Sunday 23 June 2019

Cold Pursuit

Cast: Liam Neeson, Laura Dern, and Emmy Rossum  

Director: Hans Petter Moland

118 minutes (15) 2019
Studio Canal 4K Ultra HD
[Released 24th June]

Rating: 8/10
Review by Steven Hampton

Revenge thriller Cold Pursuit is the US remake of a Norwegian movie, In Order Of Disappearance (aka: Kraftidioten, 2014), by the same director, Hans Petter Moland. This story is set, mostly, in the frozen ski-resort of Kehoe in the Rocky Mountains, where the town’s citizen-of-year award goes to snow-plough driver Nels Coxman (Liam Neeson). Amusingly, Stellan Skarsgard played Nils Dickman in the original, and rude jokes about his last name are seemingly inevitable. Nels is happily married to Grace (Laura Dern) until their son Kyle is killed by a gangster. Soon, Nels becomes a serial killer, bumping off anyone linked to a drug-smuggling cartel. With a distinctly tongue-in-cheek formula to this movie’s episodic vigilantism, much black comedy ensues during the campaign of violent slaughter. William Forsythe is very good as Nels’ stoic brother Brock. 


The villains have nicknames like Speedo, Limbo, and Santa. Their comically vegan boss is known as Viking. An odd mix of natives in a rival gang only results in the recycling of an old joke about indians needing a ‘reservation’ at a hotel. These quirky characters and more are often seen isolated against magnificent wintry landscapes, adding tremendously visual appeal to events, including the chaotic finale’s all-guns-blazing shoot-out. Unlike a predominantly male cast in the original Kraftidioten, this superior US remake has Emmy Rossum, outstanding as local cop Kim Dash, investigating the spate of disappearances, and the mobster’s ex-wife also proves to be a formidable protagonist, quite unsympathetic to his routine mistakes or his crooked empire’s collapse, and wholly intolerant of any nonsense from an utterly selfish man who's troubled by emotional detachment from society or family-related reality. 


“I thought you were a kidnapper.”
“Not all the time.”


Unlike the Taken movies, Neeson’s character has no special skill-set, he’s just a bereaved father who wants to know the grisly truth about his son’s murder. Full of a suicidal anger, he soon turns nasty against callous villains that poisoned his innocent son. A stony-faced approach to jokes means that deadpan humour is effective far beyond the outright gags of similarly-themed movies, whether they are obviously Tarantino-styled, or not. This extends to the character of a hit-man, nicknamed the Eskimo (played without irony by a black actor). In the action that prompts a gang-war between rivals that destroys a whole regional cartel, many ingeniously written scenes, even when cast with genre stereotypes, still acknowledge how a poetic use of confused realism can be surprising and fascinating.


This remake is only slightly longer than the original movie, but its humour is notably a bit sharper, and blessed with enhanced jokes, so there’s a sense that every new opportunity was taken to refine the original’s screenplay in a translation with fresher lines, and more nuanced characters, especially the feminist ones. Looking superb in this 4K UHD edition, Cold Pursuit should, and deserves to, reach a wider audience than Kraftidioten did, and that’s a very good thing for this type of entertaining crime movie. 


Sunday 16 June 2019

The Sender

Cast: Kathryn Harrold, Zeljko Ivanek, and Shirley Knight

Director: Roger Christian

92 minutes (15) 1982
Arrow Blu-ray region B
[Released 17th June]

Rating: 8/10
Review by 
Christopher Geary

A fine British production, this SF-horror mystery-movie is about a suicidal amnesiac with mysterious powers that mystify and terrify his clinic psychiatrist Dr Gail Farmer (Kathryn Harrold, Nightwing, Raw Deal). Blankly haunted while he’s locked in the hospital’s secure ward, ‘John Doe 83’ is portrayed by Slovenian-born actor, Zeljko Ivanek, making a career breakthrough with his first starring role here, and later seen in TV shows like 24, Heroes, and Damages. After the young man appears to be the cause of several weird events, the initially confused but concerned Gail investigates the stranger’s psychic connection to his creepy mother Jerolyn (Shirley Knight), and The Sender develops quickly into a cleverly composed variation on ghost stories, and horror-hospital movies with genre links to Brian De Palma’s Carrie (1976), and Richard Franklin’s Patrick (1978).


Alone at home, Gail hears an intruder and sees JD-83 in her bedroom, but was she really just dreaming of a stalker? Back at work, she hallucinates cockroaches in the fridge, and gets an unexpected visitation from JD’s irrational mother. Strange fantastical happenings build up, accelerate the primed narrative and rapidly conspire to undermine Gail’s sanity. There’s a ghostly car chase, a biblical reference (Luke 1:31) about Jesus, telepathic links that make Gail seem neurotic, and cracked bleeding mirrors that push her right over the edge. Gail is clearly sympathetic to patients on held on the clinic’s ‘elopement risk’ ward, and she rejects electro-shock option as treatment suggested by the chief doctor, Joseph Denman (Paul Freeman), even after J.D. profoundly disturbs another ward resident, the ‘messiah’ (Sean Hewitt, who died in June 2019).


Once prescribed, the ECT episode results in a slow-motion psychotic fantasy of telekinetic levitation and Dr Denman finds that his coldly logical and clinical attitude is challenged by Gail’s more liberal humanist approach. The doctors realise they have very first adult case of baby-and-mother communication called ‘sending’. JD’s own nightmares of dying wreck the stability of psych-ward patients. Shadows and repetitive sound effects reach a black-comedy set-piece with the ‘information’ episode, including an indestructible TV set, and a decapitation stunt. An escalation to brain surgery incites the suitably fiery climax and the finale replays tragic memories of smothering mothering.


Following his creative design work, on Star Wars (1977), and Ridley Scott’s Alien (1979), Roger Christian made his debut as director with this outstanding feature. The Sender led to cult space opera Lorca And The Outlaws (1984), and police bomb-disposal thriller The Final Cut (1995), before critically-derided, post-apocalypse blockbuster, Battlefield Earth (2000), based on L. Ron Hubbard’s novel, failed to please enough tolerant fans of cheesy sci-fi, So, Christian’s directing career, especially for genre movies, never quite recovered. 


That’s a great shame, because The Sender has a lot of fine visionary qualities, obvious in its performances, and atmospheric special effects (conjured by Nick Allder with a modest budget). The overall excellence of The Sender as a psychic thriller was undoubtedly quite influential, alongside Cronenberg’s classic Videodrome (also 1982), upon cinematic horror and dream imagery popularised by A Nightmare On Elm Street (1984), and the franchise it launched. 


Monday 10 June 2019

Bellman And True

Cast: Bernard Hill, Kieran O’Brien, and Frances Tomelty

Director: Richard Loncraine

122 minutes (15) 1987
Powerhouse (Indicator)
Blu-ray region B

Rating: 9/10
Review by J.C. Hartley

I first saw Bernard Hill playing the part of John Lennon in a televised showing of Willy Russell’s John, Paul, George, Ringo... And Bert (1974), but to be honest, the first time he made an impact for me, along with everyone else I suspect, was as the doyen of the head-butt Yosser Hughes in Alan Bleasdale’s Boys From The Blackstuff (1982). He is also responsible for two of my favourite moments in Peter Jackson’s Lord Of The Rings (2001-3) trilogy, in his role as King Théoden. The speech to the Riders of Rohan before the Battle of the Pelennor Fields, ‘To Death!’ is suitably inspiring, and the look of weary acceptance at the end of that battle, when he realises he must face the Witch King is equally moving. Jackson, who often lays things on with a shovel (how much longer can the world wait for his ‘Tom Bombadil Goes To The Shops’ trilogy), rather diluted the power of Théoden’s speech by giving Aragorn a similar moment in front of the Gates of Mordor, but no matter. Bellman And True came between film supporting roles for Hill, as club bouncer Bernard in Bleasdale’s sectarian conflict comedy No Surrender (1985), as coroner Madgett in Peter Greenaway’s Drowning By Numbers (1988), and as the egg-and-chips hurling husband to Pauline Collins’ Shirley Valentine (1989). 


Originally intended as a three-part TV serial for Thames, Bellman And True was filmed for this format, and as a stand-alone movie, in a link-up between Thames’ film-making division Euston Films, and George Harrison’s HandMade Films. The Blu-ray disc offers the film in two versions, the pre-release cut that went to the 1987 London Film Festival, and the slightly shorter theatrical version. The longer cut has the missing minutes compiled from ‘standard definition materials’, so the restored scenes aren’t Blu-ray quality, and to be honest don’t add much to the story. Director Richard Loncraine, speaking in an interview, suggests that he now wished he had produced two separate scripts, one for TV and one for the cinema, as editing and cutting proved quite problematic. To be fair to Loncraine, it sounds like the production process didn’t leave him a lot of room to manoeuvre. 

Hiller (Hill), arrives in London with the Boy (Kieran O’Brien) and books into a cheap hotel.  The pair are observed at the railway station and followed. Leaving the hotel the next day, Hiller sees Gort (Ken Bones) and attempts to flee with the boy, but he is apprehended in the Tube, Gort later mutilates him with a Stanley knife. Hiller is taken to a derelict casino to meet Salto (Richard Hope). Hiller is a computer expert as well as being adept at electronics and engineering, previously he stole computer tape for Salto for a payment of a thousand pounds, but rather than decode it for him and earn another payment, he decamped with the boy. The money having run out, Hiller has now returned. Quite why Hiller has returned, and how Salto was prepared for him, is one of a few plot-holes that in no way detract from enjoyment of the story. By using Gort to threaten the boy, Salto is able to coerce Hiller into decoding the tape, which provides information on the holdings at a bank near to Heathrow. Once they have the information, Gort uses his criminal contacts to engage the Guv’nor (Derek Newark) who assembles a team to break into the bank. The Guv’nor’s team comprises a Bellman (Peter Howell) who is an alarm expert, as well as a safe-cracking Peterman, some muscle, and a getaway driver.


The bank has a sophisticated alarm system which detects movement. Hiller suggests that by repeatedly triggering the alarm they can convince security guards that the system has malfunctioned, and use the window of opportunity to break into the lower levels housing the vault, having switched to an earlier recording of a video feed to mask their movements. The Bellman (a striking cameo by Howell) suggests that having solved the problem Hiller may as well take his place on the raid as there is no need for his presence. In a visit to the bank, Hiller somehow creates a ‘track’ by which he can remotely direct an ashtray on a plinth in order to trigger the motion-sensor alarms, and no, I didn’t understand this bit and at first thought he’d made a mobile device disguised as the ashtray, but then how did they smuggle it in? The alarm is triggered multiple times and the gang break into the lower levels.

While the security firm responding to the call-outs are forced to occupy the building, the gang are already in situ robbing the vault. The following morning, using tear-gas, the gang escape. Unfortunately a policeman dies from gas-inhalation, and the gang’s plans to abscond are thrown into disarray. Relocating to a cabin at Dungeness, the gang wait for a plane to get them out of the country, but the Guv’nor decides Hiller must be killed even though Salto is opposed to the plan, and Hiller must use all his ingenuity to extricate himself and the boy.


This is a grittily effective thriller, nicely understated, and with excellent performances.  Bernard Hill is totally convincing, and his scenes with Kieran O’Brien highlight the close relationship the latter reveals they enjoyed on set. Hiller is a functional alcoholic, and O’Brien’s character isn’t his biological son, but the son of Hiller’s wife who has abandoned them. Hiller makes up outlandish, verbally inventive, stories for the boy, reshaping their shared history with his ex-wife ‘The Princess’. Towards the end of the film, having discovered that his mother never cared for him, the boy realises that Hiller is responsible for all the affection and parenting he ever received, ‘It was always you’. 

Women fare poorly in the film, Anna (Frances Tomelty), brought in to look after the boy, tells her girlfriend that Hiller is the sort of man who will always be kicked around by women. After sleeping with Hiller, the night before the raid, to calm his nerves, Anna is offered half of Hiller’s share if she will take care of the boy, and all of it if he doesn’t come back. Anna tells her girlfriend she will take the money and abandon the boy. When the boy overhears, Anna tries to persuade him not to tell by encouraging him to touch her breast, to forge a bond of secrecy between them.


As part of the extras package on the disc there are four interviews. Loncraine talks about how the production came about, and notes the differences in filming practice in the 1980s compared to the present day. It’s quite amusing how he appends anecdotes about the non-observance of Health and Safety, and other standards now in current force, with: ‘And of course you couldn’t do that now, and quite rightly so’. Loncraine’s interview is subtitled ‘Running In Traffic’ which gives you some of the drift. He was a sculptor in a previous life, and apparently is responsible for the first chrome version of that fixture on executive desks the Newton’s Cradle (thanks Wikipedia). Desmond Lowden who wrote the original novel and cooperated on the script talks about his own career in film, in editing, in ‘Cracking The System’. 

Kieran O’Brien in ‘Just An Adventure’ remembers his eleven-year-old self making the film, and his happy relations with everyone on set, particularly Hill. When his father had to take him out of school for the four-month production, his headmaster said he would learn more on a film-set than he would in education. O’Brien is a little bit amazed at the scene where he touches Tomelty’s breast given that it literally involves the sexualisation of a minor, but feels that he was protected by Tomelty and all involved. O’Brien is still an actor, and experienced a certain notoriety when he starred in Michael Winterbottom’s 9 Songs (2005). Composer Colin Towns in ‘Trust’, has good memories of working with Loncraine and producer Michael Wearing, and enjoyed writing music to convey both drama and pathos in the relationship between Hiller and the Boy. Other extras include the theatrical trailer and an image gallery.  


Wednesday 5 June 2019

Track 29

Cast: Theresa Russell, Gary Oldman, and Christopher Lloyd

Director: Nicolas Roeg     

90 minutes (18) 1988
Powerhouse (Indicator)
Blu-ray region B

Rating: 8/10
Review by Donald Morefield   

“I remind you of someone, don’t I?” Based on his own British TV script, Dennis Potter seems to have written Track 29 as a US recycling effort, adjacent morally to David Lynch’s surrealist noir landscapes and so perhaps influenced by the critical success of Lynch’s breakthrough mystery Blue Velvet (1986). Here’s a North Carolina town where we find a frustrated housewife, Linda (Theresa Russell), unhappily married to a distracted doctor, Henry (Christopher Lloyd), until she meets creepily obsessive Englishman, Martin (Gary Oldman). Falling headlong into her desperately yearning fantasy of an escape from tiresomely domestic boredom, she soon comes to believe that this aggressively naughty ‘boy’ is actually her long-lost son (even though, in a preposterous but clearly intentional casting quirk, Oldman is only one year younger than Russell).


Meanwhile, down at the local clinic, Henry prefers the kinky attentions of nurse Stein (the typically sarcastic Sandra Bernhard), and plots to leave his nagging wife, whose musings lead to electrifyingly stylised fantasy sequences. This harshly delusional black-comedy is centred on the disturbed Linda’s languid eroticism and twitchily juvenile Martin’s wicked misbehaviours. Martin’s comment, that “Being a kid again, is as good an occupation as any,” is reflected later, quite satirically, in Henry’s grandstanding speech. Presented in showbiz terms much like an overblown political rally, he brashly entertains a meeting of adult enthusiasts caught up in their absurd passion for the all-consuming hobby of model trains. To his insistently needy wife, Henry eventually exclaims that “Women and trains don’t mix!”


Often garish and occasionally lewd, Track 29 is a colourfully campy romp with archly silly American melodramas of deeply festering loss and broody guilt, sketching out daydreams of oedipal lust and jealously homicidal rage. Its wryly offbeat sense of humour, exploring movie-making special effects and slow-motion action cinema, includes an orgy of model railway destruction (with thunderous sounds that mimic a real train wreck), some bloody slasher clichés, and fleeting illusions to up-end the demands of mystery genre concerns, and familiarly sensationalist Roeguish expectations. A big plus for this US-UK production by George Harrison’s HandMade Films, is the glorious cinematography by Alex Thomson (who also shot John Boorman’s Excalibur, Michael Cimino’s Year Of The Dragon, Ridley Scott’s Legend, and Roeg’s own Eureka), whose sharp camerawork enhances even the most prosaic scenes and prompts viewers to consider everything we see as a metaphor.  


On its first screening, Track 29 was arguably a picture lacking sophistication as its drama wallows in sudden twists and ‘frivolous’ visual tricks. However, with repeat viewings, the iconic director’s unrestrained cinematic imagination becomes rather more obvious and its dreamy aspects ultimately triumph, albeit quite brutally, over the limitations of any cruel reality. “What am I gonna do now?” It might still be viewed as a disappointment in the impressively creative oeuvre of Roeg. Or its dramas of violence in the pursuit of airhead ‘freedoms’ can be seen as yet another scathing critique of the increasingly depressing infantilisation of western cultures in general, and American lifestyles in particular.