MARK FELT: THE MAN WHO BROUGHT DOWN THE WHITE HOUSE

Director Peter Landesman (the superb JFK assassination film - PARKLAND) returns to iconic American history with this character study cum procedural of how Mark Felt - a 30 year veteran of the FBI - helped the Washington Post journalists Woodward and Bernstein expose the White House's involvement in the Watergate robbery and so triggered the resignation of Richard Nixon.

The resulting film is a handsomely shot and acted, compelling drama about a loyal man pushed to protect the integrity of his institution at great personal risk.  That said, he is also shown overstepping the mark in illegally wiretapping in pursuit of a terrorist group.  But overall, we are rightly meant to see Mark Felt as a hero. I loved the shooting style - Washington as a grey town full of grey men in grey suits.  I loved the subtle power plays - men overlooked for promotion - the flexing of political muscle. And I loved that Landesman allowed Felt to look compromised. Yes, he is doing something noble, but is there also a tinge of revenge against the man who got the job he wanted? This is truly nuanced and intelligent film-making and a must-see for all Watergate obsessives. 

MARK FELT: THE MAN WHO BROUGHT DOWN THE WHITE HOUSE has a running time of 103 minutes and is rated PG-13. The film played Toronto 2017 and opened that year. 

LOVING

Richard and Mildred Loving were a mixed race couple from rural Virginia who fell in love and wanted to make a life for themselves surrounded by family, on an acre of land on which Richard intended to build Mildred a house.  But in 1958, inter-racial marriage was illegal in Virginia, so they had to get married in DC, and even then, were victims of local police who imprisoned them and ran them out of the state.  And there they could've stayed were it not for this quiet and unassuming couple's deep desire to raise their children in their home town - their quiet stubborn refusal to be denied their dream.  So they returned, in subterfuge, and Mildred, the more vocal and gregarious of the two, wrote a letter to Attorney General Bobby Kennedy.  This was then passed to the ACLU, who took up the case as a way of getting the Supreme Court to over-turn anti-miscegenation laws more generally.

The genius of writer-director Jeff Nichols' approach is to make a film that is an intimate portrait of a loving couple, and to follow their approach in being resolutely uninterested in the big courtroom drama that their marriage provoked.  There's a moment about half way through this film when the two young eager ACLU lawyers show up, full of glee and awe at being able to try what could become such a landmark case. But the Lovings themselves are uninterested even in attending the Supreme Court hearing.  They continue to do what they always wanted to do - just live a quiet married life in a quiet rural town.

THE EQUALIZER (2014)

THE EQUALIZER is the big screen remake of the 1980s TV show starring Edward Woodward as ex CIA agent Robert McCall who provides vigilante justice for the downtrodden. Denzel Washington stars as a buttoned up insomniac loner who befriends a hooker with a heart of gold (Chloe Grace Moretz - KICK ASS). When she gets beaten up by her Russian pimp, Robert tries to buy her out, and when this doesn't work goes on a violent revenge spree, revealing in turn that he is obviously a skilled pro killer (although not using guns, as in the show). The movie then degenerates into a classic action-packed killing spree - although more stylish and imaginative than most movies.

It's hard not to like any movie starring Denzel Washington and Chloe Grace Moretz embraces an older and gritty role. Director Antoine Fuqua certainly has a sure and compelling visual style and as his TRAINING DAY proved, he knows how to build and sustain tension.  But the movie is fatally undercut by its sub TAXI DRIVER cliche of a young imperilled sex worker and its mid-point descent into violence.  The problem is that that violence doesn't have the emotional heft, or character development of the superb TRAINING DAY. In other words, what we have here is a superior stylish version of a Tony Scott movie. I also feel that the movie could have lost a good half hour of its running time.

THE EQUALIZER has a running time of 132 minutes and is rated R. The movie played Toronto 2015 and is on global release.