PAIN & GAIN

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It feels like we're in the midst of a run of movies about people whose sense of reality and entitlement is so out of whack that they they think they have the right to the fruits of the American Dream without, you know, actually working for it - people so ingrained with popular culture that their only frame of reference are movie heists and getaways.  In this latest instalment  we get Marky Mark and The Rock in PAIN & GAIN - a movie based on the true story of three bodybuilders who decided to kidnap, torture and extort one rich clients at their local gym. The selling point of the flick is meant to be the dark comedy of seeing these movie-obsessed idiots mess up again and again, and succeed - when they succeed - almost by accident.

Man, this movie started off so well - full of gonzo energy and whacky humour.  I loved Mark Wahlberg's intensity and his character Daniel Lugo's earnest stupidity.  And I thought this was arguably Dwayne Johnson's finest performance as the ex-con turned evangelical Christian turned reluctant kidnapper, Paul Doyle. I even liked the usually rather anonymous Anthony Mackie as their sidekick, Adrian Doorball, whose steroid abuse had led to impotence, but also his marriage to a naive nurse played by a more muted Rebel Wilson.  These guys had real camaraderie and were so incompetent I was willing them to succeed.  And of course, in real life as in the movie, they were counting on the straight up douchey-ness of their victim (Tony Shalhoub) to make sure the police wouldn't get involved.

But the movie goes downhill in its second halve.  As the body count ticks up our whacky kidnappers become less likeable and - a real problem for this film - the screenwriters Christopher Markus and Stephen McFeely - just can't sustain the hyper-ludicrous gonzo humour that this movie promised in its opening act.  Barring a truly surreal and memorable scene of the Rock barbecuing body parts while trying to chat up the neighbours, the second half was a real police procedural drag, that even Ed Harris' super-stylish private investigator couldn't save.  We needed to see more of the Rock - his transformation from evangelist to coke-head was superb - his best performance on record - and less of the procedural.  In general, this movie needed to get way more surreal - way more Nic Cage crazy.

So, a tale of two halves, but for all that, PAIN & GAIN is without doubt Michael Bay's best film since BAD BOYS. (Admittedly the benchmark isn't high.)  I far prefer Bay in his lower budget (I won't insult indie film-makers by saying low budget) movies, where he's more focussed on buddy-comedy and character than high-octane humourless misogynistic fare.  You can tell he's having fun with this flick. And kudos also to his cinematographer Ben Seresin (WORLD WAR Z) who uses a mix of DV and celluloid to create an amped-up hyper-colourful 1990s Miami, that takes us from the glossy mansions to derelict warehouses and manages to capture the coked-up craziness of a kidnap gone bad.  There's a particular sequence in a suburban home where his fluid style and use of body cameras is absolutely breathtaking. 

PAIN & GAIN has a running time of 129 minutes and is rated R in the USA and 15 in the UK.

PAIN & GAIN was released earlier this year in the USA, Bahrain, Egypt, Kuwait, Lebanon, Russia, USA, Canada, Croatia, Bulgaria, Estonia, Romania, Slovenia, Georgia, Mexico, Bosnia, Serbia, Iceland, Lithuania, Norway, Macedonia, Turkey and Italy. It opened earlier this month in Hungary, Singapore, Belgium, Australia, New Zealand, Finland, Austria, Germany, Israel, the Netherlands and Switzerland, Portugal, Thailand, Brazil and South Africa.  The movie opens on August 30th in Ireland, Poland, Spain and the UK; on September 5th in Denmark; on September 6th in Colombia, Panama and Taiwan; on September 11th in France; on September 12th in Chile and Peru; on September 13th in Cyprus and Sweden; and on September 19th in Argentina.

Overlooked DVD of the month - THE KILLING ROOM

Director Jonathan Liebesman followed up DARKNESS FALL and TCM: THE BEGINNING with a quiet psychological thriller called THE KILLING ROOM. It's an austere, tightly made, well-acted film that, while mining familiar material, still manages to hold our attention. The movie takes the same kind of approach as DAS EXPERIMENT - creating a fictional exploration of a real psychological experiment - in this case, the CIA's infamous MK Ultra programme. In the real life version, "volunteers" were subjected to mind-control experiments, often drug-induced, of the kind that led to Manchurian candidates. In this fictionalised version, four men have volunteered for a medical experiment run by the ruthless Dr Phillips (Peter Stormare) and the ambitious but morally uncertain Miss Reilly (Chloe Sevigny). They have to solve puzzles, and the man with the least correct guess is summarily executed. The prisoners try to outwit the system, and even escape, while the audience try to figure out what purpose such a sadistic experiment could serve. I liked the stark production design, gathering sense of claustrophobia, and Timothy Hutton's performance as one of the "volunteers". This movie is well worth a watch.

THE KILLING ROOM played Sundance 2009 and went straight to DVD.

UNKNOWN - taut tricksy thriller

In a week of mediocre to sub-par thrillers, finally we get a taught, tricksy little movie. The premise may not be wholly original but it is compelling and renders up 85 minutes of tight scripting, good acting and genuinely surprising twists up until the last line.

Five guys wake up in sealed up industrial shed. They've all sustained injuries. Three are untied. Two are tied up. They're all suffering from temporary amnesia. The superficial motor of the thriller is the question of which of them are kidnappers and which of them are victims. In whose interests is it to call the police? In whose interests is it to attack the remaining the kidnappers when they come back to the shed? Part of the fun of the piece is seeing the selfish survival instinct take over amid teasing flashbacks as their memories start to return.

The more profound issue is how far our actions are governed by an intrinsic sense of right and wrong or by the circumstances in which we find ourselves. Will a man make a different decision depending on whether he thinks he is a kidnapper or a victim?

Like I said, this is a wholly satisfying quick thriller that does exactly what a genre movie should do. Kudos to first time writer and director, Matthew Waynee and Simon Brand, and to the cast, which is a smorgasbord of outstanding character actors. We have Barry Pepper, Greg Kinnear, Joe Pantoliano, Jeremy Sisto and Jim Caviezel as the trapped five; Peter Stormare as the chief goon and Bridget Moynahan as the concerned wife.

UNKNOWN was released in Japan, the USA, Spain, Kuwait and Taiwan in 2006. It opened in the UK last week and opens in Belgium in May, in the Netherlands in June, in France in August and in Germany in October. It is also available on Region 1 DVD.

THE BROTHERS GRIMM – Napoleonic Ghostbusters

In this movie, the Brothers Grimm are con artists who ride around rural French-occupied Germany faking witches and goblins to scare superstitious German peasants and then vanquishing with the help of shiny armour, explosives and catapults, all for a big fat fee. Heath Ledger (10 Things I Hate About You, Monster’s Ball) gives a very enjoyable performance as geek, scholar and believer in magic, Jakob Grimm. Half the time he is channelling Brad Pitt in Twelve Monkeys – all rapid-fire dialogue and facial ticks. The other half of the time he is channelling Steve Coogan as Alan Patridge. The performance is not quite the sum of its parts, but is enjoyable nonetheless. Matt Damon plays William Grimm, who emphatically does not believe in magic but in making money by exploiting the dumb-ass peasants. A worthy aim indeed.

Everything is ticking over nicely until they are sent by the Napoleonic head honcho to Marbaden to rescue the little girls who have gone missing in the words and are respectively excited and horrified to discover that there really is something in the woodshed – namely Monica Bellucci (Matrix, The Passion of the Christ) as a five hundred year old witch trapped in a mirror.

There are significant flaws with this movie. The French general, Delattombe, and his Italian sidekick, Cavaldi, are played by Jonathan Pryce (Evita, Brazil) and Peter Stormare (The Big Lebowski) as caricatures – absurd costumes and accents. What passed for humour in 1980s sitcoms like “’Allo, ‘Allo” and “Fawlty Towers” just isn’t funny anymore - it’s lazy.

But there is a lot to like. At its heart, there is a serious discussion about how much native culture was lost when the Christians took over Europe, and of the Enligtenment battle between faith and reason. There are many obvious and subtle references to fairy tales, all beautifully re-created with a seamless blending of CGI and old school cinematographic techniques. The whole thing is a visual feast with a few good one-liners thrown in.

Like any Terry Gilliam film, this was beset by funding difficulties. MGM pulled out at the last minute and the Weinsteins took over production. They vetoed Samantha Morton as the female lead, fired the Director of Photography, Nicola Pecorini for going to slowly and generally ticked Gilliam off. Finally, the release was pushed back to allow Miramax’s movie The 40 year old virgin to retain its number one spot in the US box office. The film was likewise mistreated by the US critics who, to a man, called it a rambling mess – albeit visually stunning. On the upside, the film was finished, unlike the ill-fated "Don Quixote", and was released, and it is not a mess. It is highly enjoyable, pure entertainment. One last thing, if you are going to see this movie you should try to make it to a cinema rather than waiting for the DVD to get the full benefit of the production design.

The Brothers Grimm has been on release in the US since the 26th August, in France and Germany since the 5th October and finally goes on Nationwide release in the UK on the 4th November.