Terminator Dark Fate

The Fate And The Furious

Terminator Dark Fate
(aka Terminator 6)
2019 USA Directed by Tim Miller
UK cinema release print.

Warning: This one has some spoilers because I don’t have a great deal to say about it but I can, at least, talk about specific plot points.

Terminator Dark Fate is the latest in a long line of Terminator films, starting off with James Cameron’s break out picture The Terminator back in 1984. I saw that first one a year or two after that via a big box video rental from the Off Licence about five minutes walk away (it’s still an off licence but, alas, doesn’t rent videos anymore). Out of all the Terminator movies, that first one was by far and away the best of the series and it’s the only one so far I’ve watched multiple times. All the others I’ve only seen once on their cinema releases. Out of the rest... 2 and 5 were pretty unwatchable, 3 and 4 were a little more entertaining.

This new sixth one is... somewhere in the middle of that lot in watchability, I reckon.

Now, I’ve got no idea just what is going on with the story anymore. They’re a little more contradictory as they go on and all have tried to reboot the franchise in some way. Frankly, the continuity on these things is just as bad as the 1940s Universal Mummy sequels or the various X-Men movies from 20th Century Fox... pretty non existent and disrespectful to the audiences who have plonked down money to see a sequel which fitted in with the prior films in the series.

Alas, Terminator Dark Fate is absolutely guilty of the same derogatory attitude towards its paying audience and within the first five or so minutes of the movie, it completely disregards the 3rd, 4th and 5th films by wiping out the possibilities of those futures, having a ‘younged up’ John Connor shot dead by a Terminator soon after the events of the second film. We then jump to present day when another Terminator, played by Gabriel Luna (who you may remember played Ghost Rider in Marvel’s Agents Of S.H.I.E.L.D) is sent back to our time to kill a young woman called Danni Ramos, played by Natalia Reyes. However, an ‘augmented human’... basically a synthesis of future tech crossed with a human being, so a super powered cyborg, in other words... is sent back to protect her in the form of Grace, played by Mackenzie Davis.

And, to be fair, things get off to a great start with some strong and unrelenting action sequences which really had me believing that this may be one of the better terminator sequels. I was enjoying what I was seeing a lot and that didn’t let up when, in an early ‘deus ex machina’ moment seen in the trailer, Sarah Connor (with Linda Hamilton returning to play the somewhat iconic role) comes to everyone’s rescue and stalls the pursuit of the new Terminator for a little while. She has been getting anonymous messages from someone ‘off the grid’ for years now telling her when and where a Terminator will appear... “For John...” and is the poster girl for America’s Most Wanted as she has been dealing with various Terminators over the years. When Grace hacks her phone they match some coordinates she was sent back with and they go on a road trip to find themselves at the home of... the Terminator who killed John Connor at the start of the film. He has matured into Arnold Schwarzenneger as he looks now and, since he has new orders and is more or less the cybernetic equivalent of a Ronin (a masterless samurai), he has ‘grown a conscience’ and wants to make amends. And the rest of the film is, of course, more action as this group tries to destroy the Terminator, suffering a few losses along the way.

And... it doesn’t quite do what it needed to do for me to really get on its side. Which is a shame because, for the first hour, I was really into it hook, line and sinker. When Schwarzenegger turns up, though, things kind of go downhill a little and it’s not specifically because of him. As usual, Arnold is really cool in this and he does have some good moments in the film... as do all the cast, who make up a great ensemble. And it’s not even that the script is that bad either, despite its disrespect to the three films that preceded it. I just think that, by this point, there’s been a lot of truly spectacular action sequences and, frankly, the action in the second half of the movie, relentless though it is, just doesn’t really top anything you’ve already seen before and the pauses between set pieces aren’t really enough to keep you invested in them for the whole movie. I kinda had action fatigue by around the midway mark, I think. That was my biggest problem with it.

The ending and the not completely surprising revelation about the importance of the girl everyone is protecting is not that satisfying either, it has to be said. And it’s a shame because, like I said, the movie has got a great opening for the first hour. Then it just gets... well kinda dull actually. I no longer needed to see any action by this point and I was just waiting for all the pyrotechnics to finish. Pacing is everything and the second half of the film didn’t really have much contrast in it, truth be told.

Tom Holkenborg’s score to this however, is pretty cool. It’s quite respectful of Brad Fiedel’s original and it works and lifts the action in the occasional scenes when you can actually hear it without getting caught in the crossfire, so to speak. I believe La La Land are planning on issuing a CD of this one towards the end of the month and I may well pick this one up at some point.

Other than that... not much else to say. Good chemistry between the actors, some nice action scenes at the start and, thankfully, some good editing in those action scenes too... you’d probably not get too confused by what’s going on in this one, so that’s good news. Other than that though... not much else to weigh in with Terminator Dark Fate I think. Fans of the franchise will probably be happy enough with it (although I hear that the box office take on this is not what the studios would have wanted). Newcomers to the franchise could also probably pick up what’s going on fairly early in the film too so if you want to see a lot of explosions and bullets and flying bodies, then this is probably the film for you. I’m not sure however, at least in terms of the Terminator movies, that Arnold Schwarzenneger will ‘be back’ for another.

Score - A Film Music Documentary + Score - A Film Music Documentary... The Interviews

The Winds Of Score

Score - A Film Music Documentary
USA 2016 Directed by Matt Schrader
Epicleff Media Blu Ray Zone A

plus

Score - A Film Music Documentary
The Interviews - Educational Edition
by Matt Schrader
Createspace
ISBN: 978-1974367412
A NUTS4R2 TWO-IN-ONE REVIEW

“… the really simple brass ‘brahms’ of Inception. Now, when Chris (Nolan) and I did those, they were a story point, an absolute story point. They were in the script. And then they sort of became ubiquitous, in a funny way, in trailer music. People were just sort of using them as transitional pieces. So the idea that they actually tell a story got lost. They’re just a sound effect. So their meaning got distorted and so there’s a sort of misuse of that.”
Hans Zimmer.


Score - A Film Music Documentary is something I didn’t think I’d get to see over here. I’d just assumed it would be one of those films that didn’t get a UK release and would sink without a trace with no other venue to watch it on other than the slight possibility of a dodgy download somewhere. However, I was very pleased to find that there is this Blu Ray release in the US (it’s also been released in the UK but only as a DVD release for some strange reason). I was also surprised to learn that there is an accompanying educational edition, book companion to the film with full length transcripts of the many interviews conducted for this... about 90% of which doesn’t seem to have actually made it into the film so, actually, it’s a very valuable resource independent of the actual documentary itself. I was delighted to be presented with this on my 50th birthday by a friend earlier in the year, before I even knew this tome existed.

There is also, as it happens, a release of Ryan Taubert’s score for this film but, alas, it’s only available as an electronic download and not as a proper CD edition so I probably won’t get to hear it away from the movie. I really do fail to see how a movie about film scores would ignore a segment of the fan base for such things and not release it in a high quality presentation on the best available media. I guess it says something about the studios who control these properties that they’re a little out of touch, I guess.

So, anyway, this really is not a bad documentary and, although it deals primarily with the state of scoring or the film industry now, it’s actually quite unique in its own way because it interviews a lot of the ‘now’ composers who are the ‘new guard’ including some of my absolute favourites like Bear McCreary, Brian Tyler Hans Zimmer and Marco Beltrami. I mean, there’s a whole host of names in here and chances are that, even if movie music isn’t your thing, you’ve heard at least a few scores by each of the many interviewees here. And it was certainly nice to finally be able to put faces to the names I have adorning the, literally thousands, of film score discs I have lining every wall and alcove of my immediate environment.

Although it’s been said by some people that the film only deals with modern scoring from the 1960s and onwards, I think that’s a little unfair as the documentary is only an hour and a half long (personally, I would have liked it to be at least four hours) and there are some deliberate nods to many of the composers who have made landmark scores in the past. Admittedly, there are less golden age composers than I thought would have made the grade (where are Korngold and Tiomkin?) but the film does acknowledge certain aspects of the past with dedicated segments to composers such as Alfred Newman, Max Steiner, Bernard Herrmann, John Barry, Jerry Goldsmith and John Williams although, of those, the only one still living, Johnny Williams, is not actually interviewed for this movie. That being said, I’m kind of glad that the overall focus of this one is a little slanted to modern composers and their methods/practices because, frankly, we’ve already seen a lot of the other stuff countless times... I think interviews with people like Christopher Young, Junkie XL and the great Hans Zimmer are far more valuable at the moment.

The movie opens with... I think it was Marco Beltrami... demonstrating a dying piano way up on a deserted hill which is connected to a studio by loads of wires which react to the wind. So the wind and environment are helping create the musical texture and, as he says, the notes travel through the wire faster than the wind carries them so you kind of hear the echo of the notes first. This is a great opening hook to start the film off with. It then shows the importance of score by using snippets of the Rocky films under Bill Conti’s famous ‘getting stronger’ theme and really gets the message home for an audience who are perhaps unused to contemplating such things (although whether any of them would sit still for a movie about film scores is anybody’s guess).

The documentary has a number of interview snippets with various composers, mostly new guys although there are some people like Quincy Jones also added into the mix and it’s an extremely valuable bunch of excerpts for the modern film score afficionado, it has to be said. There are also numerous, valuable clips of the various composers either conducting or overseeing the recordings of the films from various scoring sessions, which makes for some interesting watching. Especially when they show the cues being performed in one half of the screen and the accompanying visuals for such movies as Mission Impossible: Rogue Nation (scored by Joe Kraemer) and Casino Royale (scored by David Arnold) in the other half.

It’s also nice that you have legends like Hans Zimmer and his contemporaries paying their respects and expressing their admiration of some of the past ‘greats’ of film score composers such as John Williams and Jerry Goldsmith. It’s just nice to see that the importance of these people is so well appreciated still. Plus, a good visual representation of how leitmotif works, as seen when notes of recurring motifs are highlighted during sections of Howard Shore’s score to The Fellowship Of The Ring.

There are also some very interesting choices of interviewee such as a music psychologist, Siu-Lan Tan, who talks about the way music effects us. How music can be delivered directly into the specific reward centre of the brain, the same place where sensations such as chocolate and sex are processed (ha, I knew it). Actually, I found her the most fascinating of the subjects in a way and I am now on a mission to seek out and read her books about this specific subject.

It’s also nice that there’s a lot of fun stuff in here too and if you want to see Bear McCreary rocking the Hurdy Gurdy and talking about the history of the instrument and why he used it on the TV show Black Sails, this is the place to do that. Indeed, a longer take of him playing the instrument and talking about it is one of the very nice extras accompanying the film on the Blu Ray and DVD release of Score - A Film Music Documentary.

The book, Score - A Film Music Documentary: The Interviews, is available separately and, rather than just reiterating all the great stuff found in the movie, it actually gives you way more information when it comes to each composer and their attitude and approach to the art and craft of scoring. There are a couple of slight niggles with this volume though.

One is found in the very first words of the first chapter. Each chapter comprises an interview with a specific composer and starts off by listing a few of the scores they are known for plus a list of awards, nominations and other musical affiliations but I was quite annoyed to see that the first score listed for David Arnold was for Independence Day - Resurgence, the sequel to a film Arnold actually did write the score for. Alas, as I’m sure most fans of film music will be able to tell you, the score for this sequel was actually by Thomas Wander and Howard Kloser. Now, I don’t know if maybe Arnold did actually do some work on this and his score was rejected but I’m guessing that this would surely have been known before this book went to print. So, yeah, that’s a problem. When the same kind of error occurs later in the book for Tom Holkenborg, it’s at least understandable as I think the book may have already been published before he was taken off of Justice League and Danny Elfman took over scoring duties on that one.

The other slight problem I have with this book is the amount of typos. There are absolutely loads of sentences which start off with a lower case letter dotted around the book. At least, I hope these are typos and not some bizarre attempt to change the way English grammar works, at any rate.

In spite of all that though, the volume is something which I think most film score junkies will appreciate. It’s true there are some things you expect certain composers to talk about... so included in David Arnold’s section is his enthusiasm for using Monty Norman’s James Bond theme at various points in a Bond movie and director James Cameron talks about the importance of the temp score and working with James Horner. However, there’s also a lot of stuff which people may find less familiar and it’s in these words by the people in the front line that you gain the real knowledge from.

For instance, Quincy Jones starts off talking about how hard it was to be a black composer in 1960s Hollywood. But it’s interesting to learn how he'd make a conscious effort to get away from representational music (what we would call ‘Mickey Mousing’) and to score something more in touch with mood and feeling/setting (something which Bernard Herrmann used to do, I believe). Similarly, the composing team of Trent Reznor (Nine Inch Nails) and Atticus Ross talk about completely coming at the score from a soundscape kind of sensibility to ensure that each section is appropriate for the mood and tone of a picture and scene. Being an admirer of their score for the US version of The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo, I found their interview section very refreshing and informative.

It’s also interesting to read about the contradictions between composers talking about their work too. Some think the sole job of the score is to just illustrate what’s already on the screen but others, such as Hans Zimmer, more correctly talk about the music enhancing rather than supporting the film. Filling in bits to give the audience emotional direction, for example.

Another interesting point is when the great Bear McCreary makes a really good case for why composers have to use orchestrators and why it’s actually, in the long run, more preferable to the lifestyle than doing it on your own. It’s something I’ve never been quite comfortable with in terms of the artistry of the profession but Bear more than justifies this practice here. He also talks about how you should put the directors in a very comfortable state of mind and connect with them to have the most productive dialogue in the first place.

On the other hand another of my favourite modern film score composers, Brian Tyler, is not a fan of letting what he writes go to orchestrators and mixers and, although he kinda admits it’s a necessity, he will sometimes go and remix it all again afterwords anyway. He also cherishes the imperfections of timing and performance because that's how the music feels "alive and original" which is nice. When you see a concert I’ve always been conscious that this is the only way you will ever see it performed exactly a certain way... no repeats, it’s always going to sound different every time. It’s interesting to see Tyler celebrating this natural phenomenon as being extremely beneficial to the final performance recording of the art form.

And then there’s Garry Marshall. Now, it could be that I was reading his section with the wrong tone but he seemed to come across, at least to me, as either a complete nutter or a total idiot. For example, if he wants a sequence in a film to seem like something is important... he’ll just put in a song by U2. I don’t know, maybe he’s just got a really great sense of humour and I was reading it incorrectly but... yeah... if I were a composer I might have second thoughts about collaborating with him on the strength of his words here, that’s for sure.

However, the book is, as I said, a really useful and insightful tome, in spite of the occasional piece of misinformation and rampant typos . An excellent companion piece to Score - A Film Music Documentary. If you’re a fan of the art of motion picture music then chances are you would have already seen/read this one or added it to your list. If not, then you really should and both the book and the film are certainly good for people who have no idea about the art and want to get up to speed. I’m really happy to have both the Blu Ray and the paperback and these get a big, raised conductor’s baton thumbs up from me. They’re certainly noteworthy.

You can read my review of a Hans Zimmer concert here and a review of a Brian Tyler concert here.

The Dark Tower

Have Gun, Will Unravel

The Dark Tower
2017 USA Directed by Nikolaj Arcel
UK cinema release print.

I actually wasn’t going to bother going to see The Dark Tower, to be honest, with you. Much as I like Idris Elba and the way his character loaded his guns in the most ridiculous, impossible way ever in the trailer, I was  annoyed by the appropriation of Ennio Morricone’s famous watch chimes from For A Few Dollars More (they don’t actually make it into the movie itself, just the marketing) and the negative critical attention the movie got kind of kept me disinterested on the first week of its release. However, a co-worker at my esteemed place of employment suggested to me that, actually, it’s a pretty good movie so I figured that, if I got a chance, I’d try to make some time for it after all (so thanks very much to Tracey S for the ‘heads up’).

Now, I’m pretty glad I saw this one in the end because, frankly, it’s not nearly as bad as the negative reviews are making out and probably doesn’t deserve the poor box office it seems to have had (which in a year where cinema attendances have apparently dropped over 50% to reach their lowest numbers in decades, doesn’t seem like that bad a sin, to be fair, when compared to the performance of the majority of big studio films of 2017). That being said, it’s not without it’s problems and these are not little things so I’ll get them out of the way now.

Now, one of the criticisms that the film is supposed to have is that this really isn’t an adaptation of any in the series of the Stephen King novels it is alleged to be based on. More of a prequel or sequel by all accounts. Now, although I used to love reading Stephen King in the early to mid 1980s when the first of these novels was released, I never bothered with this one because it was in what I quaintly used to call a ‘rip off’ edition... because the page count was very low and so the company who released the paperback here in the UK made the book slightly oversized and charged way more money than a regular novel twice the length to compensate for it. Even in my early teens I could tell a bad deal when I saw one so I didn’t waste what little pocket money I had getting this one. What this means, of course, is that I can’t tell you how great an adaptation or interpretation of the original source material this movie is but, by all accounts it’s not very close so I can understand the negative passion unleashed by fans of the novels at the way this movie has been handled. My sympathies to them on that one.

Not being able to weigh in on that one myself, then, the biggest problem I had with the film was the incredibly appalling continuity. The main child protagonist of the film, Jake, played ably by Tom Taylor, drops his bag of trusty drawings at one point to lock himself in a bathroom and then escape through the window before being chased out of his neighbourhood. When he escapes, finds his destination and travels to an alternative world through a portal, he suddenly has his bag with him again. What? And then, suddenly, within ten minutes, it’s gone again as he seems to lose it between two shots with no apparent explanation. At first I thought the film’s other main protagonist, The Gunslinger played by Idris Elba, was carrying it before remembering that he also had a bag like that left by the remains of his camp fire when Jake stumbles into him. So... yeah... magically teleporting bag is not the best continuity in the world. Now I understand that this may have been the fault of hard editing choices in the final cut but, even so, the continuity leaps are quite glaring here and enough to pop you right out of the movie.

So there you go... that’s my only real stumbling block with the movie. As for the rest of it...

Well, it’s a nice action movie with a very retro feel for us oldsters. It really does feel like a movie which might have been made in the early to mid-1980s (when the novels came out) and if you’re into that kind of feel then all well and good. It kinda reminded me a bit of Back To The Future Part III crossed with The Dark Crystal and... yeah... depending on your age or tolerance for flights of fantasy, then you’ll either embrace this film or shun it. Personally I had a great time with the melding of that kind of, almost innocent, sensibility mixed together with the kind of modern action sequences which have that 'Jason Statham in The Transporter' kind of ridiculousness to it... which I also loved. Seriously, when you see the way The Gunslinger manages to constantly reload his dual six shooters in the blink of an eye or throw revolver chambers up in the air and catch them in his guns, you’ll know exactly what I’m talking about. It certainly stretches the boundaries of credibility and challenges the audience's skills at suspending their disbelief but, you know, in a way that’s what cinema is all about... to show us something we can’t necessarily see in real life (like all great art). So I really have no complaints about that.

The performances are good from all the lead players and that’s especially to be said for the primary bad guy, The Man In Black, played with relish and the usual amount of almost effortless talent by the always watchable Matthew McConaughey. There are also some nicely edited together sequences such as the full ‘bullet fired through the night’ sequence which you will have seen in the trailer in a truncated form but which works better here due to the build up as certain key locations and objects are viewed by the camera before being revisited in the edit of the actual 'gunshot moment' itself. It’s good stuff and, although the film never really manages to raise itself up from being a B-movie kind of affair, it’s a nicely put together B-movie and can easily go toe to toe with a lot of A-list pictures which don’t have the same kind of understanding of the way a sequence is put together (despite the glaring continuity issues in this movie).

There’s also a nicely epic, over the top but very listenable score by Tom Holkenborg (aka Junkie XL) which gives some of the action sequences the required boost when called for. This guy is becoming quite an accomplished film composer and I’m warming to him a lot of late.

If there are some Stephen King enthusiasts in the audience who are not alienated by the deviations from the source material, then there are a heck of a lot of King references dotted throughout the film for them to enjoy. King tends to link all of his books together by having them take place in local locations or referencing events from other books as throwaway comments by characters and the film does the same thing here. For instance, Jake has the ‘shine’ associated with King’s famous novel (and subsequent Stanley Kubrick film) The Shining and a poster pin-up of Rita Hayworth from King’s short story The Rita Hayworth And Shawshank Redemption (filmed as The Shawshank Redemption) is quite prominent in one scene.

At the end of the day, The Dark Tower is not the best movie out there, especially in a year which, even with record box office lows, has given us some very rich cinematic art. It is, however, very entertaining and certainly doesn’t get boring for its ‘not quite an hour and a half’ running time. Certainly, if you’re put off by the negative word of mouth for the movie but you’re not that fussed at how closely it follows the original series of novels then you may want to give this one a look after all. It’s not an entirely unoriginal movie and it even has a few edgier moments that other Hollywood movies might have shied away from. Give it a go if you’re looking for a bit of light hearted popcorn fodder that you won’t have to think too much about. You could do a lot worse.

Mad Max - Fury Road

Furioser and Furiosa

Mad Max - Fury Road
2015  Australia/USA
Directed by George Miller 
UK cinema release print.

Okay, so the reason I just spent some time over the last few weeks watching the Mad Max Trilogy (reviewed here, here and here) was so that I could bring myself up to speed on the latest installment, Mad Max: Fury Road. Now there has been a lot of good word of mouth on this film with some people even suggesting that it’s similar to the cinema of Kurosawa in its execution and influence... well, it’s really not ‘Kurosawa good’ and I wish people wouldn’t evoke my favourite director every time they want to say they really quite like something.

On the other hand, this is certainly an okay film and, for the most part, it follows through in the spirit of the first two films of the original trilogy... so there’s that. Also, I needed to see this one in IMAX 3D... not because I was particularly bothered about seeing the spectacle on an extra large screen, but because there was no way I could pass up the chance to ask the person in the box office for a ticket to IMAX MAD MAX... it had to be done and it was worth the six quid extra on top of the Unlimited card to be able to say that phrase out loud to someone.

The film does, however, truly look quite spectacular, even using the cliched orange/blue colour scheme that the director plumped for in this one. And it’s full of action.... perhaps a little too much for many people’s tastes. I know one lady, for instance, who labelled it a kids movie due to the lack of both emotional content and story. Personally, I didn’t think the movie lacked a strong emotional element at all... and it had a heck of a lot more of that than in the original trilogy, especially in terms of the chemistry between Max, played in this one by popular actor Tom Hardy, and the new female action hero Imperator Furiosa, played by Charlize Theron. It helps the ‘action movie shorthand’ if you have two really good actors doing these things, of course.

Yes, there is a lack of anything but the simplest mission objective of a plot but, although I can understand the irritation of that to some people, it’s certainly one of the strongest links between this and the first two movies... which also shared a common lack of vision when it came to the story telling, although not to the detriment of either film. If you read my review of the third movie, Mad Max: Beyond Thunderdome, in fact, you’ll find I was citing the more complicated plotting as one of the reasons why that film didn’t really work too well in terms of spiritual continuity with the others. This new film is a lot more like Mad Max 2: The Road Warrior in terms of content...although the visual style is a world apart. I’ll get to that in a minute.

What we basically have in this film, and why it fits right into the Mad Max universe that Miller has created and maintained all these years, is the last 20 minutes or so of that second movie stretched out to make one, long car chase of a movie. There’s hardly any let up or pause between set pieces and this does make it a little more weaker as a film in some respects, than one or two of its predecessors. That being said, I got a real feel that this is where Miller wanted to take the Mad Max films all along and you have to remember that modern cinema has changed a lot in the intervening years since the original trilogy. Back in the day it was probably cinematic suicide to make one long movie which was just, basically, a big chase scene. These days, when action films just keep getting more and more over the top in their execution and with audiences demanding the kind of visual overload that goes with this style of presentation, I suspect the director finally felt like he could make the kind of movies that he always wanted to and...  in the way he wanted to. So...

The good
Well, the colours are fantastic, despite the aforementioned predominant hues... and it’s a real eye candy movie in terms of both the colours and the inventiveness of Miller’s post apocalyptic vision. There’s some beautiful lightning in a scene where Max, Furiosa and their cargo of beauties (I won’t bother to explain that, go see the film) are driving at night  and so everything is washed in blue light, even Max and Furiosa in the front two seats. In the back seats, however, the ladies who are accompanying them, have a lamp on and that creates a contrasting set of colours in the back seat of the vehicle... all pitched against the other colour scheme within the same frame. So that’s really good. And the surrealistic element of the landscapes and the kinds of Daliesque people who inhabit them are pretty interesting too.

Actually, I say it’s MIller’s post apocalyptic vision but one of the people who wrote it and drew concepts for it, back in the 1990s as it turns out... but still with his story and ideas being retained now due to production problems in the long road to... err... Fury Road, is comic book artist Brendan McCarthy. I used to read his work in popular British comic 2000AD and, although he didn’t create the comic book character I am about to cite, it has to be said that the look of the Charlize Theron character Imperator Furiosa does owe a visual debt to Mean Machine Angel from the Judge Dredd strip in the 1980s. In fact, the film is so action packed (at the expense of everything else) and colourful that I believe it would be fair to say the whole movie is infused with a comic book sensibility and so McCarthy’s involvement in the project does explain certain things, in that sense. In terms of design and colour, it’s a mad, mad, mad, mad Max.

There’s a scene in this where Max has to give Furiosa a makeshift blood transfusion with a needle and so, at one point in the proceedings, it gets to a point which I can only describe as having a Fury With A Syringe On Top moment. Yay! I nearly used that for the title of this review but I didn't so, forgive me, I had to work it into the text somehow.

The Bad
Well, when I reviewed Mad Max: Beyond Thunderdome I moaned that the cinematography in that one, utilising lots of camera movement, was out of keeping with the often static shot set ups of the original two films. Alas, this film embraces that kind of moving camera vibe to it all the way through... but I think I can forgive it somewhat because, for one thing, it’s more or less just one long action sequence and so moving camera is appropriate. Also, like I said, modern action cinema is a different beast to the celluloid milieu that Miller was filming in back in the 1970s and 1980s and, though I prefer that slower approach to film, I can’t fault Miller’s choice to go with what he’s done here.

The Ugly
Okay... so there’s been a lot of talk about where this film fits into the original chronology, with even George Miller citing it as a reboot. That being said, I think it’s obvious, to me anyway, that it’s a natural sequel to the third movie and takes place after that. More or less the same opening explanation (and footage) of the current state of the post-apocalyptic future our main hero finds himself in that graced the opening of the second movie, in most prints, is used here. But the character still has his leg brace due to wounds received in the first movie, he still has the iconic jacket with the left arm now stitched up where it was torn and he has long hair like he did in the third movie at the start of this one... so I reckon it’s just a natural sequel, The thing that did confuse me were the constant, dream-state flashbacks to people in his past, his family apparently, who didn’t look or sound anything like that in the original movie. So that’s kind of confusing.

All said and done, Miller carries on the films with what is, ostensibly, a wagon train Western that has various nasty bad guy elements representing the chasing Indians and Max, Furiosa and their crew as the good old cowboys of the piece. Junkie XL’s score is noisy but serviceable, even though it’s not in keeping with either of the composers who scored the original trilogy, and there’s also a character relationship between Max and a ‘bad guy turns good guy’ which holds a similar dynamic as that between Max and the Gyro Captain in the second movie... so that’s a nice bit of character building stylistic continuity for you, if you are looking out for that kind of stuff... and much more convincing than the cheap audio/visual echo of the music box from Mad Max 2: The Road Warrior, which has been almost half heartedly, it seemed to me, inserted into the film to check a box.

All in all, it’s not the best of the Mad Max movies (I’d rate it second or third best, although I can’t quite figure out my preferred order of that one just yet) but it’s certainly not a bad film and it’s way better than Mad Max: Bungee Jump Dome... so there’s that. I was certainly entertained by it a fair bit, even if I was a tad disappointed in the overwhelming emphasis on the spectacle of modern action cinema. However, I’m really glad it’s getting such rave, if somewhat baffling to me, reviews and I think it’s a nice pay off for Miller who really deserves this success. It’s certainly a film I’ll be revisiting again on Blu Ray in the next year or two and I think most people will be behind this one. And they’ll get no arguments from me.

Mad Max @ NUTS4R2
Mad Max
Mad Max 2 - The Road Warrior
Mad Max: Beyond Thunderdome
Mad Max: Fury Road

Run All Night

Running Up That Kill

Run All Night
2015  USA
Directed by Jaume Collet-Serra 
UK cinema release print.

Perhaps it comes as no surprise that this new movie starring Liam Neeson is a bit of a hard boiled action thriller. He’s done quite a few of these kinds of projects now, since his deservedly popular role in the first Taken movie, but to be honest, the films he’s been doing in this mode are always fairly hit and miss and the kinds of roles he’s been taking have become something of a cliché, to be honest. That’s possibly because he’s so credible in these kinds of roles, I expect. That being said, though, I sincerely hope he doesn’t abandon these roles too soon, before he has a chance to do a couple of sequels to the excellent A Walk Among The Tombstones (reviewed by me here) at least.

Run All Night is his third film for director Jaume Collet-Serra, following his work with him on the lamentably awful Unknown (reviewed here) and the surprisingly enjoyable Non Stop (reviewed here). I’m happy to report that, of the three films he’s done with this director, Run All Night is by far the superior movie to the other two, being both immensely enjoyable and actually making sense and following through on its own internal logic... something which I feel Unknown was not quite able to do. It’s also quite a gritty, anti-hero role that the always watchable and talented Neeson brings to life in this movie and it’s usually quite fun to watch the actor tap into his dark side for this kind of part.

The film centres on Neeson’s character Jimmy Conlon, who is a washed up killer for the mob, headed up by the ageing Shawn Maguire, played by the always brilliant Ed Harris. The film concerns the way these two veteran hard men deal with their relationship with each other after Conlon has to shoot Maguire’s son, played by Boyd Holbrook, in order to stop him from killing Conlon’s own, very estranged son, played by Joel Kinnaman. The film then becomes a bit of an action fest as Conlon does his best to keep his son, who hates him, and his son’s family, out of harms way as Maguire goes all out to settle the score.

And, yeah, there’s action galore and it’s all very well handled because it’s treated in quite an “in your face” kind of manner with loud gunshots that spell out ugly death. It doesn’t try to turn the violence into too much of a kind of kinetic ballet as some films choose to do (rightly or wrongly and for whatever artistic reasons) and instead lets you really feel the suspense and danger inherent in the situations portrayed on the screen.

What the film really has going for it, though, is the dramatic undercurrent of the ageing Neeson and Harris both trying to survive in a world that’s moved on from their old school ways of doing things. Both thrust back into an incident where those exact kinds of brutal methods are what they are now having to embrace again to come to terms with, and try to survive, their current situation. And all of this is bolstered with the subtext of Neeson’s son having to trust his father and the possibility of Jimmy Conlon’s partial redemption in his son’s eyes... or at least his acceptance. And, frankly, when you have actors in a movie who are as good as this... it’s rare that they’re not going to deliver the goods in terms of the emotional weight required. They certainly all do an excellent job here.

Now, I really hate to use the clichéd critical term that the movie is a bit of a roller coaster ride... but even if that phrase outstayed its welcome almost before critics started applying it to every mildly kinetic action movie possible, the truth is that this film certainly lives up to this phrase in terms of pacing and it really does whizz along quite quickly... although the actual arc is relatively slowly set up. Nevertheless it’s shot in such a way that the build up itself is hurtling along at quite a breakneck speed and you’re not going to find yourself yawning or checking your watch at any time throughout this movie, I suspect.

That being said, though, my one negative criticism of the movie is that the editing style was quite aggressive all the way through the picture. Now, don’t get me wrong, there were some lovely transitions in this movie, and some nice use of sped up cityscape zooms and transitions to get you arriving at the next sequence, but I would have to say that the average shot length in this movie, which also has quite a lot of moving camera in it, is probably only a few seconds. Even the scenes which shout out for a slower treatment, like rambly conversations between main characters, seem to be cursed with being made up of lots of little alternate angles and edits when, perhaps, it might have been better to let some of these scenes play out more in their master shots, rather than try and speed them up with constant cutting.

Even so, though, if you can handle that spin on the pacing solution, which I guess is one way to keep things moving, then you should certainly have a good time with this one. There’s a lot to like in it. It rarely gets confusing, even with all the aggressive editing, so that’s also a big bonus on this one... especially during the jumpy, fighty, chasy, shooty sequences.

One thing I would like to take a minute to shout out on this one is the excellent score by a composer called Tom Holkenborg, otherwise known as Junkie XL. Now, I’ve got his music to the second of the 300 movies (reviewed here) and I have to say that I thought that was an okay score... although I’ve noticed on various film music message boards that there seems to be a general rejection, in some quarters, concerning this guy’s music... and I don’t know why this is. Now, I don’t know how this score will stand up as a stand alone listen (although I’ve ordered a copy of the CD from the US so I hope to be able to make a judgement on that in a few weeks) but the way it works in this movie is pretty good. There is a strong melody line, almost but not quite a leitmotif approach, which plays out for Neeson’s character and it’s mixed in with typical but immensely listenable and supporting modern action scoring. Here’s the thing, though... it’s also very well spotted...

That is to say, just like masters of the craft such as Jerry Goldsmith, the places where it’s been chosen to either have music or not, is quite well thought out and effectively followed through. To use an example of another master Hollywood composer, think about the pod racing scene in John Williams’ score for Star Wars Episode I: The Phantom Menace (reviewed here). Once the race scene starts, the music is killed off in its entirety for almost the full duration of the race, allowing the sound effects to take over and present a more raw experience, with Williams only bringing in his score towards the end of the sequence to bolster a specific incident and its repercussions on the outcome of the race. In Run All Night, Junkie-XL does a similar thing with a high impact car chase... leaving it almost completely unscored until near the end of the sequence where he suddenly (and wisely in terms of orchestration) starts bringing in some percussion to top off the action and then bring you back into the sound world of the film afterwards... very nicely done. I think this guy is probably a fairly skilled composer and I think the soundtrack community should give him more of a chance, to be fair.

And that, I think, is all I got to say about Run All Night. Well shot, nicely lit, beautiful acting, appropriately handled scoring but a bit jarring on the eyes in some places due to what I feel is maybe a little bit of a case of overenthusiastic editing. If you’re a fan of Neeson’s action movies, though, then this one is certainly one of the better, not to mention most credible, of those... so you shouldn’t have any worries about giving this one a go and you probably won’t want to pass this one up... even if I stooped to calling it a roller coaster. Embrace the cliché.