visual aspect of it, though, is very glossy and, for the most part, sterile in it’s big budget portrayal of a bona fide ”sci-fi thriller”. That is to say, it’s grey and white and has the feel of something like the Will Smith vehicle I, Robot or, indeed, the aforementioned Minority Report. I’m not saying this is a bad thing though... I liked it well enough and I think other people might get a kick out of it if only they’d go to the cinema and give it a try.

In summing up I’d say, don’t go expecting a faithful adaptation of either the original movie bearing this name, or indeed, Phil Dick’s original work... it’s dumbed down significantly, for sure. However, if you like futuristic action movies with lots of punching things in it and lots of bad guys who seem to be incapable of accurately aiming their weapons at the main protagonists, then you could do a lot worse than give this one a watch. Give it a gander if you’ve got nothing better to do.

Une Couleur: Blanc

WHITEOUT 2009 US

Directed by Dominic Sena

Optimum DVD Region 2

Very minor spoilers here... not much peril but proceed with caution.

Whiteout is a thriller starring Kate Beckinsale as a US Marshall based in Antarctica. It’s also probably going to be one of my comfort movies for a few years to come... you know, one of those movies you put on sometimes just to unwind to and not necessarily have to pay attention to and will allow you some time to think through the days problems.

Why is Whiteout a good candidate for this? Well, to be honest with you... Whiteout is not a great movie. It’s certainly not a terrible movie and it’s made with some obvious skill and talent both in front of and behind the camera... and it just manages to keep it’s head above mediocrity for the majority of the film without making you feel bad for possibly wasting your time on something like this.

It is not thought provoking. It has no twists which you won’t see coming, in that, as soon as a certain actor walks on the screen for the first time... you just know they’re going to be revealed as the bad guy at the end. There’s no really clever framing or immaculate mise-en-scene which draws attention to itself and nor is that probably the point... it seems quite work-a-day in its atmosphere and pacing and I am sincerely keeping my fingers crossed that this is what the director was going for.

But it’s not terrible either... Tom Skerrit (Captain Dallas in ALIEN) turns up in it and he’s a fine actor to watch and, also, a fine actor to watch other actors react to (take note). A very naturalistic actor who, perhaps at the behest of his director, maybe telegraphed certain things a little too early in the plot than this audience member would have wanted.

I remember seeing this at the cinema last year and being quite pleased with it. It was always going to be a DVD purchase for me after that because... like I said, comfort movie.

Whiteout is very much a High Noon by way of it’s remake Outland, kind of movie because, although nobody is specifically gunning for our heroine, she has to solve the problem of a series of murders, a box full of “what?” from a plane crash 50 or so years before and stop the killer from killing again, before it’s time to evacuate the base, get out of Dodge and get in the last helicopter before the winter sets in and nobody gets in or out of the base for a good many months. So it has that "time is running out" element from those two movies I mentioned constantly ticking in the back of your mind.

This film also continues the tradition of films in which heroes take a beating in pursuit of the truth. In Chinatown, Jack Nicholson got his nose slit and had to wear a plaster throughout the rest of the film, which was kinda unusual in Hollywoodland. I remember when Kathleen Turner played V.I. Warshawski for the first time (in the movie version... she also played her a few times on the radio if memory serves) and the studios wouldn’t let her keep her bruising and general state of dishevelment after she is beaten up halfway through the movie. In Whiteout, I am happy to report that Kate Beckinsale gets two fingers amputated after she exposes them to extreme cold and gets frostbite trying to evade the killer in a sequence about halfway through the movie. She’s got two bandaged fingers for the rest of the movie and at least the scriptwriters tie it in to a reveal scene for the villain later on in the movie... that would have been really great if, as I said earlier... the villain had been in any way a surprise. Actually, lets not call him a villain... he's actually a quite likeable and sympathetic person. Bad guy will do.

There are two things which made me stand up (metaphorically) when I first saw Whiteout at the cinema... two things that is, apart from the snow. I love snow and I love snow in movies... if a movie has got snow in it (so McCabe and Mrs. Miller, The Great Silence) then I am going to be able to watch it no matter how bad it is... in fact, I’ve just realised as I was writing those last few words that maybe that’s partially why my favourite movie out of the original Star Wars trilogy is The Empire Strikes Back... it started up on an ice planet, what more do I need? Blood and snow... a winning combination in a movie if ever there was one.

Now where was I?

Oh yeah. Two things which made me pay attention. One was in a scene with Kate Beckinsale just after she has had her fingers amputated and she is taking it out on her quarters in the base by throwing a tantrum and wrecking the place. One of the DVDs in her collection, making a blink and you’ll miss it appearance, is the 1954 sci-fi B-movie THEM! Of course, it would have been more a comment on the kind of film Whiteout is in terms of setting if it had been The Thing From Another World or even John Carpenter’s remake of the same (just The Thing) but I’m always happy for movies involving giant ants to make an appearance. I love THEM! and happy to see it referenced whenever possible. The last time I remember a nod to it in a movie was in that great Area 51 how-many-sci-fi-references-can-you-cram-into-a-scene sequence in Looney Toons Back in Action. The same sound effect as the giant ants from THEM! was used.

Okay... thing number two is... the score. Never been the best follower of John Frizzell but I do like his style and I’m probably one of the few people on the planet who bought the soundtrack CD to a small sci-fi show he scored back in 1995 called VR5. The show was cancelled after less than ten episodes if I recall so the CD release must have been part of the deal before it started to air is my guess. I liked him then and I like him now. His score for Whiteout is quite breathtaking... it’s not really a score that relies on leitmotif to tune in the viewer, at least not that I can tell and that doesn’t seem to be Frizzel’s thing. His window into the material seems to be similar to the work of Bernard Herrmann... not in style, they're worlds apart, but in terms of scoring for the landscape and the psychological atmosphere of the environment rather than tying anything into a specific character. Some of his more sweeping, snowbound cues reminded me of his work on the score for Jeunet’s Alien: Ressurection (a score that I feel was much maligned when it came out but which I think people should maybe take another listen to).

So there you have it... not a great movie by any standards but certainly not an absolutely terrible one. Good thing to watch if you don’t want to think about anything in particular (everything is well telegraphed and spoonfed for you) but with some standout music and a reference to giant ants! Not the best kind of art in the world... but sometimes a light, unchallenging dessert is just the kind of comfort food you need.