Kidnapping Freddy Heineken (a.k.a. Kidnapping Mr. Heineken)

For F*** Magazine

KIDNAPPING FREDDY HEINEKEN (A.K.A. KIDNAPPING MR. HEINEKEN)

Director : Daniel Alfredson
Cast : Anthony Hopkins, Jim Sturgess, Sam Worthington, Ryan Kwanten, Jemima West
Genre : Crime/Thriller
Run Time : 95 mins
Opens : 19 March 2015
Rating : NC16 - Coarse Language

            It’s human nature to be drawn to the glittery promise of get-rich-quick schemes. Even though we know deep down that all those sidebar ads on any given website have nary a grain of truth to them, we can’t help but entertain the thought that it just might be possible to make all that money so easily. In the 80s, those ads on the internet didn’t exist yet, so a group of Dutch friends, having fallen on hard times, devise a novel way to make a quick buck – kidnapping. Their target is none other than Freddy Heineken (Hopkins), chairman and CEO of Heineken International breweries. Willem Holleeder (Worthington), Cor van Hout (Sturgess), Jan Boellard (Kwanten), Frans Meijer (Mark van Eeuwen) and Martin Erkamps (Thomas Cocquerel) demand a staggering ransom of 35 million Dutch guilders for the safe return of Heineken. The case captures Europe’s attention, the public at large unaware that these “master criminals” are really just a few regular guys.

            Kidnapping Freddy Heineken is based on investigative journalist Peter R. de Vries’ account of true events. There was a 2011 Dutch film called De Heineken Ontvoering, but it was made without de Vries’ involvement and is considered to be a largely fictionalised version of the incident. With its closely-knit band of friends pulling off an ambitious caper, the theme of “honour among thieves” and an old-school filmmaking approach behind it all, Kidnapping Freddy Heineken reminded this reviewer of Ben Affleck’s crime drama The Town. Just like in that film, our gang of protagonists needs to hit that sweet spot of being “just likeable enough”, such that we can root for them even as they engage in morally reprehensible activities, having understood their motivation. Director Daniel Alfredson only partially achieves that here. While there are several moments of nail-biting intensity, the film never really takes hold. What should be a fast-paced caper instead feels plodding and by-the-numbers, the film coming off as much longer than it actually is.

            Sam Worthington, Jim Sturgess, Ryan Kwanten, Mark van Eeuwen and Thomas Cocquerel all project a degree of working class appeal, crucial to making the audience shout “down with the rich dudes, power to the plucky little guys!” However, they never seem like a cohesive team, and this is due in no small part to the fact that their accents are all over the place. They’re playing real people – real Dutch people. Worthington, Kwanten and Cocquerel are Australian, Sturgess is English and only van Eeuwen is actually Dutch. It really pulls one out of it, especially since it’s clear that director Alfredson is striving for a believable street-level grittiness. There’s also the old plot device of the pregnant wife back home, played by Jemima West, worrying about what her husband is up to. Even if this did really happen, the film’s treatment of it is a mostly unsuccessful attempt at generating pathos.

            The ace up Kidnapping Freddy Heineken’s sleeve is Sir Anthony Hopkins, who is a still as towering a presence as ever and completely commands the screen whenever he’s on it. Throughout his ordeal, Hopkins’ take on the beer baron seems more amused than anything else, displaying an unfazed façade to his kidnappers and refusing to be intimidated by them. The scene in which he calmly requests a bathrobe, slippers, a shaving kit, other amenities and even a change in the music being played is Hopkins at his coolest. This is by no means a big movie and Hopkins could’ve easily phoned it in, but he relishes the chance to play the wily Heineken, toying with his captors instead of cowering in fear from them.

            As a lo-fi true crime thriller, Kidnapping Freddy Heineken is halfway decent, but it suffers from a flagging pace and crucial lack of urgency as well as feeling somewhat miscast. One thing the film definitely gets right is Anthony Hopkins, and it is he who keeps the film watchable.

Summary: Swap out your “nice Chianti” for a bottle of Heineken – Anthony Hopkins enlivens this mostly sturdy but dull true crime thriller.

RATING: 3 out of 5 Stars

Jedd Jong 

Noah

For F*** Magazine

NOAH

Director: Darren Aronofsky
Cast:         Russell Crowe, Jennifer Connelly, Ray Winstone, Logan Lerman, Emma Watson, Douglas Booth, Anthony Hopkins, Leo McHugh Carroll, Nick Nolte
Genre: Drama, Adventure
Run Time: 140 mins
Opens: 3 April 2014
Rating: NC-16 (Some mature content and violence)

“Survival at sea” movies seem to be making a comeback: over the last two years, we’ve seen Life of Pi and All is Lost, with Unbroken due later this year. Darren Aronofsky delivers his take on what might be the original survival at sea story with Noah. It has been ten generations since the creation of Adam and Eve, and Noah (Crowe) receives visions from God foretelling a great flood that will annihilate humankind, who has become wicked and violent. Noah is tasked with building an ark to shelter one male and one female of every animal during the flood. His wife Naameh (Connelly), sons Shem (Booth), Ham (Lerman) and Japheth (Carroll) and Shem’s wife Ila (Watson) help Noah with his divine mission, but they also witness the torment brewing within Noah. The vicious self-proclaimed king Tubal-Cain (Winstone) refuses to acknowledge the prophecy of the flood and leads his men against Noah. The fallen angels encased in rock known as the Watchers, led by Samyaza (Nolte), protect Noah and his family against the hordes as the waters erupt from the ground and fall from the heavens.



Most book-to-film adaptations are of full-length novels, and the first step in such adaptations is often trimming the material down to size and condensing it. The story of Noah is found in Chapters 6-9 of the book of Genesis in the Bible: it’s a short story that’s told matter-of-factly and this adaptation involves a good deal of expansion. Aronofsky set about making a film that would defy expectations associated with a Biblical movie, while staying true to the letter of the text – something definitely easier said than done. This is a filmmaker whose works include the provocative, disturbing likes of Requiem for a Dream and Black Swan and whose most technically ambitious film was the trippy The Fountain, so there’s no way he was going to play by established rules. Paramount got cold feet when test screenings last year generated controversy, but Aronofsky fought hard for the preservation of his cut of the film. The Noah audiences are getting stays true to Aronofsky’s vision, but it is easy to see why the studio panicked, and the multiple fades to black seem to indicate there’s still some re-editing that happened.



We don’t go to the movies to be preached to and Noah definitely isn’t a woefully laughable production the way Kirk Cameron’s Left Behind movies were. Aronofsky and co-writers Ari Handel and John Logan train the story’s focus on the humanity of the characters. The internal conflict that arises within Noah’s family and the external conflict provided by Tubal-Cain’s onslaught drive the narrative. All the players have their flaws, and oftentimes said flaws get magnified. The Bible is not a pretty book; many of the stories within are raw and hard to stomach. Aronofsky wanted to flesh out the darkness supposedly inherent in the story of Noah and the great flood, so the handling of the Watchers is particularly curious. In this film, they are fallen angels cursed to be imprisoned in stone, so they end up as rock creatures particularly reminiscent of Ray Harryhausen-style stop-motion movie monsters. In the Bible however, the Watchers lusted after human women, co-habiting with them and spawning the monstrous Nephilim; God bringing about the flood to wipe these giants from the earth. That Noah does not pursue this inherently juicy and fantastical story thread is puzzling.



There’s a lot of angst in this film, an understandable storytelling choice as angst breeds drama. Russell Crowe’s Noah is stoic but burdened with his divinely-appointed task, and as interpreted here, is intent that human beings not get a second chance. Russell Crowe certainly does “tough” and “angry” well; while this is a good performance, it’s not anything very new for him. Jennifer Connelly, who was also Crowe’s on-screen wife in A Beautiful Mind, is a dependable voice of reason as Naameh, who tries to reassure Noah that he loves his children and therefore cannot hate all of mankind.



Ila’s deal is that she is she is barren from a childhood injury and feels inadequate that she will not be able to provide Shem with children. Emma Watson attempts to give Ila a personality of her own, but it does seem like she’s defined by her role within the family. Logan Lerman’s Ham is the rebellious middle child, in danger of being swayed by the aggression and power Ray Winstone’s Tubal-Cain embodies. Winstone is as imposing and grizzled as he usually is and does make for a believable opponent to Noah, though he often falls into the position of “designated antagonist”. The slightest hint of levity in the film is provided by Anthony Hopkins’ Methuselah, Noah’s grandfather and a Yoda-type sage and mentor who misses the taste of berries.



Ideally, a film of this genre melds spectacle and intimate story-telling. It would seem that Noah accomplishes both, what with location filming in Iceland and on a purpose-built ark set at New York’s Planting Fields Arboretum, in addition to boasting the most complicated rendering in visual effects house ILM’s history. However, it sometimes feels like Aronofsky was reluctant to present a visual epic; that he was so intent on depicting a tense family drama that scenes like the masses of birds flocking into the ark were only included out of obligation. There is a time-lapse-heavy montage telling the creation story and illustrating man’s propensity towards conflict with several inventive touches. Perhaps it’s to do with the tonal approach: there’s a difference between “solemn” and “dreary” and most of the time, Noah leans towards the latter, resulting in a lack of sweeping majesty.

Darren Aronofsky wanted Noah to be “different”, and that it is. Filmgoers should appreciate the fact that a director as talented and as unique as Aronofsky was given around $130 million to tackle a story like Noah, rendering a well-worn story new again. It’s not necessarily going to sit well with the personal beliefs of every viewer out there but then again, that’s part of what sets this apart from the crop of Bible flicks – though it is at the expense of staying true to the source material. While the end result is far from watertight, it is interesting, it is sufficiently thought-provoking and taking a good deal of artistic license, the film explores the text as much as it challenges it.

SUMMARY: Far from the cuddly pleasure cruise drawn in so many children’s picture Bibles, Noah is complex, uneven, patchy but uniquely engrossing nonetheless.

RATING: 3 out of 5 Stars

Jedd Jong

Thor: The Dark World

For F*** Magazine

THOR: THE DARK WORLD

Director: Alan Taylor

Cast: Chris Hemsworth, Natalie Portman, Tom Hiddleston, Anthony Hopkins, Christopher Eccleston, Idris Elba, Ray Stevenson, Jaimie Alexander, Zachary Levi, Tadanobu Asano, Renee Russo, Adewale Akinnuoye-Agbaje, Kat Dennings, Stellan Skarsgård

Genre: Action, Fantasy

Run Time: 112 mins

Opens: 31 October 2013

Rating: PG13 (Some Violence)

   

     The Marvel Cinematic Universe train has been chugging along at a steady pace and with the release of Iron Man 3 earlier this year, Phase II has begun. Now, that film proved divisive, to say the least - it earned an impressive box office take but there was an outcry from fans over some surprise liberties it took with the source material. The thunder meister’s second outing probably will soothe some of those ruffled feathers.

            An ancient evil, the dark elf Malekith the Accursed (Eccelston), has awoken after 5000 years and re-embarks on his mission to send all of the nine realms in existence into utter darkness, using the volatile substance aether. Meanwhile, Loki (Hiddleston) is brought back to Asgard and imprisoned by his father Odin (Hopkins). His mother Frigga (Russo) is understandably saddened by Loki’s actions and Odin is keen for Thor (Hemsworth) to take his rightful place on the throne of Asgard. However, Thor is preoccupied with thoughts of his beloved Jane Foster (Portman), his father disapproving of his interest in the “meagre human”. When she comes into contact with the aether, Thor brings her back to Asgard in order to find a way to extract the deadly entity. As the convergence of the nine realms nears, Malekith is ever closer to his goal, Thor eventually having to work with his disgraced brother to prevent the destruction the dark elf has planned.

            

           It is worth noting that Thor: The Dark World has a different creative team from the first film – different writers, editors, a different costume designer, director of cinematography, production designer and a different director. Taking over from Kenneth Branagh is Alan Taylor, best known for his work directing episodes of Game of Thrones. Patty Jenkins was set to direct the film before leaving the project and it seems Taylor didn’t have the best time working as a part of the big Marvel machine. Still, he has delivered a solid film, drawing on his experience with the fantasy genre. The film is slightly more serious and heavy than its predecessor, but it is justifiably so and the drama of it all is punctuated with well-judged moments of humour, including the obligatory Stan Lee cameo.

            It has been said that sequels are all about the villains; that after establishing the characters and the world is out of the way, the spotlight can shift to a truly spectacular bad guy. Think Heath Ledger’s Joker or Benedict Cumberbatch’s recent turn as “John Harrison”. Well, that’s not the case here. Malekith is a two-dimensional foe whose ultimate goal is as straightforward as they come. He is threatening but never truly compelling – however, this isn’t a bad thing. It seems that the filmmakers’ intention was not to have an antagonist come and steal the show, but to further the dynamic between Thor and Loki against the backdrop of a new threat, a decision that pays off.

 

            Tom Hiddleston has gained recognition, acclaim and much fan love (all of tumblr squeals in delight at the mere mention of his name) for his portrayal of Loki, the god of mischief and Thor’s adoptive brother. After being the main antagonist in both Thor and The Avengers, Hiddleston gets to visit the role a third time – which, if one thinks about it, is a rare privilege for an actor playing a “baddie”. Loki is a figure who is sympathetic in addition to being duplicitous and sometimes nasty, but what really works in this film is the angle of the character as a trickster being played up, that the audience is never sure where he’s headed with whatever he’s doing and whether it is a fatal error or an unexpected boon when Thor has to rely on him.

            It’s evident by the above paragraph that Hiddleston steals the show and there was never any doubt as to whether he would, but the rest of the cast, many returning from the first Thor film, is good as well. Chris Hemsworth has truly settled into Thor’s boots, putting that famous godlike physique on display again. This a Thor who’s less of a fish out of water than in the first film, though he still gets a couple of such moments. Natalie Portman is a talented actress but, as was the case with the first film, doesn’t get a whole lot to do as the love interest. It is nice that Jane gets to visit Asgard and see her big ole boyfriend in his natural habitat. We spend less time on earth, which is good, and Kat Dennings, Stellan Skarsgård and newcomer Jonathan Howard are efficient comic relief elements while moving the plot forwards.

            Mads Mikkelsen was initially cast as Malekith, but had to drop out due to commitments to his TV show Hannibal. Christopher Eccleston is a fine replacement, covered in prosthetic makeup and doing a lot of scowling. The Warriors Three – well, two, since Hogun (Asano) isn’t in most of this – along with Lady Sif (Alexander) and Heimdall (Elba) do get their chances to shine. This reviewer was particularly entertained by Zachary Levi, nigh unrecognisable with that blonde ‘do, as Fandral the Dashing, replacing Josh Dallas from the first film. There’s also a bit more of Anthony Hopkins and Renee Russo, though Hopkins does seem a little bored at times.

            “Dark” is a word that is getting overused in movie titles and subtitles, but though Thor: The Dark World has its downer moments it doesn’t try to be unnecessarily grim and gritty. The film does focus on character relationships and development and isn’t stuffed to the brim with hyperactive action beats and too much large-scale destruction. It does lapse into “conventional fantasy flick” mode with its use of tried and true genre elements but still feels like it fits into the larger Marvel Cinematic Universe. Fans of the character will welcome being thunderstruck once more. And yes, stay during the end credits for two stinger scenes.

SUMMARY: Thor: The Dark World isn’t as upbeat as the first go-round but it does satisfyingly expand on the relationship between Thor and Loki, as well as doling out the requisite fantasy-action spectacle.

RATING: 4 out of 5 Stars

Jedd Jong

           

Thor

THOR

2011 Release

Starring: Chris Hemsworth, Natalie Portman, Tom Hiddleston, Anthony Hopkins

Directed by: Kenneth Branagh

            The folks at Marvel Studios have good business sense, and have put a lot of effort into building a Marvel movie universe populated by popular Marvel Comics characters. Iron Man 2 closed with a secret teaser ending, showing the discovery of Thor’s hammer Mjolnr, and introducing an important piece of the Marvel movie universe puzzle.

            Thor is a staggering achievement, filled with imaginative energy and crackling with excitement, but the greatest weapon this warrior wields is its strong plot. Director Branagh brings his Shakespearian senses to the fore, stirring elements such as the Cain-and-Abel tussle between Thor and Loki, the star-crossed romance between Thor and Jane and also the friction between Thor and his disapproving father Odin into the cinematic pot.

            Branagh proves that he is no pushover when it comes to action sequences and wide panoramic vistas either. He has a keen eye for what looks good to excitement-hungry moviegoers, and this movie is packed with fantastic and beautiful visuals. From the sparkling spires of Asgard to the desolate wasteland of Jotunheim, this is a ten-course feast for the eyes – especially when given the 3D treatment.

            Chris Hemsworth proves himself as a charming and charismatic leading man. Thor is portrayed here as a skilled but reckless and headstrong warrior prince, and Hemsworth takes the audience along as Thor learns humility and finds love on Earth, even as he experiences some hilarious moments of culture shock. He also does well in the fight sequences, having trained and gained 20 pounds of pure muscle for the role.

            The supporting cast hits all the right notes as well, Anthony Hopkins imbuing Odin with thundering authority, Tom Hiddleston always possessing a malicious glint in his eye as Loki and Natalie Portman at her most normal and girlish as astrophysicist Jane Foster. Stellan Skarsgard grounds the film as Foster’s level-headed mentor, and Kat Dennings is well-cast and very funny as the comic relief sidekick, usually a male role.

            An all-round movie-going experience, Thor is the explosive and substantial summer movie season opener everyone has been hoping for, and is unmissable on this and any other of the eight known realms. Oh, and don’t forget to stay past the credits for a mind-blowing revelation.

SUMMARY: Action-packed, with a strong hold on a good story and boasting startlingly beautiful visuals, Thor will have everyone asking for more. By Odin’s command, see this one!

RATING: 4.5/5 STARS