CONTRABAND

CONTRABAND is about as perfect as a caper movie gets - fast, fun, thrilling, intelligent.  To be sure, it's basic plot components are pretty conventional, but it has a tricksy enough story, and enough good humour to be the perfect Friday night-forget work-have some fun movie!

Mark Wahlberg plays a former smuggler turned straight, drawn back into "one last job" to save his idiot brother-in-law from the local drug dealer (a typically over-the-top Giovanni Ribisi).  He assembles a crew that's going to smuggle in forged currency from Panama in J K Simmons freighter. Of course, "one last job" movies are never simple.  And this one involves a double-cross back home; getting caught up in a Panamian armed robbery; an art heist; and a superbly choreographed fit-up job.  A few plot twists are predictable but there are enough genuine surprises, and I love that no plot thread is left untied.

The movie is directed by the Icelandic actor-writer-producer-director Baltasar Kormakur (JAR CITY) who wrote and starred in the original.  Together with DP Barry Ackroyd (GREEN ZONE) he directs the movie with real style and pace, and a surprisingly light touch!  There are many scenes and lines where it's clear that the smugglers are having a great time, despite or even because of the high stakes - more young kids up to some japes than Michael-Mann style existential angst.  I also really liked the casting (ex Ribisi) - being particularly impressed by Kate Beckinsale, of all people!, actually doing some proper acting as Wahlberg's wife. 

Flicking through the IMDB review page it becomes clear that CONTRABAND has taken a bad rap for being too genre-cliche-ridden.  Whatever. I had a bunch of fun watching it, and it's in my Best Of list for the year. Not every film has to be a heart-wrenching, life-changing Iranian art-house flick. There will always be room on this blog for good honest popcorn entertainment.

CONTRABAND is on release in the USA, Kazakhstan, Russia, Singapore, Bulgaria, Canada, Pakistan, Israel, Kuwait, Estonia, Iceland, Romania, the Philippines, India, Syria and Poland. It goes on release in Hong Kong on February 9th; in Australia and New Zealand on February 23rd; in Portugal on March 1st; in the Netherlands on March 8th and in Germany, Finland, Ireland, Norway, Spain, Turkey and the UK on March 16th. It opens on March 22nd in Belgium, Denmark and Hungary; on April 19th in Argentina; on April 27th in Brazil and Lithuania; on May 4th in Sweden and on May 16th in France and Italy.

London Film Fest 2011 Day 5 - RAMPART

When I walked in to RAMPART I was expecting the movie equivalent of The Wire or The Shield - an examination of corruption and institutional racism in the police force, based on the real Rampart scandal in 1990s Los Angeles. To be sure, director Oren Moverman (THE MESSENGER) and writer James Ellroy impressionistically hint at the wider malaise.  We have cameos from Steve Buscemi and Sigourney Weaver as the ass-covering establishment. But there's no clear picture of the wider context - no attempt to connect the dots and take the viewer to the heart of the corruption, in the  manner of LA CONFIDENTIAL. Rather, this movie is a character study of a fictional policeman at the centre of the scandal - Woody Harrelson's Dave Brown.  


To that end, the centre of the story isn't the police department or the patrol car, but the home Dave shares with the mothers of his two children, who also happen to be sisters (Anne Heche, Cynthia Nixon); the bars he frequents; the woman he picks up (Robin Wright).  Because, let us be clear - RAMPART is a scathing depiction of a delusional man, so corrupt he can't even see it, or own it - a self-destructive charmer, who thinks he should be rewarded for "doing the city's dirty work" but can't see that he's destroying his family in the process.  


If you accept the movie as a character study rather than a thriller or procedural, you have a far greater chance of enjoying it. Frustrations with the ambiguities of the graft and the uneven pacing - the lack of real "bite" - are compensated for by the powerful, charismatic and complex central performance by Woody Harrelson and the impressionistic use of intense colour and feeling of claustrophobia created by DP Bobby Bukowksi (ARLINGTON ROAD). Because, in the final analysis, RAMPART is not a great movie - it doesn't hold you in the way that it should - it is, rather, a highly successful mood piece that contains a superlative central performance. I just wish that that performance had been anchored to a stronger supporting text.

RAMPART played Toronto and London 2011.

Michael Stipe and Woody Harrelson at the UK premiere
of RAMPART at the BFI London Film Festival.

London Film Fest 2011 Day 1 - 360

Jude Law and Rachel Weisz as an estranged couple in 360

It has long been my experience that the most interesting and exciting films showing at the London Film Festival are those tucked away in the heart of the programme, rather than the red-carpet galas, where one suspects the programmer's hand has been forced by the exigencies of publicity and sponsorship.  Sadly, 360 proved no exception to this rule.  Worse than that, one suspects that Brazilian director Fernando Meirelles' early success with the dazzling CITY OF GOD was a fluke.  Ever since then, his films have maintained their visual style, but lost pace, energy, and tackled subject matter with a heavy handed earnestness that belies their insight.  One wishes that he would stop trying to be clever-clever with his narrative devices and just tell a good, simple story.  

The too-clever concept at the heart of 360 is to show the interweaving stories of people across the world  - the only commonality is how each of them experience a seemingly arbitrary event changes their lives.  The story takes us from a failing marriage in middle-class London (Jude Law, Rachel Weisz) to hookers and Russian mafiosi in Vienna (Moritz Bleibtrau) - from  sex offenders and grieving parents in Denver (Ben Foster, Anthony Hopkins) to forbidden love in Paris (Jamel Debbouze).  In each case, characters are introduced, their love affairs and dilemmas explained, an event occurs, its ramifications start to be explored, and the matter is dropped. Perhaps in a later strand we will meet the character again and see them from a different angle.  But by then, so much has been going on, so many characters introduced, so little time given to being able to emotionally bond with them, that we are past caring.  I left the cinema feeling totally "blah".  I had watched a parade of characters and frankly, didn't care about a single one of them.  And as for the "message" of this ponderous work, it's hardly revelatory or profound.  Some people are cynical sleazebags - some people still naively take a chance on love - the world keeps turning - and random events can change the path we move along. 

Jude Law and director Fernando Meirelles present
360 at the Opening Night of the BFI London
Film Festival 2011.

The result is a film that is utterly unmemorable and actually rather tragic when one considers the talent deployed.  To be sure, cinematographer Adriano Goldman (JANE EYRE, SIN NOMBRE, CONVICTION) creates some arresting visuals, but the rest of the talent is below par.  The actors have little to get their teeth into and are rather unforgettable, except for Anthony Hopkins hamming it up. To be fair, Hopkins is only responding to one of those awfully obvious crass Academy-Award-aspirant speeches by screenwriter Peter Morgan (THE QUEEN) when he finally comes to an epiphany in an AA meeting. 

Overall then, 360 is yet another film by Fernando Meirelles that is technically accomplished, but fails to provide us with characters that we care about and situations that are compelling.  A serious own-goal by screenwriter Peter Morgan too, moving from his typically more straightforward biopic material into some more narratively ambitious, and clearly beyond his capabilities. 

360 premiered at London 2011 and will play Toronto 2011. It will open in Sweden on October 19th 2012.