Review: Dom Hemingway

Dom Hemingway is, when it really comes down to it, a film about Jude Law playing a cockney. The plot follows Law as the title’s namesake, a safecracking diamond geezer, who has just served serious bird for keeping schtum about his boss, Mr. Fontaine (Demain Bichir). On release, Dom and his dandy pal Dickie (Richard E. Grant) seek out the convivial Fontaine in order to collect his reward, plus ‘a present’. However, a near-fatal car crash and annoying robbery force Dom to reconsider his priorities in his search for better luck.

Dom Hemingway doesn’t know what it is – old-school gangster film or sentimental character study? Initially, it seemed the former: shots of Dom’s pointy boots and immaculately tailored three-piece suits, criminals getting up to no good with booze and coke, Motörhead blaring over the soundtrack. This is what the film is sold as: The Italian Job cooked in a Layer Cake with a sprinkling of Goodfellas glamour. Thus, we all relish Dom and Dickie snorting and swearing their way round London, shocking old grannies on the Eurostar and smoking a cigarette (each) in a pub. But as Dom seeks to mend his broken relationships the whole pace slows down. Dom the don leaves the screen and we have to endure Law exploring a hard-man’s sensitive inner soul: it worked in The Sopranos, it does not work here. By blending the two types of film, Dom Hemingway has neither the pulsating excitement of a crime caper nor the gritty insight of a kitchen sink drama.

Jude Law simply isn’t convincing as a flamboyant Cockney hard-man. The performance reminded me of Tom Hardy in Bronson, but it’s not Tom Hardy, it’s Jude Law. I suspect that he wanted to play a classic gangster, and this film serves as a vehicle for that ambition. So a flabby Law swaggers around, biting ears, bullying the weak and generally being uncouth. It isn’t like Law can’t play frightening characters – think Road to Perdition or even The Talented Mr. Ripley. But as Dom Hemingway, who looks like a Kray and speaks like John Cooper Clarke, his powers are wasted. He is also incredibly annoying. The writer must have thought that he was making Dom interesting through his verbal diarrhoea. Literary references mix with violent expletives and course sexual bravado (think Joey Barton) in cringing ridiculousness. After two minutes I just wanted him to shut up. The saving grace is Richard E. Grant, a much underrated actor with a comic flourish consummate enough to render any film watchable. Grant is convincing as a greasy lunatic who is one hand short of two. His various gags, visual and oral, are funny. I could have happily watched this East End Withnail drinking cognac in a mobster pub instead.

I was expecting a shallow but scintillating film. What I got was a reasonably enjoyable hour and a half of a few amusing scenes with boring interludes, and the rare chance to watch Law spitting on his own acting record.

Interview and Review: Day of the Flowers

Day of the Flowers is the first British film set in Cuba since the 1950s. The plot follows Rosa (Eva Birthistle), a Scottish political activist, who travels to Cuba to bury the ashes of her father, supposedly a veteran of the Revolution. But Rosa’s plan for a socialist holiday with grubby friend Conway (Bryan Dick) is interrupted when her materialistic, gregarious sister Ailee (Charity Wakefield) tags along. Things start to go downhill as naive Rosa finds trouble seemingly everywhere: tensions mount and various home truths are revealed. The film also stars Carlos Acosta, famous Cuban ballet dancer, as Tomas, a tour guide and generally decent chap. I spoke to director John Roberts about his recent venture.

For me, the human element is the most important aspect of Day of the Flowers. Would you agree?

Yes, that is what really drew me to the script. The human story grabbed me after about three pages – with the relationship between the sisters – particularly the older one who was in a crisis.

Although it is ostensibly about the two sisters it focuses on Rosa – the film literally starts and ends with her. What about her, or her type, stood out as worthy of investigation?

I found Rosa an interesting character because she seemed so conflicted and unable to square everything. She was trying to make something good out of what was much more complex, and when I got to Cuba I saw that you can’t ignore the realities. She seemed like a throwback in some respects, but actually became more relevant with what’s been happening recently (financial crisis et cetera), and there’s been a resurgence of people protesting.

I thought that she was almost relying on politics to make up for her own problems dealing with life.

There is a truth there. Without wanting to be too broad, politics often serves as an outlet for other things, even at the highest levels. With people who are dogmatic you think ‘what’s driving them?’. There was definitely a sense of that with Rosa – a lot of stuff going on underneath ­which took a while to tease out.

Were you tempted to explore Ailie more? She remains largely the same throughout.

She does, and I thought that she was the more level-headed of the two – a little more intuitive. But actually a whole backstory about them emerged very late in the writing process. Without revealing too much, we were aware that something hadn’t quite been addressed. Eventually the penny dropped.

I suspect that the main criticism levelled at Day of the Flowers will be that it can seem obvious at times – the characters definitely are ‘types’. But this is slightly irrelevant, because they were intended to be ‘types’.

Having said all that, the Cuban element is nonetheless prominent. Was the inclusion of this country a major aspect of planning the film, or was its prominence accidental?

It was very important for the writer – she’d been there many times. I think Cuba acts as a symbol in the West, though I’m not quite sure of what it stands for now. So it was important on that level, and I cannot think of anywhere that has that Romantic idea of revolution. What I was interested in was the gap between that and the reality.

And that’s Rosa’s issue. For her, Cuba is an image, it stands for something but is not a real place.

Yes, and so many people have that. A lot of the crew were keen to go because they thought they knew what Cuba meant. After three months a number of them had changed their ideas quite a bit. I went in thinking ‘what I see, I see’, and stuff just started to filter through. The people are very well educated and absolutely wonderful. I found it visually stunning, partly because there is no advertising – none of the clutter that you see in the West. So it is a remarkable place.

In terms of the visuals, you are providing a condensed image of Cuba, so in a sense you are summarising it for viewers who haven’t been. Did you try hard not to act like Rosa by romanticising and simplifying?

Yes I was very aware of that, and I also found it more interesting than the ‘Buena Vista Social Club view’ of it. In terms of the infrastructure there’s so much Soviet and East German stuff, like apartment blocks. And then on top of that it’s very clear that everything is changing – mobile phones are starting to be allowed for example. So we were mixing it up, because, while we wanted to stay outside of the cliché, it is still there.

The characters have these various brushes with the dark underbelly of Cuba. Was your experience more savoury?

It’s an incredibly safe country to visit, without doubt safest place that I’ve been to: the people are absolutely delightful. At the same time there is an economy based on sex tourism and that kind of thing which is very clear, and we didn’t want to duck that. But in the end it is not a tragedy, and I wanted to capture the Cubans’ great spirit.

Roberts has indeed captured Cuba consummately. It is beautifully and respectfully shot, accompanied by a fitting soundtrack.

With regards to Carlos Acosta, you must have had some reservations about casting an inexperienced actor in such a major role?

I didn’t, we were just delighted to get into a room to talk to him. There was only one thing for me – whether he could act. And he was an absolute natural: within two seconds it was obvious that he could hold his own against very experienced actors.

Casting Acosta certainly paid off. He has a real screen presence but nailed a naturalistic performance. Roberts further stressed the quality of all the actors. Eva Birthistle transforms into the most infuriatingly self-righteous pseud since Michael Sheen in Midnight in Paris, and Charity Wakefield’s charisma ensured every one of her scenes was a delight to watch.

Day of the Flowers is not, as Roberts points out, a tragedy: There is humour, there are thrills, there is romance.

Were you consciously trying to keep a balance between a feel good factor and a stinging personal critique?

I certainly enjoyed the humour in the script. Every time we tried to make it tougher politically, it sunk. I felt that the writer had a very light touch and I wanted to keep that. Whether we succeeded I don’t know.

I think that he and his crew have succeeded. You can decide for yourself from 29^th November.

Review: In Fear

In 2013’s cinematic landscape of CGI, digital technology and lavish blockbusters, audiences can thirst for a film stripped down to the bare essentials. In Fear is one such film, about little more than two spritely young urbanites getting lost in the countryside. Tom (Iain De Caestecker) and Lucy (Alice Englert) are looking for a remote hotel and – yes, you guessed it – there is something unsavoury in the woods. Instead of finding the Killarney Arms, they find a terrible start to the holiday.

For a while, this minimalistic style works. A simple, everyday setting can enhance a horror film because it makes it ‘real’ for the audience. It is this which allows In Fear to be scary: two people inside the car; something menacing outside. As Tom and Lucy drive hopelessly lost for hours, things go from bad to worse, their increasing stress levels mirroring the nervy audience’s. The acting is good and believable, especially considering that the set is essentially a car and the actors have to be frightened of something that they know is not there. However, that is really all that I can say in the film’s favour.

When the satnav eerily blinked ‘signal lost’, I wondered if this was going to be tongue-in-cheek – An American Werewolf in London style comic-horror. Actually, In Fear is simply unaware of how riddled it is with laughable clichés: an unwelcoming pub of cantankerous, three-eyed locals who enjoy nothing more than turning music off when strangers enter; a decrepit roadside shack with broken tractors in the garden and a ‘KEEP OUT’ sign on the rotten gate; shaking cameras filming the car from behind a bush, the operator atmospherically pushing the lens into the nearest leaf every few seconds. Most of the dialogue is ‘that’s funny, I could have sworn...’ and ‘it’s probably nothing [so let’s face away from the impending danger]’. Some viewers chuckled, others walked out.

Without wanting to reveal too much – although it would be a struggle to do so – the most flawed aspect of In Fear is its total lack of story. Whereas Halloween, Psycho or Friday the 13^th explain their killers and introduce a spooky legend, the writer(s) of In Fear apparently just didn’t bother. This means that all of the fright dissipates on exiting the cinema. The Alan Partridge-style pitch for this movie must have been over in seconds. Much of it doesn’t actually make sense – many of the spooky happenings are literal physical impossibilities. Fundamentally, this is an insult to the audience, who are paying increasingly expensive ticket prices. Additionally, I just didn’t care. There is no biographical information about the characters (I couldn’t even work out her accent), so they remain cardboard cut-outs, dispensable youths to be sacrificed on the altar of horror. Where is the terror in that?

In Fear does what it says on the tin. It is a horror film, designed primarily to scare, and there are plenty of frights: suspense, ghostly figures and people jumping out suddenly. If this is what you’re after, then In Fear is perfect. Just don’t expect anything else.

Review: The Counselor

The Counselor is a star-studded affair: Brad Pitt, Javier Bardem, Penelope Cruz, Michael Fassbender and Cameron Diaz. It is written by Cormac McCarthy, whose works are always being adapted for cinema (e.g. No Country for Old Men), much like Daphne du Maurier and Stephen King. Ridley Scott directs. Despite this, The Counselor is a preposterous film. 

The plot is not particularly original. Fassbender’s lawyer character decides to get involved with the narcotics trade, as one does, through a client of his, Bardem’s gangster. Diaz is Bardem’s scheming girlfriend, who has ‘issues’. Pitt is a nutty cowboy middleman, and Cruz is Fassbender’s fiancée. And guess what? Things go pear shaped. There are violent deaths, a funky Mexican soundtrack, and lots of cowboy boots. For me, setting a film in a situation as real and horrendous as Mexican cartel wars and drug trafficking should be for more than mindless fun: maybe as a vehicle for highlighting something terrible, a documentary-style investigation, or an insightful examination. This was none of those things – it was just an easy way to create excitement.

Michael Fassbender is completely out of his depth. He is a damp squib of irrelevance on-screen, especially when sharing a scene with the charismatic Pitt or Bardem. His character doesn’t even have a name. Perhaps everyone kept forgetting it, such was his lack of magnetism. Neither was he a convincing lawyer, although that’s less Fassbender’s fault than those who designed his look. Thankfully, Diaz, Pitt, Bardem and Cruz make up for this. They do captivate, and all, Cruz excluded (she’s the nice one in this), exude Pesci-esque psychopathy. The problem is that these are stock characters. Bardem, for example, is the same flamboyantly dressed oddball with an unfathomable haircut as he was in No Country for Old Men and Skyfall. Pitt is the same sartorially snappy cowboy with greasy long locks and a cocksure attitude as he was in The Assassination of Jesse James and Killing Them Softly.

One thing that The Counselor does have going for it is, surprisingly, that much of it is people talking in rooms. There is no doubt that its sprawling plot makes the viewer think - something which this kind of film very rarely does. Much as Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy or Funeral in Berlin are not simply gunfights – there is intrigue. Most of this thinking, though, is just trying to work out what is going on: a failure to explain the plot doesn't make a movie clever. For all that McCarthy is a brilliant writer, some of the lines are too consciously ‘cinematic’ (‘the truth has no temperature’). The metaphor-laden soliloquies about hunters and greed et cetera are trying to mimic No Country for Old Men, but the wisdom is absent. There are even a couple of cheetahs, resplendent in diamond collars, purring and hunting – how metaphorical! Or just impractical and a clear health and safety hazard. We have the theme of greed stuffed down our throats to show that this film is saying something, but it is hard to swallow because it is portrayed in a two-dimensional fashion. So many details are left unexplained, such as the relationships between characters, that it is a convoluted mess.

The Counselor is a classic case of a badly made, but entertaining, film. The problem is that it is not nearly entertaining enough. I’d suggest buying No Country for Old Men on Amazon.

Yet another bad hair day at work for Bardem

Review: Philomena

Philomena is about Philomena Lee (Judi Dench) who had entered a convent after falling pregnant, the holy authorities subsequently selling the son to a rich American couple. A conspiracy of silence from the ‘evil nuns’ has ensured that Philomena has never been allowed to know anything about her child's development. Phil’s daughter (Anna Maxell Martin) approaches journalist and former spin doctor Martin Sixsmith (Steve Coogan), believing the story to be good. Martin and Phil attempt to track down the son order to write a popular article.

There is ample opportunity to make Philomena a little obvious: the evil Church; the stereotypes of a naive old Irish woman and an arrogant Oxbridge Labourite; excessive emotion. In no way does this happen. There is a lot of emotion, but it is powerful, partly because it is derived from a true story and partly because the film is well made. Dench both accurately portrays this God-fearing ex-nurse and nails the psychological process that the real Philomena must have gone through. Coogan's role is, I suspect, closer to home for him. I have said before that he seems to bring a lot of his own vulnerabilities and insecurities into his roles. Any good actor will do the same, but it is a shame that because of Coogan’s noticeable mannerisms, people will insist that he is ‘just playing Alan Partridge’. The cynicism and anger present in Sixsmith shows that Coogan has self-awareness, insight and, ultimately, an ability to turn his flaws into art. That is surely the mark of a good artist.

The relationship between Philomena and Martin is enhanced by the acting relationship between Coogan and Dench. Maybe they just got on well, but the apparently genuine affection and understanding is a feat of performance. This relationship, I think, is a major part of the film’s charm. Steve Coogan stated several times before its release that he was proud of the film’s lack of cynicism – the touching friendship is warming to watch, and without any kind of saccharine coating. Their mix of ignorance and wisdom in different areas complements each other perfectly. The supporting cast, such as Maxwell Martin, is solid and back Dench and Coogan well.

I would certainly recommend Philomena. It is intelligent and wise, has a touch of class, and really is an ‘uncynical’ study of a heart-wrenching tale.