London Film Fest 2010 Day 7 - THE AMERICAN

THE AMERICAN is a deeply disappointing film from Anton Corbijn, director of the brilliantly photographed CONTROL. The visuals here are lacklustre, the acting so-so, the plot machinations weak and predictable, and the existential angst we are meant to be exploring taken from grade-school.

George Clooney plays a bespoke weapon-maker/assassin in hiding in a small Italian town. Because, of course, you'd never go into hiding in a large anonymous metropolis. Oh no! You'd go into hiding in a small town where your presence would be conspicuous. The Clooney character is asked to manufacture a weapon by a hot female assassin - mais oui! - and while doing so falls for a hooker with a heart of gold - naturellement! Meanwhile, he has a couple of conversations with a local priest that threaten to become a serious moral conversation but never do.

The resulting film is dull, quiet, ponderous, ludicrous and predictable. This movie doesn't become edgy or interesting just because Clooney allows himself to play a man who does some pretty cold-hearted stuff.  Especially when all that is undercut in the final scenes.  I honestly have no idea what this film is doing in this festival.

THE AMERICAN is on release in most markets. It opens on the 22nd October in Iceland and on 27th October in Belgium, France, Switzerland and Hungary. It opens on November 12th in Brazil and on November 25th in Portugal, Iceland and the UK. It opens in Australia on December 16th.

London Film Fest Day 2 - THE MEN WHO STARE AT GOATS - A Funny Idea In Search Of A Plot

From the producer of GOOD NIGHT, GOOD LUCK and the writer of SIXTY SIX, comes a directorial debut that is uneven, misguided and ultimately unengaging, despite occasionally very funny scenes indeed.

The film is about as convincing as Ewan MacGregor's dodgy American accent. He stars as a naive young journalist who goes to Iraq when his wife dumps him. He takes up with a strange man called Lyn (George Clooney in a "trying-to-be-goofy" moustache). Lyn used to be part of a secret US military programme that was training soldiers to use paranormal powers (mind-bending) and so become "Jedi". The title of the film comes from an experiment whereby the Jedi soldiers would try to kill a goat by staring at it. As the Jedi and his acolyte cross Iraq looking for the US Army psych-op/PR-op base, the movie periodically flashes back to the story of how this bunch of kooks got government funding and were ultimately taken down by a cynical soldier jealous of Lyn's power (Kevin Spacey.)

Now, given the sheer ridiculousness of the premise, we could have had a seriously wacky, funny movie. People might reference the Coen Brothers because of Clooney, but I could imagine Guy Ritchie in the old LOCK-STOCK days handling the voice-over and the freeze frames brilliantly. Sadly, director Grant Heslov has neither the flair nor the confidence to pull off the kind of bravado-film making needed to sell such a ludicrous (even if true) concept.

As for the modern day footage in Iraq, as I said before, Ewan MacGregor is mis-cast, while Kevin Spacey and Jeff Bridges are type-cast as the Antagonist and The Dude respectively. The plot seems to meander aimlessly, just like their journey in the desert. Worse still, when Heslov does try to show something serious - something that's meant to shock - like an IED explosion or incarcerated, tortured Iraqis - the scene is trivialised by the surrounding ludicrous material.

The upshot is that this is a movie that works neither as a comedy nor as a provocation about the war in Iraq.

THE MEN WHO STARE AT GOATS played Venice and Toronto 2009. It will be released on November 6th in the USA: November 19th in the Netherlands; December 4th in the UK; December 24th in Slovenia; January 2010 in Italy, Sweden, Switzerland and Norway; February 2010 in Turkey; and in March 2010 in Germany.

GOOD NIGHT AND GOOD LUCK – Hagiography makes for bad cinema

QUICK REVIEW: A sadly disappointing and un-involving film about the journalist who took on McCarthy at the height of his anti-communist witch-hunt in the 1950s and won.

LONG REVIEW: George Clooney’s father was an anchorman and his aunt was the lounge singer, Rosemary Clooney. He clearly has a great deal of nostalgia for a “better time” when men wore snappy suits, women wore pearls, couples hung out in cool lounge bars drinking cocktails, and newsreaders were journalists with integrity rather than partisan spin-doctors. This nostalgia is evidenced in his Las Vegas hotel project, which as far as I can tell, aims to re-create the vibe of The Sands in its rat-pack hey-day. It is also evidenced in the choice of subject matter for his second directorial effort: GOOD NIGHT AND GOOD LUCK. Clooney tells the story of Edward R. Murrow, CBS anchorman in the 1950s, and according to Clooney, “the high water mark of broadcast journalism.” Murrow started out broadcasting from the rooftops of London during the Blitz, hence his wish for “good luck” in his famous signing out catchphrase and had been at CBS for almost 20 years when he decided to take on Senator Joseph McCarthy. Clooney clearly believes that what the US needs today are independent journalists capable of taking on Bush, corporate malfeasance and the war in Iraq. Murrow should therefore be an icon and an inspiration.

The good stuff: The central performance by David Strathairn is outstanding. He plays Murrow as conceived by Clooney – an icon of journalistic integrity, who never doubts that he is doing the right thing and can do nothing else other than the right thing. We believe in him implicitly. Strathairn has been working for a long time and created memorable characters such as Pierce Patchett in "LA Confidential”, but it is amazing what he does when finally gets a leading role. Strathairn got the Best Actor award at Venice for this role and I will be surprised if he is not nominated for an Oscar* (although if there is any justice it will go to Philip Seymour Hoffman for Capote.) Secondly, Ray Wise (“Twin Peaks”) gives a superb performance as Don Hollonbeck, the CBS newsreader who is being harangued by a McCarthyite columnist for supposedly being a Communist. The music, provided by the wonderful jazz singer Diana Reeves, is also fantastic, but I cannot figure out why it is there other than to assuage Clooney’s fondness for all things Lounge.

The bad stuff: the script. Seriously, Grant Heslov, who co-wrote the script, is inexperienced and it shows. (Inexperience is not always bad, look at the genius script for upcoming “Capote” written by Dan Futterman.) Actually, scratch that, the problem is the entire conception of the movie, and the bad script is just the side-effect. Clooney holds Murrow to be an icon of all that is good and true. He resurrects this icon on screen. We are in no doubt that Murrow is an icon because we get an opening shot of Murrow receiving an industry award for being an icon. His iconic stature is hammered home by beautiful framed scenes in which the camera is in static and loving close-up. This degree of hagiography makes for incredibly un-involving cinema.

Moreover, Clooney is disingenuous about his intentions with the movie. In introducing it at the London Film Festival, he claimed that just wanted to raise questions about the role of the Fourth Estate in society. The film does not raise questions but bludgeons over the head with answers. It is not subtle, it is not hugely original, and it is not unmissable cinema. On balance, this is not a bad movie, but neither is it out-standing. It is hard to see who will gain from seeing it. Clooney isn’t telling the liberal left anything it does not already know and believe, and he is hardly likely to convert the FoxNews audience. And as Roger Ebert nicely put it, how many cinema-goers even know what habeas corpus is, let alone value having it? The fault of this movie is that if you didn’t know or care before you entered the cinema, you still won’t know or care when you leave.

GOOD NIGHT AND GOOD LUCK is already on nationwide release in the US. It goes on release in France on 5th December 2005 and in the UK on 17th February 2006. I’ll update the German release date when I have it. *This review was originally published in November 2005. I was right - Straithern was nominated for an Oscar - let's see if he gets it!