I Am Wrath

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I AM WRATH

Director : Chuck Russell
Cast : John Travolta, Christopher Meloni, Amanda Schull, Rebecca De Mornay, Sam Trammell, Luis Da Silva, Patrick St. Esprit
Genre : Action/Crime/Drama
Run Time : 90 mins
Opens : 12 May 2016
Rating : NC16 (Violence)

John Travolta is very angry, and you won’t like him when he’s angry. In this action thriller, Travolta plays Stanley Hill, a mild-mannered auto manufacturing plant manager whose wife Vivian (De Mornay) is murdered in cold blood by some thugs right in front of his eyes. Frustrated by the inefficiency of the justice system, Stanley decides to take matters into his own hands in his quest for vengeance. He turns to his old friend Dennis (Meloni), who runs a barbershop but who used to work alongside Stanley in the distant, shadowy past. As Stanley and Dennis cut a swath through the city’s criminal element and uncover a conspiracy involving state officials, Stanley’s daughter Abbie (Schull) finds herself in the thugs’ crosshairs too.

If you’re thinking, “Gee, this sounds like the kind of thing Nicolas Cage would sleepwalk through,” you’re absolutely right. Cage was apparently slated to star in I Am Wrath, with legendary director William Friedkin (The Exorcist, The French Connection) attached, but that incarnation fell through. Instead, we get the man with whom Cage once swapped faces. It’s no secret that every actor wants to be Liam Neeson in Taken, but not every actor has what it takes. Here, John Travolta is one of the least convincing action heroes in recent memory, complete with a paunch and a ghastly hairpiece. It seems odd that Dennis is a barber by trade, and doesn’t mention a word about how odd his pal’s hair looks.

This is a movie that takes itself very seriously, taking its title from Jeremiah 6:11 in the Bible, which begins, “But I am full of the wrath of the LORD, and I cannot hold it in”. Because it is so very difficult to take Travolta seriously as a badass, I Am Wrath flits between being unintentionally funny and just dreadfully dull. His co-star Meloni would make a much better lead – now there’s a believable middle-aged guy who could throw down with gun-toting, knife-wielding no-goodniks. To go earlier than Taken, I Am Wrath clearly wants to be Death Wish. Now, Charles Bronson was a grizzled guy nobody wanted to mess with. Travolta looks like he’s midway through a transformation into a wax statue of himself.

From the stock ‘dead wife motivation’ to the non-descript gangster villains to the corrupt authority figures, I Am Wrath has not a single original bone in its body. The decision to set the movie in Columbus, Ohio seems like an odd one, to say the least. We have nothing against Columbus, Ohio – we’ve never been to Columbus, Ohio – but as filmed by director Chuck Russell and cinematographer Andrzej Sekuła, it looks extremely boring. Incidentally, Sekuła was the Director of Photography on Pulp Fiction, which starred Travolta. I Am Wrath’s tagline is, “I lay my vengeance upon them,” obviously meant to evoke Ezekiel 25:17, the Bible verse famously paraphrased by Samuel L. Jackson’s character Jules Winnfield in Pulp Fiction. Let this be a lesson for every mediocre to terrible movie out there: do not remind the audience of far superior work.

Summary: John Travolta is as unconvincing an action hero as they come in this lazy, wholly forgettable sub-Taken dreck.

RATING: 1.5 out of 5 Stars

Jedd Jong

Legend

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LEGEND

Director : Brian Helgeland

Cast : Tom Hardy, Emily Browning, Christopher Eccleston, Taron Egerton, Paul Bettany, David Thewlis, Chazz Palminteri

Genre : Drama/Crime

Run Time : 132 mins

Opens : 12 November 2015

Rating : M18 (Violence and Coarse Language)

After going Mad earlier this year, Tom Hardy’s going Kray-zy in this gangster biopic. Hardy plays both Ronnie and Reggie Kray, identical twins who ruled the London criminal underworld in the 60s. Reggie is the savvy businessman while institutionalized Ronnie is the unhinged, unpredictable loose cannon. After threatening a psychiatrist into declaring Ronnie sane, the pair rise through the ranks, running protection rackets and buying up nightclubs. Reggie falls in love with Frances Shea (Browning) who eventually marries him, much to the disapproval of her mother (Tara Fitzgerald). In the meantime, Ronnie openly pursues a relationship with Teddy (Egerton). The twins become business associates of Philadelphia crime family don Angelo Bruno (Palminteri) and are pursued by Scotland Yard Detective Superintendent Leonard “Nipper” Read (Eccleston), intent on putting an end to their reign of terror. 

Legend is based on John Pearson’s biography The Profession of Violence: The Rise and Fall of the Kray Twins. The twins were the subject of the 1990 biopic The Krays as well as the straight-to-DVD 2015 film The Rise of the Krays, the latter apparently made to ride the coattails of this film. Writer-director Brian Helgeland earned his crime movie bona fides with 1997’s Oscar-winning L.A. Confidential and the Kray twins’ colourful history and trail of violence makes them attractive true crime biopic subjects. While Legend is a superb showcase for its star, it falls short in almost all other departments. Like many period gangster movies, Legend all too frequently invokes the classics of the genre while feeling like a mere echo. Its portrayal of 60s London is at once stylish and slightly artificial, Helgeland never achieving the authenticity he strives for. 

The film falls into a pattern of Ronnie doing something despicable and outrageous with Reggie cleaning up after him, the twins often coming into conflict with each other and those around them. It’s odd: even though the film spends a lot of time with its central characters, it doesn’t dig very deep into the psychology of the twins and by its conclusion, we only actually understand very little about them. It is eventful, but sometimes difficult to follow, everything tied together with a voiceover by Browning’s Frances. The voiceover is often heavy-handed and there are some clumsy attempts at breaking the fourth wall. In the end, it feels like the main purpose this voiceover serves is to give Frances some semblance of agency, since for most of the film, she is just there, just “the wife”.

Hardy has emerged as an A-lister who can headline big-budget blockbusters and prestige dramas with equal ease, and his dual role here is plenty impressive. Of course it’s gimmicky, but it’s a gimmick that works. With the help of body double Jacob Tomuri (who was Hardy’s stunt double in Mad Max: Fury Road and the upcoming The Revenant) and some clever visual effects trickery, two distinct versions of the actor co-exist and after a while, the sleight of hand becomes truly seamless. When Ronnie and Reggie come to blows during an especially heated argument, the fight is spectacularly convincing. Affecting an East End dialect, Hardy is able to play both twins as distinct characters, the end result far less stilted than when Armie Hammer’s head was duplicated and pasted onto Josh Pence’s body to play the Winklevoss twins in The Social Network. Reggie is the tortured antihero and Ronnie is the wild-eyed, mal-adjusted psychopath. In very loose terms, Reggie is the “good” twin, though that is of course relative. 

The afore-mentioned Browning looks gorgeous, appropriately retro-chic in a selection of 60s ensembles, but is given little to do beyond fretting over her husband’s illegal activities. Christopher Eccleston huffs and puffs as the cop on the Krays’ case, but Helgeland doesn’t seem too interest in the cat-and-mouse cops vs. criminals aspect of the story. Egerton, having made a splash in Kingsman: The Secret Service earlier this year, is also underused as Ron’s boy toy. Paul Bettany pops up very briefly as rival gangster Charlie Richardson. The British character actors who make up the Krays’ criminal posse come off as sufficiently tough and unsavoury, with Palminteri adding a touch of American mob movie cred. 

Given how Legend has been positioned as an awards contender, the film ends up surprisingly superficial. Even more so than other gangster films, it revolves around relationships, given its main characters are twins, but few of those relationships are satisfyingly developed and explored. Slick but formulaic and often unfocused, Legend offers very little real insight into the lives of the fascinating Kray twins. 

Summary: Tom Hardy’s dual role is dynamite stuff, but Legend is hampered by its heightened glossiness and is ultimately too shallow to pass as a gripping biopic. 

RATING: 2.5 out of 5 Stars 

Jedd Jong 

Sicario

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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 

American Heist

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AMERICAN HEIST

Director : Sarik Andreasyan

Cast : Hayden Christensen, Adrien Brody, Jordana Brewster, Tory Kittles, Aliaune “Akon” Thiam

Genre : Action/Crime/Thriller

Run Time : 94 mins

Opens : 25 June 2015

Rating : M18 (Coarse Language)

From Russia-based, Armenian director Sarik Andreasyan comes the crime thriller American Heist. Hayden Christensen plays James Kelly, an Iraq war veteran and New Orleans mechanic whose brother Frankie (Brody) has just been released from prison. Frankie took the fall for a crime the pair committed together, serving ten years in jail. Frankie tricks his brother into joining his small gang, which also includes Ray (Kittles) and Sugar (Akon). Together, they plan to rob a bank. Complicating matters is James’ girlfriend Emily (Brewster), who just happens to work as a dispatcher at police headquarters.

            American Heist is supposedly an update of the 1959 film The Great St. Louis Robbery, starring Steve McQueen and in the public domain. A Russian-American co-production, this film will feel right at home lining the bottom of the bargain bin alongside direct-to-DVD dreck. The 94 minute runtime may not seem long, but this is mind-numbingly dull, the heist proper only kicking in at the 61 minute mark. This means an hour is spent doing nothing but setting up the characters, who are extremely difficult to care about regardless. Andreasyan is aiming for a grittiness in the grand tradition of American crime films like Heat and The Town, but American Heist is inauthentic and fidget-inducing at every turn.

            Hayden Christensen and Adrien Brody play brothers. From the word “go”, suspension of disbelief flies straight out the window. The central relationship and the tension between the brother trying to get on the straight and narrow and the other who falls back into his criminal ways upon his release from jail is nigh impossible to latch onto. Christensen, whose career was never able to fully recover following his disastrous turn as Anakin Skywalker in the Star Wars prequels, is as stilted as ever, unable to compellingly essay a downtrodden average Joe. Brody, still the poster child of the so-called “Oscar curse”, is miscast as a swaggering, tough-talking thug who’s done hard time. Apparently, awkwardly bursting into tears in the middle of heated confrontations is supposed to pass for pathos.

Tory Kittles is saddled with some laughably pretentious speeches about how banking institutions are the real enemy. Akon, who plays a minor supporting role and provides the soundtrack, contributes nothing at all. It seems he is planning to encroach on 50 Cent’s “rapper attempting to act in sub-par straight-to-DVD fare” turf. Jordana Brewster plays the bog-standard designated love interest who will eventually discover that her boyfriend is involved in some unpleasant business.

            The film is competently shot by cinematographer Antonio Calvache and doesn’t look as cheap as it could have, but that’s far from enough to rescue American Heist from the doldrums it languishes in. The dramatic scenes that stretch out the first hour are plenty boring, but then the shootouts and stand-offs begin and those quickly become uninteresting too. Sure to bring about spells of mass listlessness among whatever audience shows up, American Heist is uninvolving, rote and poorly acted, adding nothing at all to the crime thriller genre.

Summary: This uninspired crime flick is plodding, shambling and other synonyms for “slow”. A movie with “heist” in the title should send the pulse racing instead of rendering viewers comatose.

RATING: 1.5 out of 5 Stars

Jedd Jong 

Run All Night

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RUN ALL NIGHT

Director : Jaume Collet-Serra

Cast : Liam Neeson, Joel Kinnaman, Ed Harris, Vincent D'Onofrio, Boyd Holbrook, Genesis Rodriguez, Common, Bruce McGill, Holt McCallany

Genre : Action/Crime

Run Time : 114 mins

Opens : 12 March 2015

Rating : NC16 (Violence and Coarse Language)

Liam Neeson goes from training the Dark Knight to running all night in this crime thriller. Neeson plays Jimmy Conlon, an aging hitman who used to work for crime boss Shawn Maguire (Harris). Shawn has supposedly reformed, and refuses to do business with drug dealers who are brought to him by his son Danny (Holbrook). It just so happens that Jimmy’s son Mike (Kinnaman), a limousine driver, is hired by Danny and witnesses a deal go horribly awry. Jimmy ends up killing Danny to save Mike, which leads to Shawn ordering that both father and son be killed in retaliation. Mike resents his father for the strain that being a hitman put on their relationship, but the duo have to stick together if they want to survive this long, brutal night.  

            Run All Night marks the third collaboration between Liam Neeson and director Jaume Collet-Serra, who also helmed Unknown and Non-Stop. Neeson claims that this will be his last action-centric leading role in a while. As cool as the actor always is, he is very much in danger of being a caricature of himself, if the Taken memes still all over the internet are anything to go by. Unfortunately, even though it’s meant to be more dramatic and character-driven than the Taken movies, Run All Night is still a let-down. Collet-Serra intends for it to be a gritty 70s-style crime flick, set in a grimy, misty New York City during the Christmas season over 16 hours. However, the scene transitions are Google Maps-style CGI camera moves, swooping out of one street, up over the city, and right into another. This comes off as nothing more than a jarring stylistic flourish, supposedly to disguise how surprisingly boring the film ends up being.

            The story is a predictable one – an ex-hitman must wade back into the muddy waters of his former life when things get personal. That logline can also be used to describe last year’s John Wick. Where that movie was surprisingly inventive, original and stylish, Run All Night is, well, a more run of the mill affair. The two relationships at its core are the personal connection between an enforcer and his old boss/long-time friend and between said enforcer and his estranged son. Brad Ingelsby’s screenplay strains to make this more than your typical father-son action movie team-up – the relationship isn’t amusingly dysfunctional, it’s downright toxic. And yet, it’s just not sufficiently compelling, some moments unintentionally funny rather than dark and dramatic. During the first half of the film, when Jimmy and Shawn wistfully reminisce about their youth, it’s meant to set up this deep bond that will inevitably be shattered over the course of the film, but it feels more like filler than anything else.

                Liam Neeson grimaces, wields a gun and talks tough through gritted teeth - daring, uncharted territory for the actor. We all love Liam Neeson but especially coming on the heels of the dismal Taken 3, it’s very easy to see why audiences are getting tired of this character type. Joel Kinnaman is good here as a clean-cut family man who wants nothing to do with the dangerous, seedy world which his father was a part of. He’s certainly less annoying than Jai Courtney’s Jack McClane in A Good Day to Die Hard. Alas, the clash of titans that is Liam Neeson vs. Ed Harris is something of a let-down. When all is said and done, it feels like Harris hasn’t really done all that much throughout the film, even though he has a substantial role. Harris is an unsung old-school cinematic badass, so seeing him go toe to toe with the old-school cinematic badass du jour should be more of an event. The macho friends-turned-enemies plot is undercut by what can be interpreted as homoerotic undertones between the two characters. Common shows up as an ice-cold bespectacled assassin; his night-vision eyepiece and high-powered pistol equipped with a laser sight likely referencing the first Terminator movie. He provides the best thrills of the film.  

            Run All Night is too predictable and contrived to work as an engrossing crime drama but also lacks the over-the-top action spectacle required to make it successful as a piece of escapist entertainment, falling into an uncomfortable no man’s land. It’s sturdily-constructed, shot well and solidly acted all around, but it has nothing to distinguish it from every other New York-set crime thriller out there.

Summary: Nowhere near as exciting as its title makes it sound, Run All Night never goes off the beaten crime thriller path. Its central trio do turn in strong performances, but even then the film can’t outrun the realm of the generic.

RATING: 2.5 out of 5 Stars

Jedd Jong 

Blackhat

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BLACKHAT 

Director : Michael Mann
Cast : Chris Hemsworth, Tang Wei, Wang Leehom, Viola Davis, Holt McCallany
Genre : Crime/Thriller
Run Time : 133 mins
Opens : 15 January 2015
Rating : NC-16 (Scene of intimacy and some coarse language)

Following the scandalous, crippling hack of Sony Pictures Entertainment, cybercrime is back at the forefront of public consciousness. Director Michael Mann brings us Blackhat, purporting itself to be a techno-thriller for a post-Snowden world. A cyber-attack sabotages a Chinese nuclear power plant, causing a catastrophic meltdown. Chinese cyber-security expert Captain Chen Dawai (Wang) concludes that in order to catch the perpetrator, Chinese and American authorities must call on the expertise of convicted hacker Nicholas Hathaway (Hemsworth). Chen, alongside his sister Lien (Tang) and FBI Special Agent Carol Barrett (Davis) cross the globe in pursuit of the cybercrime syndicate responsible, travelling from Chicago to Los Angeles to Hong Kong to Jakarta.

            Cybercrime, a globe-trotting hunt, a furloughed convict aiding the authorities, geopolitics – it all sounds pretty exciting. Therefore, it’s a shame that Blackhat ends up being pretty dull. It’s not a poorly-made film, just a boring one. Even with the requisite shootouts and chases, Blackhat never fully grabs hold of the audience. There are some surprises, even a few thrills, but each step forward in the plot feels merely perfunctory. Techno-thrillers are an interesting genre because those films often feel really dated really quickly and are mocked for their Hollywood-ised depiction of hacking – try sitting through Hackers or The Net with a straight face. It is after watching Blackhat that we realise a “realistic hacking movie” just isn’t all that entertaining a proposition, and this is something that should’ve been a foregone conclusion.

Hemsworth isn’t exactly believable as a hacker – we get that the film wants to step away from the image of the hoodie-clad teenager with thick coke-bottle glasses but Hemsworth never quite sells it. Part of the appeal of his portrayal of Thor in the Marvel Cinematic Universe is that he’s not the brightest of the Avengers, which only seems fair because he has, arguably, the most impressive physique. Call us insecure, but we refuse to believe anyone would have the brains to go with all that brawn.

            One thing the film has going for it is the Asian characters do not feel forced into the story in an obvious bid for international appeal *ahem*Transformers: Age of Extinction*ahem*. They are integral to the plot and are not depicted in a stereotypical manner. Wang Leehom acquits himself reasonably well and we’d be all for American audiences becoming familiar with his handsome mug. Tang Wei struggles more, her line delivery rather stilted. There’s a forced romantic subplot between her character and Chris Hemsworth’s, which feels all the more unnecessary because they have practically no chemistry together. Viola Davis is the same no-nonsense boss lady she usually portrays. Singaporeans might get a kick out of seeing a well-known local actor in a minor supporting role.

            In addition to being middle-of-the-road all the way through, Blackhat just isn’t that pretty of a film to look at either. Michael Mann has drawn flack for shooting in the digital format with sometimes cheap-looking results and there certainly is no shortage of noise-filled night scenes in Blackhat. Mann also favours handheld close-up shots, which can be slightly nausea-inducing. During a brawl in a restaurant, the film goes into full-on shaky-cam mode, standing in stark contrast to some pleasant sweeping aerial establishing shots.

This reviewer was looking forward to Blackhat and was puzzled to find out it had been given a January release date, since it didn’t quite look dump month-worthy. Now, he has a bit of an idea why. There is a novelty factor in seeing Southeast Asian locales featured so prominently in a Hollywood flick and unlike many films where hacking is tantamount to sorcery, Blackhat never lapses into the realm of the all-out ridiculous. However, coming from the acclaimed director of The Last of the Mohicans, The Insider, Heat and Collateral, Blackhat is a let-down, continuing Mann’s disappointing streak, seeing as how Miami Vice and Public Enemies weren’t great either. At least “Blackhat” works a lot better than the movie’s working title “Cyber”.

Summary: It could’ve been a breathless, high-stakes chase across continents but instead, Blackhat is plodding, boilerplate and decidedly average.

RATING: 2.5 out of 5 Stars

Jedd Jong

Kill The Messenger

For F*** Magazine

KILL THE MESSENGER

Director : Michael Cuesta

Cast : Jeremy Renner, Rosemarie DeWitt, Mary Elizabeth Winstead, Oliver Platt, Paz Vega, Michael Sheen, Ray Liotta, Andy García

Genre : Biography/Crime/Drama

Rating : NC-16 (Some Drug Use And Coarse Language) 

Run time: 112 mins

The archetype of the “intrepid reporter” has always had its allure and while we’re gripped by thrilling stories of journalists who will chase a story at any cost, it’s easy to forget that in real life, situations like this don’t often end well. It is 1996 and Gary Webb (Renner) is a reporter for the San Jose Mercury News who uncovers a shocking connection between the CIA and drug-runners in Nicaragua. He writes “Dark Alliance”, a three-part exposé for the newspaper that grabs the nation’s attention. The African-American community in particular is angered by the possibility that the CIA intentionally introduced crack cocaine into their communities. Soon, the scrutiny that comes from life in the spotlight proves to be more than Webb, his wife Susan (DeWitt) and their three children can take as he feels his life is in danger.

            Kill the Messenger is adapted from Nick Schou’s book Kill the Messenger: How the CIA's Crack-cocaine Controversy Destroyed Journalist Gary Webb as well as Webb’s own Dark Alliance: The CIA, the Contras, and the Crack Cocaine Explosion, an expansion of his articles. Like other conspiracy thrillers that examine the cost of uncovering the truth, Kill the Messenger is driven by a righteous indignation and has the David and Goliath aspect of a reporter from a small local newspaper going up against the CIA. Director Michael Cuesta has dealt with similar subject matter directing episodes of the TV series Homeland. There is a sense that he is striving not to over-sensationalise the actual events that took place but perhaps as result of this, the second half of the film lacks the propulsive urgency promised in the first half.

            The film places a fair amount of focus on Webb’s family life and how his pursuit of the truth behind the CIA’s alleged partnership with the Contras in Central America affected them. We see his exuberance slowly fade as he slides towards a meltdown as much of the journalism community turns against him and the big boys at the L.A. Times and the Washington Post become ravenously envious of his scoop. It feels as if a good chunk of what made the real-life case so compelling has been omitted from the film. Ideally, a thriller should pull one in deeper and deeper as it progresses, but Kill the Messenger hits a disappointing plateau midway through.

            Director Cuesta claims that in this film, Jeremy Renner delivers his best performance since The Hurt Locker and he’s pretty much right. Renner can’t quite seem to attain A-list action hero status despite appearing a number of popcorn movies over the last few years and perhaps projects in this vein are what he should be pursuing. There’s a charisma and hunger as well as a dash of idealism that Renner doesn’t overplay and it is truly crushing when we see things start to collapse before Webb’s eyes. The supporting cast is studded with semi-recognizable-to-pretty-famous faces including Oliver Platt, Ray Liotta, Tim Blake Nelson, Michael Sheen and Andy García. Mary Elizabeth Winstead and Rosemarie DeWitt, as Webb’s editor and wife respectively, are especially convincing and their performances contribute to Kill the Messenger’s credibility as an account of actual events.

            Kill the Messenger brings an event and a personal story that has been largely forgotten by the public back to the forefront. Gary Webb died in 2004 from being shot twice in the head; this was ruled a suicide. There are still lessons to be learnt from Webb’s story, particularly for those interested in investigative journalism. While Kill the Messenger is admirable in how it doesn’t turn the whole thing into an overblown melodrama, it slides a little in the opposite direction, rendering its subject matter not quite as compellingly as it could have.

SUMMARY: While Jeremy Renner puts in an excellent performance, Kill the Messenger doesn’t dig deep enough into its subject matter and falls short of being a searing account of journalist Gary Webb’s ordeal.

RATING: 3 out of 5 Stars

Jedd Jong 

Sabotage

For F*** Magazine

SABOTAGE

Director: David Ayer
Cast:         Arnold Schwarzenegger, Sam Worthington, Mireille Enos, Olivia Williams, Joe Manganiello, Terrence Howard, Josh Holloway, Harold Perrineau, Max Martini, Gary Grubbs
Genre: Action, Thriller
Run Time: 109 mins
Opens: 10 April 2014
Rating: TBA

As per his oft-quoted promise, the Governator is back from politics and on the silver screen, in a film that promises to be tougher and grimier than either The Last Stand or Escape Plan. In this film based very loosely on Agatha Christie’s novel And Then There Were None, Schwarzenegger plays John “Breacher” Wharton, the grizzled leader of an elite DEA squad. The motley crew includes Monster (Worthington), Grinder (Manganiello), Sugar (Howard), Neck (Holloway) and Pyro (Martini) – nobody has an un-silly nickname, except perhaps Lizzy (Enos), who’s also Monster’s wife. After a bust goes awry, the team members are picked off one by one in gruesome fashion. FBI agents Caroline Brentwood (Williams) and Darius Jackson (Perrineau) are sent in to investigate, all signs pointing to the mastermind being someone in Breacher’s circle.

Action movie junkies have bemoaned the lack of truly great American action movies as of late, citing the homogenisation that results from every film having to be rated PG-13 to pull in the crowds, having less bite to them because of it. Sabotage pulls no punches when it comes to the violence – it seems like somebody was having a 2-for-1 sale on blood packs. The action is visceral and bereft of noticeable digital enhancement. But make no mistake: Sabotage is far from a “great American action movie”. Chaotic, mean-spirited, dumb and deafening, it pummels the audience into submission. Director David Ayer, who has carved a niche making gritty cop thrillers, gives Sabotage some of the documentary-like style he’s become known for, but the script that he co-wrote with Skip Woods is heavy on the insipid tough guy dialogue and light on wit and invention. This should be no surprise, seeing as Woods had a hand in penning the likes of X-Men Origins: Wolverine, A Good Day to Die Hard and Swordfish.



Watching the team in this film at work just really made this reviewer miss the guys who followed Dutch into the jungle in Predator. Practically everyone in Breacher’s squad is a jerk, chugging beers, hanging out at strip clubs - they’re just not really interesting, let alone endearing. It’s impossible to buy the group as a well-oiled machine who have been operating as a unit for some time, since they’re always at each other’s throats, and not in an amusingly dysfunctional way either. Now, of course it would be boring if everyone just got along, but if it seems like nobody has anyone else’s back, the audience is hard-pressed to give a damn when each team member starts biting it. As a result, this whodunit soon gets increasingly tiresome, instead of increasingly absorbing.

Schwarzenegger does make for a convincing team leader, worn, grizzled and serious. Thankfully, he doesn’t do a whole lot of referencing his status as a pop culture icon. It seems contemporary moviegoers regard Schwarzenegger as not much more than a punch-line, a fount of cheesy one-liners and a relic of the over-the-top 80s. It’s a bit of pity as his acting is not bad at all here.

The supporting cast isn’t remarkable but for what it’s worth, it’s cool that there are two Terminators on the same team (the other being Sam Worthington). Worthington has a reputation as a wooden, cookie-cutter action hero, but he’s competent as the only guy in the team with his head screwed on right. The distracting “ponytail beard” hanging from his chin does snatch a good deal of the credibility away, though. Mireille Enos spends most of the film being quite annoying, though it’s probably more the script’s fault than it is hers. She’s the lone girl on the crew has to constantly prove she can stand among the boys. How original and empowering. Olivia Williams fares only slightly better, her no-nonsense investigator being a character we’ve also seen a million times.

The film’s attempts at humour are cringe-worthy and oddly scatological. The team squirms as they wade through a sewer, and there are two random agents tasked with monitoring Breacher who have an extended conversation about peeing into a bottle. Yes, of course there are shootouts and car chases, and while the action scenes don’t feel overly staged, they also lack creativity and style, little more than flurries of bullet hits and gratuitous blood spatter (that poor cyclist on the windscreen). Pointlessly cruel instead of shocking or impactful, Sabotage has even less substance than your average spectacle-filled summer blockbuster, Schwarzenegger’s stoic turn its sole saving grace.

SUMMARY: We used to have at least a few brain cells. We watched Sabotage, and then there were none.

RATING: 2 out of 5 Stars

Jedd Jong

Re:solve (决义案)

For F*** Magazine

Re:solve (决义案)

Director: Randy Ang

Cast:  Chris Lee Chih Cheng, Yuan Shuai, Mico Chang, Pamelyn Chee, Jimmy Wong, Sunny Pang, Zheng Ge Ping, Zhu Houren

Genre: Action, Thriller, Crime

Run Time: 100 mins

Opens: 27 February 2014

Rating: PG (Some Violence)

We’ve all heard the adage “actions speak louder than words” and fisticuffs and shootouts are indeed a universal language among film-goers. Ong Bak and Tom Yum Goong did a good deal for the visibility of Thai films around the world, as did The Raid: Redemption for Indonesian cinema, not to mention the scores of Hong Kong martial arts movies over the decades. Touted as “Singapore’s first action crime thriller”, director Randy Ang’s Re:solve hopes to pave the way for made-in-Singapore action movies to become a thing. These are baby steps though, and it shows.

Special Tactics Unit member Cheng Shaoqiang (Lee) is part of a raid that goes awry, resulting in the death of team leader Wu Tianle (Pang) and the dissolution of the unit. Shaoqiang’s girlfriend Wu Qizhen (Chang), who’s also Tianle’s sister, is understandably upset and the relationship falls apart. Seven years later, Shaoqiang, now an inspector with the Serious Crimes Unit, finds his past coming back to haunt him, as he investigates a series of attacks on financial firm BWB Capital. Qizhen and Wang Zheng-ming (Wong), Shaoqiang’s former teammate, now work at BWB Capital and the three reunite under less-than-ideal circumstances. As Shaoqiang and his new partner Yan Yongchen (Yuan) work to crack the case, all signs point to Tianle – the mentor and comrade who seemingly died in the line of duty – being the mastermind.

It is about time a made-in-Singapore crime thriller feature film saw the light of day, so the mere existence of Re:solve should be encouraging, but it also demonstrates how far the local movie industry has to go. It’s worth noting that the production values are solid and the look and feel of the picture is a marked improvement on that of amateurish home-grown TV “action dramas”. The action sequences here are decently choreographed, though they are few and far between.

But the film’s tone is constantly overwrought and melodramatic, emphasised by a maudlin score filled with swelling strings and lilting piano melodies. The film slips into unintentionally funny territory on a number of occasions, falling back on trite plot devices like Mission: Impossible-style “latex perfection” mask disguises. It’s also a pretty dull affair, sagging in the middle when it enters paint-by-numbers procedural mode.

The acting is just passable, Taiwanese actor Lee making for a handsome but bland lead. Chang is very much the same; at least her part is a little more than a bog-standard “girlfriend”. Zhu Houren hams it up, gesticulating wildly and wringing his hands in all of his scenes. Yuan Shuai’s turn as the sidekick borders on being whiny. Pamelyn Chee has poise to spare as the businesswoman who might know more than she’s letting on. Wong is pretty stiff and it turns out that he isn’t a professional actor and is in fact a Forex trader who executive-produced the film, so the fact that he plays an important secondary character does carry a slight “vanity project” aftertaste. TV veterans Richard Low and Xiang Yun show up and there’s also a cameo from Roger Koh, owner/CEO of the fried rice restaurant Chen Fu Ji and one of the movie’s financiers. Thankfully, the name-dropping of his restaurant, while silly, stops short of the cringe-worthy product placement that infests so many Singaporean films.

In the context of Singapore’s film landscape, Re:solve might seem like something of an achievement. Unfortunately, the reality is that this also-rans crime flick can barely compete with any of the dime-a-dozen cop movies that come out of Hong Kong. It’s a “points for effort” situation in that it’s clear what Ang was striving for, and the film does possess a degree of polish, the climactic infiltration of a hijacked cruise liner making for a decent denouement. Following that, however, the film ends with a “sothisiswhatreallyhappened” reveal, the logic-straining twist ending coming off as not quite preposterous but still really rushed, especially given Re:solve’s flabby midsection – not an ideal resolution.

Summary: Less of a milestone and more of a stepping stone, those hoping for a decent Singaporean action thriller will be at least a little disappointed by the frustratingly mediocre Re:solve.

RATING: 2.5 out of 5 Stars

Jedd Jong

Police Story 2013 (警察故事2013)

For F*** Magazine

POLICE STORY 2013 (警察故事2013)

Director: Ding Sheng
Cast:         Jackie Chan, Liu Ye, Jing Tian, Huang Bo, Yu Rongguang, Zhang Lanxin, Wang Zhifei
Genre: Action, Crime
Run Time: 106 mins
Opens: 24 December 2013
Rating: PG13

Upon the release of last year’s CZ12, Jackie Chan was pretty sure that it would be his last big, action-centric role, but the actor was also adamant that he was far from retirement. He revisits the Police Story franchise in this film which, like New Police Story before it, is unrelated to the earlier entries in the series and promises to be tough and serious. But are “grim and gritty” and “Jackie Chan” really the best bedfellows?

Ditching the Chan Ka-Kui persona from the first four Police Story films and Chan Kwok-Wing from New Police Story, here, Jackie Chan plays Mainland Chinese police Captain Zhong Wen. He goes to meet his somewhat-estranged daughter Miao Miao (Jing Tian) at the Wu Bar, an industrial-chic establishment converted from a factory. Zhong discovers Miao Miao is dating the Wu Bar’s proprietor Wu Jiang (Liu Ye), something he disapproves of. It turns out that his suspicions of Wu Jiang are not unfounded as Zhong and the rest of the patrons get taken hostage inside the nightclub. Wu Jiang pursues a vendetta that began one night five years ago with an incident in a pharmacy, and it turns out that Zhong was there. Zhong has to fight for the safety of his daughter and everyone else held hostage as the police plans an infiltration of the Wu Bar to put an end to a night of madness.



Audiences will know they’re in for something different than the usual Jackie Chan action romp from the opening scene onwards – that scene featuring Jackie holding a gun to his head. In his review of Police Story 3: Super Cop, film critic James Berardinelli said of Jackie Chan’s style, “this is action with a smile, not a grimace.” Well, Police Story 2013 is very heavy on the grimacing indeed. This film is essentially Die Hard in a Nightclub, with Capt. Zhong and the other characters stuck on the premises for most of the film. It’s even set during Christmas, like Die Hard. However, Bruce Willis cracked a good number of jokes but here, Jackie Chan does nothing of the sort, gritting his teeth through the whole affair.


The vast majority of Jackie Chan’s films are exuberant and silly, the actor favouring a madcap style of physical humour and incorporating comedy into action sequences in an inventive manner. While CZ12 was almost gratingly juvenile, here, we have a Jackie who’s grizzled and hard-boiled. The problem with this is that everything that makes Jackie Chan who he is gets stripped away. There really aren’t enough action sequences in this action thriller and the main fight is a pretty brutal cage match, hits and impacts enhanced with Zack-Snyder style slow-motion and ramping. It’s not an enjoyable melee to watch; that mix of playfulness and peril that Jackie does so well replaced with more typical movie violence.



Ding Sheng, who directed Jackie in Little Big Soldier, pulls triple duty as director, screenwriter and editor. In all fairness, Police Story 2013 isn’t a poorly-constructed film and possesses some effectively dramatic moments. However, Liu Ye makes for a relatively disappointing villain. The character’s motivations are very personal, veering into soap opera territory. As an adversary, he pales in comparison to Daniel Wu’s captivating, wickedly charismatic turn as Joe Kwan in New Police Story. The idea of an aging cop mending bridges with his daughter is far from a new one but Jackie and Jing Tian work well enough as father and daughter.



The frustrating thing about Police Story 2013 is that Jackie Chan is not a bad actor and he can be convincingly serious (see Crime Story, The Shinjuku Incident or even Karate Kid) – but then, he ends up just like every other action hero. As he gets on in years, he has been open about his desire to take on more dramatic and less action-centric parts. Perhaps we should be glad that he's no longer running through spice markets butt-naked but we’re pretty sure that most of Jackie’s fans will find themselves missing the humour and vim and verve that are his trademarks. As with most of his films, a gag reel rolls as the end credits do, in which we see Jackie flub lines, get nicked by too-realistic prop knives, take some hits and goof off. It only goes to show that “action with a smile” really is his wheelhouse.

SUMMARY: While not a bad film, Police Story 2013 doesn’t play to Jackie Chan’s strengths, turning him into every other tough action hero ever. It’s surprisingly short on the stunts and thrills too.

RATING: 2.5 out of 5 Stars

Jedd Jong