Salocin

Following Memento was always going to be a hard task and remaking an already respected Norwegian movie only added grist to the mill of those critics looking to see a genuine English cinematic talent drop the ball.

Fortunately, Insomnia is a triumph. The harnessing of quality acting to an intelligent plot reminded me of nothing more than LA Confidential.

Briefly, two LA detectives caught in the middle of an IA investigation are sent to Alaska to assist with a murder case. Hap Eckhart (Martin Donovan) is planning to help IA with their investigations, to the potential detriment of Will Dormer (the ironically monikered Al Pacino). During a confusing beach chase of the killer, Dormer shoots and kills his partner. As Dormer’s perceptions are increasingly fractured by his lack of sleep, the killer reappears and starts playing psychological games that the detective is ill prepared to deal with.

From the start, the film looks stunning. The Alaskan background provides a truly cinematic backdrop for the events of the narrative. Nolan and his editor superbly utilise fast cutting and disorientating compositions to involve the audience in Dormer’s fragmenting perceptions.

Within that framework, Pacino and (after his delayed entrance) Robin Williams (almost unrecognisable from his usually over sentimental persona) spark off one another whilst Hilary Swank and Martin Donovan (criminally overlooked by Hollywood for so long) provide sterling support.

The film has several superb set pieces – a chase over logs, the beach sequence and the climactic shoot out spring to mind – but is at heart a psychological thriller depending on the performances of its leads and the wit of its characters to deliver its twists and turns.

Excellent at every level, this is a classic example of what Hollywood can do when it martials its financial and artistic weight behind a quality product.

This weekend I rented both Black Hawk Down by Ridley Scott and Behind Enemy Lines which should have been produced by Jerry Bruckheimer even if it wasn’t.

Both films deal with American involvement in foreign civil wars and in both, American troops end up fighting their way to safety from hostile territory.

There the similarities end. Scott’s movie is a high-minded treatment of war, Moores is a low brow actioner. And much against my better judgement, I confess I preferred Behind Enemy Lines.

There is little wrong with Scott’s film. The direction is taut, the performances are good and after a slow first half hour it rattles along at a fair pace. It displays all the viscera of war with relish and does not sentimentalise the events it depicts.

By contrast, Behind Enemy Lines is brash and simplistic. Americans = good, foreigners (even the ones who are supposed to be on our side) = bad. It uses similar camera trickery to Enemy of the State (by Ridley’s oft dismissed relative) to the extent where I could have sworn that one shot of a satellite swivelling to focus on a new target was reused footage from the earlier film.

However, Behind Enemy Lines succeeds where Black Hawk Down does not because it centres itself in the plights and decisions of individuals. Black Hawk Down may be a stunningly accurate portrayal of a real event in Somalia, but so what? It plays like a modern US version of Zulu as a band of heroic white Americans fight their way through a horde of mindlessly violent blacks. None of the protagonists have motivation beyond being soldiers and wanting to survive. Whilst that may be the stuff of war, it is not the stuff of cinema.

Behind Enemy Lines draws heavily of the star personas of Gene Hackman and to a lesser extent Owen Wilson. Hackman in particular benefits from a script which gives him genuine climactic choices to make whilst Wilson has at least a mini arc from disillusionment back into the military fold. Sadly, Josh Hartnett, Tom Sizemore, Ewan McGregor, Eric Bana and Jason Isaacs are not so well served.

Consequently, and for all Black Hawk Down’s accuracy and worthiness, it is a video game movie where the events played out are bereft of wider context be it at a social, moral or character level. The conflicts of Behind Enemy Lines are writ large but at least seem to have something, no matter how trite to say.

I appreciate this is an unusual opinion. Black Hawk Down scores a credible 75% on Rotten Tomatoes freshness meter whilst Behind Enemy Lines scores in the low 30s. Personally, I will never watch Black Hawk Down again but may well indulge in Behind Enemy Lines’ guilty pleasures on future occasions.

There is a moment in American Beauty when a plastic bag is filmed moving as if possessed with its own anima. It is a moment self consciously highlighting the beauty of the world around us if you only care to look. It works because it is grounded within a movie about people.

The Road to Perdition plays like an entire film of ‘bag moments’. Every shot is self consciously beautiful and calls attention to itself. Sadly, there is no human interest to ground it.

It is hard to know where to lay the blame. The performances are, with the sole exception of Tom Hanks, excellent. The soundtrack is, of itself, beautiful. The direction is frequently artistic and aesthetic. The writing is minimal but sharp (with one salient exception).

However, for all the cool brilliance and control of the direction, Mendes completely fails to find any heart in his story. It is notable that every important emotional moment on the path of Hanks’ anaemic hitman occurs off screen. From the start the audience is distanced from the characters and that sense of distance is only enhanced by an obtrusive use of the score which deliberately drags you away from the specific events in favour of a more general sense of ‘watching a serious movie’.

Hanks is poorly cast as the hitman. He runs an emotional gamut from A almost all the way to B seemingly unsure why the filmmakers cast someone with his nice guy persona as a cold hearted killer. In fact, he resembles nothing so much as Stan Laurel pretending to be a gangster. Fortunately Paul Newman is as reliable as ever, Jude Law contributes yet another excellent performance (as in AI using physical traits to delineate his character) and Stanley Tucci provides a well observed cameo as Frank Nitty, Capone’s enforcer.

The film is not without merits. The hotel shoot out between Hanks and Law is superbly constructed and filmed and there are some well observed moments between characters. However, the final moments fatally undercut those strengths. The closing voice over is truly awful, simply repeating that which has already been shown for those who were not paying enough attention to grasp the point before continuing in a morass of pointless mawkishness.

Mendes has some way to go if he is going to prove himself a great director for Road to Perdition has few of the strengths seen in American Beauty and many self indulgent weaknesses.

Caffeinated...

Work here at Wharton was gradually going to ramp up, that's what I thought. By the time it reached it's peak, somewhere in the middle of the first semester, I would be working reasonably hard.

My expectations were just a little out - The second week of classes we have 2 mid-terms (go figure), 2 written cases, a presentation, a homework and 2 cases to prepare for class.

This is really a good thing, as this used to be the pace in the real world. The long break, followed by learning to sail in Key West, followed by a very slow start to the year in pre-term, meant that I had forgotten what it was like to work hard.

It's energising. I have loads to do, and yet I am determined to go sailing this weekend. The more I pile onto my schedule, the more I realise that I can be ruthless about what activities I allow myself to do, and what I don't have time for. I also realise that there's a lot more time between Monday and Friday than you think, but you only start finding that time when you apply a little pressure. Or when your marketing professor starts applying a little pressure.

There's so many things to do here that being selective is very difficult. How many professional, social, cultural and sports clubs can you be a part of and still have time for work? How many informally-organised activities (like sailing this weekend), industry speaks, career talks, community activities, company tours and leadership positions can I sign up for before I reach the point where my schedule simply will not flex to take the strain? I've chosen to find out by signing up for everything and then seeing which parts of the week simply can't take it.

Part of me wants to be having more fun with less time pressure, but I know that if I were to leave here in two years without having found it very challenging, I would be wondering what I paid so much money for... Similarly, if I leave here in two years and I didn't participate in absolutely everything it is possible for me to do, then I will have missed an opportunity that's not coming back. In fact, the time pressure is the best measure of how much fun I'm having!

It's going to be a great 2 years.

The only thing to be butchered in the Hughes brothers' Ripper adaptation is the source material.

Based on Alan Moore's graphic novel, From Hell presents a 'solution' to the identity of Jack the Ripper.

However, where the original text was the work of years on the part of Alan Moore who meticulously researched every character, fact and event in order to create a sense of both the time and the place, the film abandons the vast majority of facts. That it does this to no good end is doubly depressing.

The movie takes a cavalier approach to the facts associated with the case for no good dramatic reason. The writers clearly had trouble finding a device to tell the tale effectively since they have introduced a laughable device whereby Inspector Abberline (Depp) gets his clues through visions received whilst under the influence of opium.

It is a shame, since Depp struggles manfully with the part and a cockney accent that grows on him rather like his sideburns.

Heather Graham appears to have jumped out of the pages of a fashion magazine into East End London (the Ripper victims were over 40 and toothless).

However, all of the above would be forgiveable if the film managed to conjure even the slightest sense of dread or horror. However, it is so cool to its subject, and the images are so clean and precise as to render the audience completely distanced from the subject matter. The Hughes brothers are not horror directors and clearly have no clue as to how to use the mechanism of cinema to create horror in their audience.

Sadly, sitting through this rubbish is as close as I think I want to get to hell.