Sicario

For F*** Magazine

SICARIO

Director : Denis Villeneuve

Cast : Emily Blunt, Benicio Del Toro, Josh Brolin, Jon Bernthal, Maximiliano Hernandez, Victor Garber

Genre : Crime/Thriller

Run Time : 121 mins

Opens : 17 September 2015

Rating : NC16 (Coarse Language and Violence)

As another presidential election rears its head, U.S.-Mexico border issues are as hot a topic as ever. The so-called “war on drugs” rages on in this thriller. Emily Blunt plays Kate Macer, an FBI agent from Phoenix, Arizona specialising in kidnap response. Kate is selected to join a task force cracking down on drug cartel crime on the border. Department of Justice consultant Matt Graver (Brolin) leads the task force, aided by the enigmatic mercenary Alejandro (Del Toro), a former prosecutor turned efficient hitman.  Kate and her partner Reggie (Daniel Kaluuya) suspect that Matt and Alejandro are not being upfront with them from the start, and Kate soon finds herself dealing with far more than she bargained for as she wades into the murky waters of the escalating conflict on the border. 

'Sicario' is a slang term for 'hitman' used in Mexico. The film is directed by Denis Villeneuve, who helmed the kidnapping drama Prisoners and is attached to the upcoming Blade Runner sequel. Sicario is a straight-ahead thriller and markedly different from his last directorial effort, the mind-bending psychological thriller Enemy. Villeneuve presides over the proceedings with an even hand, crafting an intense, slow-burning film. Favouring disquieting “calm before the store” moments instead of a flashy bursts of action, this detached approach means that the film always feels grounded instead of over the top. However, it also means that it might be difficult for some audiences to truly sink their teeth into the story, since in avoiding heightened spectacle, Sicario is sometimes dull. 

Action movies are a dime a dozen, but interestingly, there has been a dearth of truly serious action-thrillers. Most contemporary Hollywood action flicks have a mere veneer of grimness and may be entertaining but are rarely really about anything. The violence here is uncompromising and ugly, never slick and glossy, with mutilated bodies hanging from bridges in full view. Screenwriter Taylor Sheridan consciously avoids over-simplifying the issues at the heart of Sicario. There is a subplot focusing on everyman Mexican cop Silvio (Maximiliano Hernández) and his family, which attempts to show the toll the war on drugs takes on average folk. Border politics and the nature of this particular conflict are anything but clean-cut and Sicario does a good job of reflecting that the concept of a black and white morality is an antiquated one and old-fashioned good guys just don’t really exist anymore. 

We see this through the eyes of Emily Blunt’s Kate Macer, who goes through the familiar arc of the fresh-faced rookie who has her idealism swiftly eroded when she sees how things actually work. While it isn’t exactly untrodden territory, Blunt is excellent in the role, reminiscent of Jessica Chastain’s performance in Zero Dark Thirty. Kate is not afraid to question authority, though as the story progresses, she starts to see less and less of a point in doing so. Blunt continues to showcase her versatility and there are several moments where Kate is brought to her knees that could have been overwrought in the hands of a lesser actress. 

Josh Brolin is right in his element, slyly entertaining as the lackadaisical Matt Graver. He wears flip-flops into serious meetings and doesn’t quite look to be in the best shape, but when means business, he means business. Benicio Del Toro complements him well, his character methodical and deadly but with a vital unpredictable streak. It seems like Del Toro is contractually obligated to appear in almost every drug trade thriller from Savages to Paradise Lost, but he doesn’t phone it in here. Del Toro brings an intriguing mixture of primal animalistic instinct and an underlying sadness and vulnerability to the part. However, the film does trip up on the age-old storytelling trap of establishing a character as unpredictable and mysterious, so we expect him to do the unexpected and it isn’t so much of a surprise when he does. 

Cinematographer Roger Deakins and composer Jóhann Jóhannsson, who collaborated with Villeneuve on Prisoners, return here. It is not the aerial views of arid desert expanses that have the most impact, but strangely mesmerizing shots of dust particles suspended in the air. Jóhannsson’s dissonant, droning score ups the queasiness provided by alternating thermal imaging and night-vision camera points of view. The twists and turns in the story are not as surprising as they could have been, but Sicario is a tough, riveting thriller featuring on-point performances and helmed by a very promising director. 

Summary: This subdued, grim thriller is almost too restrained but it is well-acted and sufficiently haunting. 

RATING: 3.5 out of 5 Stars 

Jedd Jong 

Big Game

For F*** Magazine

BIG GAME

Director : Jalmari Helander
Cast : Samuel L. Jackson, Onni Tommila, Felicity Huffman, Victor Garber, Jim Broadbent, Ted Levine, Ray Stevenson, Mehmet Kurtulus
Genre : Action/Thriller
Run Time : 91 mins
Opens : 7 May 2015
Rating : PG13 - Some Violence & Brief Coarse Language

You know what they say: “go big or go home”. In this Finnish action adventure film, 13-year-old Oskari (Tommila) feels the pressure of having to “go big”, seeing as his father Tapio (Jorma Tommila) is the best hunter in the village. While on a coming-of-age hunting mission, Oskari comes across an unexpected quarry: President of the United States William Moore (Jackson). It turns out that Air Force One has been shot down over the Finnish forest and the President’s escape pod has landed in Oskari’s neck of the woods. The President is being pursued by traitorous Secret Service agent Morris (Stevenson), who has partnered up with wealthy psychopath Hazar (Kurtulus) to hunt him down. President Moore must rely on Oskari for guidance and protection in the wilderness, while the Vice President (Garber), CIA Director (Huffman) and counter-terror consultant Herbert (Broadbent) figure out how to deal with the situation back at the Pentagon.

            Big Game is written and directed by Finnish filmmaker Jalmari Helander, famous for his Christmas horror-comedy flick Rare Exports. This feels every bit like it was made by a foreigner who grew up loving Hollywood action flicks and this element infuses Big Game with an irresistible charm. It homages 80s action movies and has an authentic “boy’s own adventure” vibe to it. This reviewer has a soft spot for adventure flicks in which kids are the heroes, films like E.T.: The Extra-terrestrial, The Goonies, Monster Squad and more recently Super 8. Big Game takes that and mashes it up with Die Hard or Air Force One and the end result is thoroughly grin-inducing.

            With its €8.5 million budget, Big Game is the most expensive Finnish film ever made and it certainly looks it. There is an overabundance of sweeping establishing shots of the Alps, standing in for the Finnish Lapland, and the big visual effects sequences, mostly furnished by Scanline VFX, are very well done. The CGI exterior shots of Air Force One look as good as in any major blockbuster and it’s clear that Helander intends for this movie to be his calling card when he inevitably breaks into Hollywood. While the film has its tongue very firmly planted in its cheek and is peppered with really funny moments, it doesn’t feel like obnoxious self-parody and its acknowledgement of action movie tropes is earnest and affectionate.

            Samuel L. Jackson may have top billing, but it’s Onni Tommila who is the true star of the show. He makes full use of the incredible opportunity to play opposite a prolific Hollywood actor and is excellent as the underdog hunter kid Oskari. Tommila’s real-life father Jorma plays his dad here; Helander previously directed the father-son pair in Rare Exports. There is a great little scene in which Oskari imagines killing and cutting the heart out of a bear. It’s a goofy moment that’s played so wonderfully by Tommila and that very effectively conveys to the audience what this character’s hopes and dreams are. It’s also telling that instead of leaping into an opening action scene, Helander spends a fair bit of time setting up the coming-of-age hunting mission and the relationship between Oskari, his father and the other villagers, as well as the significance of this hunt and what it would mean for the boy if he were to fail.

            Samuel L. Jackson seems to be in pretty much everything and it is a bit of a wonder that he hasn’t played the President of the United States until now. He does have fun with the role and doesn’t phone it in, and it is really amusing to see the guy famous for his portrayal of assorted badasses play a rather wimpy character who has to depend on a kid to get him through a survival situation. He shares good chemistry with Tommila and the scenes in which this odd couple gets to bond are genuinely sweet.

The scenes set in the Pentagon with Victor Garber, Felicity Huffman and Jim Broadbent huddled in the world’s tiniest situation room do have a slight silliness to them but that actors of this calibre are playing supporting roles in a silly action movie is something of a casting coup. There’s the added bonus of them not having to embarrass themselves as “serious actors” have in movies like the Transformers series. As the villains of the piece, Ray Stevenson and Mehmet Kurtulus chomp away at the scenery and bring enough of that crucial “love to hate factor” that the most memorable genre villains have. There’s also the added novelty of seeing Volstagg/The Punisher go after Nick Fury.

             Big Game has its plot holes and contrivances, but the fact that it doesn’t take itself too seriously while brimming with heart and delivering the goods in the action and comedy departments does make us more than willing to cut it some slack. There is a major plot twist late in the movie that rather frustratingly does not get followed up on, but the rest of the film is satisfying enough to make up for it and we would be all for a sequel.

Summary: With its entertaining homages to old-school action flicks, a terrific lead performance by child actor Onni Tommila and an earnestness evident throughout, Big Game is big on action, big on adventure and big on humour.

RATING: 4 out of 5 Stars

Jedd Jong 

Argo

As published in Issue #34 of F*** Magazine, Singapore

ARGO

Director: Ben Affleck
Cast:  Ben Affleck, Bryan Cranston, Alan Arkin, John Goodman
Genre: Drama, Thriller
Run Time: 120 mins
Opens: 13 November 2012
Rating: PG13 – Coarse Language

Arnold Schwarzenegger recently released his autobiography, entitled ‘Total Recall: My Unbelievably True Life Story’. Well Arnie, it seems you have some serious competition in that department; because Argo is as unbelievable as true stories come. Ben Affleck’s historical political thriller recounts the U.S.-Canadian joint covert rescue operation nicknamed ‘The Canadian Caper’, drawing on declassified documents and personal accounts, laying it all out in incredible fashion.

It is 1979, and Iranian militants have stormed the U.S. embassy in Tehran, taking 52 Americans hostage. Six others manage to escape and seek refuge at the residence of the kindly Canadian ambassador Ken Taylor (Victor Garber). The CIA calls upon exfiltration and disguise expert Tony Mendez (Affleck), working with his boss Jack O’Donnell (Cranston) to devise a plan to rescue the six consulate workers. When his son watches Battle for the Planet of the Apes on TV, Mendez is inspired and hatches a crazy plan: he will enter Iran under the pretence of doing location scouting for a science-fiction fantasy film. With the help of Oscar-winning make-up artist John Chambers (Goodman) and Hollywood film producer Lester Siegel (Arkin), Mendez concocts the sham-movie Argo, and thus begins the harrowing mission to smuggle the six Americans out of Iran, having them pose as a Canadian film crew.



Producers George Clooney, David Klawans and Grant Heslov read an article in Wired magazine about the ‘Canadian Caper’ and thought it would make for a great movie. Guess what: they were absolutely right. Ben Affleck delivers a crackling thriller which hits all the right notes: it feels thoroughly authentic with meticulous details ensuring the audience is convinced of the '70s period setting; it’s taut and exciting with the very high stakes feeling very real and it’s leavened with a good helping of humour revolving around the fickle Hollywood machine.

When the trailer was released, some concerns arose that the tone of the film would be uneven, lurching from serious political drama to light-hearted movie business satire. Well, you can rest assured that director Affleck and screenwriter Chris Terrio have managed to weave both elements of the story together and very cleverly presented an interesting juxtaposition. In the film and, presumably, in real life too, nobody seemed convinced for a second that the idea would work, and just as Mendez had to sell the CIA on it, so Affleck has to sell the idea to the film-going public – and that, he does. Goodman and Arkin are welcome presences, their affability providing much-needed respite from the intense goings-on in Iran. Hollywood is presented as a place where nothing is meant to be taken seriously, vis-à-vis Washington D.C. and Langley Virginia, where everything is meant to be taken seriously, and we get to see just how much trouble Tony Mendez had to go to in order to assemble ‘The Hollywood Option’, and in how short an amount of time he had as well.



Ben Affleck seems to have regained all the credibility he lost following the likes of Gigli and Daredevil with his directing stints in recent years, and this film most definitely continues that winning streak. He presides over the picture with a sure hand, expertly ratcheting up the tension (though he sometimes appears overly dependent on 360 degree camera moves) and giving the film something of a retro feel (notice the old-school Warner Bros. logo at the beginning) without going overboard. The climactic airport tarmac pursuit is a bona fide edge-of-your-seat moment. He’s not too shabby in front of the camera either, putting in a low-key performance while conveying the quiet valour and determination of the Mendez character very well.

During the film’s premiere at the Toronto International Film Festival, there were some murmurs from the Canadian crowd that the film unfairly overlooked the involvement of the Canadian government in the rescue operation – it’s called the ‘Canadian Caper’ after all. Ben Affleck agreed to augment the postscript text, noting that the CIA’s actions were performed in conjunction with Canadian intelligence. This reviewer can’t vouch for the veracity of the film’s portrayal of historical events, but he can say this: it really doesn’t feel like your average overly-embellished ‘loosely based on a true story’ Hollywood deal, and that’s something to be admired. Argo is an expertly-crafted tribute to the power of ingenuity, bravery and co-operation (cheesy though that may sound) and makes for engrossing, compelling and powerful entertainment.

SUMMARY: Ben Affleck has a monumental success on his hands with this intriguing, exciting and smart historical political thriller. Go see Argo now!

RATING: 4.5 out of 5 STARS

Jedd Jong