Movie Review: "Enemy At The Gates" by David Pretty

 
With all of the recent hubbub about American Sniper lately I thought that I'd look back at another sharp- shooter-centric war movie: Enemy at the Gates.

The year is 1942 and the Nazi war machine is in full flight. The Germans have invaded Russia with their sights set on capturing the oil-rich Caucasus region. The final levy standing between the Wehrmacht tsunami and this key objective is Stalingrad. For Hitler, the destruction of the place that bears the name of his Bolshevik rival quickly becomes an obsession and soon the city is reduced to nothing but a rubble-strewn meat grinder. Ultimately hundreds of thousands of Axis and Allied soldiers would perish in this extended battle of attrition.

Thrown into this deadly mix is Vasily Zaytsev (Jude Law), a former sheep-herder from the Urals who nearly dies in one of many involuntarily-suicidal Red Army charges. After retrieving a rifle from a dead comrade he manages to save his own life and the hide of one Commissar Danilov (Joseph Fiennes). Impressed by the young marksman's deadly skills, Danilov convinces superior officer Nikita Khrushchev (Bob Hoskins) to channel their propaganda efforts away from fear and threat and towards heroism. Danilov soon transforms Vasily into a bonafide Russian hero, replete with tales of inhuman skill and unflagging heroism.

Eventually Vasily's Nazi officer kill count snags the attention of the German High Command who introduce their own deadly sniper, Major Erwin König (Ed Harris), into the theater. The rest of the film details the deadly cat-and-mouse battle between the two rivals as well as a budding love triangle between Vasily, Danilov and a spirited and beautiful freedom fighter name Tania Chernova (Rachel Weisz).

 
Writer / director Jean-Jacques Annaud kicks off the film with an epic set piece that I'm convinced was at least partly inspired by the harrowing D-Day beach landing sequence in Saving Private Ryan. The first thing we see is the incongruous sight of Red Army "recruits" being herded like cattle onto train cars and then transported to the front. When they arrive in Stalingrad they're immediately packed onto unprotected landing boats and then sent across the Volga River under a hail of withering German artillery fire and unopposed strafing runs by the Luftwaffe.

When the surviving soldiers reach the besieged bank of the Volga, their promptly hauled out of the boats and driven towards the front lines under threat of execution. En route officers armed with bullhorns shout the following chilling mantra over and over again:

"One out of two gets a rifle. The one with the rifle shoots! The one without, follows him! When the one with the rifle gets killed, the one who is following picks up the rifle and shoots!"

Needless to say endless waves of demoralized Soviet troops are callously mowed down by German machine gun and tank fire. There are few sequences on film that truly convey the nightmarish and futile nature of war and how cheap human life can be. This is really driven home moments later when the tattered remains of the Russian ranks try to retreat and are gunned down by their own barrier troops for "cowardice".

This terrifying prologue is an absolute triumph of direction, pacing, art design and visual effects. Clearly the scale of the scene was augmented somewhat with nascent-level CGI and digital matte paintings but Wolf Kroeger's gritty production design and the authentic costuming of Gudrun Leyendecker and Janty Yates help preserve a strong sense of authenticity. Throw in some crackerjack editing by Noëlle Boisson and
Humphrey Dixon and a stirring soundtrack by composer-extraordinaire James Horner and you've got a truly memorable sequence that packs an emotional wallop.

The cinematography of Robert Fraisse also deserves a special nod considering that the film's drab visual palette could easily have degenerated into a monochromatic mess. Mercifully, Fraisse uses a keen eye and some judicious color timing to wring a surprising amount of  visual variety out of the sets and the costumes. At no point does the film become a chore to watch.

The screenplay was adapted from the book Enemy at the Gates: The Battle for Stalingrad by William Craig. It's pretty clear to even the most casual viewer that certain story elements have either been fabricated or enhanced to ramp up the drama. Mercifully these additions aren't treated as a burdensome afterthought and considerable screen time is earmarked to develop them.  

For example the love triangle between the three leads actually emerges rather organically from the story proper. Starchy, bureaucratic Danilov clearly pines for the passionate, vengeful Tania but she's, in turn, completely smitten with the brave and heroic Vasily. Hints of their potential relationship are planted early and come to fruition in due time. As a side note, this also results in one of the most unconventional and smoldering sex scenes in cinema history as Tania seduces Vasily in the squalid and crowded confines of an underground muster station.

Equally fictionalized is the back-and-forth battle of wits between Vasily and his German counterpart. Again ample time is invested in turning König into a real, live three-dimensional human being who has his own motivations to enter the arena. The tactics and counter-moves employed by the both snipers have a field-tested authenticity that makes these scenes riveting to watch.

Pity the strong scripting isn't sustained throughout the entire film and Annaud and his co-screenwriter Alain Godard seem to lose their way slightly during the endgame. Naturally, König is tasked to do something uncharacteristically evil just to remind us that he's a filthy, stinkin', despicable Nazi. He does this merely to lure Vasily into a typical hackneyed Hollywood-style face-off that makes very little logical sense given what we've seen so far. It's as if König starts acting like an idiot merely because the screenwriters were getting concerned about the script's page-to-screen-time ratio.

In spite of this, the cast is universally solid right across the board. Yes, it would have been nice if only Russian actors were cast but, hey, what are you gonna do? First up, Jude Law gives a wonderfully honest and unpretentious showing as Vasily Zaytsev. It's pretty easy to buy him as a simple shepherd manages to persevere through terrible circumstances thanks to his unconventional skills. During a well-mounted scene in which Vasily tries to deter Tania from becoming a sniper he talks about what its like to have a potential victim in his sights:

"He doesn't know you exist, but at that moment you're closer to him than anyone else on earth. You see his face through the sign. You see whether he shaved or not. You can see whether he's married if he's got a wedding ring. It's not like firing at a distant shape. It's not just a uniform. It's a man's face. Those faces don't go away. They come back and they get replaced by more faces."

Coming off his stellar success in Shakespeare in Love three years earlier, Joseph Fiennes was a pretty hot property at the time. It's a bloody shame that he hasn't done much of note recently unless, of course, you include such time-wasting dreck as 2014's Hercules. His performance here is spot on: twitchy, skittish and informed by an undercurrent of self-doubt, longing and resentment. Danilov is brave and skilled in his own right but his ivory tower existence just isn't sexy enough to attract the passionate Tania.

Danilov does whatever he can to keep Tania out of harm's way, which sets up a Shakespearean-style tragedy in its own right. When Danilov writes a false, unflattering report about Vasily during a fit of jealousy, Fiennes had me convinced that this was going to be the least of his transgressions. His final speech is pretty meaty stuff, with plenty to say about the inherent flaws of communism specifically and human nature in general:

"I've been such a fool, Vasili. Man will always be a man. There is no new man. We tried so hard to create a society that was equal, where there'd be nothing to envy your neighbor. But there's always something to envy. A smile, a friendship, something you don't have and want to appropriate. In this world, even a Soviet one, there will always be rich and poor. Rich in gifts, poor in gifts. Rich in love, poor in love."

As a female character in a war movie, Rachel Weisz goes through a pretty respectable character arc as Tania. At first glance she appears to be a studious interpreter but as the siege of Stalingrad wears on she quickly becomes a highly-capable member of the militia. And then, when Nazi atrocities hit even closer to home, she transforms into a cold-hearted seeker of vengeance, which makes her rejection of Danilov's offer of comfort and safety forgivable. Weisz is surefooted throughout: alternately warm, fierce and charming. Her presence in the film is a great tribute to all of the real Soviet women who fought alongside men during World War II.

Now by all accounts Nikita Khrushchev was a relatively minor player in the defense of Stalingrad so I assume that his profile was increased just for name recognition value. Whatever the reason, it adds up to win for the audience since the part is played with gusto by the late, great Bob Hoskins. Clad in his authentic commissar uniform and transformed by a convincing make-up job, Hoskins vacillates between belligerence, ruthlessness and parent-like pride for his rising star Vasily. Whether he's reveling in coal black humor or delivering thinly-veiled threats to Danilov, Hoskins is equally game.

Ignoring the fact that everyone is slightly miscast due to the proliferation of English accents, Ed Harris feels particularly out of place here. Nevertheless he acquits himself rather well, turning in an understated and intense performance as Major Erwin König. Given what we eventually learn about König's personal ties to the battle, his emotionally-bloodless line deliveries are well in-step with these revelations. Contrary to his outward veneer of steely calm, Harris gives the impression of a tightly-coiled bear-trap that could spring at any moment. This helps to reconcile the character's increasingly-sloppy and erratic behavior towards the end of the film.

If the goal of Jean-Jacques Annaud and company was to convince the viewer that war is hell while highlighting the inherent bravery, fortitude and valor of its heroes, then Enemy at the Gates is a real winner. I can't wait to watch American Sniper to see how a modern story compares. 

Tilt: up.

Movie Review: "Hot Tub Time Machine" by David Pretty

 
This completely loopy comedy doesn't make a lick of sense but it does assault the funny bone with the same intense fervor that Fox News usually reserves for Obamacare.

Here's the high-concept set up: four male friends, bored and disillusioned with adulthood, find themselves teleported back in time by the titular device. They end up at debauchery ground zero: the same ski resort they frequented as carefree youths. Not only has the site been restored to its mid-Eighties glory, so have our forty-something time travelers!

Freshly dumped in the present-day by his latest girlfriend, Adam (John Cusack) gets a second chance with a super-hottie named Jennie. Faced with the prospects of a dead-end job and a cheating wife back in 2010, Nick (Craig Robinson) is once again at the height of a nominal hip-hop career with groupies aplenty. And Lou (Rob Corddry), a self-prescribed metal-head and party animal who's been warning his buddies about the dangers of adult domesticity, finds himself sporting a re-constituted mullet and immersed in a misc-en-scene ripe for insanity.

Adam's Real Life-obsessed 20-year-old nephew Jacob (Clark Duke) gets pulled along for the ride. Although his age remains unaltered he starts to wink in and out of reality with alarming frequency. This begins the film's great debate: do they stay in the past to take advantage of this second kick at the can or do they return to their own era to avoid tampering with the time line? Since responsibility isn't exactly our hero's collective strong suit, this quickly becomes grist for a surprisingly-productive comedy mill.

In retrospect, Adam realizes how vapid Jennie is but this time out he becomes the dumpee. The script conveniently provides him with another potential soul mate: a free-spirited music journalist named April. Despite knowing that his wife is chronically unfaithful, Nick has a hard time sticking to the "we gotta do exactly what we did in 1986" plan. The scene where he weeps uncontrollably while having sex with a groupie is priceless. Lou is particularly conflicted since he's destined to be pummeled into oblivion by ski-instructor Blaine (Sebastian Stan), but he's also back in his element as a wannabe roadie for Motley Crue. Pretty soon he's doing whatever he can to undermine the efforts of his more conscientious buddies.

 
Gross-out comedies are a dime a dozen so why not recognize the ones that are actually pretty funny? This flick serves up its heart, soul and dignity for your amusement. Director Steve Pink, the screenwriter behind two of my favorite Cusack comedies High Fidelity and Grosse Pointe Blank, keeps things moving with manic energy. If you miss a gag or a funny line reading then just hold on Abigail Mae; in a few seconds a vomit-covered frozen squirrel will meaner into the scene to screw up someone's sure bet.

The screenplay by Josh Heald, Sean Anders and John Morris goes for broke with a veritable conveyor belt of shockingly-tasteless scenes. The presence of Crispin Glover's Phil, whom the other characters want to see maimed in a ghoulishly-nasty moment of fate, is reason enough to watch the film. Sad souls such as myself who actually grew up in that hideously-garish era will have fun spotting other 80's icons like William Zabka, who played Daniel's douchebag rival in The Karate Kid, and Chevy Chase who picks up a check as the hot tub time machine repairman (?).

All the leads are great sports and totally on top of their game. Then again, they'd have to be in order to keep up with Ron Corddry's borderline-psychotic Lou. Everyone knows someone similar to Lou, someone who's clearly not all there but is still strangely endearing probably because you've been through so much together. Credit Corddry for inhabiting a character that's more charming than obnoxious. 

John Cusack is his usual watchable self. Craig Robinson is stellar as well. When Nick drunk-dials his nine-year-old future bride and then calls her down to the dirt I nearly died thanks to Robinson's over-the-top delivery, the sheer audacity of the writers and because I knew what impact it was going to have on his future. Clark Duke's Jacob plays a perfect straight man and main foil to Lou, speaking about the "scientific" properties of the hot tub with straight-faced authority with such lines as: “Hey, I write Stargate fan fiction; this is my bread and butter, man!”

Be prepared to crash around with the characters in Hot Tub Time Machine. The action flies all over the place, things happen for no logical reason, the special effects are ludicrous, and we're often subjected to a torrential checklist of bodily fluids.

Fortunately the movie also happens to be friggin' hilarious.

     Tilt: up.

Movie Review: "Close Encounters Of The Third Kind" by David Pretty

***WARNING!***

This is gonna be a fairly in-depth analysis and, as such, I'm gonna dip inordinately deep into spoiler territory. Watch first and then read this later! 

If you were to ask me to name a movie that best epitomizes the "magic of cinema", I'd be quick to mention Close Encounters of the Third Kind. Like Star Wars seven months earlier, I distinctly remember stumbling out of the theater after seeing the film as a kid back in November of 1977, looking up at the sky and feeling as if I'd been changed somehow.

When electrical worker Roy Neary (Richard Dreyfuss) responds to a swath of late-night power outages he has an experience that will forever alter his life. His service truck conks out near some train tracks and he's blasted from above by a blinding light. When he looks out to determine the source of the disturbance one side of his face gets burnt beet red. The nearby railroad crossing sign starts undulating wildly like a spastic metronome and a hive of mailboxes begin to open and close all by themselves. Gravity goes nuts inside the cab of the truck, sending flotsam and jetsam spining everywhere.  

After the odd phenomenon abruptly ends, Roy spots a huge, silent object floating away overhead. He gives chase and eventually gets a really close look at some unidentified flying objects. During the pursuit he nearly runs over three-year-old Barry Guiler (Cary Guffey) who's been running after someone (or something) that just broke into his rural home. His distraught mom Jillian (Melinda Dillon) is too stunned by what she's just seen to be mad at Roy and the two immediately bond over this strange sighting.

They both become obsessed with the encounter and are haunted by the vision of a mysterious, volcano-shaped mountain which they try to re-create using such diverse media as pencil, sculpture and mashed potatoes. Things turn particularly grim when little Barry is abducted by the aliens and Roy's wife Jillian (Teri Garr) leaves her husband after he builds a giant butte in the middle of their living room.

But when Roy and Jillian witness news reports about a nerve gas accident near Devil's Tower in Wyoming, things start to fall into place. Motivated by an inexplicable drive for answers, the pair make a pilgrimage to the area, hoping to sneak into the quarantine zone. Almost immediately they're arrested, questioned and sent packing. At the last minute, Roy gambles that the crisis is a sham and dashes off with Jillian. Together they make a final desperate bid to fulfill their cosmic invitation and experience the ultimate close encounter: contact.

Close Encounters of the Third Kind is definitely the product of its time and if Spielberg tried to make it today I think it would turn out a lot different. First off, the esoteric title would stymie the movie marketing morons and would probably be changed to something like Invasion From The Stars, Keep Watching The Skies! or The Fast and the Futuristic. The age demographic of the two leads would likely be dropped from thirty-something to twenty-something. It's also highly improbable that Frenchman François Truffaut and plain-jane Melinda Dillon would never be cast.

I suspect that the secondary / concurrent story-line with the scientists would also be jettisoned, thus compromising a major source of the film's aforementioned "magic". Check out that freaky, yet vaguely superfluous opening sequence in which researcher Claude Lacombe (François Truffaut) and his ersatz interpreter David Laughlin (Bob Balaban) find a fleet of missing, mint-condition World War II-era fighters sitting in the middle of the Mexican desert, sans pilots. When they question an old man who witnessed their sudden and inexplicable appearance he simply tells them that "the sun came out at night and sang to him."

I'm convinced that Chris Carter probably saw Close Encounters at the perfect time and it heavily influenced his work on the X-Files. This, in turn, had a positive creative ripple effect on countless other movies and T.V. shows. Consider how many times your attention's been piqued by some weird, seemingly-unrelated hook at the beginning of a television program. A hook that, at face value, has nothing to do with the show's continuity or the first twenty minutes of the episode. It works because it defies expectations, shatters conventional story-telling structure and gives us a juicy mystery to ponder right off the bat.         

More weirdness abounds in the script. We watch on pins and needles as an air traffic controller presides over a close encounter between two passenger jets and another unidentified aircraft that displays unearthly speed and maneuverability. He asks the pilots if they want to report a UFO but they sheepishly decline, perhaps fearing the repercussions of doing so. Later on in the film, Lacombe and Laughlin come across a missing cargo ship just lying in the middle of the Gobi Desert. As a kid growing up in the 70's all of these mind-blowing oddities dove-tailed nicely with Bigfoot, Crystal Skulls and the Bermuda Triangle.

Things get even trippier when a bunch of odd lights in the sky transmit a five-note musical phrase to hordes of people in Dharamsala, India. The scientists beam the notes back into space and receive what appear to be random numbers in return. Eventually it's determined that the digits are a set of co-ordinates centered around Devil's Tower in Wyoming. This sets off a series of events that completely shattered my fragile eggshell mind as a kid. 

Clearly Spielberg and his generation were still working through the implications of the Watergate scandal. Indeed, Close Encounters of the Third Kind was my very first introduction to the concept that people in authority can lie to you. To prevent widespread panic and ensure that there are no eyewitnesses to the big interstellar rally, the military concocts a fraudulent nerve gas leak story in order to evacuate thousands of locals from the surrounding area. When I first saw the film I missed the whole part about the military using knock-out gas and left the theater thinking that the army had slaughtered all of the local livestock to give credence to their lie. That's a pretty hefty thing for a seven-year-old kid to process.

Another thing that Spielberg himself would probably not do nowadays is have his main character flat-out abandon his family. We get some hints of this early on in the film: Roy's model train set dominates the living room and later he tries to cajole his unimaginative family into seeing Pinocchio, the story of a puppet becoming a real boy. This last reference also foreshadows Roy's gelotophobia, the fear of being laughed at.

In 1976 Steven Spielberg was thirty years old, single and without kids. His script for Close Encounters seems to hint at a fear of commitment and responsibility. Roy is a man-boy who likes model trains and cartoons and his real-life obligations are slowly beating the inner child out of him. The aliens represent imagination, alternatives and wonder, not fear or obligation. Little Barry isn't scared of the visitors and neither is Roy, but all of the other adults see them as either a threat or as a hoax.

The film also functions quite nicely as a mid-life crisis analogy. Roy is immediately fired from his stressful, thankless job the second he talks about UFO's on TV. His wife is a boring, unimaginative, shrew who has nothing but disdain for his flights of fancy. His kids are ungrateful, destructive, emotionally manipulative little hooligans. Roy's terrestrial life is so dull and pointless there's no wonder why he wants to find the aliens and fly off with them. The visitors are like a hot, young, new love interest who comes along, thinks you're fascinating, wants to get to know you better and then tempts you to run away with them on some crazy, irrational adventure where the possibilities are, once again, endless.

Yes, you can have a field day with all of this sub-text but you can also enjoy the movie on a purely superficial level. The household banter and chaos of the Neary household is achingly real and rife with subtle humor. When Roy impatiently waves at the traffic behind his truck to move along only we're privy to the sight of the "headlights" rising up and out of frame instead. The aliens activate all of Barry's wind-up toys, leading to a cacophony of cymbal-clanking monkeys, grinding gears and flashing laser beams.

Countless evocative moments abound in this film. You can almost smell the bug-off, roasting weenies and warm summer air as a group of amateur UFO enthusiasts anxiously await the return of their extraterrestrial friends. The alien ships resemble airplane guide-lights shrouded in a corona of fog, giving them just enough authenticity to feel real. To this day I still think of Close Encounters whenever faced with opposing traffic cresting a distant hill on the highway. I fully expect those high beams to start strobing, change colors and then launch off the top of the hill and fly overhead.

It wasn't just thoughts of government conspiracy that scared the ever-lovin' shit outta me; I was also  completely traumatized by Roy's increasingly-erratic behavior. As a kid, your trust in adults is absolute and if they start acting weird, your whole world gets rocked. When Roy starts taking fully-clothed showers, sculpting his side-dishes and weeping openly at the dinner table the resulting strife felt uncomfortably real and very scary to me. Mercifully the tone does lighten up when Roy begins his unconventional, in-house landscaping project but up to that point it was pretty rough going for this l'il shaver.

And then there's the film's two bravura moments, the first being the abduction of Barry. Very few movies succeed in generating the sort of cresting tsunami of dread that this scene engenders. The aliens herald their arrival with roiling, apocalyptic-looking storm clouds, instantly evoking shades of Norman-Rockwell-meets- Invaders-from-Mars when superimposed high above Jillian's impeccably color-timed farmhouse. Thanks to a perfect storm of taut direction, excellent lighting, and John William's amazing score, this sequence becomes the stuff of pure, unadulterated nightmares.

Jillian does her best to barricade the house against imminent invasion and prevent her son from voluntarily waltzing out the front door. But as soon as Spielberg gives us a macro view of bolts slowly unscrewing out of the floor vent by themselves we just know that the kid's disappearance is inevitable. I think this was the first time that this gimmick was ever used in a film and when you add it to the rest of Spielberg's technical virtuosity, it results in one of the most thoroughly-effective and unnerving scenes in cinema history.

Then we have the big, götterdämmerung alien / human summit in the shadow of Devil's Tower. Again Spielberg serves up the perfect confection of convincing sets, organic dialogue, and exponentially-dazzling sights. Although Steven certainly deserves the lion's share of praise, credit must also go to editor Micheal Khan for taking such a complicated finale and making it tight, crystal clear and packed with one jaw-dropping spectacle after another. If not for Star Wars, I'm convinced that Khan would have won the Best Editing Oscar in 1978. 

Contributing to the film's bling-factor is Douglas Trumbull's special effects. To this day, his work is incredibly convincing and the appearance of the massive mother-ship is still a crowd-pleasing, jaw-dropping visual barn-burner. Aided considerably by the stellar work of veteran cinematographer Vilmos Zsigmond, the movie looks fantastic throughout and the final sequence especially so.

Perhaps the only place where the film stumbles a teensy bit is in the reveal of the visitors. The first creature, a spindly, marionette-type thing, looks super-freaky at first but then we get a side-shot where we can clearly see some kind of support beam behind it, which probably explains why we never see it again. Then, for the little "gray aliens", Spielberg dresses up a bunch of kids in skin-tight outfits with over-sized heads, pot bellies and spindly fingers. This works reasonably well since Spielberg shoots them at all a distance, in silhouette and then Micheal Khan's judicious cuts ensure that no one shot lingers on them for too long.

Finally we see the lead ambassador alien, rendered as a full-sized puppet designed by renowned animatronics expert Carlo Rambaldi. Given the liberal application of back-lighting, filters and smoke, the blinking, smiling, head-tilting creature looks legitimately other-worldly and pretty darned authentic. The illusion starts to break down somewhat when the thing is tasked to return Lacombe's Curwen hand signs. The "skin" looks rubbery and the movements are very mechanical, bringing to mind "Disney's Country (Alien) Bear (Hybrid) Jamboree". Clearly this technology was refined quite a bit by the time Spielberg got around to making E.T. four years later.   

But the film isn't all about special effects and flashy technology; the human element is also top-notch. Richard Dreyfuss is very relatable: a frustrated, confused everyman who didn't ask to see anything strange, but now that he has and can't un-see it, he's driven to seek the truth at all costs. Everything Dreyfuss brings to the table: the mania, the fear, the epiphany, the anger and the sense of wonderment are all completely convincing. The scene where he's grilled by Lacombe and Laughlin about his presence in the quarantine zone is a true tour de force:

   

Speaking of Lacombe, François Truffaut was certainly an unconventional choice to play a lead character in an American-made sci-fi film. Nowadays, Truffaut is mainly remembered as a director of art films and not as an actor. Although I do believe that his thespic talents were somewhat limited, his showing in Close Encounters is perfectly serviceable. As a scientist and a researcher, we don't need him to be warm and cuddly. In fact, his "cold fish" approach to the material keeps us guessing about his motivations right up to the very end.

Melinda Dillon is perfectly cast as fretful and anguished single mom Jillian Guiler. Bereft of make-up and possessed of a world-weary bearing that instantly conveys both exhaustion and concern, I totally bought her fictional relationship with little Cary Guffey. It's agonizing to see Barry get ripped right out of Jillian's hands and then watch her get pulled through a knothole of public scrutiny that calls her competence and even her sanity into question. On the flip-side, her joy in finding Roy as a loyal ally is exhilarating and her reaction to the finale is particularly stirring.  

The film is also graced by a series of memorable minor performances. Teri Garr is great as Roy's persistently out-of-patience wife Ronnie. Spielberg used very clever and innovative visual and audio techniques to wring a completely authentic performance out of then-three-year-old Cary Guffey. And finally Bob Balaban is cool and collected as cartographer-turned-interpreter David Laughlin.

Close Encounters was made at the perfect time, back when Steven Spielberg was a hot, young, hip, up-and-coming film-maker who managed to wed the unconventional scripting of a Seventies-era maverick auteur with the directorial chops of Alfred Hitchcock. Obvious sentimentality and shmaltz hadn't crept into his films yet. Roy's willingness to abandon his family to fly off with the visitors would be a pretty unpopular choice with contemporary audiences, but back then it sprang from an honest place and I applaud Spielberg for having the gusts to follow through on it.

As such, I still maintain that Close Encounters of the Third Kind is one of the most complex and rewarding pictures in all of Spielberg's celebrated body of work.    

       




  

Movie Review: "Knights Of Badassdom" by David Pretty

For what it's worth, Knights of Badassdom is better than Unicorn City. But that ain't sayin' much.  

After slacker Joe (Ryan Kwanten, I.E. Jason Stackhouse from True Blood) gets dumped by his upwardly-mobile girlfriend Beth (Margarita Levieva) he crawls back to his man-boy pals, which include the independently-wealthy Eric (Steve Zahn) and fellow hanger-on Hung (Peter Dinklage). Collectively, the trio are professional reality-dodgers who live on a constant diet of heavy metal and fantasy games.

Strictly for therapeutic reasons, Eric and Hung get Joe blitzed on weed and bourbon and then haul his unconscious ass off to a local Live Action Role-Playing event. At first he refuses to participate but when his friends harken back to their now-legendary D&D tales of yore, Joe's yen for adventure is piqued. Pretty soon they're rampaging through a make-believe world created by Game Master / old rival Ronnie (Jimmie Simpson) and foam-bashing actors in lime green ape suits with aplomb.

But something's rotten in the Kingdom of Eliphaz. An evil book that Eric acquired on eBay has conjured up a very-real and very-murderous succubi demon which takes the shape of Joe's ex-girlfriend. Allied with a hottie fighter named Gwen (Summer Glau), her protective bodyguard Gunther (Brett Gipson) and Lando (pronounced LON-dough) the Pious (Danny Pudi), the group attempts to set things to rights before all hell breaks loose.

Knights of Badassdom had a very problematic production history and, as such, I'm hesitant to completely Flame-Strike it into oblivion. Director Joe Lynch's ninety-minute minute cut (which was actually a resounding  hit at 2011's Comic-Con) was repo'd away by a new, unsympathetic studio head and chopped down by twenty minutes. And, frankly, it shows. There's barely any narrative flow to the film.

Having watched the movie and then re-watched parts of it in preparation for this review I still have no clue who the millionaire is supposed to be. Is it Eric or is it Hung? I'm gonna go ahead and assume that it's Eric since he tells Joe that "you're always welcome at meine castle". Also, if not for a few disposable lines about eBay, we'd have absolutely no idea where the cursed book came from. But perhaps the film's gravest sin is wasting funnyman Brian Posehn in a pointless cameo at the beginning of the film.

Everything is so disjointed and choppy the film comes across as decidedly amateurish. From one scene to the next day magically transforms into night. There are a few jarring jump cuts that really took me out of the action. The American Graffiti-style "Where are they now?" end titles are poorly written and feel slapped together and tacked on. Sadly, Unicorn City was a slicker package when it comes to nuts n' bolts movie-making.

But Knights of Badassdom proves vastly superior to its mono-horned cousin in the acting department. Even though all of the characters are hideously underwritten, the actors are all impeccably cast and give it their all.  For example, star Ryan Kwanten runs rings around Unicorn City's Devon McGinn as a protagonist. Instead of being a weird, creepy, combative asshole, Ryan's Joe is the perfect sounding board for the audience. He's brash, heroic and has zero tolerance for the overtly-nerdy bullshit going on.

Steve Zahn is equally game. Even though he's obscenely rich and the audience should probably resent that, Eric's unpretentious state of arrested development is oddly charming. His entire existence revolves around his 70's- era scramble van with the fantasy mural airbrushed on the side, RPG-style escapism and just hangin' out with his bros. He delivers the faux-medieval dialogue with panache and, in doing so, manages to make Eric a living, breathing three-dimensional character despite receiving precious little help from the script.

Summer Glau is coolly-understated as Gwen a.k.a. Guinevere the Paladin. Again, her motivation for getting involved in L.A.R.P.-ing is pretty weak but Summer manages to sell the idea that such geeky pursuits have grown on her and she just gets a kick out of it. Given her previous ass-kickery training as River Tam in Firefly her action scenes are impeccable. I just get the vibe that Summer's having fun with the goofy setting and her fellow actors.
 

 
Of all the main characters, Peter Dinklage really gets short shift as Hung. Peter does what he can with the wafer-thin material, serving up some classic stoner moments with a spectrum of quirky deliveries and mannerisms. One can only imagine how much more fun the movie could have been if Dinklage had been given something more substantial to work with.

The minor players also deserve a nod. Margarita Levieva is vapid and superficial as Beth but then transforms into an unnervingly slinky, detached and bloodthirsty succubi. Brett Gipson is even more deluded and unhinged then Tom Hanks was in Mazes & Monsters. Community's Danny Pudi lights up of the screen whenever he's around as Lando. Finally Jimmi Simpson steals every scene he's in with his dinner-theater-meets-over-caffeinated-soprano line readings.

Knights of Badassdom is also superior to Unicorn City for its treatment of L.A.R.P.ing and its devotees.  Even though the OCD characters, their goofy get-ups and their "Lightning Bolt!!!" shenanigans are soundly parodied here, it's done with an underlying sense of respect. Witness the scene in which Hung dutifully lectures Joe on the basics of foam weapon hit scoring in the game. Team names like "Gnomeland Security" and "The Norse Whisperers" also exhibits some cheeky insight into what tickles the funny bone of the average gamer.

 
Unfortunately, this devotion also ends up being a major deficit to the film. For some reason, writers Kevin Dreyfus and Mark Wall keep their characters slavishly bound to medieval speak even as the proverbial shit hits the fan. I don't care how out of touch with reality someone is, they're gonna snap back into modern parlance the very second that real blood starts to fly. It's okay if a gonzo character like Gunther persists but when everyone keeps nattering on with "thou's" and "thine's" it gets really annoying and far-fetched really quick.

This is also one of the main reasons why Knights of Badassdom doesn't really work as a horror film or as a comedy. The script might have plenty of salty dialogue, some creatively-slimy gore effects and a pretty cool practical demon for the finale but because it's all so disjointed and goofy that precious few chills and frights are generated. Tonally the movie's all over the map. Some bleak, dark shit goes down at the mid-way point and, as a result, the yuks pretty much dry up. And even though Eric is inadvertently responsible for several deaths this seems to have little to no impact on the film's consequence-free ending. I guess there is a different legal system for the one-percenters. 

I'm hoping that I can revisit the film one day in the form of a director's cut. As for now, Knights of Badassdom is the clear champion in the "Battle of the L.A.R.P. Comedies". But it's not because it's so good, it's because the competition is so lame.

         Tilt: down.

Movie Review - "The Hobbit: The Battle Of Five Armies" by David Pretty

For better or for worse, Peter Jackson's vision of The Hobbit is finally complete. And make no mistake about it, this is most assuredly the New Zealand director's take on the venerable children's fantasy yarn since it bears about as much resemblance to Tolkien's original text as Olive Garden does to an Italian restaurant.

Smaug the dragon (voiced by prerequisite presence Benedict Cumberbatch) has been evicted from his squatters lair in Erebor thanks to a gutsy extermination effort by the displaced dwarves. The olde wyrm decides to punish their temerity by turning the nearby hamlet of Laketown into a giant hibachi. This concludes with a fateful encounter with the dauntless and dead-eyed Bard the Bowman (Luke Evans).

With Smaug out of the picture the new dwarven King Thorin Oakenshield decides to celebrate by diving Scrooge McDuck-style into the freshly-liberated treasure horde. As a result he begins to suffer from "dragon sickness", a corrupting influence left over from Smaug's extended proximity to the gold. Overcome by greed and paranoia, Thorin barricades the front gates of Erebor like the Middle Earth version of Cliven Bundy.

And his paranoia may very well be justified. The Elves, led by King Thranduil (Lee Pace) have arrived en masse to recover their heirlooms which were stolen by Smaug over the years. The survivors of Laketown also come a-knockin', looking to file a dragon fire insurance claim. Even worse: hordes of orcs are converging on the relatively undefended stronghold, demanding their own piece of the action.

The best thing I can say about The Battle Of Five Armies is that all the irrelevant mush that Jackson and his screenwriters have dragged into the story are all action beats this time out. Well, most of it is anyway. For example, the subplot featuring the Wormtongue-esque Alfred Lickspittle (Ryan Gage) is completely superfluous but at least Gage is fun to watch. Equally superfluous is the color-by-numbers non-existent love triangle between Legolas (Orlando Bloom), Tauriel (Evangeline Lilly) and Kili the hawt dwarf (Aiden Turner).

At this stage, Jackson isn't even trying to replicate the tone of Tolkien's classic kid's adventure book. It's been re-purposed to conform with every single other modern blockbuster: in other words it's a dark, noisy and hideously violent action movie. There's absolutely no sense of adventure, discovery or wonder, just a constantly-escalating parade of digital spectacles. And that's really a bloody shame because The Hobbit should have been a training wheels version of Lord of the Rings for kids: something short, sweet, lighthearted, funny and occasionally scary but maybe not too scary. Instead we get an incessant bombardment of sound and fury signifying Jackson shouting "Are you not entertained?!?" to the widest theater-going demographic possible.

Moments of insight, emotion, tranquility and reflection are few and far between. Sadly I'm at my happiest when the dwarves are trucking along a real mountain ridge, Gandalf is galloping across the New Zealand countryside or Bilbo is crossing the threshold of the Shire. Many of the practical sets, including the dwarven realm of Erebor, the charred and ruined city of Dale and the desolate peak of Dol Guldur showcase a fine attention to detail, but most of the digital backgrounds and establishing shots look like cut scenes from Diablo III.

I also wish that the dwarves looked more rough n' tumble, like Gimli did in Lord of the Rings. It's bad enough that Legolas and Thranduil are under so many freakin' filters that they look like plastic, pointy-eared versions of Bruce Jenner but the dwarves are equally well-coiffed. When you superimpose one of these flawless, ruddy, rubbery ("ruddery?")-looking bastards in the foreground of an equally fraudulent digital background I feel as if I'm watching some sort of competent-looking fan film. For example, when Scottish comedian Billy Connolly shows up as Dáin all I could think of is how much better Varric from Dragon Age: Inquisition looks.

Jackson makes amends somewhat by serving up some of the trippiest moments of the entire Middle Earth saga. When the White Council featuring Galadriel (Cate Blanchett), Elrond (Hugo Weaving) and Saruman (Christopher Lee) suddenly bomb in like the Super Friends to confront the embryonic Ring Wraiths, you'll swear that you just popped a tab of brown acid instead of a Milk Dud. After witnessing the incongruous sight of 92-year-old Christopher Lee kicking ass and taking names like Jackie Chan in a Drunken Master movie you'll also get a load of Galadriel foreshadowing her Fellowship freak-out by going full Ozymandias on the re-constituted Lidless Eye. By the time you watch Thorin sinking into Smaug's lake of gold like a deleted scene from The Lawnmower Man you'll begin to wonder if Jackson is just trying pay homage to his earlier, infinitely more interesting low-budget horror movie career.

But for every WTF?!? moment of  there are three instances of eye-rolling idiocy, most of which involve *surprise, surprise* Spider-Ma...er, I mean Legolas. I was willing to accept his patented light-as-air arm sweep / arrow in the skull bat-glider scene, but when he steers a troll around with a cranium-embedded sword and then runs up a series of falling bricks like Bugs Bunny I audibly shouted "Check, please!" in the theater. Honestly, just because the movie looks like a cartoon does the action hafta go all Looney Tunes on us as well?

But I can't criticize all of the spectacle. Smaug's attack on Laketown is harrowing and intense. The titular Five Army fracas is an epic scrum of humans, elves, dwarves, orcs, trolls, goblins, giant bats, and sandworms who apparently took the wrong turn on their way to Arrakis. But even the best-visualized action scenes get boring after awhile, especially if you've been given so little reason to identify with the characters who are supposedly in peril. The reason we cared so much for Frodo and Sam in the Rings trilogy is because we spent so much time with them and suffered as they did. Here Bilbo is just trying to keep his head down as a bunch of greedy assholes get into a very stabby rugby match over a pile of gold.

It's bad enough that the characters are under-written but the action scenes drag on and on. At one point I thought that Thorin had actually used his noodle to abbreviate an already-prolonged scrum with Azog but seconds later we get a predictable, hackneyed, slasher-villain style jump scare that anyone can see coming a mile away. Eventually I started to suffer from hyper-extended spectacle fatigue and began to tune out.

Thankfully the film is aided by a horde of capable actors who give credence to the alternately functional, interchangeable and / or stilted dialogue. Martin Freeman's performance is a bit self-conscious and labored but I think that he's just trying to wring some passion and nuance out of the wafer-thin material. For a film titled The Hobbit Bilbo sure spends a lot of time in the background peeking over shoulders or wordlessly staring at other characters as they do more interesting things. Ian McKellen is his usual great self and the jarringly-quiet pipe-cleaning scene he shares with Freeman is something that I wanted a lot more of.

Richard Armitage as Thorin Oakenshield enjoys a functional, if rather dragged out, character arc. It takes nearly two hours for him to go from an obstinate, avaricious hermit to a valiant, take-charge warrior. Unfortunately, it isn't the eponymous hobbit that prompts this epiphany but his aforementioned psychedelic gold whirlpool nightmare. Orlando Bloom and Evangeline Lilly are stalwart and stiff-upper-lipped as Legolas and Tauriel. Luke Evans also deserves considerable praise for filling in as an Aragorn understudy.

I feel churlish criticizing a film as well-made as The Battle of Five Armies. The sets look cool, the music is solid, the actors are strong, the costumes are convincing and the special effects are especially effective. It just has no heart and no soul. In his effort to make The Hobbit as epic and earth-shattering as the chronologically-distant Lord of the Rings, Jackson stripped that humble little tale of everything that made it quaint, charming and unique.

Even worse, if you watch Fellowship of the Ring right after a Hobbit flick you'll realize that the two don't even dove-tail visually and tonally with one another. The Lord of the Rings still feels like a comparatively lean and mean little quest tale featuring three-dimensional characters and practical special effects while The Hobbit reeks of the modern cinematic failure of trying too hard.

   Tilt: down.

Movie Review: "The Hunger Games: Catching Fire" by David Pretty

IN A NUTSHELL

Poor Katniss Everdeen. Along with faux love interest Peeta Mellark, she managed to survive the state-sanctioned horrors of the 74'th Annual Hunger Games. But even after she's granted all the privileges and rights associated with victory she's unable to reconcile her new role as a willing pawn for the totalitarian regime with the destitution and abuse being inflicted on her people. 

During her Victory Tour she becomes increasingly willful, inspiring the despotic President Snow to propose a new version of the Hunger Games called the "Quarter Quell". A selection of prior champions, including the hapless Katniss and Peeta, are once again thrown into the field of battle to determine a single winner. But this time secret forces are at work in an attempt to turn our budding heroine into an unwitting symbol for a full-fledged rebellion. 

IN THE WHEELHOUSE

Of course, fans of the Suzanne Collins book series will most likely have already seen this several times over. Anyone else who digs lite sci-fi / dystopian future / big event movies will also be predisposed to checking out The Hunger Games: Catching Fire.

PROS

•  Yay, new director! Francis "I Am Legend" Lawrence replaces Gary "Seabiscuit" Ross and the results are pretty noticeable. Even though I Am Legend was downright ass-tacular, at least Lawrence didn't cheat most of the action scenes by resorting to shaky-cams and electron-microscope-style close-ups. And even though this one has a slightly-longer run time it actually feels shorter. This is, in part, due to Lawrence's breezy directorial style and partly because of my next point.
• Introductions are over and now we're down to the real nitty gritty. By threatening to enact a suicide pact at the end of the prior film, Katniss (Jennifer Lawrence) and Peeta (Josh Hutcherson) managed to survive the Games and generate a groundswell of opposition to the barbaric practices of the Capitol. When President Snow (Donald Sutherland) trots them out for a self-serving "Victory Tour" they begin to see just how widespread the uprisings are. Whenever someone in the crowd tries to perform the District 12 Sign to salute the two self-sacrificial "lovers" they're either dragged away, pummeled into submission or shot on sight. Even though our heroes would love to come out in public support of the people, Snow has threatened to execute everyone in their circle. Man, talk about a sticky wicket!
• The love triangle between Katniss, Peeta and Gale (Liam Hemsworth) finally starts to coalesce. In the first film, Peeta's motivations were tough to pin down but now that he's proven his mettle, I can see the dude's appeal. Since they've been through hell and back together it makes sense that Katniss would develop feelings for him. By the same token Gale is a childhood sweetheart and quite noble and heroic in his own right.
• Snow's nasty solution to the surging popularity of Katniss is kinda like Jeopardy's "Tournament of Champions" but with 100% more murder. Even though this "Quarter Quell" doesn't make a lick of sense to this armchair dictator (see "CONS" below), it sure ramps up the film's dramatic tension. Especially when you consider that these Victors have been promised a lifetime of fame, fortune and security if they survive the Games. When they find themselves dragged back onto the field of battle, the resulting rancor and bitterness is downright palpable.
• In addition to its superior pacing and story, Catching Fire also exhibits a considerably sharper visual eye. The special effects used to depict the Capitol, the Roman-esque Chariot Ride / Tribute Parade, the transport hovercraft and the combat grounds are all a lot more convincing this time out. 
• There's also some great set design on display here including the slums of District 12, the ghostly "Victor's Village", the Capitol Train car, the Presidential Mansion, the Training Center and the battle site itself.   
• The costumes of the Capitol residents are as extravagant as ever but not nearly as inadvertently goofy. Effie Trinket's monarch butterfly frock and Katniss's transformative wedding dress / mockingjay gown are pretty distinctive. This contrasts nicely with the shabby, work-a-day garb worn by the average District-dweller. The stormtrooper-like armor of the incongruously-named "Peacekeepers" is also chillingly effective.        
• I'm really glad that these books and films are so popular with young people since, at the very least, it should give them the ability to recognize symptoms of fascism. Keep a checklist handy while watching Catching Fire and count how many real-world parallels you can spot. We've got a growing disparity between the rich upper-class and the working poor, overt pageantry and idolatry, law-enforcement over-reach, Orwellian language, dictatorial powers, info-tainment media distractions and an attempt to convince the average plebe that you can become one of the elite if you just jettison your morals and start doing whatever it takes to get ahead. I only hope that fans realize sooner rather then later that The Hunger Games is only nominally a work of fiction. 
• Jennifer Lawrence is forced to endure what amounts to an emotional roller coaster here but she's sure-footed throughout the entire film. Brash and defiant towards Snow's regime, terrified by the prospects of retaliation against her mom and l'il sis and suffering from what amounts to PTSD, the character of Katniss has a lot on her plate here. Not a lot of young actresses could pull off the insight, mental agility and physical demands required to make all of this work but Lawrence is completely self-assured and sympathetic throughout. 
• Josh Hutcherson presides over a pretty decent little character arc and even provides a few twists as Peeta. In my review for the first film I described his character as a "milksop" and wanted Katniss to just "snap" and "make his head look like a pincushion". Between the solid scripting and Hutcherson's growing command over the role, I no longer want a heavy object to fall on him such as a safe or a piano. Perhaps this was the intent of Suzanne Collins all along: to have our feelings towards Peeta mirror those of Katniss and evolve as we got to know him. Having said that, I can't escape this overwhelming suspicion that fans of the book are probably reading this and laughing their asses off at me for some reason.
• Peeta occasionally calls Katniss Cat-Nip. Now if Katniss had only referred to Peeta's grade-school crush "Hummus" then things would have been absolutely perfect.  
• Just as I predicted, Gale emerges here as a vaguely three-dimensional character and Liam Hemsworth finally gets a chance to do something. Even though he's miles away from the Tribute spotlight he does provide considerable emotional heft for Katniss and also proves to be a stalwart guardian for the downtrodden masses of District 12. The scene where he bull-rushes the cruel and sadistic Romulus Thread (Patrick St. Esprit) makes for a great "Hells, yeah!" moment and his resulting punishment is pretty harrowing. 
• In a related point, congrats to St. Esprit for making the most out of his limited screen time and delivering a genuinely frightening and unhinged performance.  
• As the "damaged veteran" Haymitch Abernathy, Harrelson is no longer a sloppy, flinty, acerbic mess. He's become a highly-functioning alcoholic with his own machinations to deal with. Whether he's dreading a return to the Games, prepping his young charges for battle or revealing a surprisingly deep agenda, Harrelson is pitch-perfect throughout. 
• And just as expected, the flighty, audacious and relentlessly-cheerful Effie Trinket seems to be on the cusp of a complete mental breakdown. It's fun to watch the fantastic Elizabeth Banks struggle to keep up appearances during the deja vu District 12 Reaping Ceremony. Effie's close proximity to Katniss and Peeta has put a pretty big hole in her Kool-Aid tumbler. Her best moment comes on the eve of the Quarter Quell when she struggles to present Haymitch and Peeta with their "team symbols" without crying. Given what these token come to symbolize later you can't help but wonder if she's done with the whole rotten edifice.    
• There are some great supporting performances on hand as well. Lenny Kravitz is cooly self-assured as the fashion consultant Cinna. As the new Gamemaker Plutarch Heavensbee, the greatly-missed and entirely-unreadable Phillip Seymour Hoffman is a very welcome addition to the cast. Stanley Tucci is gloriously obnoxious and vacant as media personality Caesar Flickerman. Donald Sutherland is quietly terrifying as President Coriolanus Snow. Finally Jena Malone makes a real impression as the bitter, shifty and um...body-positive Tribute Johanna Mason. Her elevator scene alone is worth the price of admission.

CONS

• As much as Suzanne Collins might wish that Battle Royale doesn't exist, the two are so similar that comparisons are inevitable. In Battle Royale the participants are secretly gassed, they wake up in captivity, they're handed a weapon and then they're told that it's "kill or be killed". There's no time to dwell on morality: their immediate actions are primal and instinctive. In The Hunger Games the Tributes have plenty of time to ponder their predicament. Hell, they're even trained, for Chrissakes. As such, I'm surprised that more Tributes don't struggle with the concept of becoming a state-sponsored murderer and that more of them don't just off themselves. I know that this is probably addressed somewhere in the books but it's petty much glossed over in the films.
• The subtext in Battle Royale is that kids should be culled because they are, by their very nature, rebellious. In The Hunger Games these gladiatorial contests happen to distract the masses and remind citizens of the omnipotent power of the Capital. Which makes Snow's decision to martyr a bunch of honored heroes seem pretty stupid to me. Wouldn't this just piss off more people and galvanize them against the government? At the very least wouldn't everyone be gunning for Katniss because its her fault that they all got dragged back into this mess? Snow needs to take a cue from the real world: the best distractions are the most vapid. If the Capital could only find its own Grumpy Cat, PewDiePie and Kardashians they'd be all set. 
• For the most part the action scenes are gritty, realistic and well-shot. That is until the original novel requires the film-makers to break open a barrel of monkeys. As soon as our heroes were attacked by a horde of pissed-off mandrills I was this friggin' close to shouting "Check, please!" and stopping the movie. I'm sure this scene plays out a lot better in the book but in cinematic terms it feels like a deleted pre-vis scene from Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull. 
• Another thing that threatened to eject me out of the film was the ol' "lets-string-this-seemingly-limitless-bolt-of-copper-wire-through-the-jungle-and-electrocute-everyone-in-the-lake-and-on-the-beach" trick. If I was Katniss I probably would have stuck my hand up at that point and asked: "Um, ooookay, so, won't this unjacketed wire with a hundred gigawatts of lightning surging through it also electrocute everything else in this damp-ass rain forest? Like, y'know, us for example?"      

 

THE BOTTOM LINE

Catching Fire is definitely an improvement on the first film. Even though I still maintain that Battle Royale pulls off this scenario more viciously and economically, I still appreciate the in-depth world-building and social commentary on display here. I'm now officially engrossed in The Hunger Games saga and I really wanna see what happens in the last two installments.

  

Tilt: Up.

Movie Review: "In The Name Of The Father" by David Pretty

There aren't a lot of films dealing with "The Troubles" in Ireland, but along with 2008's Hunger, In the Name of the Father is one of the best.

Director Jim Sheridan tells the real-life story of Gerry Conlon (Daniel Day-Lewis), a scrap metal thief who ventures to London in the mid-Seventies to try and escape the constant danger and despair in his native Belfast. But when an IRA bomb rips through a pub in Guildford killing five people, Conlon and three of his mates are snatched up by the British secret service who have just been granted sweeping powers of arrest and detainment thanks to the hastily-cobbled-together "Prevention of Terrorism Acts".

The authorities beat and coerce Conlon and his associates for seven straight days in an effort to wring confessions out of them. To make matters worse, when Gerry's father "Giuseppe" Conlon (Pete Postlethwaite) visits his sister-in-law Anne Maguire in London to assist his son, the entire family is swept up by the police as accomplices. All told, eleven innocent people were sent to prison for crimes they didn't commit, including Anne's fourteen-year-old son Patrick! In the mad rush to produce results and quell needless panic, witnesses for the defense were deep-sixed, evidence was concealed and latent confessions were ignored.

The balance of the film details the trials and tribulation of Gerry and his father, their effort to survive incarceration and the subsequent campaign led by an English solicitor named Gareth Peirce (Emma Thomson) to see them released. As she begins to peel back the layers of corruption we witness a contemporary example of why it's so important to preserve the due process of law, particularly during times of "terrorist threat", whether it be legitimate or the product of fear-mongering.

The film is a masterstroke. Sheridan takes his time, easing the audience into the story and generating a considerable amount of pathos for his subjects along the way. As a corollary, they aren't depicted as saints either, which lends more weight to their humanity. In Sheridan's capable hands, all of the pertinent introductions, complications, impossibilities and revelations are presented to us in an economic and engaging fashion.

Since the violence was starting to abate somewhat in the early Nineties, this afforded the film-makers a rare opportunity to shoot on location in Ireland. This gives the movie an original look and convincing tone. Belfast was still a bit too volatile at the time but Dublin fills in adequately, with its Docklands, Sheriff Street and Kilmainham Jail offering an unmatched level of authenticity.

The actors do a stellar job. Human chameleon Daniel-Day Lewis is incredible, investing as much effort in the physicality of the role as the emoting. Celebrated character actor Pete Postlewaite is absolutely superb as Jerry "Giuseppe" Conlon. His physical deterioration in prison mirrors that of his son's mental state and its heart-rending to think about how wasteful and unnecessary this all was.

A pre-Nanny McPhee Emma Thomson proves just how much of a treasure she is. As Gareth Peirce she's single-minded, earnest and strident. The scene in which she gains access to secret documents in Jerry's protected file thanks to a clerk's oversight intoxicates the viewer with overwhelming feelings of righteous vindication.

Back when this film was released it was just one of many fascinating stories to emerge from a dark period of modern British history. Now it's a contemporary warning against politicians who are trying to use the intangible but ever-renewing specter of terrorism to erode our freedoms and basic human rights. It's a clarion call for vigilance since, in many ways, our own liberties have been curtailed far more dramatically in recent years and with far less justification.

This is a very relevant, compelling and heartbreaking story.

Tilt: up.