A SECOND CHANCE / EN CHANCE TIL - LFF14 - Day Five

A SECOND CHANCE is an intense and haunting drama from the Danish auteur Susanne Bier. She specialises in closely observed beautifully shot film that show what happens to ordinary people in difficult circumstances. In this film she looks at motherhood - the prejudices surrounding it, stresses entailed and the strange and powerful reactions to grief.

As the film opens, there are two contrasting couples with baby boys. The first - Tristan and Sanne - are junkies, and their baby Sofus is horribly neglected. This is set against the picture perfect couple of Andreas (Nikolaj Coster-Waldau) and Anna and their son Alexander. At first, our sympathies are utterly with Andreas and his police partner Simon (Ulrich Thomsen) - a kind of casual middle-class prejudice at the parenting suitability of the junkie couple. But the genius of this film is to turn around our preconceptions about what a good mother is and just how far a parent will go to keep a child with them.

To say more would be to give away crucial plot points that motivate the narrative. Suffice to say that this is an exceptionally well-made and acted film. Nicolaj Coster-Waldau gives what is surely a career-best performance. But I also really liked May Andersen as Sanne. Ultimately this is a movie that should be remembered for how it made us feel about parenting - and the right of a parent to be respected in that role, and the need not to rush to judgment.

A SECOND CHANCE has a running time of 105 minutes.  A SECOND CHANCE played Toronto and London 2014 and opens in Sweden and Denmark on January 15th.

THE OTHER WOMAN

THE OTHER WOMAN is basically a remake of the teen revenge comedy JOHN TUCKER MUST DIE for the forty-something set.  Cameron Diaz plays a power lawyer called Carly who's met a guy so perfect she wants to introduce him to her dad (Don Johnson).  But when Carly discovers that Mark (Nikolai Coster-Waldau - GAME OF THONES) is married to ditzy squeaky stay-at-home wife  Kate (Leslie Mann - THIS IS FORTY) the two women strike up an unlikely friendship.  But what starts of as Carly helping Kate to get a decent divorce settlement plan turns into a full on revenge-plot when they realise that Mark is also dating hot model Kate Upton, and using his wife to front a series of dodgy off-shore companies with which he's defrauding his clients.

When the movie works it works best as a buddy comedy and there's a genuine if cliched connection between the cynical Carly and the flakey Kate.   Carly comments once or twice that she doesn't quite know what skill-set Kate Upton's character is bringing to the revenge plot and I'd have to agree - this seems like stunt casting at its most pointless and vapid.  By contrast, I was pleasantly surprised by Nicki Minaj as Carly's secretary - she actually delivered her lines with some sass.  The real problem with the film is Nikolai Coster-Waldau. He's certainly good-looking and charming enough to convince as a thieving lothario, but he really cannot do physical comedy and this script demands that of him again and again.  It's just awkward.  If done well, a simple comedy based on a much-worn concept can still be fun.  But mis-casting is the fatal flaw of THE OTHER WOMAN.

THE OTHER WOMAN has a running time of 109 minutes and is rated PG-13.  THE OTHER WOMAN is on global release.

Late review - London Film Fest 2011 Day 10 - HEADHUNTERS

This Norwegian adaptation of Jo Nesbø's popular thriller sets of at a rapid pace but jumps the shark at the thirty minute mark and never regains its credibility. As a result, the final furlong is a dull trawl of a thriller - utterly unthrilling - enlivened only by a moment of emotional reconciliation.

Aksel Hennie plays Roger Brown - a professionally successful headhunter who is so insecure that he moonlights as an art thief to keep his beautiful wife in finery. His life unravels when he crosses path with Clas Greve - a specialist military tracker and former tech-CEO, who also happens to have a priceless Rubens in his flat. (Greve is played by the not unattractive Nikolaj Coster-Waldau - Jaime in HBO's Game of Thrones.) At this point, there is rather predictably a heist that goes wrong. Greve turns out to be sleeping with Roger's wife, and tracking Roger down with guns, dogs and fast cars.

For me, the movie started to go wrong as soon as Roger and Clas had an encounter at a cabin in the woods. Roger just seemed way too resourceful for a pen-pusher - too adept at being o the run. I mean, he's practically Bourne - surviving too easily, too much. And Clas, for a world-class military tracker, just seemed too incompetent, letting Roger off the hook not once but twice. And the foreshadowing is clunky as a sperm whale. Conspirator Ove (Eivind Sander) helpfully describes the many guns in his house as well as some hidden cameras broadcasting straight to his security firm. Do you think they're gonna be important?!

Film critics often get sniffy about remakes. I'm no exception. But after the rip-roaring fun on CONTRABAND (also on release in the UK now, and a far better watch), I can't wait to see the Mark Wahlberg remake of this film. It's bound to be more entertaining. 

HEADHUNTERS played Toronto and London 2011. It opened last year in Norway, Finland, Belgium, Sweden and the Czech Republic. It opened earlier this year in Kazakhstan, Russia, Estonia, Australia, New Zealand and Germany. It is currently on release in the UK and Ireland. It opens on April 12th in the Netherlands; on April 27th in the USA; and on August 23rd in Spain.

THE BAKER - hokey cokey pig in a pokey!

Milo is a hitman on the lam in a Welsh village. The locals presume he's the new baker and Milo's all to happy to swap his Glock for an apron and stave off his mid-life crisis. Problem is, the locals soon twig what he really does for a living and start commissioning him to kill their irritating neighbours. Milo still thinks they're ordering "cake". So proceeds a comedy of errors that is painfully executed. Writer-director Gareth Lewis never moves beyond the obvious - exploding Welsh sheep, garden gnomes - and always crosses the line from silly to plain stupid. The classic example of this is a scene where our (anti-)hero Milo (Damian Lewis) and his love interest Rhiannon make love smeared in flour, eggs and cocoa powder. Unsexy and, what's worse, not hugely funny.

We've seen hitmen turn soft before. This territory is covered better in THE MATADOR. Even ANALYSE THIS makes a better fist of it. Fish-out-of-water comedy has been done better too. But the most tragic thing about this movie is that it seems to ignore all the development in British comedy over past decade, not least by the genius TV series THE LEAGUE OF GENTLEMEN. In that phenomenonally successful show, the comedians moved beyond the crude stereotypes used by Lewis. They satirised the urban view of rural life as well as pushing those stereotypes to their logical and grotesque conclusions. By contrast, THE BAKER seems very old-fashioned and unambitious.

THE BAKER is on release in the UK but is also available on DVD.