Review No.173: The Cold Light of Day

You wait for a review of a Bruce Willis film, or maybe you don't, but two come along at once nonetheless but if you were hoping for more of him after his handful of appearances in The Expendables 2 you may be disappointed. Despite appearing fairly prominently on the poster for The Cold Light of Day, Mr Willis' appearances add up to no more than about 15 minutes of the 90 minute run time so any fans of the Die Hard star who would be watching this film for him alone might want to look elsewhere. Willis plays Martin Shaw a man who has a job working for the government booking philharmonic orchestras or something to that effect, yeah right, and is currently in Spain with his family on a fishing trip. Arriving in Spain is his son Will, played by the new Superman Henry Cavill, who doesn't seem to have a great relationship with his father and they argue over Will's instance to make business calls while on the trip a decision that later injures his brother's girlfriend.  He goes to town to get some medicine for her but when he returns he finds his family missing and later discovers they have been kidnapped by some shadowy folks who want a briefcase back from his father who is in fact a CIA agent, shock horror! Will and Martin briefly reunite as we are introduced to his partner, Sigourney Weaver's Jean, who may or may not have turned against him to sell said briefcase and the bigger question is who exactly Will can trust. Later on in the film he meets a sexy senorita by the name of Lucia who  in addition to helping him escape may also be able to shed some light on his father's dealing in the past as the two have a slightly unbelievable connection. 

I think The Cold Light of Day has its roots firmly in the old school Alfred Hitchcock thrillers in which the action is all controlled by a MacGuffin, which for those not in the know is an object that moves the plot along even if it isn't that important, however that would be an insult to Hitchcock's collections of films. The MacGuffin here is the mysterious briefcase which everybody is after even though we never discover what is in it, though as Willis is here maybe it's Marcellus Wallace's soul, but I never once cared and that's the major problem with this film. There's a lot of running, jumping and shooting in the film however if it's all based on a plot point that you don't care about then everything seems a little bit pointless despite the fact that all the action sequences are fairly well shot. Personally I didn't think Henry Cavill was a particularly captivating lead but to be fair to the actor has little to work with playing a character who owns some sort of small business which is on the verge collapsing and who also has a poor relationship with his character. Willis is in his action movie default setting as he gets to both play the slightly brooding patriarch and the gun-wielding CIA agent in his brief time on screen in what amounts to no more than an extended cameo. The two performances I enjoyed were from Sigourney Weaver who makes for a tremendous central villain and British actor Joseph Mawle has her creepy henchman. The Spanish setting also means that the running, jumping and shooting gets some lovely backdrops to be shot against but I don't think this is fully utilised as there are more sequences in dingy clubs and dark houses than there on the streets of Spain. Though I did like seeing Weaver brandishing a gun and being badass there's only so much of that you can take in one film and due to the lack of any decent characters and a story that is fairly one-dimensional I got bored of The Cold Light of Day fairly quickly. 

Verdict: Though the Spanish backdrop and Sigourney Weaver's villainous turned did provide brief highlights overall The Cold Light of Day suffers from an uninvolving leading man, a threadbare plot and fairly dull action scenes so for that reason I'll have to give it 4.5/10

Review No.171: The Expendables 2

More summer fun now as we enter the retirement home of action that is The Expendables franchise with Sylvester Stallone and buddies blowing more stuff up around the world. The plot of this new film is like the first one, somewhat unmemorable, however with an even bulkier cast plus a shorter runtime and a new director at the helm I found this one more enjoyable. The start of the film sees all of The Expendables from the first film team up to shoot down some bad guys or something before Arnie's Trench comes up and saves the day while soon after Jet Li says his goodbyes to the group. Bruce Willis' Mr Church then gives them another mission to go on with some new recruits namely Liam Hemsworth's idealistic Billy and Yu Nan as new technology expert Maggie Chan. While the group to retreive the mystery item for Church they're soon pounced upon by Jean Claude Van Damme's imaginatively named villain Jean Villain who steals the item, takes their weapons and kills poor old Billy presumably so he doesn't show up the rest of the oldies in the remaining battle sequences. From there the team travel to some desolate Eastern European town where Jean Villain is abusing the men as workers in a nearby plutonium mine and soon his men are on the case of our heroes thankfully though Chuck Norris is around to help them out however he doesn't stay too long as he is a lone wolf after all. From there it's business as usual as Stallone, Arnie, Bruce, Stath and the rest battle JCVD and his allies to the death but as there's a third film in the franchise I think we all know how things are going to pan out.

For me I wasn't a big fan of the first Expendables film finding it disorganised and over long while at the same time it didn't exploit the great cast that it was given with most of the scenes featuring simply on Sly and Stath. The sequel though is a vast improvement which I believe is mainly down to the fact that Sly has handed over directing duties to Con Air's Simon West, who knows what he's doing when it comes to ensemble acting pictures, and he tries to make the best film he can about a bunch of over-the-hill action heroes that he can possibly do. The Expendables 2, unlike its predecessor, doesn't take itself too seriously instead adding a lot of in-jokes about the catchphrases that our stars are best known for as well as some obscure jokes also. The fact that Arnie and Bruce are in the film a little more this time, after the former is officially out of the politics game, also adds to the overall feel of the film as a nostalgia-trip while seeing them fight alongside Sly and Chuck Norris is a treat all on its own. Talking of Norris his Booker is well-utilised and only has a minimal talking role which is good a thing as he's more useful when he's kicking ass and he does that a lot. As far as the rest of the cast is concerned with Mickey Rourke, who did all the acting in the first film, now departed it seems that Jason Statham has picked up that mantle and was actually fairly impressive however it is still his bromance with Sly that is the highlight of the piece. Elsewhere the other expendables don't do a lot, however Maggie Chan is slobbered over by her male colleagues to the point where she could've ordered some sort of employment tribunal while Hemsworth is at least given an emotional death scene. JCVD is always cast as a villain although he does have some of the more ludicrous lines of the piece he's able to pull them off because at the end of the day's it's Van-Damme whose even cool when wearing sunglasses in a plutonium mine. If you're coming to The Expendables to for a story and character development then jog on as there's little of that here however what there is plenty of enjoyable in-jokes, chemistry between the leads and the chance to see your favourite childhood action figures fight alongside each other. Personally I rather enjoyed The Expendables 2 which, while it had no story to speak of, survived because of the willingness of the cast to send itself up and West's competent direction so in summary a good summer action film which is all we can ask at the end of the day.

Verdict: There's lots of fun to be had while watching The Expendables 2 though due to the fact it has very little going on outside of its action scenes I can only award it 6/10

Review No.86: Moonrise Kingdom

A trip up to see my Manchester-based friend resulted in a cinema trip to Corner House, my sixth cinema this year if you're keeping track, the film was the latest from Wes Anderson, Moonrise Kingdom. Though I have a love of Anderson's films, particularly his eye for detail in designing the main sets, however I've often found his characters emotionally alienating due to their awkward nature. That is not the case however with Moonrise Kingdom partly I think due to the fact the central characters, 12 year olds Suzy Bishop and Sam Shakusky, are strange runaways who are yet to be truly emotionally scarred by the parental figures in their life. Of the two Suzy's life is the most fraught thanks to the fact that her lawyer parents, played by Bill Murray and Frances McDormand, are sleeping in separate beds while her mother continues an affair with Bruce Willis' melancholic police sheriff. Rather than distancing herself emotionally I felt that Suzy tried to distance herself physically looking down on the town using a pair of binoculars which she later describes as her super-power. Music also plays an important part in the Bishop house as demonstrated through a record player owned by one of her brothers on which the family listen to Benjamin Britten's Young Persons' Guide to the Orchestra while she herself prefers the music of Francoise Hardy. After no longer being able to stand life in her house she takes the record player along with several other items and runs away eventually running into escaped scout Sam. Sam is another lost soul as he is an orphan who has been rejected both by his foster parents and by his fellow scouts eventually quitting the troupe and running away much to the horror of Ed Norton's scout-master.

The pair are able to survive fairly well due to Sam's wilderness training and eventually declare their love for each other moving down to the coast where they learn to dance, kiss and basically set up a small family unit. They are torn apart once again when they are tracked down and while Suzy is chatsised Sam must await the fate that lies in the hands of Tilda Swinton's Social Services a magnificently scary Mary Poppins figure all-decked out in pastel blue. Though we don't know what exactly will happen to our protagonists we are told at the start by Bob Balaban's omnipresent narrator that the time period and setting, a New England island community in 1965, is about to be hit by one of the biggest storms in American history.

From the opening scene of Moonrise Kingdom, which occurs in the Bishop house, you know you're watching an Anderson film as the camera tracks through every room in the house allowing us to get to know the characters. Unlike other films though Anderson doesn't keep us in one location for long allowing us to explore the scout camp with its uniformly aligned tents and unusually high treehouse as well as the caravan in which Willis' cop leads a lonely life. The fact that the characters escape the Anderson settings and try to start their new life is possibly one of the things I liked about the film as vast exterior locations aren't something you always associate with the director. In turn this allows us to explore New Penzance and its neighbouring islands as places that are separated from the rest of society with our guide in these scenes being Balaban, who is dressed up like a Christmas elf with a baromtoer around his neck, who uses maps to pinpoint the direction of our young characters. As well as sets, costumes always play a big part in the world of Anderson with uniforms especially being important to Moonrise Kingdom what with Willis' cop outfit, Swinton's hat and jacket combo, Suzy's Sunday school dress and the uniforms worn by the scouts all being important in some way especially in the final scene involving Sam.

As far as the performances go it's newcomers Kara Hayward and Jared Gilman who rightly steal the show from more accomplished actors really inhabiting these strange adolescents who have finally found each other. They almost become little adults with Sam smoking his pipe and Suzie feeding her cat I found the first half of the film to resemble a geeky Blue Lagoon at times. Talking of young actors I don't think the boys who play the scout troupe have been given enough praise in other reviews as I feel they acted as a small family and like with all the youngster in the film were much more grown-up than the adults. Anderson's strength as a director is getting the best out of his actors and I never once thought like I was watching Bruce Willis or Ed Norton but rather swept up in the exploits of Captain Sharp and Scout Master Ward. Anderson's script, co-written with Roman Coppola, was both warm and moving but most importantly it was extremely funny in fact it was possibly the film I've laughed most at this year. It is true that Anderson's film is still a little twee and also I did forget from time to time that this was actually set in the past as there were no real references to this however these are very small niggles. Finally the importance of the Britten music that the Bishop siblings listen to is in the fact that each part of the orchestra is separated but only sounds full when all of these pieces are put back together. That is true of the characters in Moonrise Kingdom separated they think they sound fine but it is only after being reunited and sticking together that they find their happy ending.Talking of music don't leave until the end credits role as you get a special treat involving Alexandre Desplat's score.

Verdict: With characters you care about, a script that never stops you laughing and two great central performances plus the usual Anderson charm this is definitely the comedy of the year so far so I will give it 9/10