Free Fire

Shooting Stars

Free Fire
UK 2016
Directed by Ben Wheatley
UK cinema release print.

I usually find the films of Ben Wheatley... who along with co-writer Amy Jump has, perhaps unwittingly, become one of the most shining auteurs representing British cinema these days... well... usually a bit hit or miss. I’ve only seen four of his six cinematic features (and not a great deal of his TV work... only his Doctor Who episodes) and of those four, I loved the first two I saw... Kill List (reviewed here) and Sightseers (reviewed here)... but really didn’t rate High Rise (reviewed here) when I saw it at the London Film Festival back in 2015. So I approached his new film, Free Fire, with a certain amount of caution. Not least because the trailer didn’t really appeal to me all that much.

It does, however, have a lot of big name stars shooting at each other in this film... such as Cillian Murphy, Sharlto Copley, Armie Hammer, Brie Larson, Noah Taylor and Michael Smiley... which is to be expected with this directors growing status in international cinema. People are going to want to work with him.

 It would be true to say that on the level of the acting talent in this film, nobody does a bad job here. They all make believable characters and a certain sense of heightened, dramatic ‘realism’ is manufactured to serve the threads of black humour running through the piece. It’s a film that will pull you into an immersive experience in a very short time. That being said, although it’s a heck of a lot more entertaining than High Rise (for me at least), it was nowhere near the dizzying heights of the other two movies I mentioned in the opening paragraph. That being said, it’s an interesting experiment of a film in its premise and execution and, if it was for nothing other than that, then it’s to be applauded for going full on into the very limiting territory which the writers and director have chosen to explore here.

The film tells the story of an arms deal that goes sour and, apart from maybe the first ten minutes of the movie, it’s all set in an abandoned/disused factory/warehouse kind of environment. Now, the thing I didn’t realise until finding out the day after I saw it is that it’s set in Boston in 1978. The film is all shot in Wheatley’s home town of Brighton, UK,  which is not all that much of a surprise actually, since the only external locations are a moving vehicle at night and a place just outside of the warehouse. No, what surprised the heck out of me after having already seen this is the fact that this movie is actually set in the 1970s.

Nothing about the style of dress or haircuts or anything else in this movie screamed 1970s at me and, I suspect, that this failure or inability on my part to register that it’s set in a historical time period, albeit one I grew up in, is endemic to me rather than anyone else. A fair few times in my life I have been called Mr. 70s by people who have never met each other at different periods of my life and so, I can only assume I have a blind spot when it comes to recent time periods I’ve lived through. That being said, it makes a little more sense now as to why people in the movie risk life and limb to get to the only phone in the place rather than whip out a mobile... which I never even thought of while I was watching. The phone design should have perhaps given it away but, in my minds eye, all people’s telephones still look like that so I didn’t make the association. I think dial phones should make a big comeback, to be honest. Of course, if any of the characters did have a mobile phone on them then the ‘experiment’ could not have worked in the same controlled environment that this movie has in the same way... so it’s obvious why Mr. Wheatley chose this period for this film. After all, can you imagine how something like the original Die Hard (reviewed here) might have played out if John McLane had a mobile phone on him?

The film is about, as I said, a gun deal that goes sour between the two parties buying and selling the guns and, right from the outset when the various people meet, Mr. Wheatley raises the tension by having them not get on very well at all. Far from it, in fact. Everything feels dangerous and the audience is left waiting for the one trigger that blows the gasket of the less than smooth running engine of this particular arms deal and causes everything to go wrong. It turns out that the back breaking camel’s straw is an incident that occurs off screen and which affected two of the characters from the night before this event takes place but, once these two characters, one from either of the side of the deal, both recognise each other... that’s when everything goes, as people say these days, pear shaped.

But it’s to the credit of Mr. Wheatley, Ms Jump and the cast of the film that the audience is already placed in a position where everything seems like a powder keg waiting to go off anyway. The characters do not like being around each other and they act, for the most part, like people who don’t expect an arms deal could go sour. So rather than go in polite, they spend a lot of their time trading insults with the ‘opposition’ and generally getting on each other’s nerves... not a great start to an equitable trade solution, to be sure.

The film, once the inevitable happens, becomes a movie comprising of all the cast members insulting and shooting at each other and just trying to find a way to survive the evening and get out of the environment they all find themselves trapped in. Nobody escapes a bullet and the characters are continually shot up and find themselves getting more damaged as the evening wears on. Everybody just wants to shoot everyone else and get themselves to a hospital... not to mention the presence of two snipers in the warehouse, who are an unexpected element to the majority of the characters (don’t worry, that’s not a spoiler... you’ll find that one out very early on in the proceedings).

All in all the film is noisy and has some nice moments in terms of dialogue but, for me and probably only for me, the film seemed less able to grab me than it may most people, I suspect. Anyone who knows me knows that I dislike gangland based or criminal POV films and, like most other films featuring these types of characters, I didn’t find one redeeming feature in pretty much anyone here. So that kinda takes the punch out of it for me because, once the shooting starts, I didn’t really mind who got shot and who made it out of the film alive. Horror films about bratty teenagers tend to throw up the same problem for me so... yeah, for the most part, if I don’t feel like I could spend an hour of pub time with a character then I’m probably not going to care what happens to that person.

It is, however, a fascinating film to watch on a technical level and Wheatley manages to get some nice shot set ups with various planes of space slicing up the screen in some places. There’s also a nice ‘John Denver’ moment too but, you know, I don’t want to get into pseudo-spoiler territory here. It must have been a nightmare to film in some ways... but probably a lot easier in others. I’ve absolutely no idea if this is the case but it struck me very early on that... with the amount of damage that both the characters and, perhaps more importantly, the set/environment they are inhabiting is taking... this thing must have been, surely, shot in sequence (apart from maybe the first ten minutes of the movie). Otherwise it would have been a complete nightmare with rebuilds to already damaged sections of the set and, believe me, the warehouse takes a lot of damage as the film progresses. I wouldn’t be surprised, too, if all of the actors would have all been on the set more or less simultaneously for about 90% of the time... so it must have made for a pretty interesting shoot. I’m guessing, of course, but I really can’t see how it could have been done any other way.

Ultimately, Free Fire is not really my cup of tea but I don’t think that’s going to be the case for most audience members and I think this will go on to become a well loved movie. I think history will treat this kindly and I think, although I would probably never watch this again myself, that I would recommend this film to a fair amount of people as I genuinely think most of them would enjoy it far more than I did. So there you go... catch it while it’s at the cinema because it’s all about guns and noise and shouting and you need the nice speakers for that.  And, yes... I am now back on track in terms of waiting to see what this director does next. He’s a bit hard to predict and that can only be a good thing.

Hardcore Henry

First Person Standing

Hardcore Henry
2015 Russia/USA
Directed by Ilya Naishuller
UK cinema release print.

Warning: Extremely slight spoiler in here which gives almost nothing away... just a minor surprise the first time something happens.

I first saw the poster to Hardcore Henry about six weeks ago at my local cinema. I’d never heard of the film before and the title and design of the poster didn’t exactly make me want to go and see this one. I was more than happy to let another dubious action movie pass me by. However, a couple of weeks ago I watched the trailer for the movie and that changed my mind. Sure, it looked like a mindless bullet fest shot on high levels of adrenalin but it also looked completely demented and, furthermore, it looked like it had all been shot from a first person point of view. And by that I mean... imagine if you were playing an old computer game like Doom or Quake or the original Duke Nukem... the whole movie is shot like that, where you are the main character as accessed by the camera’s eye. Something we’re used to seeing in the horror genre to a certain extent but, even then, the character is usually a person armed 'with' the camera... this is slightly different in that the camera viewpoint is supposed to be the eyes of the titular Henry.

So yeah, after seeing that trailer, I was pretty much up for going to see this... although I still had my reservations. Had I registered that Sharlto Copley was in it, I would have probably crossed it off my ‘to watch’ list, to be honest... I’ve not been a fan of Copley in the few films I’ve seen him in. Luckily, I didn’t realise he was in it because, not only is the movie a fairly enjoyable one if you’re into the whole gung ho action thing but... Sharlto Copley is also really good in this. Maybe I just don’t like his native South American accent which the actor usually uses in his films... it’s possible I’ve been reacting to that in the past. Copley ditches that here in favour of... a whole bunch of other accents but... okay, I’m getting ahead of myself here.

As I said, Hardcore Henry is a first person shooter of a movie and, as it starts, we see the memory of Henry as a young boy. At least, that’s what we assume it is at the time. This is then followed by a title sequence that really sets the bar on the level of violence in the movie. Now, I’m not sure if it was just me but in terms of graphic, gory detail, the rest of the movie really doesn’t live up to the quiet ferocity of this opening credits design. I say quiet because the credits are all slow motion shots set against a soundtrack and are almost, in some ways, a spiritual cousin to some of those old Bond title sequences. However, these particular credits concern themselves with close up shots of various areas of the human anatomy as violence with a variety of implements is brutally committed to said body parts. So a slow motion knife entering a person’s neck from one side followed by a shot of it exiting, still in slow motion, from the other side... that kind of thing. I’m not someone who condones violence in real life but in art such as painting, film and fiction I am happy to enjoy it on the level that it occupies and, since I haven’t seen a title sequence quite like this before, I found it all kinda interesting to be honest. The opening credits end with the camera following the trail of a bullet which has just penetrated somebody’s eyeball. Possibly this is all what has happened to Henry before the film starts proper. These credits are pretty much the only part of the movie which are not shot in strict, first person viewpoint, in fact.

We then return to that POV camera angle when we ‘wake up’ as the title character gains consciousness. It’s clear the character is recovering from some violent procedure and that his girlfriend (Estelle, played by Haley Bennett) has rebuilt him/us as some kind of cybernetic killing machine. Now the key here is that, cleverly on the part of the writer, the character has no immediate memory of anything that has happened to get him into this state, including remembering the lady in question. He can’t even speak until she downloads a new voice into him and, just before this is about to happen, the room caves in and we meet the main villain of the piece. So Henry is silent throughout the film. People are killed and Henry has to go on the run to escape certain death at the hands of the deadly Akan (played by Danila Kozlovsky) and his endless army of trained killers. Luckily, every time Henry is on his own, the plot unfolds just a little more and he stumbles onto someone who can help him, to tell him the next bit of his mission, whether that be keeping himself charged up and alive or... something more specific.

The first person to help him is a guy called Jimmy, played by Sharlto Copley. He doesn’t last long, though, before his brains are shot out the front of his head but, every time a new development occurs... there’s Jimmy again to help. In one guise or another. Basically, Sharlto Copley plays a number of, lets call them incarnations for the sake of this review, of Jimmy over the course of the film and each Jimmy is a different variation of him... druggie, punk rocker, British army officer... that kind of thing. Copley plays them all really well and I found this constantly, recurring character with numerous South Park style “Oh my God, they killed Kenny” moments to be very entertaining. After a while, as the plot develops, you’ll also get to find out why there are so many ‘Jimmys’ and the gradually emerging picture of the world that Henry has been resurrected into is one of the things that holds the interest throughout the film.

That’s the basic set up and the structure is a bit weak, to be honest, in that if it didn’t have a back story to the situation evolving in the background... well it might be a bit of a dull film after a while. I actually thought, before I went to see this, that an hour and a half of first person style, non-stop action would get a bit boring as it wore on but the director is quite good at keeping the momentum and interest going throughout the whole of the movie... somewhat surprisingly. This includes some ferocious edits to the footage that allows the director to cut to a later moment in a scene without losing the audience in terms of what’s going on... he can eliminate the unnecessary bits without it being a major jolt on the visual cortex and, again surprisingly, the action sequences are really easy to follow, even when they are at their most frantic (which is quite often). Having the odd gimmick like overlapping subtitles to convey a chatter of voices doesn’t harm the movie either... although I wonder how that moment must play out in other markets around the world.

I did have a couple of problems with it, one of which is the structure of the forward momentum of the picture. There will be a mindless but mostly entertaining action sequence... then we’ll get a few minutes of calm where one character explains a little more of what is going on. However, as that situation  carries on it will always suddenly conclude with some kind of violence or explosion or occurrence of extremely aggressive mayhem... which will then lead into the next action sequence before another bit of calm. Stop... repeat. The whole of the movie works in exactly this fashion, one scene after another, even throwing a Frank Sinatra musical number sung by various Jimmys singing alternate lines, at one point, before the violence suddenly erupts out of the blue again... and it’s a shame that this kind of repetitive structure was used all the way to the end, to be honest. It’s just enough of a calm before each storm to hold one’s interest but I can’t help but think what the impact of some of the action sequences would have been if there had been more downtime in between punch, crunch, slice and dice sessions. Probably a lot more potent, is my guess.

The other problem I had was with the main bad guy, Akan. Kozlovsky’s performance is fine but the villain, with his all powerful psychokinetic powers, seems somewhat out of place in the narrative, it seems to me. Perhaps more suited to being plucked out of a Japanese manga and rendered in an anime rather than finding himself grafted onto the narrative here. Still, I can see that when you basically have a title character who slowly finds his feet into being a kick ass killing machine, you have to have a villain who he can’t just knock down in 30 seconds flat and I’m guessing the writers introduced the concept of a villain with superhuman powers precisely because of this. Personally, I found it a little intrusive into the narrative style of the rest of the piece but... yeah, it didn’t spoil my enjoyment of the movie too much, it has to be said.

Ultimately, Hardcore Henry does exactly what it says on the tin. If you like considerably over the top action thrills and a fairly proportionate dose of blood and guts in the mix, then chances are you’ll have a blast with this movie. Not exactly the best action film I’ve seen but it certainly has its moments and action fans will not want to miss out on seeing this one at the cinema... so give it a go, maybe.

Elysium

The Magnificent Heaven

Elysium
2013 USA
Directed by Neill Blomkamp
Playing at UK cinemas now.

Warning: Possible slight spoilers.

I wasn’t the biggest fan of Neill Blomkamp’s last movie, his debut feature District 9, although I can acknowledge it was certainly quite an impressive film for all the right kinds of reasons and it’s no surprise to me that he’s got a couple of big names like Matt Damon and Jodie Foster in his follow up feature. Not to mention including the “seen him everywhere lately” character actor William Fichtner in the line up. So in terms of the acting he’s in safe hands here and, as you would expect, everyone in here more than pulls their weight, especially the actor who played the anti-hero main protagonist in District 9, Sharlto Copley, who here plays a very unpleasant villain.

And I have to say that I liked Elysium a lot more than that previous movie although, for sure, it can be almost seen as a companion piece. The worlds inhabited by both sets of characters on Earth is something of a dystopian vision and this also shows up in the style in which the movie is shot. However, since there’s not a great deal to criticise in Elysium and since this would be a real short review if I just said... “Elysium. Okay movie. Wouldn’t watch it again but good for a night out.”... then I’ll elaborate a little more, I think.

You’ve got some really good things going on here because we’re plonked down right into a future society with an established background for both Matt Damon’s Max character and his childhood sweetheart Frey, played charmingly by Alice Braga. Elysium, a space station world where the rich live in their perfect paradise (a metaphor for the world where those chosen favourites by the Gods go to in their afterlife, in certain ancient cultures) is already well established before these two characters are even born and being thrown together again in the mix of a storyline after having been apart from so long is quite poignant when you understand that their dream was always to go and live on Elysium.

However, they are not the chosen elite, they are part of the trodden masses who the rich and powerful look down on... not even that really. People are just things that live and die with no empathic response from the population “up there”. But things now come to a head because, once Max is accidentally exposed to a high dose of radiation, he embarks on a criminal data robbery from his old gang leader in order to get illegal passage to Elysium. Since he can barely stand, he is fitted with an exo-suit to make him stronger and has a data terminal spliced into him, in to which he has to steal and synch with the contents hidden in William Fitchner’s head. I don’t want to completely spoil the story for you but, when everything goes pear shaped, Max, Frey and the others find themselves heading to Elysium in... well... not the best company.

All the scenes on earth are shot with that same kind of gritty and jerky “reality viewpoint” which made District 9 a notable film to watch and the establishing footage initially shown of Elysium has a much more steady-cam, cleaner look to it... and this works really well. My one complaint being that the jerky camera work and editing style is also employed when our main characters are indulging in action sequences on Elysium too... which kinda annoyed me, it has to be said. It’s like the gritty realism is not really a harbinger of the duality of the environments portrayed in the movie... it’s more like a leitmotif for the inner chaos brought by the inhabitants of Earth and the way this bleeds out in to the world as they experience it. Which is a fair enough approach, I guess. I just maybe would have liked a more simplistic idea in terms of environmental rather than social expression.

Another gripe I have is the fact that the exo-skeleton suit that both Max, and later Sharlto Copley’s Kruger character, wear is really low tech. It looks like a pair of crutches and it’s not really believable that this would give our hero super strength. Yes, I understand it’s an Earth-tech, patched up version but that’s no excuse for the identical “frame” that Kruger wears, which he gets fitted on Elysium. So this kinda killed the mood for me a little.

That being said, the film has a certain gritty, brutality all its own and I suspect that this is why people will cotton on to this one so much. It’s easy to get sucked in and be inhabited by a movie when it’s hitting all your comfort zones with a big stick, I’m guessing. So, to be fair, it’s one of those movies where you really feel what’s going on (judging from the audience I saw it with the other night), rather than sit back comfortably and look at the way in which it is framed. It succeeds on this level really well.

One of the reasons it does succeed in this, of course, is because of the editing. Although the action sequences are chopped about quite aggressively, at a fast pace and with lots of changes of scale, it actually manages to capture what’s going on very well and although you may be numbed by the intensity of the various fight and chase sequences in the movie, you certainly shouldn’t have any problem with following what’s going on in them. It’s very carefully edited to produce a raw, in your face aesthetic while still preserving the sense of the overall scheme of things... Blomkamp really seems to know what he’s doing here.

There’s also a great and almost, at times, hypnotic score by first timer Ryan Amon, which is muscular and not unlike a solid Brian Tyler score... who is who I’d guessed had scored it until I saw Amon’s name in the end credits. The current retro trend of using short musical motif’s like Bernard Herrmann or Philip Glass is in full swing here but, who cares, it works and I happen to like those composers anyway. It’s a score I’ll probably get around to picking up sometime soon, I expect.

All in all, Elysium is over-the-top brutal fun for a certain kind of audience. The story is old and clichéd 1950s style science-fiction again, to be sure, but at least it’s treated with a certain degree of respect for its influences and Blomkamp certainly pulls no punches when it comes to manipulating the emotions of the audience. As a piece of hard hitting sci-fi, admittedly ramming its personal philosophies down your throat quite a lot, then it’s still a pretty impressive exercise in movie making and, while I probably wouldn’t watch it again, I’m certainly glad I’ve seen it the once at the cinema. Good work done here.