Bastille Day

For F*** Magazine

BASTILLE DAY

Director : James Watkins
Cast : Idris Elba, Richard Madden, Charlotte Le Bon, José Garcia, Eriq Ebouaney, Thierry Godard, Kelly Reilly
Genre : Action/Thriller
Run Time : 92 mins
Opens : 21 April 2016
Rating : NC-16 (Some Nudity and Violence)

Two actors often named as prospective James Bonds become unlikely partners in this action thriller. Michael Mason (Madden), an American eking out an existence as a pickpocket in Paris, finds himself implicated in a bomb attack. Zoe Naville (Le Bon), whose boyfriend built the bomb, is tasked with planting the explosives, but has a crisis of conscience. CIA agent Sean Briar (Elba) goes off in pursuit of Michael, a wanted fugitive after he is caught on security footage apparently planting the bomb. French Minister of the Interior Victor Gamieux (Garcia) decrees that the upcoming Bastille Day parade will go ahead as planned, in spite of the heightened threat level. Wanting to tie up loose ends, the terrorist leader Rafi Bertrand (Garcia) targets Michael, Briar and Zoe. In the meantime, Briar’s fellow CIA operative Karen Dacre (Reilly) uncovers a conspiracy within an elite task force of the French police, as societal tensions mount and rioters overrun the streets.

            What really is little more than an adequately diverting spy flick takes on a sobering quality in the wake of the November 2015 Paris terror attacks – production occurred before the tragedy. In this regard, Bastille Day shares similarities with London Has Fallen. Bastille Day is markedly less ridiculous, though there’s still the “Americans save the day” quotient and a huge pile of fairly silly action movie clichés. Our hero is a hard-nosed secret agent whose introductory scene has him being berated by his superiors for being a loose cannon, and the guy he has to team up with is a ne’er-do-well thief whose skills come in handy when the pair are after the bad guys. “Briar, this isn’t Baghdad, it’s Paris,” a CIA official chides. “Red wine, the Louvre, Louis Vuitton.”

            The film’s attempts at being topical are far from subtle, but are not as ham-fisted as in many other recent action films. The ways in which the perpetrators of the attack manipulate the masses into forming angry mobs, including blaming a local mosque and posting calls to arms on social media, seem sufficiently logical. However, one would have to work extra hard to stifle laughter when the terrorist mastermind proclaims to his cronies, in all seriousness, “the hashtags will tip it over.”

            Our two protagonists serve as foils for each other: Briar is prone to reckless violence and is an old-school action hero of the “punch/shoot everything” variety, while Michael’s modus operandi is devilish sleight of hand. It’s easy to buy the physically imposing Elba beating up the bad guys and dishing out a one-liner or two, but Briar is all brute force, and Elba is at his most watchable when he’s exercising his brand of suavity - an opportunity he’s denied in Bastille Day.

Game of Thrones heartthrob Richard Madden plays a guy who’s just in the wrong place at the wrong time – but when you’ve got that pretty a face, who needs luck, right? Madden trained with professional pickpocket/entertainer Keith ‘The Thief’ Charnley, who called the actor “a natural” with “a very light-fingered touch”. Indeed, the sequences where Madden struts his artful dodger stuff end up more exciting than most of the action scenes.

Le Bon looks worried and on the brink of tears through the whole film, as the stock “woman who’s been dragged into some nasty business because she didn’t know any better” character. For what it’s worth, she does have a role to play in the climactic face-off. The villains, led by Godard as Rafi Bertrand, are relatively unremarkable and the twists and turns in their scheme, especially the revelation of their actual motive, are predictable.

The stunts, which include a rooftop foot chase and a bank siege, aren’t anything to shout about – but the production values definitely pass muster. Crowd scenes in low-to-mid-budget action movies can often look phony, but the finale involving a throng of protestors being held back by riot police manages to be convincing. Bastille Day is very much your standard-issue post-Bourne spy action movie, packed with tropes and characters that will be immediately recognisable to genre fans. It scrapes by on Elba’s charisma, even if he doesn’t actively showcase it – and that brisk 92-minute running time certainly doesn’t hurt either.

Summary: Bastille Day is formulaic but watchable, though its depiction of Paris besieged by terrorists will understandably affect those still raw from the recent real-life terror attacks.

RATING: 3 out of 5 Stars

Jedd Jong

           

            

Flight

For F*** Magazine

FLIGHT

Director: Robert Zemeckis
Cast: Denzel Washington, Kelly Reilly, Don Cheadle, Bruce Greenwood
Genre: Drama, Thriller
Run Time: 138 mins
Opens: 21 February 2013
Rating: M18 - Nudity And Drug Use

There was a time when flying was considered glamourous and exciting, the kind of thing Frank Sinatra songs were made of. “A brand new way to travel”, as it were. Today, getting on a plane is very much a part of regular life for many; sometimes inconvenient, sometimes frightening. Much of the awe of air travel has gradually eroded away, and these days, it seems like more of a necessity than a luxury. Still, it’s sobering to realise that every time we get on a plane, we put our lives in the hands of its pilots.

Denzel Washington plays one such pilot, named William “Whip” Whitaker. Unfortunately, “sober” is not quite in his dictionary, and after a night of alcohol, cocaine and sex, he takes the controls of a SouthJet airliner bound from Orlando to Atlanta. All of a sudden, the plane goes into a steep dive, and Whip is able to perform a risky manoeuver: rolling the plane upside down so it levels off, and turning it right side up again for a crash landing in a field, saving most of the souls on board.



In the hospital, Whip is greeted by his old friend Charlie (Greenwood), a pilot’s union representative. He also meets Nicole (Reilly), a desperate drug and alcohol addict who had just passed out from an overdose. Whip tries to avoid the media attention he has gained since landing the plane, and is informed by Charlie and attorney Hugh Lang (Cheadle) that he could face prison time based on a toxicology report that reveals he was intoxicated during the flight. Whip begins to spiral back into his old ways as those around him try to get him to pull himself back together in time for a National Transit Safety Board hearing.

Flight’s premise is intriguing in that a film would typically wrap up with its hero saving the day, but here, that’s just the jumping-off point and we get to examine what happens to said “hero” after the day is saved. The film also marks director Robert Zemeckis’ return to the land of the living, after a good ten years spent making dead-eyed CGI motion capture animation films. Zemeckis is well-remembered for such popular classics as the Back to the Future films, Who Framed Roger Rabbit and Forrest Gump, so it’s good to see him back working in live action where he belongs.



Flight begins with a plane crash scene that is even more harrowing than the one Zemeckis put onscreen in Cast Away. This is the movie’s major set piece, and it’s brilliantly shot, imbued with an unsettling sense of familiarity in addition to danger and urgency. As the plane violently flips over and passengers tumble about in the cabin, you might just want to hang on to your armrests. You probably won’t see this as an in-flight movie soon, is all we’re saying.

However, Flight is not a disaster movie. It’s not an action movie, it’s not even a mystery thriller. It’s a good old-fashioned character study, a small, intimate film in a bigger movie’s clothes (or pilot uniform) – though those clothes happen to fit it quite well. Everything hinges on Denzel Washington as Whip Whitaker, a character whose name is probably inspired by Sully Sullenberger, a pilot who successfully landed an airliner on the Hudson River. It’s safe to assume that that is the extent of the inspiration, as Whip is a hard-drinking, somewhat arrogant rogue, though Washington’s magnetism ensures we never look away and are always rooting for him. This turns out to be a compelling portrait of someone dealing with addiction, and the impact substance abuse can have on someone and those around him. The film is never too heavy-handed in its approach and doesn’t come off as a public service announcement. Washington too never overplays the part, and the result is well deserving of the Best Actor Oscar nomination he’s gained.



Washington is assisted by a fine supporting cast. Nicole appears to be in a much worse place in her life than Whip is, on the verge of being evicted from her apartment and implied to be prostituting herself to sustain her drug habit. Kelly Reilly subtly conveys the fragility of the character without turning her into a “damsel in distress”, and we become invested in her relationship with Whip. Bruce Greenwood is always dependable as the kind authority figure, and Don Cheadle is also good as the hardworking attorney, so we end up pulling for the two to get Whip straightened out. John Goodman very nearly steals the show as Whip’s easy-going drug dealer, a role that this reviewer is almost certain was written for Jeff Bridges.

The movie’s ending does stretch credibility and several pilots have decried the film, saying someone in Whip’s condition would be in no state to fly a plane, but that doesn’t seriously hurt the end product. The outcome is an intelligent, involving drama lifted by a well-written screenplay (earning writer John Gatins an Oscar nomination) and a brilliant turn by Denzel Washington.

SUMMARY: A mesmerising performance by Denzel Washington and a solid return to live-action movies for Robert Zemeckis make for a first-class flight.

RATING: 4 out of 5 STARS

Jedd Jong