Spider-Man: Far From Home (2019)

The Low-Down: There’s a lot riding on the slim, young shoulders of everyone’s friendly neighbourhood Spider-Man. Far From Home is the first film in the Marvel Cinematic Universe (MCU) since the recent double-whammy of Avengers movies changed the status quo forever. Where does the most successful superhero franchise in the world go after this? Can non-legacy superheroes – like Spider-Man, Black Panther, Captain Marvel etc – carry on where Iron Man left off? Is the MCU running out of steam? It’s a big burden for a relatively smaller film in the franchise to carry. But Far From Home does so very well by zeroing in on what has successfully fuelled the MCU thus far: prizing character development above all to tell a story that’s as emotional as it is entertaining.

The Story: Peter Parker (Tom Holland) is trying to find his bearings in an unsettled world. He, along with half his school-mates, has suddenly reappeared on Earth – unaged and not at all dead – five years after the Snap. His mentor, Tony Stark, haunts him in the form of video tributes and street art. There’s something strange going on between Aunt May (Marisa Tomei) and Happy Hogan (Jon Favreau), Tony’s Head of Security. Amidst the uncertainty, all Peter wants is to get back to normal: to enjoy his school trip to Europe, and to let MJ (Zendaya) know how he really feels about her. But world-saving duties wait for no young man. Suddenly, Peter is roped in by Nick Fury (Samuel L. Jackson) to do battle alongside Quentin Beck a.k.a. Mysterio (Jake Gyllenhaal), taking down rogue Elementals that have already ravaged one world and are hellbent on destroying another.

The Good: At its best, Far From Home impressively blends the awkward comedy of a coming-of-age romantic drama with country-hopping superhero action thrills. It’s a delight to watch Peter use his superhuman skills as Spider-Man to navigate his way through hormonal messes of his own making – often in the same scene. This is as intriguing a narrative direction as the MCU has ever taken: using a lighter, more humorous lens to examine the aftermath of Endgame’s darker, considerably more mature themes. At the same time, Far From Home finds a rather ingenious way to quietly become one of the MCU’s most political films. (More on this later.) It’s worth noting, too, that, in a franchise filled with sublime casting coups, Holland continues to prove himself to be one of its very best. He dances nimbly through Peter’s high-school misadventures, while still tapping into the heartbroken, traumatised core of his character.

The Not-So-Good: With the action focused so squarely on Peter, his friends – especially his love interest – invariably suffer. Jacob Batalon is as goofily charming as ever as Ned, Peter’s best friend, but he might as well have the words ‘comic relief’ tattooed across his forehead. Zendaya’s sparky, sarcastic MJ – while still an interesting twist on a classic character – comes dangerously close to being a damsel in distress. And, while Jon Watts’ direction is more zippy and confident than it was on Homecoming, he doesn’t always land or weave narrative beats together very effectively. As a result, the film occasionally sags when it should soar.

One of Life’s Great Mysterios: What is Gyllenhaal – indie movie darling and theatre thespian – doing in an MCU movie? It might seem like one of life’s great mysteries… but all will soon come clear once you realise just what drew him to the part of Quentin Beck. Fans of the comics will know that there’s far more to the character than what we saw in the trailers, but nothing will prepare them for how brilliantly he’s been reinvented for the MCU. Essentially, this is a gift of a role for the prodigiously gifted Gyllenhaal – allowing him to play every shade of hero (including a few notes of uncanny similarity to Robert Downey Jr’s Tony Stark), while also indulging his more whimsical, theatrical side. In retrospect, it’s easy to see how Gyllenhaal must have been drawn to the grim relevance of Quentin’s storyline to the world in which we live today. Just as Black Panther examined race and Captain Marvel explored toxic masculinity, Far From Home asks audiences to think about the concepts of truth and reality – at a time when both are very much under threat.

Fan Fare: Marvel has trained us all well – never leave the theatre before the credits stop rolling, for fear of missing a funny moment or a narrative nugget that hints at future films and storylines. This reaches a new level of necessity with Far From Home. Each mindblowing scene – one midway through and one at the very end of the credits – is vital to knowing (or, at least, guessing) where the MCU is going next. Also, watch out for one of Tony Stark’s beloved A.I. acronyms: it will apply, in a subversively clever way, to more than one character in the film, drawing laughs in one instance, and eliciting a deep sense of foreboding in another.

Recommended? Absolutely. There might be a few growing pains here and there, but Marvel has hit another home run – grappling effectively and emotionally with its immediate past, while raising the storytelling stakes for the future.

Southpaw (2015)

There’s got to be something magical at work here. Strictly speaking, there isn’t a shred of anything remotely original in Southpaw‘s DNA. Boil the narrative down to its bare bones, and it’s a tried-and-tested, tried-and-tired retread of the sports movie. It’s not even metaphorically about getting back up after life knocks you down – that’s literally the plot of the film. And yet, through Antoine Fuqua’s sensitive direction, Kurt Sutter’s punchy dialogue and some excellent performances, Southpaw somehow transcends its own generic limitations.

We meet the scrappy Billy Hope (Jake Gyllenhaal) at the height of his career as a boxer. He’s the undefeated champion of the world in his category, and after each match, he gets to drag his broken, bruised body home to his doting wife Maureen (Rachel McAdams) and adorable daughter Leila (Oona Laurence). It’s a far better life than a kid born and raised on the streets could have hoped for. But, one terrible day, tragedy strikes. Practically overnight, Billy loses everything: his career, his lifestyle, and his family. Trapped by grief, depression and his grim circumstances, Billy must fight hard to get back on his feet and recover what he can of his old life.

From an objective standpoint, Southpaw is almost breathtakingly old-fashioned and unoriginal. You’ve definitely seen it all before – arrogant athlete suffers an ignominious setback, and must gain some humility and a better understanding of the more important things in life before he can complete his journey towards redemption. Sutter’s script seems to almost thrive on its many clichés. He saddles his protagonist with the weighty and completely unsubtle surname of Hope. When all seems bleak, Billy’s scheming agent Jordan Mains (Curtis ’50 Cent’ Jackson) deserts him for his chief rival. Billy acquires a gruff but trustworthy mentor in the form of Tick Wills (Forest Whitaker). The film has even forgotten to explain – or take into account – its title, which refers to a stance adopted by left-handed boxers in the ring.

And yet, for all its flaws, Southpaw is a compelling, touching and surprisingly truthful effort. Fuqua tackles the predictable elements of the story with such verve and sensitivity that he manages to make them more palatable. The director unearths the gnawing heartbreak in Billy’s anguish, as he visits a daughter who has grown cold and unresponsive towards him. The relationship that develops between Billy and Tick has its obligatory share of training montages, but also features moments of genuine connection between the two men, as they drink, mourn and bond with each other.

Though it never becomes what you might call a classic, Southpaw occasionally flirts with greatness. That’s due almost entirely to its cast. McAdams channels her trademark sunshine and charm into a relatively thankless supporting role. Her energy and chemistry with Gyllenhaal add invaluable weight to the emotional stakes in the film, lingering long after each of her scenes with her on-screen husband. Whitaker, who could play his part in his sleep, thankfully doesn’t do so. Instead, he’s very present, suggesting a darker inner life to his character that’s fascinating to watch. Laurence, meanwhile, is a great find. She plays every aspect of Leila – her innocence and vulnerability, as well as her resentment and steely determination – with a piercing, heartbreaking truthfulness.

The main draw, however, is Gyllenhaal, and for very good reason. Frankly, no one would have expected him to take the part of Billy Hope, which had originally been designed with rapper Eminem in mind. And yet, Gyllenhaal once again proves with Southpaw, as he has done with his consistently bold and off-kilter career choices, that he might very well be the finest actor of his generation. In a complete turnaround from his skeletal look in last year’s Nightcrawler, he’s practically unrecognisable as the beefed-up, mumbly Billy, burying his own slim frame and fine bone structure beneath layers of weight and muscle. Beyond the physical transformation, however, are Billy’s darker demons. It’s here where Gyllenhaal excels, as Billy taps into, releases and, ultimately, learns to temper the almost blinding rage that both drives and traps him.

Truth be told, there are better movies out there about boxing and/or redemption. This isn’t Rocky, much less Raging Bull. But, somehow, Southpaw pulls off that weird, difficult trick of being predictable but compelling at the same time. The ending may never be in doubt, but there’s a certain pleasure to be derived from the journey. If all else fails, watch this for Gyllenhaal, who’s currently doing some of the best, most vital work of his career.

Basically: Formulaic but entertaining, in its own way, with an excellent cast doing excellent work.

Nightcrawler (2014)

How often do you come across a film that’s at once a horror movie and an incisive commentary on society? How about a psychological thriller that’s packed with action beats, or a workplace drama weighed down by shades of the macabre? It’s an explosive combination that has rarely been seen since Martin Scorsese’s seminal Taxi Driver from 1976. And yet, Dan Gilroy pulls it all off with Nightcrawler, his frankly astonishing, remarkably assured first feature film as a director – one that benefits hugely, too, from a tight, dark and awkwardly funny script that he penned himself.

Gilroy’s words and camera revolve around Lou Bloom (Jake Gyllenhaal), an unemployed man thirsting for a job in a parched economy that can no longer sustain the ambitions of its youth. However hard he tries, Lou just can’t convince anyone to give him the opportunity to prove what a smart, good, dedicated worker he is. Finally, he stumbles upon a ‘nightcrawler’ – a breed of video reporter, or paparazzi, who prowls through the night shooting footage of crimes and misdemeanours that can then be sold to television studios to headline their morning news shows. Lou decides to get in on the game, working his way up with a thrift-store camcorder and no shortage of ambition. Soon, as he grows ever more comfortable in making money out of the misfortunes of others, one begins to wonder: is he capturing the news… or creating it?

What’s so impressive about Nightcrawler is how it shifts so easily and confidently between genres and ideas. Gilroy has found an electrifying premise that allows for drama, action, comedy and horror to share screentime, frequently in the same scene. In one moment, Lou seems to be a go-getting entrepreneur in a workplace comedy, as he reels off trite management tactics he downloaded into his brain from the Internet. In a heartbeat, the film spins him into the realm of psychological thriller, as he uses these same broad dictums to justify his increasingly criminal, morally questionable pursuit of success. From delivering yet another truism-laden lecture to his hapless intern, Rick (Ruiz Ahmed), on how to get ahead in life, Lou leaps into action – cutting corners and causing accidents to beat other nightcrawlers to the scene of a crime.

There’s plenty of room here for social commentary and satire, too, which Gilroy subtly peppers throughout his script. The film cheerfully skewers the unquenchable voracity of the 24-hour news cycle, while laying out the possibly dire consequences of feeding this hunger. Morning news director Nina (Rene Russo) may become complicit in Lou’s efforts as she continually pushes the boundaries of what can be shown in a telecast, but, as consumers, we’re no less to blame in driving up the ratings when bloody, broken bodies and raging flames are splashed across our television screens. Ours is a world in which Lou Bloom  gets away with and, in fact, is rewarded for what he does – and so he keeps doing it.

The relationships that form between Lou and the other characters in the film are also rich with darkness and detail. His dynamic with Nina morphs from one of subservience to control – when he has all the cards, he places a chilling offer on the table that she both can and can’t refuse. It’s a moment as terrifying as anything you’ll see in a horror movie: a situation in which the victim plunges, eyes open, towards her doom. Rick provides comic relief and pathos in equal measure, as his failed attempts at navigation threaten to shatter Lou’s resolutely unflappable exterior.

Nightcrawler would not be half as effective as it is without the shiveringly good lead performance at its heart. Gyllenhaal, who shed over 9kg for the part, prowls through the film with a lean, singleminded hunger in his unblinking eyes, flesh stretched taut over his cheekbones. He slips easily and imperceptibly into character, whether he’s playing Lou’s grasping desperation when looking for a job, or his completely cool, unruffled stillness as he wends his way through a house still fresh with the taint of murder and bloodshed. It’s not so much that he plays Lou without a heart – rather, he finds the odd burst of unyielding humanity in this lonely, strange, sociopathic creature, which makes for an altogether more unsettling experience. Unlike ghouls and ghosts and other supernatural creatures of the night, this is a monster who can walk unnoticed among us – recognisably human, and yet not, all at once.

If there’s anything amiss with Nightcrawler, it’s that the film can come across as detached and analytical – it may blaze hot with its myriad ideas and themes, but never quite manages to raise its temperature above a chilly iciness. It connects with its audience through visceral shocks rather than emotional engagement. But that is, of course, almost entirely the point of the film. Gilroy wants us to watch through our fingers as Lou forces his career to live up to his expectations. He wants us to squirm, to flinch, to be repulsed, while never quite managing to tear ourselves away. This approach might alienate many viewers, but those who stick with Nightcrawler all the way to its bitter, bloody end will be rewarded with one of the scariest, smartest and most thought-provoking films of the year.

Basically: A brilliant mix of drama, action, comedy, horror and satire, anchored by Jake Gyllenhaal’s lean, hungry performance – a career highlight for all concerned.

Enemy (2014)

From The Prince And The Pauper through to Sweet Valley High, literature and fiction has held a particular fascination with the notion of doppelgangers: two (or more) individuals who are physically identical and yet fundamentally different, whether in personality or social station. Denis Villeneuve’s Enemy, a psychologically-charged mystery that’s more thoughtful than thrilling, explores the idea that there’s someone else in the world who shares your face but has, seemingly, nothing else to do with you. It’s fascinating, mostly, but also slow-moving and, ultimately, frustrating.

History professor Adam Bell (Jake Gyllenhaal) leads a dull, repetitive life: he lectures unappreciative kids about totalitarian dictatorships, has bursts of largely uncommunicative sex with his maybe-girlfriend Mary (Mélanie Laurent), and otherwise shuffles through the day in a lethargic haze. But everything in his humdrum existence changes when he watches an obscure movie in which, for a brief moment, he spots himself. Turns out he has a doppelganger: a not entirely successful actor by the name of Anthony St. Claire. Adam becomes obsessed with meeting Anthony, and soon their lives become irretrievably entangled.

There are many ways to play a scenario like this one: Enemy could easily have been a broad farce (just add in pratfalls and double-takes), or a heart-stopping thrill ride (mix in life-threatening cases of mistaken identity). But Villeneuve has chosen a determinedly glum, very philosophical approach to Adam’s dilemma. He frets to his mother (a nicely-cast Isabella Rossellini) about the possibility that he has a twin, and finds himself in a worryingly intimate situation with Anthony’s pregnant wife Helen (Sarah Gadon), but high drama proves elusive until the final ten minutes or so. The resulting film, soaked in shades of yellow, is moody and considered, its pace bordering on the languid as Adam stumbles through his existential crisis.

Anyone looking for easy answers or a clear message will be disappointed. Enemy is very much what you make of it: it’s packed with ideas that are never fully explored, about lives never lived and the notion of identity, which audiences can pick apart at their own leisure. In fact, the film ends just when a more mainstream, accessible version of this story might begin. The final shot is less cathartic than outright puzzling, underscoring the completely alien life into which Adam has stumbled once he chose to hunt down Anthony.

Whatever you make of the film, there’s no denying that this is some of the best work Gyllenhaal has done in his career to date. He inhabits his two characters very well, slipping into Adam’s despondent skin as easily as he finds Anthony’s brash confidence. This is really his film, but he receives capable support from Laurent, who breathes personality into a paper-thin character. She helps make it particularly intriguing that, when it really matters, Mary – despite having a less apparently happy relationship with Adam – proves better able to tell the two men apart than Helen.

Almost boldly, Enemy refuses to go down any of the routes you might expect when a man stumbles upon his exact double by chance. It doesn’t plunge into sci-fi territory, suggesting they’re clones; nor does it dip into the melodrama of hinting that they might be twins separated at birth. Instead, it baldly states the fact – there are two men with Gyllenhaal’s face in the world – and drifts after the revelation in a determinedly arthouse manner, refusing to tie up any loose ends or offer any simple conclusions. It makes for a compelling film, if not a particularly satisfying one.

Basically: Smart and intriguing, but so resolutely oblique that it’s hard to really care about how (oddly) it ends.

Prisoners (2013)

Who says star power doesn’t sell a movie? If Prisoners had been made with actors residing several notches below Hugh Jackman and Jake Gyllenhaal on Hollywood’s Power Index, it would likely have slipped by unnoticed: a straight-to-DVD indie curio that’s interesting but hardly noteworthy. However, because the film’s two leads are who they are – and Jackman, to his credit, is giving one of his most compelling performances to date – Prisoners took critics by storm and surprise. The film has been lavishly praised for its sense of tension and foreboding, filled with questions about how far a parent will go to safeguard his or her child. It’s not quite enough, however, to disguise the fact that this is ultimately a B- or C-grade thriller, its schlockier, more ridiculous elements disguised to fairly good effect by its cast.

Keller (Jackman) and his wife Grace (Maria Bello) are enjoying Thanksgiving lunch with their neighbours Franklin (Terrence Howard) and Nancy (Viola Davis), when the unthinkable happens. Their two little girls – one from each family – disappear in broad daylight. All Keller and Detective Loki (Gyllenhaal) have to go on is a van parked up the street, driven by Alex Jones (Paul Dano) – a troubled, damaged young man with the I.Q. of a ten-year-old, who’s still living with his bereaved aunt Holly (Melissa Leo). As hours and days tick by, Keller frets that not enough is being done to save his little girl, and decides to take matters into his own hands.

The first half of Prisoners – which stretches rather unnecessarily over 153 minutes – is grey, brooding and dark, both in look and in feel. It’s when the film is at its most effective, asking its most troubling questions: What would you do, as a parent, in Keller’s position? How far will you go to get answers from someone you’re positively convinced is guilty? What happens if you’re wrong?

Jackman is almost terrifying here, his anger and determination fiercer than even the worst of Wolverine’s berserker rages. He makes Keller’s encounters with the tremulous, resolutely silent Alex difficult to watch, rescuing them from the murky depths of torture porn by the sheer strength and desperation of his performance. The reactions from the other parents add to the complexity and tragedy surrounding the girls’ disappearance: Howard radiates horror at Keller’s actions, Davis is devastating as a conflicted mom, and Bello… well, Bello curls up and cries a lot, which is annoying but a fitting possible response to the scenario.

It’s a shame that the second half of the film unravels to the extent that it does. Packed with twists and red herrings that don’t amount to much, the rickety plot turns out to be silly rather than creepy. It’s not that all the tension goes out of the film; in fact, director Denis Villeneuve keeps it going for a lot longer than it really should, particularly in a heartstoppingly tense scene that sees Loki prying open a series of packing crates, unsure of just what he will find within them. But that doesn’t make the film’s revelations any less disappointing. Ultimately, although Keller’s actions form the ethically troubling centrepiece of the first half of the film, the intelligent, worrying questions raised by what he does fade away when the Prisoners shows itself for what it is: an over-the-top, schlocky thriller convincingly restrained and deepened by its cast.

That’s not to say Prisoners is awful – for all that has been said so far, the sheer miracle of the movie is that it really isn’t awful at all. It could have been, and sometimes comes a little too close for comfort. (There’s a 90-minute slasher-flick cut of Prisoners waiting out there in some alternate universe.) But Jackman, Gyllenhaal and Davis can’t help but class up the joint, and their efforts lend welcome amounts of depth and conviction to the film and its faintly ridiculous revelations. 

Basically: You might feel like you’ve been taken prisoner by the film – especially by the end – but, where Jackman is concerned, that’s a good thing. His performance is arresting (see what we did there?) and really quite wonderful.

End Of Watch (2012)

The ‘found footage’ phenomenon of recent years – started by The Blair Witch Project and exacerbated since by the proliferation of smart phones – can be a bane or a boon when it’s used as the basis for an entire movie. Chronicle, for instance, was a blast of fresh air: the superhero movie from the point of view of the camwhore generation. But even that unravelled towards the end, when the concept just became too tenuous and it was impossible to get the shots required to continue telling the story without taking some liberties with the supposed cameras in play.

Now along comes End Of Watch, a ‘found footage’ buddy cop drama featuring smart, white Brian Taylor (Jake Gyllenhaal) and brave, Hispanic Miguel Zavala (Michael Peña) as they pound the streets of LA amidst gang wars, drug busts and domestic disturbances. Brian’s camera is almost always on – he’s documenting everything for a film-making class – and the audience is brought along for the ride as they cruise through the ghettos, saving or taking lives as the situation calls for it.

If you’re wondering why I specifically mentioned that Brian was white and Miguel was Hispanic – well, that’s because End Of Watch takes an admirably realistic approach in depicting friendship the way most of us would recognise it. The relationship between the two men,  as their families mingle and co-exist, is a patchwork of cultures and backgrounds, just as it would be in the real world. The jokes and insults that fly back and forth between them are laced knowingly with ethnic stereotypes, but they come across as good-natured ribbing rather than offensive race-baiting – the kind that only work when two people are so comfortable with each other that there’s no longer a need to be politically correct. I daresay most people would find this to be a more genuine reflection of human interaction than you’d see in most mainstream media these days. (Take note, MDA. Ahem.)

It’s also why End Of Watch has been earning the rave reviews it’s been getting after its release in US cinemas. The characters are thoughtfully developed beyond the generic archetypes, to the extent that Brian and Miguel feel like real people rather than modern-day action heroes. Occasionally, they are rude, cocky and unnecessarily mean to their colleagues in the precinct; sometimes they act like teenage boys who are living out a first-person-shooter video game in their daily lives. It’s nice that they don’t come across as anointed guardians of justice on a heaven-sent mission either; in fact, it feels rather as if they’re stumbling ever further into the web of danger in which they finally find themselves just by showing up for work every day.

The strong focus on character development is helped no end by the excellent lead actors – Gyllenhaal and Peña are both fantastic, lending credibility to moments that might otherwise come across as a bit soap-operatic. The devastatingly emotional last scene they share together is a pretty difficult one to pull off, but they both handle it with aplomb. The chemistry between them is rich and believable as well, enhanced no doubt by the fact that, prior to shooting the movie, they spent five months riding alongside real LAPD cops for up to twelve hours at a stretch.

So how does the ‘found footage’ concept fare in this particular film? It’s something of a mixed bag – it certainly punches up the action scenes in a refreshing, visceral way. Without a traditional steady-cam perspective, it feels like we’re right there in the room with Brian and Miguel, whether they’re facing off with unhinged felons or finding dark, disgusting secrets in curtained-off rooms. The cameras also spend almost as much time with Brian and Miguel inside their car as outside of it – which allows the audience to gain a fuller, deeper sense of their characters and their lives, as well as the women they love and cherish (excellently portrayed by Anna Kendrick and Natalie Martinez), as they chat and bicker and take down criminals.

Unfortunately, the concept does stretch credibility quite a bit. The shooting style switches back and forth between cameras in a way that doesn’t really make a whole lot of sense – more or less as if writer-director David Ayer shot the film both traditionally and with cameras embedded among his characters, and then just stitched a movie together out of whatever he got. This does make the movie a bit of a disjointed experience, and ironically makes it all the more obvious that, when it comes down to it, the plot isn’t any great shakes and the stories being told probably wouldn’t be as strong and compelling if told in a completely conventional fashion.

Don’t let that put you off though – End Of Watch is an engrossing, rewarding watch, boasting a couple of really impressive lead performances and a down-and-dirty look at police work that arrives refreshingly free of Hollywood gloss and magic. Some will argue that it’s too benign a depiction of the notoriously corrupt LAPD, but if you’re willing to suspend your disbelief on that count (and the force has apparently cleaned up its act a lot in recent years), you’ll be wondering by the film’s end why on earth anybody would sign up to be a cop in the first place, even as you’re eternally thankful for the people who do.

Basically: It falters on occasion but this is a realistic, emotional drama in which bullets and expletives fly freely. True grit.

 

 

Written for F*** Magazine

Rendition (2007)

Rendition? Has a cast to die for. Meryl Streep makes anything she’s in about a thousand times better, Jake Gyllenhaal is one of the most promising young actors of his generation, and Reese Witherspoon continues to try to prove that she’s not just legally blonde and worth her Best Actress Oscar salt. Add to this supporting performances from the likes of Alan Arkin and Peter Sarsgaard, reliably fantastic character actors if ever such actors existed, and you’d imagine that at least the cast is a good enough reason to catch the film. Well, you’d be right on that count – but I’m afraid that’s pretty much it. The film looks good, is reasonably entertaining, and boasts a twist that definitely makes you think a bit once you’ve placed it in the context of the entire movie and figured everything out. But it’s difficult to shake the feeling that you’ve seen it all before, and done better elsewhere – not to mention the fact that the multi-thread plot still somehow moves too slowly and lacks the depth you’d expect to be there on the basis of the acting talent involved.

Ah well. I’m getting ahead of myself. Plot-wise, the film focuses on the extraordinary rendition – a removal of suspected terrorists by the US federal government to an offshore prison (read: torture chamber) to allow for law-free interrogation – of Anwar El-Ibrahimi (Omar Metwally). There, he is questioned, badgered, tortured by the likes of hard-assed interrogator and stern family man Abasi Fawal (Yigal Naor), as the usually desk-bound CIA agent Douglas Freeman (Gyllenhaal) watches and struggles with both his desire to prove he can handle the job, and his increasingly uneasy conscience. Isabella (Witherspoon) is the all-American soccer-mom left behind to try to find Anwar when he drops off the radar of the world. She heads to Washington and secures the help of former flame Alan (Sarsgaard), an aide to Senator Hawkins (Arkin), to approach Corrine Whitman (Streep), the maven of CIA’s rendition policy, for answers. Meanwhile, we follow also the story of Abasi’s daughter Fatima (Zineb Oukach) as she embarks on a tentative, illicit relationship with Khalid (Moa Khouas) – unbeknownst to her, a boy tempted by the skewed doctrines of a radical Islamist preacher into repeating the very acts of terror Anwar is accused of having committed.

And that’s it, really – aside from its final reveal, which in my opinion comes a little too late to enliven proceedings, Rendition proceeds in a fairly by-the-numbers fashion. It has moments that do stand out: Isabella, embarrassed, asking her mother-in-law whether she might be wrong about Anwar after all; Isabella using a credit card slip to prove to Alan that Anwar did get on the plane from which he officially never disembarked; the relentless torture of poor Anwar, witnessed by a pained Douglas who can barely keep from flinching or from drinking himself into a stupor afterwards to absolve himself of having been part of the torture.

But these moments are slipped into a larger plot that doesn’t seem to feel comfortable with probing its characters or its story very deeply. The politics of the film is uncomplicated: rendition bad, bad policy. Sure, I’ll buy that. Director Gavin Hood and writer Kelley Sane make it pretty obvious how bad it is through the numerous barely-justified torture sequences, or when Corrine tells her deputy that a polygraph test (which Anwar passed) isn’t good enough for her, she’s ordering the rendition anyway. The only reason that scene works, and the character of Corrine works at all, is because Streep has such a firm handle on her portrayal of the person behind the harsh words (a person who, I suspect, is in no way communicated through the script) that she knows how to translate onto the screen Corrine’s will of steel and iron as something other than pure cold-hearted bitchery. She convincingly sells the line that this is how Corrine sleeps better at night – but it’s cold comfort when the rest of the film doesn’t even make a stab at giving the other side of the picture. The argument for the rendition process, I admit, doesn’t have much of a leg to stand on, given the decided, conscious lack of concern for human rights involved in the entire process – but surely some treatment could be afforded for the argument that, with fine-tuning and until a far better, more humane option comes along, there are reasons for rendition that could be more profoundly explored. They may be wrong, or misguided, but concerns of national security never seem to feature in this film: just a relentless focus on the struggle of one innocent man and his family against a machine that makes no sense. (Except, sometimes, in this crazy world of bombs and terror and children dying, it might.)

The actors, for their part, do try their best. Streep has nothing to work with and still does what she can, as one has come to expect of her. Witherspoon remains rather too adorably beautiful to convince in roles that require such dramatic emoting – hopefully she’ll grow into older roles (although there’s a certain poetry to having poor Anwar married to, in effect, Elle Woods from Legally Blonde). Gyllenhaal is good, though all he has to do for the most part is look sickly and guilty; his character isn’t written to leap off the page either, which is a problem for much of the film. The supporting cast is excellent, however, even if they’re dealing with a rather hackneyed plot about a romance doomed by terrorism (oh dear, so subtle) – Naor is riveting as both interrogator and father, his stern and rather terrifying demeanour barely covering up the deep love he has for his daughter. The ending becomes, correspondingly, quite emotionally devastating when you figure out how he, too, features in the larger patchwork of this film.

So, while the movie is never less than engaging, it feels too long for its ambitions, as it worries over a theme that isn’t fully explored or fairly treated (if there had been genuine reasons for the CIA to suspect Anwar of anything, that might have improved the film immeasurably), and doesn’t really go far beyond the surface of its characters. And, honestly, Rendition‘s “everything is connected” Babel-like storyline wasn’t even that impressive when Babel tried it. Worth a watch for the cast, if anything, though Streep fans be warned – she’s in it for probably ten minutes in total!

Zodiac (2007)

It’s been an even dozen years since Se7en, in which director David Fincher first tackled the story of a serial killer hell-bent on screwing over and messing with pretty much everyone on his tail. The difference with Fincher’s latest, Zodiac, is that this film is about a real-life serial killer, a seriously mixed-up dude who gained notoriety throughout the US when he went on a killing spree in the San Francisco area in the 1970s. Not only did he stab or gun down innocent couples, Zodiac – as he called himself – sent all the gory details, together with blood-soaked remnants of a murder victim’s clothing and jumbled-up ciphers hiding secret, sinister messages, to newspapers and police stations. Very much a case of a completely cold-blooded nutter seeking attention, then. But another point where the movies differ is that Zodiac, as a movie, is almost unconcerned with the true identity of its featured mass murderer – oh, sure, it’s integral to the plot in that detectives and journalists alike spend their lives, years after years of obsessive research and frustrating dead-ends, hunting this one man (or is it two?). But, ultimately, Fincher’s latest is less of a straight-up thriller than a tension-filled psychological study, as we watch lives and priorities and relationships dissolve in the wake of the Zodiac murders… and we’re not even talking here about the murder victims and their families.

Instead, we’re talking about the men for whom hunting down Zodiac became almost a personal mission. Meet Robert Graysmith (Jake Gyllenhaal), a cartoonist at the SF Chronicle who finds himself increasingly absorbed in a case which he technically has absolutely nothing to do with. But his clear fascination with the case sees him draw closer to eccentric, jaunty crime reporter Paul Avery (Robert Downey Jr), who amiably shares details of the case even as he finds himself getting involved – or, as is also the case, wilfully involves himself – in the publicity circus generated as much by Zodiac’s actions as the media’s initial willingness to pander to his demands to be published. Then there are determined cops David Toschi (Mark Ruffalo) and William Armstrong (Anthony Edwards), who immerse themselves in the minutiae of the case but are equally frustrated by bureaucracy (Zodiac’s killings take place over several police districts, each under separate jurisdictions) and their need to finally give up and live their own lives. Finally, when almost everyone else has fallen by the wayside in an alcohol-fuelled haze or sheer frustration, Graysmith alone soldiers on, hunting down all the suspects in the case from the distinctively creepy and frequently incarcerated Arthur Leigh Allen (John Carroll Lynch) to equally creepy amateur film projectionist Bob Vaughn (Charles Fleischer).

Although the Zodiac murders remain officially unresolved in real life, Fincher’s Zodiac, based as it is on the real-life Graysmith’s same-titled novel and (reportedly) the director’s own sordid fascination with the case, eventually draws a conclusion about the identity of the murderer. Of course, all the evidence is circumstantial but damning when taken in its totality, and Fincher makes that point clearly with a final scene that sees Graysmith – the lone warrior still on his quest of righteousness – seek the murderer out and stare him in the eyes, just for the satisfaction of knowing that he did track Zodiac down. But again it must be made clear that this film, when it comes down to it, isn’t really about the identity of Zodiac, but about just how much some men are willing to give up to finally find out the truth, even if only for themselves. The crumbling of Graysmith’s marriage to Melanie (Chloe Sevigny) is perhaps the best example of this: he first meets her for a blind date but can barely think about anything else but Paul Avery’s possibly disastrous meeting with (maybe?) Zodiac himself. Melanie leaving him is only a question of time, but it’s still chilling and almost immeasurably sad when she returns on one occasion to find him crouched in the dark, still hellbent on tracking down Zodiac despite the danger to himself and his family, and he admits that he can’t go back to her because he can’t let his kids see what’s become of him. Toschi, too, struggles through William’s decision to quit the case to have a normal life, and damning accusations that Toschi himself might have faked letters to keep interest in Zodiac and his own career going.

There is much to admire about Fincher’s film, although I suspect it will be a bit difficult to find something about it to love. He remains a master at creating nail-biting tension out of practically nothing – as the years pass in Zodiac‘s world, with nary a peep from the mysterious murderer himself, Fincher somehow manages to keep Graysmith’s quest almost morbidly fascinating, whether Graysmith is given the go-ahead to rummage through boxes of weathered records or has just discovered that Vaughn has a basement (gasp!) as Zodiac does, in the practically basement-less SF area. He laces the few murder scenes scattered through the first half of the movie with genuine terror, keeping Zodiac perpetually shrouded in shadow even as he shoots or stabs the life out of his cowering victims. His cast is also uniformly excellent – particularly Downey Jr as the loopy Avery and Ruffalo (the only actor who’s squashed uncomfortably into tight, checkered 70-style pants) as the dogged Toschi. In a few brief minutes, Lynch also manages to make his character – who’s better known as Leigh than Allen – just a little bit off-kilter during his interrogation by Toschi and Armstrong, enough for both detectives to feel that they might have finally landed Zodiac himself.

It’s a shame that Fincher doesn’t get quite as impressive performance out of his leading man. Gyllenhaal retains his easy charm, and clearly gives the role his all – but his part is frustratingly one-note, his obsession with Zodiac being about the only apparent distinguishing feature about his character. There’s some cute comedy stuff early on in the film, when Fincher is still laying out his story and characters, and he establishes Graysmith as the geeky outsider who only gets in with Avery and the ‘in’ crowd at the Chronicle when he starts trotting out all the books he borrowed at the library on code-cracking. (“Doesn’t it bother you that people call you retard?”) But these light moments of humour quickly dissipate in favour of story, and thereafter Gyllenhaal just can’t seem to avoid looking a little out of place in the film: almost too modern for the 1970s, and too consistently the same (young) age to completely convince as Graysmith. Sevigny, unfortunately, has much the same problem. Both of them are good enough actors for this not to completely detract from the film, but it does mean that the movie feels a little more hollow than it should – how can you convince yourself that these characters are worth caring about when they feel just a little bit out of place in the movie they’re in?

Whether you really warm to Zodiac also depends on how you take to Fincher’s approach in meticulously laying out the entire story – from beginning, to middle, to end – with real commitment to communicating every unvarnished detail to his audience. He wants to present as full a picture of the case as he can, so he moves through every aspect of it: the police investigation, Avery’s building up of his own role in the case, and finally Graysmith’s desperate hunt for clues even as Toschi unofficially feeds him information to continue the quest that the latter can no longer work on in his official capacity. Small wonder that Fincher was so keen to portray the entire Zodiac case in such painstaking detail – apparently he got so into the whole mystery that he insisted on shooting Zodiac’s murder scenes with exact geographical precision. Well, that’s all well and good if you can appreciate the very procedural nature of this film, and want to just soak in every aspect of the story and characters. But if you’re looking for a punchier film, you’ll be quite upset – Fincher could have sliced a much slimmer, tighter movie out of this one’s very long, 160-minute running time, and that’s an editorial decision you’ll have to live with even if you disagree with it.

Whereas Se7en was a fast, furious romp through Kevin Spacey’s decidely fucked-up, nefarious plots, with a final sequence so mindblowing you couldn’t shake it for days, Zodiac is far more expansive and almost elegiac in its impact, delving as it does into the lives that Zodiac has touched and some might say destroyed… except he managed to get these men to do this to themselves over years and years, rather than through mere moments of excruciating pain. It’s a movie that might well test your patience (and bladder), but it’s also a worthy, never less than fascinating examination of men driven not so much by ambition but by curiosity. And didn’t that kill a cat or two, in its day?