Crime thriller

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

Victoria

Director: Sebastian Schipper (2016)

A schnapps swigging clubber is swept up by criminals in this suffocating German thriller.

Laia Costa gives a virtuosa performance as the vivacious Victoria. Her engaging elfin spirit is the damaged flip side of Audrey Tautou’s ingenue in Amelie (2001).

There’s shades of epics such as Arthur Penn’s Bonnie And Clyde (1967) Michael Mann’s Heat (1995) in the story of likeable people doing bad deeds.

Breathtaking artistic and technical ambition surpasses the dexterity of Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu’s faux single shot Oscar winner Birdman (2014).

Deliriously filmed in a single extended shot, the dizzying camerawork of Sturla Brandth Grovlen sweeps us around the clubs, cafes and corner shops of Berlin in real time.

As the characters dance, run and drive beside us, it creates an emotional connection and makes us complicit in their crimes.

The lighting, performances and dialogue are washed in naturalism, offering the impression of organic relationships and behaviour. Masterful use of music and sound mixing are key to the increasingly fraught and menacing atmosphere.

A chance meeting with four dubious local charmers leads Victoria to an impromptu after hours rooftop birthday party. Conversation is conducted in broken English as they steal, fight, smoke, drink and flirt.

Victoria’s evening becomes something wild when a phone call leads to her involvement in an armed raid.

With drugs, guns, blackmail and bloodshed at every turn, the young girl needs all her wits to survive as poor choices lead to increasingly desperate options and jaw clenching tension.

Frederick Lau, Franz Rogowski, Max Mauff and Burak Yigit offer strong support but it’s Costa who steals our heart and the film.

★★★★★

 

Secret in Their Eyes

Director: Billy Ray (2016)

In my eyes there’s far too little mystery in this plodding political pot boiler.

The star of 12 Years A Slave (2014) Chiwetel Ejiofor is now 13 years an investigator, that’s the time his character Ray has spent hunting for a killer.

As talented as the public school educated British actor is, he fails to convince as a blue collar New York cop.

Ray’s convinced he’s found the man responsible for the murder of the daughter of former colleague Jess.

Julia Roberts performance has been described as ‘brave’, meaning she wears no make up.

To borrow Stephen Fry’s ungentlemanly phrase from the Baftas, she looks, albeit intentionally, like a bag lady.

Nicole Kidman’s glamorous District Attorney is reluctant to jeopardise her career by reopening the case on the basis Ray’s flimsy evidence.

There are corruption, confessions, chases, interrogations, break ins and some waffle about baseball.

The story switches between two years, most of what happens in 2002 lacks tension and 2015 is too concerned with Ray trying to resolve a romantic obsession.

The top drawer cast are on great form and none disappoint as in turn they’re granted the space to demonstrate their considerable ability.

But we’re not terribly invested in the characters and the script isn’t interested in the plot and moments of humour are misjudged as the cast strive to carry weighty themes.

Based on an Argentine film The Secret in Their Eyes (2009) it’s been heavily retooled for the American market.

There’s an effectively created mood of paranoia and uncertainty in the aftermath of 9/11.

Addressing the attacks’ effect on the American psyche, the script demands the US bury its grief and stop feeling guilty over allowing it to occur.

Arguing the US must in future deliver swift and terminal justice to wrong doers is an insular and biblical view point which may play better across the pond than over here.

★★★☆☆

Black Mass

Director: Scott Cooper (2015)

After series of flops including Mortdecai (2015), Transcendence (2014) and The Lone Ranger (2013), Johnny Depp’s career is in desperate need of a hit.

Here he hides his leading man looks under extensive make up, false teeth and a receding wig.

Although he’s great as the ruthless American gangster ‘Whitey’ Bulger, it’s a clunking biopic that’s far less than the sum of it’s parts.

It’s fine looking with a nice contrast between the faded grandeur of the locations and unfortunate 1970’s fashions.

Boston is inherently photogenic and offers a variety of unfamiliar settings.

But strong performances from a great cast are undermined by an unfocused script and uninspired direction.

Whitey feeds information on his mafia rivals to childhood friend turned FBI agent in return for a blind eye to his gangster activities.

Joel Edgerton’s central character is sidelined in order to give more screen-time to Depp.

Neither are sympathetic, despite early attempts to portray Whitey as a loving family man.

Supporting characters such as Jesse Plemons’ are introduced, forgotten about and wheeled back in again.

Benedict Cumberbatch’s role is even more reduced as Whitey’s Senator brother.

There’s an interesting story to be told how the lives of these two brothers took very different directions.

But the film ignores this, preferring to indulge in macho posturing and bloody violence.

The setting, soundtrack, language and violence are very much the milieu of director Martin Scorsese.

However not only does Black Mass feel like Martin Scorsese lite, it feels like poor Martin Scorsese lite.

Black Mass calls to mind the maestro’s weak, albeit Oscar winning The Departed (2006).

What’s more interesting is it’s also Ben Affleck light. Black Mass suffers in comparison with the actor turned director’s Boston set crime thrillers Gone Baby Gone (2007) and The Town (2010).

I say that as a fan of both Affleck’s films.

Depp may have to wait a while longer for his next success.

★★☆☆☆

Kill Your Friends

Director: Owen Harris  (2015)

Grab a backstage pass to the ’90’s music biz with this scathing satirical thriller.

It revolves around a London record company riddled with backstabbing office politics, extortion, blackmail and murder.

But this parade of sex and drugs and rock and roll is criminally ploddingly paced.

Nicholas Hoult plays Steven Stelfox, a cynical, talent spotting A&R man.

The company where Steven works is full of idiotic chancers and he’ll stop at nothing to secure a promotion.

But Steven’s career implodes when Tom Riley’s smooth talking rival competes to sign hot Swedish indie band The Lazies.

So Steven hatches a violent master plan to get himself back on top.

As the Simon Cowell of Unigram Records, Steven’s an equally unlikeable character, if not as irritatingly smug.

Based on biographical book by scriptwriter John Niven, the intervening years have dulled the sharp edge of the writing.

Due to TV shows such as X Factor, we all have far more knowledge of how the music industry works than we did back then.

It’s not much of a shock there’s drug use in the music industry or that bands are manufactured, packaged and sold to us.

Plus the script mistakes profanity for wit and the recurring diatribes aren’t nearly as funny as they’re imagined to be.

However the performances are sound.

Glamorous Georgia King is game as an ruthlessly ambitious PA while Ed Hogg shambles through his scenes as a Columbo-like copper with musical ambition.

James Corden appears as a hard drinking shaggy haired colleague.

Hoult delivers a calmly confident performance but fails to suggest rampant self loathing or devilish delight at his own behaviour.

As we neither sympathise with him or love to hate him, all we’re left with is a passing interest in whether his scheming will succeed.

And the moment when Steven hits rock bottom on an extended booze and drugs bender is not markedly different to the rest of his life.

He hates the music he sells to the public and isn’t interested in making art or political statements.

Though he repeatedly claims he’s driven by money, with his expenses fuelled lifestyle we never see him earning it, spending it or even enjoying it.

Despite a soundtrack of Oasis, Blur and Radiohead mixed with euro dance tracks, Kill Your Friends fails to create a sense of place or time.

Plus it lacks the chaotic zip and visual dynamism which characterised Michael Winterbottom’s Manchester based music drama 24 Hour Party People (2002).

Hopefully this film finally flags up the end of the Britpop party.

★★★☆☆

Captive

Director: Jerry Jameson (2015)

Based on a true story but failing to hold the attention, this kidnapping drama becomes an empowering experience for at least one of those involved.

With a shaved head and a pec-tastic physique, lauded British actor David Oyelowo stars as paranoid psychopath Brian Nichols.

He also produces and gives his wife a small role, so he must shoulder some of the blame for this uninspiring turgid mess.

After shooting his way out of a courthouse, Brian breaks into a random house to use a hide out.

This is bad news for Kate Mara playing home alone meth addict Ashley.

She’s desperate to be at a fashion show in the morning.

After years of addiction it’s her last chance to prove she’s capable of looking after her child. If she fails to turn up, her cute as a button infant daughter won’t be allowed home.

In this high stress situation she goes cold turkey. It’s her story and she’s sticking to it.

She reads self-help manuals and makes pancakes while he waffles to himself and watches TV.

Feeling like an advertorial for said self-help book, it features an appearance by the TV queen of over-empathy, Oprah Winfrey.

Michael K. Williams is in charge of SWAT teams as the none too sharp and distractingly named Detective Chestnut.

Move along, there’s nothing to see here.

★☆☆☆☆

Legend

Director: Brian Helgeland (2015)

This barnstorming biopic of cockney crime lords the Krays is a double barrelled blast of brutal and funny entertainment.

The exhausted tale of London’s most infamous gangsters is given a fresh impetus by a pair of magnetic performances by Tom Hardy as twins Reggie and Ronnie.

So well defined are their characters at times I forgot I was watching the same actor.

London is in transition from fifties post war austerity to the swinging sixties. The Krays see an opportunity to expand from their poor East end roots to the moneyed lights of the celebrity-filled West end.

We see their rise through the eyes of Reggie’s wife Frances. Their mother who normally looms large in their legend is a minor figure.

The script rockets through the boys’ rivalries with the Richardson mob, their dealings with the mafia and the murder of Jack ‘the hat’ McVitie.

Reggie is the older of the brothers, a charmer with brains. He’s an ambitiously ruthless businessman who owns clubs, runs protection rackets and wants to break into the casino trade.

Ron is a philosopher fool with fists of iron. His tenuous grasp of reality and impulsive behaviour are disastrous for those nearest to him.

Though unquestionably devoted to each other, the nearest the boys come to affection is beating seven bells out of each other.

Their fall is framed as a tragedy with Greek references peppering conversations.

Reggie is seemingly destined for great things but is thwarted by his love for his brother Ronnie; the most unpredictable of loose cannons.

Frances is a fragile pill-popping poppet who struggles as her husband fails to become the straight businessman he professes he wants to be.

Ozzie actress Emily Browning is fine but forced to deliver a terribly written and utterly unnecessary voice over. It ruins every scene it witters over.

Tara Fitzgerald plays her disapproving mother and antagonises Reggie by wearing black to their wedding.

Prime Minister Harold Wilson is played with pipe-wielding gusto by Kevin McNally. Christopher Eccleston is always two steps behind as Keystone cop Detective Superintendent ‘Nipper’ Read.

There’s great support all round from Colin Morgan, David Thewlis, Paul Anderson, Taron Egerton and Chazz Palminteri. The latter plays Angelo Bruno, the head of the Philadelphia crime family with whom the twins strike a lucrative deal.

The occasionally larky tone may chafe with those who believe it inappropriate in a story where real people are murdered.

However it’s titled Legend for a reason. It makes no attempt to be definitive or exhaustingly accurate. Nor does it offer an apology for not being so.

It presents a glamourised, heightened view of a specific period and is anchored by the emotional truth it offers of the twins’ complex relationship.

Write-director Brian Helgeland won Best Screenplay Oscar for LA Confidential (1997), more recently he wrote Ridley Scott‘s Robin Hood and Paul Greengrass’ Green Zone. (Both 2010.)

Previously he directed Mel Gibson in the thriller Payback (1999) and baseball biopic 42 (2013).

Legend is extremely confident and ambitiously crafted. There is excellent production design by Tom Conroy and gorgeous costume by Caroline Harris.

The dynamic soundtrack and expertly executed camera moves are hugely influenced by Martin Scorsese’s gangster epic Goodfellas (1990).

HIs famous Copacabana tracking shot is transplanted to Frances’s introduction to Reggie’s club. It’s one of several ambitious and expertly executed camera moves.

It’s the work Brit cinematographer Dick Pope was Oscar nominated last year for Mr Tuner and is a regular Mike Leigh collaborator.

Hardy is currently 3 to 1 to be the next James Bond, but on this showing he might just be too good an actor.

★★★★☆

Anti-social

Director: Reg Traviss (2015)

Illegal street art and armed robbery collide with no great interest in this poorly executed London thriller.

Just as the talent of a graffiti artist offers an escape from his sink-estate upbringing, his hard fought-for future is threatened when he’s dragged into brother’s criminal world.

Believing in the script far more than I did, the earnest cast give their all in this functional collection of uninspired confrontations, punctuated by woeful dialogue.

It has no views on contemporary Britain other than a concrete belief in the integrity of the street and keeping it real.

Neither slick and flash or gritty and hard-edged, it’s edited with energy but not enough control – too many scenes are padded out for no particular reason.

Meanwhile it’s shot through with whip-pans, fast-cuts and lots of shaky-cam – with the occasional slow-motion dropped in.

The soundtrack is loud, busy and contemporary, adding to the overall sense creative decisions were made on the basis of being cool – instead of serving the story.

Skilled and daring artist Dee (Gregg Sulkin) is on the cusp of international fame. He has a model girlfriend, a part-time job as courier and spends his evenings being chased by the police for defacing property with spray cans.

Meanwhile his step-brother Marcus (Josh Myers) is out robbing diamonds with his gang of axe wielding super-bike riders. Myers has a rough-edged lairy charm and a suitably imposing physique but is given the very worst of the dialogue.

They have a likeable chemistry; part brother, part father/son relationship.

When Marcus invests his big score in a drugs deal, he falls foul of the violent West Grove crew leaving him in debt to a feared firm and the target of hit-men. There’s also a police grass at large on the estate.

Dee is called on to help out among the welter of drugs, sex, shoot-outs, rapes and beatings, putting pressure on his fledgling career and on his relationship with girlfriend Kirsten (Meghan Markle).

His mother Nadine (Maria Fernadez Ache) is Spanish and spends her time stoned in her flat and is one of the many weakly written woman who suffer abuse in a variety of ways and are forgotten about by the end.

The unfortunate molls Emma and Tara (Sasha Frost and Sophie Colquhoun) take the worst of it. Only Rochelle (Caroline Ford) serves the story in any way and even her plot arc is left dangling as loose as her over-sized ear-rings.

Though more than one person dies, no-one learns anything or develops as a character. There may be a decent idea buried underneath the geezer posturing and street language the film-makers are overly-enamoured of, but it’s not worth persevering with to unearth it.

★☆☆☆☆

Hyena

Director: Gerard Johnson (2015)

With it’s line-up of dull characters and drab dialogue there’s nothing to laugh at in this grim and grimy tale of London lowlifes.

It’s a tawdry and tiresome tale to be added to the canon of dispiriting British gangster flicks.

Unkempt and unlikeable, bent copper Michael (Peter Ferdinando) moonlights as an enforcer for a criminal kingpin known as The Turk and uses his police Task-force colleagues as muscle. One member Keith (Tony Pitts) looks and sounds like Vic Reeves on steroids and peps up our interest whenever he appears.

Michael has £100k invested in the new drugs supply route from Afghanistan but when vicious Albanian brothers Nikolla and Rezar Kabashi (Orli Shuka and Gjevat Kelmendi) muscle in on the deal, Michael demands a cut of their profits or his money back.

Then Michael is re-assigned to the Vice squad to investigate the Kabashi’s. This means he must spend a lot of nervous energy trying to keep his drug deal alive and his new colleagues in the dark.

To make matters worse Vice is ran by Michael’s old colleague David Knight (Stephen Graham). He and Michael share a fraught career history. Despite some unconvincing behaviour Graham raises the quality bar in his few scenes.

At the same time Michael is being investigated for corruption by the smarmy Nick Taylor (Richard Dormer). He’s treated with comic contempt until he’s needed as a serious player.

An eclectic soundtrack and itchy camerawork try to power proceedings along as on a diet of champagne and cocaine, Michael visits cafes, nightclubs and brothels.

Suspects are beaten and interrogated while elsewhere limbs are hacked off and people are raped and beheaded.

Due to Michael’s poor investigative skills, a trafficked Albanian Ariana (Elisa Lasowski) is sold to another gang to work as a prostitute. She’s the only sympathetic character in a film that lacks any moral grounding.

The other female is Lisa (MyAnna Buring). We learn nothing of her but she is granted one scene to emote.

Too much screen-time is spent driving in cars and as Michael’s life unravels, the script hasn’t the courage or wit to resolve its own plot.

★☆☆☆☆

The Gambler

Director: Rupert Wyatt (2015)

Call the bluff on this glossy gambling movie that will leave you out of pocket and feeling cheated for watching.

Based on the superior 1974 film of the same name, the always watchable Mark Wahlberg plays to the manor born Jim Bennett, a masochistic, nihilistic and wildly unsympathetic university professor.

It’s a brave piece of casting which treats us to the novelty of former Funky Bunch frontman Wahlberg lecturing to University students on the merits of Shakespeare.

He’s a spoilt, whiny, attention-seeking brat with self-destructive tendencies who self-medicates his existential crisis by playing cards, and is not above developing a relationship Brie Larson’s genius young student.

Jim spends his nights gambling in illicit dens and his days teaching, leaving him too busy to put on a tie or brush his hair.

When not betting money he doesn’t have or antagonising gangsters for the empty thrill of it, Jim’s isolating himself from family and colleagues and generally feeling sorry for himself.

After a great deal of behaviour I wouldn’t allow from my four year old, Jim owes a quarter of a million dollars to various bad people and has seven days to pay it back. Or else.

Reduced to trying to hock his watch to stake another game, violence is repeatedly threatened for non-payment, and Jim wants to be hurt so badly its hard to feel sorry for him when he’s badly is.

Jessica Lange plays his tennis playing mother, and the elegant actress is particularly hard done by, but Jim probably thinks that’s her fault for enabling his addiction.

And in four brief appearances, the shaven-headed John Goodman raises the acting ante as a philosophising and kindly intentioned loan shark.

★★☆☆☆