ANT-MAN AND THE WASP

I'm so far behind on Marvel movies it's an embarrassment but I blame peak TV and the relentless churning out of these rather similar films.  In catching up I had all my worst fears confirmed with this ANT-MAN sequel.  Paul Rudd returns as the smart-ass superhero in the ant suit - a kind of cut rate IRON MAN or DEADPOOL.  Why do all superhero movies now have to have a wise-ass hero?  Evangeline Lily returns as his partner/romantic interest, THE WASP.  Both are working to rescue her mum slash Michael Douglas' ex-Shield scientist's wife, played by an almost scarily well preserved Michelle Pfeiffer, trapped in some super-magical alt-realm.  Problem is, there's an evil baddie woman after them - out for vengeance - and only magical mum can save her.   

What then follows is a movie that self-consciously tries to tug on our heart strings.  Isn't Paul Rudd cute playing a hands-on father?!  Isn't it so adorable how he co-parents with his lovely ex (Judy Greer) and her huggable hubby (Bobby Canavale)?!  Isn't it cute how Michael Douglas' scientist joshes his daughter and Antman about getting together. Isn't it entirely predictable that  Laurence Fishburne's evil villain scientist is actually rather decent and that magic-mum is gonna cure the vengeful baddie who isn't gonna be that bad after all?

In other words, this is a really banal anodyne film, film of try-hard goofy humour and self-conscious feel-good vibes. The action sequences are predictably CGI driven, dull and silly. That said, Paul Rudd is funny doing his Paul Rudd thing and Michael Pena as his side-kick is funny too.  Just not enough to justify a two-hour run-time.

ANT-MAN AND THE WASP has a running time of 118 minutes, is rated PG-13 and is available to rent and own.

ANT-MAN

ANT-MAN.  Gotta admit, not a massive comic book fan, never heard of him.  But, seeing how great Marvel have been in reviving properties and having loved GUARDIANS OF THE GALAXY despite no prior knowledge of the characters, I had high hopes. And with Paul Rudd cast in the lead role, I was expecting a similarly fun-filled, effects heavy action movie. But no. While ANT-MAN is certainly full of special effects and enhances and extends the Marvel Universe, it's the most unmemorable entry in the franchise. This is actually quite an achievement given that it stars Michael Douglas who retains his charisma.  But the problem is that the movie just isn't funny  - and in not being funny it wastes Paul Rudd. Worse still, the movie isn't interesting. It feels like it's being played exactly by the book with nothing new, nothing subversive, no real chemistry between any of the characters.  All of this made sense when I recalled that ANT-MAN was originally meant to be written and directed by Edgar Wright - a script that Joss Whedon called the best Marvel movie ever.

AND SO IT GOES

From the director of WHEN HARRY MET SALLY - a rom-com of true originality - comes a rom-com of deathly predictability and banality in every aspect except the age of its protagonists. Michael Douglas plays his familiar screen persona - a selfish, wise-ass lothario called Oren Little.  He's the grumpy grieving landlord of a small residential community in which one of his tenants is the sweet and lovely Leah, played by the typically sweet and lovely Diane Keaton.  To say that all three major players in this film - stars and director - are slumming it here, is an understatement.  As the film unfolds, we see Oren's ex addict son turn up with a ten year old daughter who he dumps on his dad before he goes to prison. Naturally, Leah is going to turn out to be a lovely surrogate grandmother and this is going to soften Oren's heart and lead to a bumpy but ultimately happy romance. 

The film is not entirely unwatchable thanks to the genuine charisma of both leads but it really does just grind through its gears and lead us to a very obvious denouement.  There is really nothing new to see and frankly this is a DVD release at best, if not plain avoided.

AND SO IT GOES has a running time of 94 minutes and is rated PG-13. The movie is on release it Italy, Israel, Greece, the UK and Ireland. It is released later this month in Israel, Ukraine, Canada, the USA, Mexico and Singapore. It goes on release in August in Estonia, Lithuania, Argentina, Chile, the Netherlands, New Zealand, Portugal, Croatia, Macedonia and the UAE. It goes on release in September in Denmark, Hungary, Kuwait, Norway, the Czech Republic, Serbia, Paraguay, South Africa, Paraguay, South Africa, the Philippines and Slovakia. It goes on release in October in Belgium, Switzerland, Sweden, Brazil, Spain, Colombia, Lebanon, Peru and Finland. It opens in November in Germany and Austria, and in January 2015 in Hong Kong and Japan.

WALL STREET: MONEY NEVER SLEEPS

"We are all one trade from humility." Marv, WALL STREET.

WALL STREET (1987) - a movie that vocalised the mood of the time; gave birth to the world's greatest greedy capitalist bastard; and sent a population cohort into investment banking - that same cohort that by and large caused the global financial cluster-fuck whose ill effects we are still grappling with. A movie with a simple narrative; strong characters; and an innocence, almost, in retrospect, about what it was doing. Because make no mistake, WALL STREET, exposed something nasty and cut-throat, but oh so tempting, that was taking over corporate America.

Jump forward twenty years, and the world is a very, very different place. No disrespect to my mother, but even she can tell you why the credit crunch happened and has an opinion on the government sponsored bank bail-outs. Economic commentators from Nouriel Roubini to Gillian Tett have made reputations and fortunes explaining this crisis to the Ordinaries who are going to have to pay for it, maybe for the rest of their tax-paying lives. Bankers - their lifestyles, their economic power, their slippery ability to get a bail-out AND a bonus, still, still! - are out in the open. Even hedge fund managers have been exposed. And righteous anger runs forth.

Pity then, poor Oliver Stone, trying to bring a script to screen in a period when reality was over-taking even the most scandalous fictional depiction of high finance. A period, moreover, where every new book release - every new Rolling Stone magazine article - was beating him to the punch in exposing the corruption, greed and excess that led us to this Fall. By the time we got to Cannes 2010, what else was left to say? Was there, in short, an appetite, to see and be dazzled by the titans of finance when we were left in negative equity if we were lucky, and unemployed if we weren't? WALL STREET could surprise us, and tell us something we didn't know. WALL STREET 2 feels like a re-hash.

In short, WALL STREET: MONEY NEVER SLEEPS feels like a movie over-taken by events - a movie without a concrete idea of itself - without a clear idea of what it wants to say and what it wants to be.

But before we get to why it's such a mess - let's lay out its basic structure, post Cannes-2010-edits. (Spoilers follow.)

The movie plays in four acts. The first act sees a crypto-Lehman collapse, when the New York Fed, advised by the heads of her competitor banks, refuse to bail her out. As a consequence, the head of crypto-Lehmans (Frank Langella) tops himself, much to the horror of his mentee, a young energy prop trader called Jake Moore (Shia LaBeouf). Jake is prompted to propose to his girlfriend Winnie Gekko (Carey Mulligan), estranged daughter of Gordon Gekko (Michael Douglas), and in doing so, starts meeting Gordon on the sly.  

In Act Two, there is little evidence YET of the fallout from the Lehman collapse - the jewellery still glitters as the money is still there. Jake is corrupted both by Gordon Gekko and his business enemy Bretton James (Josh Brolin), CEO of a crypto-Goldman Sachs. Jake brokers a reunion with Winnie in exchange for Gordon dishing the dirt on who let crypto-Lehmans fail - and uses that info. to screw over Bretton James on a trade. Such is the fucked up value system of Wall Street that James reacts by offering Jake a job. 

In Act Three, the corruption goes further. The systemic financial collapse is in full effect. Crypto-GS is suffering, as is Jake's mother - a nurse turned realtor. Jake's corruption continues - he connives with Gordon to free up Winnie's $100m trust fund, thinking he'll invest it in clean-tech. Gordon, being Gordon, takes the money to London, opens a hedge fund, and makes a cool billion. Winnie, pissed off with Jake for being suckered by her dad, dumps him. 

In Act Four, Jake, not learning, again tries to trade with Gekko - access to his grandson against giving the money back. Gekko being Gekko says no. And then, in what one can only assume to be a tacked on post-Cannes 2010 ending, Gekko has a last minute change of heart, gives back the money, and plays happy family with his kid and grandkid. Meanwhile, Bretton James has been exposed as trading on his own account against the bets of his clients, getting him sacked from crypto-GS and indicted by the SEC.

So what's really going on here? There are four strands to the story. Strand number one is a romance. A guy, with partially good intentions, lies to his girlfriend, is found out, loses her, but is forgiven. This strand really doesn't work. Shia LaBeouf doesn't have the emotional range, and poor Carey Mulligan is given nothing to do by the script other than look tearful. We're meant to think Jake is basically a good kid, but what kind of arsehole tries to trade money for pictures of his unborn child's ultrasound. Horribly misjudged. Utterly unconvincing.

The second strand of the story is a revenge thriller. This could've been great but is crowded out by all the other crap in the film. Revenge part one sees a young trader punk a slippery CEO. This really works, is thrilling and well explained. Revenge part two sees Gekko use Jake to expose Bretton James. This could've worked - it could've been the dramatic heart of the film - but it isn't given a chance. Truly, Josh Brolin's Bretton James - deeply good-looking and even more attractive when dripping with power - is as charismatic as Gekko ever was. But they have no real screen-time together. What we really needed was a show-down scene, but the skinny idiot Jake is always used as the go-between, undermining the power of the whole thing.

The third strand of the story is a coming-of-age drama. This should've been Jake Moore's story. He should've gone through shit and come out of it with self-knowledge - just like Bud Foxx in the original movie. But of course he doesn't, because there are no consequences to what he does. He screws up time and again, but is forgiven. He doesn't even serve time for the original market manipulation in Revenge Part One. Where is the scene with Jake Moore crying in the rain in Central Park? It gets worse. Not only does WALL STREET 2 refuse to let Jake Moore learn from his mistakes, but it even retro-fits Bud Foxx's narrative arc. Rather than serve time, come out and do something useful with his life, we see him in a cameo in the sequel, a self-made billionaire, dripping with hot chicks and as morally vacuous as ever. But it gets even worse than this. Jake Moore and Bud Foxx should've been changed by their experiences in the film, but Gordon Gekko shouldn't have been. Gekko does what he does because he can do no other - that is his tragedy. By tacking on a last minute emotional U-turn, the movie betrays Gekko and assumes the audience are a bunch of idiots who are going to buy it.

The fourth strand of the movie is a fictional recreation of real events. This is where the movie both succeeds and fails most. To its credit, WALL STREET 2 creates some amazing set pieces surrounding the collapse of Lehman Brothers and the creation of the TARP bail-outs. Set in the New York Fed, with a room full of bank CEOs and a crypto-Paulson and Geithner, we get a real sense of the panic and time-pressure involved in taking these momentous decisions typically over the course of a weekend to pre-empt the markets. The slippery reasoning, the desperation, the brutality of the survival instinct - it's all there. Frankly, I would've paid good money just to see Oliver Stone take us through a fictional recreation of these real events, without all the romantic, personal crap in this film. In particular, you have to love Eli Wallach as a crypto-GS founder, with his ruthless survival instinct and enigmatic whistle.

But it's also in its attempt to chronicle a period that WALL STREET 2 fails. And this is perhaps nobody's fault - insofar as the screenwriters were trying to hit a moving target. Still, all that aside, I can't help but think that the screenwriters made a fundamental mistake in trying to anchor their story in a long-term vendetta between Bretton James and Gordon Gekko that's basically about exposing insider trading. The whole point of the current crisis is that it wasn't by and large about illegal trades. Kerviel, Madoff etc are not actually the point. The real point is that these bankers weren't actually doing anything wrong, legally speaking. They were acting in a loosely regulated system, with perverse incentives, enabled by cheap central bank credit, and they ran riot. If this story were about a single rogue trader we simply wouldn't be in the global meltdown we're in. So to try to pin it on something personal, something basically quite petty, like trading on one's own account, is to basically miss the point.

Just as the genius of WALL STREET is best seen in the seminal keynote speech by Gordon Gekko, the failures of WALL STREET: MONEY NEVER SLEEPS are best expressed in the new keynote speech by Gordon Gekko. The big speech - far from being prescient and persuasive as in the first film - sounds old-hat and banal in the second. There are no witty one-liners - no startling sucker-punches. I can't remember a single line that stood out. In fact, the best one-liner that sums up the current situation comes from the FIRST movie, and is quoted at the head of this review. There is no feeling that we are seeing fundamental truths exposed and taboos broken. Worst of all, as if in embarrassment at the poverty of the content, Stone directs the scene like a kid with ADD. It's all jump cuts and shifting camera angles - hardly a sentence is completed. Poor, poor, poor.

In fact, Stone's direction in general is pretty poor. There are too many editing visual tricks - especially in the many mobile phone conversations - and cheap effects. Take for example a scene in which the camera rapidly moves down the length of a sky scraper as we here the sound effect of a ball in a roulette wheel - supposedly to symbolise the market crash. Crude. And perhaps most unforgivable is that Stone breaks the fourth wall. By that, I don't mean that he has the characters speaking to the audience face-on. But he does something stylistically as jarring. He acknowledges, within the world of the film, just how iconic the original movie has become. In other words, he induldges in cameos that serve no purpose other than to show how desperate celebrities are to be associated with the world of WALL STREET. So we get Warren Buffett, Graydon Carter, Jim Cramer, Nouriel Roubini, and a host of CNBC anchors playing along, winking at the audience, and worst of all, that Bud Foxx redux. This all smacks of not taking the project, and the audience, seriously.

WALL STREET: MONEY NEVER SLEEPS is on global release.

Some thoughts on WALL STREET (1987)

Oliver Stone is left of centre in his personal politics. How ironic, then, that his iconic 1980s morality tale, WALL STREET, single-handedly persuaded the teenagers of my generation that, rather than being teachers, doctors or engineers, what we really wanted to be when we grew up was Liquid. “Rich enough to have your own jet. Rich enough not to waste time. Fifty, a hundred million dollars, Buddy. A player. Or nothing.” Sure, the movie was an alleged morality tale and social critique. It took a naïve kid called Bud Foxx who traded insider information and his loyalty to his father’s little airline for a ticket to the big time. Naturally, he then got skull-fucked by his supposed mentor, Gordon Gekko. Foxx ended up in jail, and so did Gordon. But before we got to that point we saw a young kid living in a flash Manhattan apartment, date a hot blonde chick, eat at the best restaurants, and bask in the glory of the most charismatic man alive, Gordon Gekko. We wanted what Bud wanted, and so what if Gordon was a bit too sharp? – when he spoke about taking sleepy companies and making them profitable, it made sense! This man was dangerous PRECISELY because he was right. Greed was good. Greed was going to turn around over-unionised, over-bureaucratised corporations and increase profits. And don’t think Oliver Stone didn’t know what he was doing. As much as he gives Hugo Chavez a more than fair hearing in his latest documentary, half of what Stone’s doing isn’t applauding Chavez' Marxist policies but being dazzled by Chavez' power. WALL STREET is a film about power – and what makes it a great film – is that it shows how power is both repellant and fascinating. This is the ultimate human tragedy.

WALL STREET was both genius by design and favoured by good fortune. The good design lay in three things: a great script; great direction; and a great leading performance. To start with Stanley Weiser’s script, it’s about as near to perfect as you can get. You start with something rock-solid but not unusual: starry eyed boy tempted by fortune, sells his soul, loses everything, but finds himself. But then you add something truly original – you put that archetypal story in a world that few ordinary people have experienced – Wall Street – but which they were bound to be fascinated by, given its power and glitz. Finally, you express this story in a series of eminently quotable one-liners - “Lunch is for wimps” - “Money itself isn't lost or made, it's simply transferred from one perception to another” - “If you need a friend, get a dog.” 

And then you anchor the whole package in a speech so logical, so persuasive and so dangerous, that today most bankers of my generation can still quote it in full: 

“The richest one percent of this country owns half our country's wealth, five trillion dollars. One third of that comes from hard work, two thirds comes from inheritance, interest on interest accumulating to widows and idiot sons and what I do, stock and real estate speculation. It's bullshit. You got ninety percent of the American public out there with little or no net worth. I create nothing. I own. We make the rules, pal. The news, war, peace, famine, upheaval, the price per paper clip. We pick that rabbit out of the hat while everybody sits out there wondering how the hell we did it. Now you're not naive enough to think we're living in a democracy, are you buddy? It's the free market. And you're a part of it. You've got that killer instinct. Stick around pal, I've still got a lot to teach you.” 

If we look at the direction and the leading performance, that iconic speech is a great place to start. Michael Douglas, with his good looks, slicked back hair, designer suits, and charisma, was everything Gordon Gekko should be. He was the guy whose self-belief was so over-powering you wanted to be in his world.    And look at how Oliver Stone films that great speech. It’s basically a still camera, with no cut-aways. In other words, Stone has the good sense to let the man take centre frame and hold our attention with his words.

True success requires not just talent but luck, and Wall Street had the luck of being released at a time when a lot of people realized that something was afoot, but hadn’t yet seen it articulated. We knew that bankers were becoming more aggressive and that ordinary people were getting caught up in an equity boom – we knew that Reagan and Thatcher had somehow changed the rules of the game – that we could want to make money without being embarrassed about it – but no-one had come out and just plain said it. Gordon Gekko took what everyone was feeling, took it to its logical conclusion, and brought it out into the open. He scared us with his candour – but there was also a crucial recognition and identification. WALL STREET didn’t just echo the zeitgeist, it told us what it was and reinforced its importance. So much so, that when we look back at that era, it’s Gordon Gekko, with his DynaTac phone, who still best articulates the mood of the time.

WALL STREET was released in 1987. Michael Douglas won the Best Actor Oscar beating William Hurt for Broadcast News; Robin Williams for Good Morning, Vietnam; Jack Nicholson for Ironweed; and Marcello MAstroianni for Dark Eyes.

GHOSTS OF GIRLFRIENDS PAST - Automated Rom-Com

GHOSTS OF GIRLFRIENDS PAST is a high concept romantic “comedy” in which Matthew McConaughey plays, shocking I know, a scoundrelous photographer who refuses to commit to the love of his life (Jennifer Garner). He is not a complete schmuck, you see, but is acting out as a result of childhood trauma and the example of his Robert-Evans-style lothario uncle (Michael Douglas). Said Uncle sends a ghost (Emma Stone) to show McConaughey’s character scenes of his past romantic cowardice, present shallow lifestyle and future loneliness if he doesn’t mend his ways. All of this takes place the night before his kid-brother’s wedding allowing a suitably schmaltzy ending and some lovely scenery in a gorgeous country house. The only reason to watch this movie is for interior design tips cum country house fantasising and to watch Michael Douglas camp it up as Robert Evans. I’ve seen Matthew McConaughey’s sterotypical arrested adolescent character too often now to find it interesting, and he has absolutely no chemistry with Jennifer Garner. Overall, this is just another one of those clunking rom-coms, where you can see the machinery of the plot lurch into gear and predict from the start where it’s heading. Dull, dull, dull.

GHOSTS OF GIRLFRIENDS PAST is on release in the UK, USA and opens next weekend in Australia and New Zealand. It opens later in May in South Africa, Argentina, Germany, Denmark, Estonia and Lithuania. It opens in Malaysia on 4th June; in Greece, Russia, Singapore, Brazil and Romania on June 12th; in France, the Czech Republic and Finland on June 18th; in Belgium and Italy on July 3rd; in Bulgaria on July 10th; in the Netherlands and Norway in July 24th and in Portugal on August 20th.

KING OF CALIFORNIA - harmless

KING OF CALIFORNIA is a rather harmless, whimsical story of the relationship between a responsible-before-her-time teenager and her sporadically mentally-ill father. The daughter, played by Evan Rachel-Wood, is basically a good kid, who panders to her father's delirious dream of finding Spanish gold buried beneath - of all places - a big-box grocery store. After all, in a world of convention and dull consumerism, isn't it far more fun to go with the crazy idea? Michael Douglas clearly has a whale of a time in a wild beard and an even wilder physical performance. But for all the warm-feelings aroused by this indie comedy, I couldn't help but want a tighter script and plotting. The movie washed over me - it was pleasant enough - but not particularly memorable.

KING OF CALIFORNIA played Sundance and Toronto 2007 and was released in France, the US, Germany, Hungary and Austria last year. It was released in Israel, Argentina, Italy and Spain earlier this year and went straight to DVD in the UK.

THE SENTINEL - dull spy thriller

Watching the first season of 24 ruined TV for me. Every other drama, indeed all the following seasons of 24, seemed a pale imitation - unable to match the intensity and professionalism of the original. I now find that 24 has ruined a certain type of movie for me too. THE SENTINEL is a case in point. It's a well-cast, high-budget action movie cum thriller starring Michael Douglas, Kiefer Sutherland and Eva Lonfgoria as secret service agents on the US President's security detail. Douglas is being framed for an assassination attempt on the President's life and Longoria and Sutherland are in charge of bringing him in. The set-up has a lot of promise: topicality, CSI-style crime scenes, car chases, shoot-ups and big budget set pieces in the White House and Camp David. Problem is, it all seems like it's going through the motions. Nothing surprises you. It's not even entertaining. I figured out who the mole was in the first ten minutes on the basis that the actor was the only "name" in the supporting cast. The motives of the real killers are skated over. To paraphrase the report my old international relations tutor once gave about me: (the movie) "is like a glacier. It looks sleek on the surface but one crack reveals the gaping void beneath."

THE SENTINEL is on release in the US and most of Europe. It opens in Venezuela, Slovenia, Turkey, Serbia and Egypt in October.

YOU, ME & DUPREE is unfunny

YOU, ME AND DUPREE is a deeply disappointing romantic-comedy. It's all about high production values and good casting but low on actual laughs. Every bit of quirkiness from the Russo brothers' previous flick, WELCOME TO COLLINWOOD has been bleached out of this blander than blander date flick. But, just to go through the motions, (much like the movie) here's a plot synopsis. Molly (Kate Hudson) is a cute, primary school teacher (movie code for All Round Nice Gal) who happens to be the daughter of a property developer played by Michael Douglas (movie code for mean, greedy, scheming bastard.) Molly marries Carl (Matt Dillon) who is also a nice guy. But Carl is under pressure from the mean father-in-law and also from his best man, Dupree. Dupree is the kind of sad-assed loser who still lives for sports and has no job well into his thirties. He's the kind of guy who moves into your house and sets the couch on fire. But, here's the twist: Dupree is played by Owen Wilson, which means he will be a Love-able Loser. Dupree is sort of responsible for splitting Molly and Carl up (roughly sixty minutes) and then sort of gets them back together (forty minutes.) And then we all go home! Okay, so maybe that was a major plot spoiler, but seriously, I doubt you wouldn't have seen it coming a mile off. All in all, this is a pretty lame-ass excuse for a date movie and a real disappointment. You would do better by renting THE WENDELL BAKER STORY instead. It has basically the same central plot premise (Owen Wilson putting a fork in the path of true love) and also features a cameo from Harry Dean Stanton. Plus, it's really, really funny!

YOU, ME AND DUPREE is already on release in the US, Puerto Rico, Australia, the Netherlands, Thailand, Russia, Iceland and the UK. It opens in Argentina and Mexico on September 1st, Hungary on September 7th, Greece, Israel and Brazil on September 15th and in Germany and Latvia on September 22nd and in Finland on September 29th. YOU, ME AND DUPREE opens in Spain on October 11th, Turkey on October 13th, France on October 18th and Belgium on November 1st.

THE ASSASSINATION OF RICHARD NIXON – earnest yet dull

THE ASSASSINATION OF RICHARD NIXON is a movie about the psychological breakdown of a man named Samuel Bicke. He is decent working class man pushed to the limit by a series of misfortunes. His wife leaves him when he cannot provide for her and their daughters. The bank turns him down for a business loan largely because his partner is black. He is the butt of jokes and criticism at work. He feels denigrated and de-humanised at every turn, and comes to think of himself as a modern-day wage-slave. For some bizarre reason, which is never convincingly explained, he sees Richard Nixon as the ultimate cause of his downfall – the man who sold him a vision of the American Dream that turned out to be a lie. In a bizarre turn, Bicke decides to take a hold of his life, and become more than just another face-less nobody. He will hijack a plane and crash land it into the White House, thus killing the President.

Where the film succeeds in casting three great actors, Sean Penn, Naomi Watts and Don Cheadle, in the leads. Each gives a technically pitch-perfect performance, although because of flaws in the concept of the story, I found their performances ultimately uninvolving. I also think that the film beautifully captures the absurdity of the man on the edge of society: Sam Bicke is a tragi-comic character. Nowhere is this shown more clearly than we he tries to join the Black Panthers, who are understandably mystified and insulted that he should want to join. Bicke argues his case for allowing white membership as follows: “Zebras. You see, they're black, and they're white. The Black Panthers become The Zebras, and membership will double.”

However, for me this movie ultimately fails. The title, the fact that it stars Sean Penn and the plot summary that references a suicidal terrorist mission, sell the movie as a tense political thriller with contemporary relevance. However, viewers may find themselves feeling short-changed. Terrorism and the corruption of Richard Nixon are never really discussed here. Instead, it is the process by which a man becomes dehumanised to the point of considering extreme action of any kind that is the real subject matter. The Samuel Bicke character could have expressed his frustration at society in any number of ways. For instance, he could have become a lone gunman like Michael Douglas’ character in the movie FALLING DOWN, hitting out at anyone who came across his path. To my mind, there is something crass in the current climate in using the hijacking a plane that is intended to crash into the White House as a sort of background, substitutable plot device.

Overall, I found that despite some technically brilliant performances by the leads and the rare flash of black humour, this movie had nothing new or interesting to say about the disenfranchisement of working men in corporate America. It certainly had very little to say about terrorism. And worst of all, because it re-treads old ground, it was a very dull movie to watch.

THE ASSASSINATION OF RICHARD NIXON showed at Toronto 2004 and is released in the UK today.