Action thriller

Keanu

Director: Peter Acencio (2016) BBFC cert 15

Murder and mayhem follow in the wake of a missing moggy in this entertaining action caper.

US TV stars Jordan Peele and Keegan-Michael Key are the cat’s whiskers as lovesick stoner Rell and his overly sensible cousin, Clarence. Their good natured rapport energises the knockabout humour.

Peele co-wrote the script which generates a lot of comic mileage by sending up the LA gangster lifestyle and attitude. This allows for gratuitous nudity and plenty of pistol packing action.

Heartbroken Rell finds new meaning in life when he adopts a cute kitten which he names Keanu. But when a local gangster catnaps his furry friend, Rell and Clarence are forced to impersonate a pair of assassins to get him back.

Unfortunately as Keanu is such an adorable feline, he has more than one claim on his ownership. And everyone has guns. Despite the shoot outs, car chases, hard music, hard drugs and hard language, there’s a surprisingly sweet and law abiding heart at the centre of all the silliness.

So we’re treated to tattooed criminals emoting to the music of George Michael and a drug induced hallucination where Keanu Reeves voices his kitty namesake.

Tiffany Haddish is tough and tender as a gang member and Luis Guzman lends his weight to proceedings as a fearsome crime boss. Plus there’s a samurai sword wielding appearance by actress Anna Faris as herself.

★★★☆☆

@ChrisHunneysett

The Nice Guys

Director: Shane Black (2016)

Since his first writing success with Mel Gibson’s Lethal Weapon (1987), writer/director Shane Black has spent his career creating crowd pleasing action comedies.

After recent blockbuster superhero success with Iron Man 3 (2013) he’s back with another smartly written, explosive and character driven adventure, riffing on Los Angeles detective noir such as Chinatown (1974) LA Confidential (1997) and The Big Lebowski (1998), among many others.

If you’re as in the dark to what’s going on as the dimwitted detective duo, don’t worry. An opaque plot is a vital element of the genre. Other hallmarks present and correct are the voice over, a dead glamour model, a bag of cash, sinister doctors and a corporate conspiracy.

In typical style Black ramps up the action but finds his normally sharp comic dialogue is subdued by the pot headed sun kissed California vibe. Nor can he resist including an unnecessary trademark Christmas scene.

However Black’s writing has reached sufficient maturity to splice together porn movies and car adverts in a scathing commentary of both industries.

Plus a degree of satirical self knowledge is needed to write a script set in Hollywood where a character dodges bullets to save a canister of celluloid of utmost importance to solving a murder.

Heavy weight Russell Crowe teams up with a comically dim Ryan Gosling as the ironically titled leads.

As mismatched down market private detectives Healy and March, they’re employed to solve the case of a missing teenager in 1970’s Los Angeles.

Though a pair of cynical, violent alcoholics in true noir style, this is disguised by their easy screen charisma and laid back chemistry.

Kim Basinger and Margaret Qualley are strong support as a mother and daughter at the centre of the story.

Our point of view of proceedings is guided by March’s 13 year old daughter Holly. Angourie Rice is terrific as the bright, brave, street wise moral conscience of the film.

Her sweet nature proves these nice guys aren’t all bad and Black is continuing to improve.

★★★★☆

@ChrisHunneysett

These Final Hours

Director: Zak Hilditch (2016)

With the end of the world only twelve hours away, society has descended into an orgy of sex, suicide, booze, drugs and violence.

And that’s just the first five minutes of this scorchingly apocalyptic Australian road movie.

A meteorite has caused Europe, Africa and the Americas to be engulfed in an rolling inferno, and Perth is last on the list.

Nathan Phillips is well cast as buff surfer dude James, desperately racing to a party to be with his girlfriend.

With it’s vehicle hopping, dry humour and brutal violence, this is arguably an unofficial and worthy prequel to George Miller’s magnificent Mad Max: Fury Road (2015). It offers an explanation of how society reached there from here.

The smart script by the director Hilditch offers James choices whose actions flesh out his character. Further bonus points are gained by never compromising the central premise.

Cinematographer Bonnie Elliot exploits the local light in extraordinary ways by saturating the screen in blistering red, orange and yellow.

Plaudits also to the production designer Nigel Davenport for stretching the budget and providing vehicles in a suitably searing shades of ochre.

Similarly to Max, James is defined by the relationships he has with the women in his life.

Jessica De Gouw and Kathryn Beck offer bikini clad support as James’ girlfriends Zoe and Vicky. Lynette Curran steals a scene as his mother.

En route to see Vicky, James’ rescues a young school girl from a pair of paedophiles.

Angourie Rice gives a remarkable performance as the sweet and straight talking Rose, who insists on being taken to her waiting father.

These reluctant fellow travellers offer each other the possibility of redemption as they work out what is really important in the short time they have left.

★★★★☆

 

 

 

 

 

The Absent One

Director: Mikkel Norgaard (2016)

This moody Danish thriller has homelessness, rape, mental illness and murder plus teen drugs and sex.

A shame then the dour tone is a drag on momentum and the plot twists itself into the silliness of a revenge slasher flick.

Nikolaj Kaas and Fares Fares star as obsessive cop Carl and his laid back partner Assad. They’re dismissed in the precinct as the drunk and the Arab.

A suicide lead to them re-examine an old unsoved case of murdered school children.

They find a connection between the boarding school and current corruption in high society.

The split narrative flips between then and now with the flashbacks showing us layers of deceit and abuse, with potentially fatal consequences for the future.

★★☆☆☆

Criminal

Director: Ariel Vromen (2016)

What isn’t extraordinarily stupid in this brain dead thriller is astonishingly misjudged or alarming dull.

It’s a grey spongey mess of ageing stars, woeful dialogue, cheap looking stunts and preposterous plotting.

Gary Oldman and Tommy Lee Jones play CIA bosses who need to recover the memory of  of a murdered agent to locate a computer hacker who is selling nuclear codes to the Russians.

So using untested technology, they implant the dead agents memories into the mind of an emotionless killer, played by  grunting Kevin Costner.

Developing a conscience and language skills as a result of the operation, he goes off mission and pursues a creepy Patrick Swayze ‘Ghost’ style romance, giving a new meaning to the word spook.

Meanwhile Spanish anarchists try to muscle in on the nuclear action. There is expensive London location work and the screen is busy with military hardware.

It all goes Alan Partridge Alpha Papa (2013) as Costner evades a squad of police cars in an ambulance.

Various Brits bystanders are beaten up for comic effect. Plus there is a cut price reprise of Schwarzenegger in Terminator 2: Judgement Day (1991) when Costner steals a sandwich, a beanie hat and a van.

Fresh from playing Wonder Woman in Batman Vs Superman: Dawn of Justice (2016), Gal Gadot chats about her lingerie, parades on the beach and is tied to her bed.

Flush with success from his mega smash Deadpool (2016), Ryan Reynolds appears briefly at the beginning but is curiously underplayed on the advertising.

Antje Traue is an incompetent leather clad assassin called Elsa and while it’s great to see Alice Eve on screen, she needs to have serious words with her agent about this non-role.

The uncertain tone, scattergun editing and woeful storytelling hint at heavy handed interference in production. Costner’s performance seems out of control. There a host of executive producers credited.

Just when you start considering the value of your own lobotomy, TV host Piers Morgan appears as himself to convince you there’s always a more suitable candidate.

★☆☆☆☆