Review No.166: Clone

Before latest Doctor Who Matt Smith became a household name he was a jobbing actor picking up any films that came his way and obviously the chance to have a love scene with Eva Green was too much to resist even if it was in such an odd film as Womb which has since been re-named Clone on its UK release. In a weird English beach town of the near future two kids, Rebecca and Tommy, are very close however when her family move to Japan she goes with them. The older Rebecca, played by Green, journeys back to the town to find Smith's Tommy shacked up with Natalia Tena however it doesn't take too long for old feelings to come to the core with the pair hooking up. As they go off on the road together the two get into an accident which injures her but kills him off however desperate to get him back she decides to enrol on a programme in which his DNA can be used to bring him back however she must give birth to him first. This is where everything gets a little weird as Rebecca essentially has to raise the baby, she calls Thomas, into the man she loves so she can get with him or something like that. Smith obviously resurfaces again as the older Thomas whose mother is in love with him however he hooks up with Monica, played by Skins' Hannah Murray, who is a little unsure of the frosty relationship in her boyfriend's household. The plot of Clone is a fairly odd one which looks at how much science could meddle in our future relationships if cloning of this nature ever becomes popular but more than this it is just a bit confusing.

Anybody wanting to watch this film just for Smith may want to know that he's not in it for great periods of time only a bit about twenty minutes in and then for the final half hour. In that time he does some things you wouldn't normally catch him doing on prime time BBC1 such as saying the F-Word, showing his bare behind and that aforementioned romp with Ms Green. Talking of Eva Green this is really her film appearing in the majority of the scenes she perfects the wistful stare casting her eye over the unknown beach in many scenes throughout the film. For me Green's performance is the best thing about this film for a country mile as she manages to make the preposterous plot at least halfway convincing in that she is able to portray a woman torn between trying to be a mother and caring for her lost love. Smith once again does his best manchild impression, similarly to the one he does in Doctor Who but this time without a Sonic Screwdriver, while Hannah Murray is given little but gives a lot as the girlfriend weirded out by the situation she finds herself in. The seaside locations add a nice touch and everything is well-photographed but there's no getting away from the fact that this is a ridiculous film and more than that is fairly dull for long segments in between. I found there were far too many quiet moments that were meant to be arty but came off as as slightly pretentious and fairly overlong. There are some good things in Clone - Green's performance and the majority of the cinematography however an odd plot and too much naval-gazing means this is one to miss even if you're a big Matt Smith fan.

Verdict: A silly plot about nature and nurture coupled with too many quiet moments makes Clone a fairly skipable film all be it one with a great performance from its leading actress.

Review No.120: Hard Boiled Sweets

When I was reviewing Payback Season the other day I mentioned that some of the fight sequences reminded me of those from some of Guy Richie's earlier films however they look totally original when compared to Hard Boiled Sweets which seems to have ripped off the entire oeuvre of the former Mr Madonna. For me I feel that the British gangster movie has long since passed its prime and this Southend-based film just proves it as one generic criminal after another is finished off. The plot is essentially a showdown between two old school gangsters who are both played by actors who instantly trigger the, 'what do I know them from?' question in most of our brains. There's local criminal Shrewd Eddie, played by Paul Freeman who has been in everything from Raiders of the Lost Ark to the Power Rangers Movie while Jimmy the Gent is a London-based gangster and is played by Peter Wight who has this year alone appeared on the TV in Titanic, Hit and Miss and Public Enemies. The meeting between the two will see an exchange of £250,000 so there is some obvious interest in this sum of money with other interested parties being Eddie's vengeful hooker girlfriend Porsche, newly released convict Johnny, his crooked cop buddy Fred, pimp Gerry who everyone refers to as 'Daddy' and his favourite prostitute Delta. Hard Boiled Sweets' unique selling point seems to be the fact that everytime we meet a new character they are compared to a piece of confectionary so for example Jimmy the Gent is The Mint Imperial as he is the King of the Mints while Gerry is The Chocolate Lime because he's an acquired taste and Delta is a Sherbet Pip in that she's a tiny treat with a dizzy centre. I get the impression that writer/director David L Hughes believes he's being awfully clever using these metaphors however there is nothing clever or particularly original about Hard Boiled Sweets.

Using my Guy Ritchie analogy it seems that Hughes wants to emulate the original mockney godfather by giving his characters colourful descriptions and having a lot of multiple plot strands that all interconnect to build up to one big shoot-out at the end. In the case of something like Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels though there were clear motives set from the beginning as well as a sense of fun throughout the heart of the film. I didn't find that here as Hard Boiled Sweets took itself far too seriously and Hughes seemed to want to give every character their five minutes in the sun by having them perform a mini-monologue each in which their views were shared through dialogue that wasn't believable for a minute while in some cases was utterly laughable. In fact the script is unintentionally funny from the word go as one of Jimmy the Gent's adversaries claims that he's a bigger cock than him but to be honest everybody in this film seems like a cock. Things got to a head towards the film's final chapter in which there was a three-way shoot-out which just reminded me too much of Reservoir Dogs and screamed a lack of originality on the part of the director once again. On the upside at least the female characters seemed to have a mind of their own, even if Hughes can't write believable dialogue for women, with actresses Ty Glaser and Laura Greenwood shining as Porsche and Delta respectively. However overall this is a film that thinks its a lot more clever than it actually is and while I'm all for promoting young talent it seems that Hughes wasn't ready for a major cinematic project instead meshing together of some of his favourite films. The only thing the film really wanted to make me do was to pop down to my local Mr Simms and dose up on Rhubarb and Custards.

Verdict: Unoriginal with one-dimensional characters and a sense that it thinks it's very clever Hard Boiled Sweets' only redeeming qualities are its two female protagoinists so I'm sorry if this makes me sound like a Sour Ball but I'm only going to give this 2/10