Action thriller

JUNGLE

Cert 15 Stars 3

Daniel Radcliffe leaves Harry Potter well behind him when he gets lost in this real life Bolivian survival adventure.

As the Israeli Yossi Ghinsberg he joins a group of footloose and fancy-free Western backpackers who go off-roading in search of a rural village.

As well as dodgy accent and bushy beard, he’s soon suffering separation, isolation, starvation, hallucination and attack by hungry creatures.

It’s directed by Greg McLean who made the thrillingly entertaining Wolf Creek films and last year’s insane The Belko Experiment. This isn’t his best work, but unlike Yossi, it’s not far off.

 

DETROIT

Cert 15 143mins Stars 5

Full of fear, panic and prejudice, two British actors excel as Americans caught up in the devastating Detroit race riots of July 1967.

The Force Awakens star John Boyega is a security guard who acts as our witness to events, while Will Poulter is a racist trigger happy cop leading the search of a motel for a sniper.

To a soundtrack of sirens and soul tunes, the head banging brutality is punctuated by photos from the real events.

Kathryn Bigelow is the first and only woman to win the best director Oscar, for her Iraq war bomb disposal drama The Hurt Locker in 2009. She was nominated for the best film award in 2012 for her hunt Osama bin Laden thriller, Zero Dark Thirty, and this film will certainly add to her list of nominations.

Once again she casts a critical eye on the machismo of a militarised environment, and uses her particular brand of rapid editing and hand held camerawork to generate heart stopping tension.

 

 

THE MOUNTAIN BETWEEN US

Cert 12A 111mins Stars 4

Get hot under the collar as Kate Winslet and Idris Elba turn up the heat when stranded on an icy mountain.

In an era where actors are considered of less important to a film than its franchise brand, this survival adventure is refreshingly built around the chemistry, charisma, talent and global fame of its stars.

It’s especially welcome as both are British, though only one of them sports a US accent.

This unashamedly old fashioned and enjoyable romantic melodrama begins with an exciting and well staged crash, leaving the strangers high up The Rockie mountains in the depths of winter.

Though Winslet is not the only cougar around in the epic and beautifully bleak environment, there’s less cliff hanging than you’d expect as the script chooses to focus on developing the characters.

The only disappointment is Winslet never channels her inner Mae West and asks ‘is that a mountain between us or are you just pleased to see me?’

LOGAN LUCKY

Cert 12A 118mins Stars 3

Having reportedly retired from making feature films in 2012, the director of classic heist movie Ocean’s 11 can’t resist returning for one more criminal caper.

Sadly for Steven Soderbergh as decent as Logan Lucky is, this is in all ways a down market riff on his glossy 2001 George Clooney Las Vegas smash. Though it is far better than the lamentable and self indulgent Ocean sequels.

Channing Tatum and Adam Driver play the good old Logan boys Jimmy and Clyde, whose family it is locally believed are cursed by ill fortune, hence the title.

Jimmy’s ex wife is taking their daughter to another State and he needs money to hire a lawyer to fight for custody. He’s also just unfairly lost his job at the nearby motor racing track, from which he promptly decides to steal a fortune.

He rounds up a crew which includes Daniel Craig. The 007 star is clearly having a blast a tattooed explosive expert.

Riley Keough, Katie Holmes and Katherine Waterston add glamour, romance and some brains.

Written by the fictitious Rebecca Blunt in the quirky comic style of the Coen Brothers, many suspect the writer was really Soderbergh himself, who has previously used the pseudonym Mary Ann Bernard when working as an editor. If it is him then we know who to blame for various script issues.

With the absence of a bad guy and the police generally incompetent, the good guys are more or less pushing at an open door to get the loot. Nor is it always clear if the film is laughing with or at the dim witted desperadoes and townsfolk.

Subplots featuring Seth MacFarlane as a British racing driver and Hilary Swank as a FBI agent should have been cut to give proceedings a much needed sense of urgency. The pace mirrors the drawl of the hillybilly West Virginia characters.

As Logan Lucky failed to make a killing at the US box office, perhaps early retirement wasn’t such a bad idea after all.

ATOMIC BLONDE

Cert 15 115mins Stars 3

This brash and sleazy Cold War action thriller is a lace and leather post punk party for lovers of fetishised violence.

It takes a salacious glee in it’s own stylishly dressed nastiness and is so busy being screamingly self aware and cool, its indifferent to your viewing pleasure.

After her kick ass turns in Mad Max: Fury Road and The Fate of the Furious, Charlize Theron is the ferocious kick ass queen of Hollywood.

Here she’s a female Jason Bourne in killer heels, suspenders and sunglasses, with an the inventive use for a rubber hose.

As top-level MI6 agent Lorraine Broughton she’s chasing a top secret list of operatives, an ‘atomic bomb’ of information also wanted by the Russians and Americans.

Theron’s in fine fighting form and we see a great deal of her form due to her frequent ice baths, which are evidently very cold indeed.

There’s a brutal terrifically well choreographed and prolonged fight which begins in a stairwell. Such a shame the rest of the film doesn’t come close for ambition or intensity.

A deliciously feral James McAvoy co-stars as MI6’s Berlin agent David Percival, and  Toby Jones and John Goodman don’t break a sweat as the suits back in London, and for what it’s worth, love interest Sofia Boutella is much better than she was in The Mummy.

Set to the backdrop of the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989, all the counter espionage seems somewhat moot.

Not that the script is interested in politics as such, it just uses the period setting as wallpaper and is a useful way for the scriptwriters to avoid having to deal with the internet.

Meanwhile the dialogue is functional and the humour is off target. Beneath the surface sheen and synth soundtrack there’s little to make us care about this Atomic Blonde, as it’s never sufficiently explosive or electrifying.

 

 

 

 

 

 

WAR FOR THE PLANET OF THE APES

Cert 12A 142mins Stars 5

There’s no monkeying about when the fur starts flying in this epic end to the sci-fi trilogy.

It’s a mean, meaty, and hair raising action adventure which doesn’t hang around and becomes increasingly tense and spectacular as the explosive conclusion approaches.

And it’s far superior to this year’s other monkey movie, the disappointing Kong: Skull Island.

This is a rare beast of a series, improving in quality from good to great to gripping.

In 2011’s Rise of the Planet of the Apes, scientific experiments led to apes talking, and in 2014’s Dawn of the Planet of the Apes, the humans were mostly wiped out by a virus.

Now the remainder of humanity is on the warpath and the talking apes are being hunted to extinction.

Caesar the chimp is a thoughtful tribal chief who abandons his responsibilities and sets off on a mission of personal revenge with a small group of friends.

When he’s confronted with the consequences of his disastrous failings as a leader, father, and spouse, Caesar seeks to redeem himself and save his tribe.

Heading a strong cast and reprising his role as Caesar, Andy Serkis provides the powerful emotional heart of this film with another mesmeric and masterful performance.

He is the king of motion capture technology, the process which convinces us the apes, gorillas and orang utans exist as living, breathing, and bleeding creatures, not just animated computer pixels.

Woody Harrelson brings a controlled menace to role of Caesar’s nemesis. He plays a crazy army colonel who has established the power of life and death over his troops.

Using humour to light the darkness is Steve Zahn as a stray ape in a beanie hat, and young Amiah Miller is a slight, sweet presence as mute human, Nova.

An ambitious script owes as much to British classics such as The Bridge on the River Kwai as it does to westerns such as Clint Eastwood’s The Outlaw Josey Wales. And there are unmistakable references to Vietnam war epic, Apocalypse Now.

This is a world of difficult choices and painful consequences, filled with madness, torture and death. Even older primary school kids may struggle with the heavyweight tone of a film pitched far ahead of films featuring spangly spandex superheroes or wise cracking giant robots.

Though the Hollywood jungle drums suggest this may not be the end of the story, the emotional finale guarantees you’ll go ape for this chest beating brute of a blockbuster.

TRANSFORMERS: THE LAST KNIGHT

Cert 12A 148mins Stars 1

Run for your life as the giant alien robot franchise returns to obliterate the box office.

The previous four films have taken nearly £3 billion in total at the box office and this wretchedly repetitive and grindingly incoherent episode will probably add considerably more.

Never afraid to do less with more, director Michael Bay takes his £200m budget and adds King Arthur to this mangled mess of globe hopping machines, endless explosions and terrible bantz. Even the supposedly quiet moments are played with a rock music video intensity.

The plot shamelessly apes the plot of the most recent Fast Furious film. Hero robot Optimus Prime is coerced by a glamorous female villain to turn on his former comrades so she can rule the universe, or something. 

As Optimus is a pompous, vain, and speechifying dumbbell, it’s a blessing he’s sidelined for long periods.

Mark Wahlberg resumes his role as Cade Yeager, a struggling inventor and now legendary resistance leader. He gamely runs around, shooting stuff and flirting with Laura Haddock.

The Brit actress has been jettisoned in to provide a glamorous love interest and miraculously escapes with her dignity intact.

This is despite her character being described as a ‘professor in a stripper dress’ and being obliged to perform a zero gravity pole dance during one of the many lengthy action sequences.

Anthony Hopkins’ broader eccentricities are unleashed as Sir Edmund Burton, a historian with back door channels to Downing street.

He explains the sub-Da Vinci code nonsense as they chase about castles and stately homes in pursuit of the staff of Merlin.

It’s the weapon of ultimate power. Which is useful as the robot planet Cybertron is en route to suck the life out of Earth. I now understand exactly how that feels.

This obsolete hunk of junk should be sent to the wreckers yard.

 

 

ALIEN: COVENANT

Cert 15 122mins Stars 5

Scream as though no-one can hear you as the galaxy’s greatest space horror franchise is back to terrorise us once again.

Director Ridley Scott returns to the sci-fi thriller which made his name, and delivers an epic of spine-busting action, exotic locations and stunning design.

The Oscar winning director made the original Alien in 1979 when he was a young man in a hurry. As one of cinemas elder statesmen, in 2012 he belatedly  followed up with the grandly ambitious but less well received, Prometheus.

Now he splices the pair to create an explosive hybrid of blood-splatting thrills and apocalyptic destruction on a mythic scale. It’s all very familiar and at times daringly new.

There are chest-bursters, face-huggers, and acid blood. Orifices are penetrated and cavities evacuated, as we’d expect. But Scott plays on our knowledge of the franchise to skilfully toy with our expectations of the narrative.

We’re challenged to have some sympathy with the the ferocious flesh hungry parasitic alien, called a Xenomorph. A seduction is played with such subtle grace and integrity, it disguises how audacious and mind bendingly freaky it is. 

Set ten years after Prometheus, a small team of colonists are stranded on a planet and are unable to communicate with the orbiting mothership.

As the script wrestles with the big questions of existence, our heroes have to grapple for their lives.

Leading the fight for survival is Daniels, played by Katherine Waterston. The tall, dark-haired beauty is slyly styled by Scott to resemble the undisputed queen of the franchise, Sigourney Weaver.

Despite displaying Weaver’s kick-ass aptitude, Waterston is overawed by a majestic Michael Fassbender. He’s mesmeric in a dual role as synthetic androids, David and Walter.

Scott’s final theatrical flourish sends the franchise spinning out in a new direction. This is screamingly great cinema.

SLEEPLESS

Cert 15 95mins Stars 2

This run of the mill thriller may offer some respite for sufferers of insomnia.

The stakes are established early and fail to escalate, so we idly watch some decently-staged action scenes and the glossy neon glow of Las Vegas at night.

As a corrupt cop called Vincent, the well fed Jamie Foxx sees his chickens come home to roost when his son is kidnapped by the mob.

These include gangsters, a casino boss, more corrupt cops and Michelle Monaghan’s Internal Affairs police officer, who ambitiously wants to arrest everybody at once.

At the centre of the plot is a bin bag of cocaine who everyone wants to get their hands on.

As the cast chase each other a crowded Las Vegas casino, the cocaine changes hands in the manner of a fizzing bomb in a Tom and Jerry cartoon. By the end I’d forgotten who had it or why I cared.

UNLOCKED

Cert 15 98mins Stars 2

This silly thriller seems designed to unleash a female rival to James Bond on the unsuspecting world of international espionage.

The topical Europe-hopping plot includes a reasonable amount of action. But the film is unevenly paced, predictably plotted and the moments of broad humour dilute the under-powered tension.

Noomi Rapace and Orlando Bloom play a CIA interrogator and a former marine. They’re on the run and have to prevent the detonation of a biological bomb in London.

Michael Douglas and John Malkovich add Hollywood gloss as CIA top brass, with the latter not taking his role with absolute seriousness.

Filming wrapped in January 2015, and since then the movie has collected dust on a shelf. Presumably it’s being released now to cash in on the fact its stars are about to return to cinemas in much bigger films.

Rapace appears next week in Alien: Covenant, the follow up to sci-fi epic, Prometheus.

Meanwhile in two weeks, Bloom attempts to kickstart his stalled career with a return to The Pirates of the Caribbean franchise. In the first Pirates film, Bloom was the romantic hero. But Johnny Depp swaggered up as Captain Jack Sparrow and sank Bloom’s career as a leading man.

Bloom has since failed to offer any evidence he’s anything other than a posh pretty boy of reasonable talent and an inoffensive screen presence. He’s astonishingly miscast here in a role more suited to the rough charm of Jason Statham.

And now forty years old, Bloom seems beset by an early mid-life crisis. He’s sporting tattoos, an ill advised haircut and a desire to prove his physical prowess.

This uninvolving mess was directed by Michael Apted, who made 1999’s not great 007 film, The World Is Not Enough. I’m sure any plans for Rapace to make a sequel to this remain locked up and for her eyes only.