RocknRolla

After the one-two punch of Swept Away (2002) and Revolver (2005), Guy Ritchie’s career had hit rock bottom. The former movie was an ill-conceived remake with his then-wife Madonna and which tanked spectacularly. The latter movie pushed his distinctive brand of crime story too far, alienating many of the fans he acquired with the immensely entertaining and popular Snatch (2000). Ritchie wisely regrouped and got back to basics with RocknRolla (2008), which was a welcome return to the tried and true formula that launched his career with Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels (1998). This involved a caper story with plenty of plot twists that mixed laughs with stylized action as a colorful assortment of gangsters and thugs bounced off each other all scored to an eclectic soundtrack of rock ‘n’ roll music. Best of all, it gave meaty roles to then-emerging actors Gerard Butler, Tom Hardy, Idris Elba, and Mark Strong – relative unknowns in North America, but who have gone on to appear in mainstream Hollywood movies.

Lenny Cole (Tom Wilkinson) is a ruthless gangster who runs London with the help of his right hand man Archy (Mark Strong). Lenny is gobbling up as much real estate in the city as he can, but faces stiff competition from an aggressive Russian billionaire named Uri (Karel Roden). Enter One Two (Gerard Butler) and Mumbles (Idris Elba), two small-time crooks that front a crew known as the Wild Bunch and who are also trying to acquire their own chunk of real estate, but need the cash and clout that only Lenny can provide. Unbeknownst to them, the elder gangster screws One Two and Mumbles out of a deal. Now, they need to come up with some money and quick. So, One Two contacts Stella (Thandie Newton), a beautiful accountant (she works for Uri), who gives them a job that soon has the two criminals running afoul of Uri’s seemingly indestructible henchmen.

The wild card in this mix is Johnny Quid (Toby Kebbell), Lenny’s estranged step-son and a rock star presumed dead, but who is very much alive and slumming with a dim-witted junkie. Add in Uri’s lucky painting, which has gone missing while in Lenny’s possession and you’ve got the makings for a very entertaining caper movie.

Much like the gangsters in Quentin Tarantino’s crime films (and a filmmaker Ritchie is often compared to), Ritchie’s crooks are a chatty bunch, not above pontificating about the right way to slap someone or the introduction of American crayfish into the Thames River in the 1970s. And like in QT’s films, most of the crooks talk excessively as a form of survival. It’s when they stop talking that bad things happen.

Ritchie’s witty screenplay gives his very talented cast all kinds of memorable dialogue to spout and so we get moments like an amusing bit where Archy chastises an underling for not slapping another one properly and proceeds to school him in the most eloquent fashion. Mark Strong doesn’t have to do much in this scene because he exudes a confident presence and a kind of casual menace that intimidates those around him. Even minor characters get their moment to shine, like two junkies – one a smooth talker, the other a complete space cadet – who comes into the Wild Bunch’s hangout trying to sell them fur coats in the middle of summer!

Watching this film again reminds one how Hollywood has failed miserably to exploit Butler’s talents as a suave leading man with a capacity for comedy. He’s not afraid to act silly and look good doing it. The flirty give and take he has with Thandie Newton’s sexy accountant is reminiscent of the kind of sexual chemistry George Clooney had with Jennifer Lopez in Out of Sight (1998). In a perfect world, Butler would have Clooney’s career in the U.K. instead of doing forgettable garbage like The Ugly Truth (2009) and Playing for Keeps (2012).

Ritchie also gives us moments that show the strong bond between the Wild Bunch crew, especially best mates One Two and Handsome Bob (Tom Hardy) in a scene where the latter, clearly upset about an impending stretch in prison, tells the former that he’s gay and that he fancies him. It is an oddly touching and amusing scene that provides insight into their friendship while also showcasing the acting talents of Gerard Butler and Tom Hardy. Part of the joy of RocknRolla is watching the likes of Mark Strong and Tom Wilkinson getting a chance to chew on this meaty dialogue and have a blast doing it.

Versatile character actor Wilkinson plays the film’s baddie, a xenophobic bully in dire need of a much-deserved comeuppance. He’s the typical Ritchie villain – an old school gangster who thinks that fear and intimidation will keep everyone in line, but makes the fatal mistake of underestimating the wild card factor, which is Johnny Quid who has been patiently biding his time until he can exact retribution for years of abuse. Idris Elba and Tom Hardy also have memorable supporting roles as part of the Wild Bunch crew and get a chance to spar verbally with Butler while also getting in on some of the action in an exciting sequence where they attempt to rob the Russian mob.

Ritchie also shares Tarantino’s knack for marrying just the right song to a given scene and so One Two and Stella flirt while “Have Love, Will Travel” by The Sonics blasts over the soundtrack and we get insight into Lenny and Johnny’s turbulent relationship via flashback, scored to “Bankrobber” by The Clash. In keeping with his other films, Ritchie also throws in some vintage tunes, like “Outlaw” by War and “Funnel of Love” by Wanda Jackson for quite the eclectic soundtrack that enhances the brisk tone that is established right from the first scene.

RocknRolla was inspired by Guy Ritchie’s fascination with the presence of large amounts of foreign money – usually from Eastern Bloc countries – in London’s crime scene: “I wanted to take a humourous look at the consequences of the new school pushing in on the territory of the old school.” He wanted it set in London because, at the time, it was becoming an international sensation: “London is in the middle of the world in the sense that it’s often the last place you go on your way to America, and it’s the first place you arrive before you get to Europe.” Producer Joel Silver was a fan of Ritchie’s blend of action and comedy and within 24 hours of reading the screenplay for RocknRolla knew that he wanted to make it.

Ritchie realized that London had changed a lot since he made Lock, Stock and wanted RocknRolla to reflect that. He and production designer Richard Bridgland sought out parts of the city that were brand new or being rebuilt and looked for spaces that had a grandeur to them. To this end, they managed to get permission to film in the new Wembley Stadium – the first production given permission, which was quite the coup. As per Ritchie’s preference, the film was shot over a brisk six weeks using HD cameras.

Before RocknRolla’s release, Warner Bros. president Alan Horn saw the film and felt that it was not “broadly commercial,” was “very English,” and only had “funny spots.” As a result, the studio did not give it a wide release and even Ritchie admitted, “I’m not sure if Alan quite knows what to do with it.” RocknRolla received mixed reviews. Roger Ebert gave the film three out of four stars and wrote, “It never slows down enough to be really good, and never speeds up enough to be the Bourne Mortgage Crisis, but there’s one thing for sure: British actors love playing gangsters as much as American actors love playing cowboys, and it’s always nice to see people having fun.”

In her review for The New York Times, Manohla Dargis wrote, “The violence is idiotic and brutal (the story is just idiotic), but it’s also so noncommittal that it doesn’t offend. Like the filmmaking itself, the violence has no passion, no oomph, no sense of real or even feigned purpose.” Entertainment Weekly gave the film a “B+” rating and Owen Gleiberman wrote, “He concocts a crime-jungle demimonde that’s organically linked to the real world, and it’s a damn fun one to visit.” Time magazine’s Richard Corliss wrote, “Ritchie has a portrait-satirist’s gift for creating supporting characters that’s almost in the league of Preston Sturges, the pinwheeling comic genius of 1940s Hollywood. Now if only he could duplicate Sturges’ range of milieu.” USA Today gave it two-and-a-half out of four stars and Claudia Puig wrote, “His edgy and visually bracing direction is better than his writing, though his oft-imitated, fast-paced style doesn’t seem nearly as fresh as it once did.”

Along with Layer Cake (2004), a British gangster film directed by Matthew Vaughn (Ritchie’s former long-time producer), RocknRolla addressed the notion of London as one of the premiere, desirable cities in the world to live in and how this made real estate values go through the roof. This, in turn, fueled all kinds of criminal enterprises and Ritchie shows how gangs diversified along ethnic lines. He doesn’t belabor the point, but instead has it in the background as part of the film’s tapestry. While RocknRolla didn’t exactly set the box office on fire, it was a return to form for Ritchie and paved the way for his Sherlock Holmes (2009) gig that has made him a sought after director of big budget studio moves. It would be a shame, however, if he didn’t return to this world and deliver on the sequel promised in the closing credits. Oh yeah, and also rescue Gerard Butler from mediocrity.

SOURCES

RocknRolla Production Notes, 2008.

McLean, Craig. “It’s A Guy Thing.” The Guardian. August 23, 2008.

Pacific Rim

It’s been five long years since Guillermo del Toro directed a film. It certainly hasn’t been from a lack of trying as he was all set to direct The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey (2012) before legal studio wrangling prompted him to depart the production. Then, he came close to realizing his dream project, an adaptation of H.P. Lovecraft’s At the Mountains of Madness, but the studio balked at a big budget R-rated monster movie and that fell through. Frustrated, Del Toro jumped at the opportunity to direct Pacific Rim (2013), an epic science fiction film that he was already producing and co-writing with Travis Beacham (Clash of the Titans). The film fits rather nicely in Del Toro’s wheelhouse as it involves massive battles between giant monsters and human-operated robots.

Del Toro has always been fascinated by creatures, from the mutant insects in Mimic (1997) to the grotesque vampires in Blade II (2002) to the creature underworld in Hellboy II: The Golden Army (2008). Pacific Rim allows him to pay tribute to the kaiju and mecha genres popularized in Japan that were spearheaded by Godzilla (1954). After the impersonal CGI workouts that characterized Michael Bay’s Transformers movies, the hope was that Del Toro could bring his own personal touch to the summer blockbuster.

A few years into the future and giant monsters known as Kaiju emerge from a portal located deep on the ocean floor and lay waste to cities all over the world. In response, many countries band together and create the Jaeger program, an army of enormous robots, or mecha, controlled by two human pilots, to combat these creatures. The pilots form a kind of Vulcan mind meld so that they are not just one with each other, but with the robot as well. This gives Del Toro the opportunity to hit it us up with one loving shot after another of these mecha, showing how they work in a way that tells us all we need to know in a few minutes.

The opening battle not only introduces us to how the mecha operate, but also to Raleigh Becket (Charlie Hunnam), a hotshot pilot and his equally brash older brother Yancy (Diego Klattenhoff). Of course, their cockiness proves to be their undoing and Yancy is killed in battle while Raleigh lives, wracked with guilt. With this opening battle, Del Toro does an excellent job of conveying the colossal scale of the robots and the monsters and what they can both do in a way that is never confusing.

He also personalizes the battle by showing how it affects the pilots. As the years pass and the war rages on, more Jaegers are destroyed and the program is to be phased out in a matter of months. The remaining ones are ordered to regroup in Hong Kong for a last stand. Raleigh has quit and becomes an anonymous welder working on a coastal defensive wall in Alaska when he is recruited back into the program by his former commanding officer Stacker Pentecost (Idris Elba). The introduction of the surviving Jaegers is robot porn for mecha fans with lingering, awe-inspiring shots of the architecture of each one.

There’s an amusing subplot involving Dr. Newton Geiszler (Charlie Day), a quirky, maverick scientist, pursuing a wild experiment that allows him to mind meld with the brain from one of the creatures, but a live one is hard to come by so he seeks out black marketeer of living Kaiju organs, Hannibal Chau (Ron Perlman) in the slums of Hong Kong. It’s a small role, but one that veteran Del Toro collaborator Ron Perlman makes the most of with his flashy attire and gruff attitude. The interplay between the grouchy cynicism of Hannibal and the frantic idealism of Dr. Geiszler is entertaining and provides some much needed levity. It is a lot of fun to see Ron Perlman and Charlie Day (It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia) banter back and forth, including a cool sequence where Hannibal’s crew travel through the insides of a defeated creature to find its secondary brain and stumble across something else.

Let’s face it; the characterization in Pacific Rim is pretty superficial with most of the pilots being interchangeable and their rivalry coming off as something right out of Top Gun (1986). At best, the dialogue is serviceable and many of the archetypal characters are rife with clichés as Raleigh is teamed-up with Mako Mori (Rinko Kikuchi), a rookie with no practical experience, but has a thirst for revenge, much like he does. Del Toro makes some attempts at characterization with Raleigh and Mako coming to grips with their respective demons over the course of the film, which is, to be honest, simply filler between impressively staged battle sequences. Only Idris Elba and Ron Perlman manage to make a distinctive impression with their respective characters, the latter rising above his character’s archetype through sheer force of will and attitude. Just look at the choices Perlman makes with wardrobe, how he speaks and how he carries himself to see how an actor can make something out of a minor role. However, we’re not watching Pacific Rim for characters’ soul-searching. We’re here to see giant robots beat the crap out of huge monsters, which this film delivers in a very satisfying way.

Some criticize the monsters in Pacific Rim as looking rather alike (reminiscent of the monster from Cloverfield) and not very distinctive, which is rather odd considering what a fan of monsters Del Toro is and what unique creatures he’s delivered in the past. I get the feeling that he was more interested in showing the diversity of the Jaegers – all of which have their own distinctive look and abilities. He lingers on them many times while the Kaiju are seen fleetingly during the day or slightly-obscured at night or deep under murky water. This may have been due to the budget limitations for the creature visual effects or that he simply wanted to put more emphasis on the mecha and the people that pilot them.

For anyone who grew up watching or is a fan of Godzilla vs. [insert name of monster], Pacific Rim is pure, unadulterated cinematic catnip. It is pretty cool to see robots and monsters duke it out, like a moment where one of the Jaegers uses a large freighter ship like a baseball bat, or when the same robot uses a giant sword to slice a Kaiju in half (in what seems like a visual nod to Voltron!). Unlike the Transformers movies, Pacific Rim has a lot of heart. It’s not afraid to embrace clichés, like the stirring call to battle speech, the maverick pilot with something to prove, and the scientist with a wild theory that just might help beat the monsters, and serve them up with a straight face. Del Toro does this lovingly as only a fan of kaiju movies could.

You really get the feeling that there is something at stake in the story depicted in Pacific Rim, that this isn’t just another CGI workout – all noise and fury signifying nothing. While this film may not be as artistically satisfying as The Devil’s Backbone (2001) or Pan’s Labyrinth (2006), it is wonderful to see Del Toro back in the director’s chair delivering the goods with a rousing and entertaining popcorn movie that reminds us of the unbridled glee we felt as children being transported to cinematic worlds populated by visually arresting special effects and heroic figures fighting to save the world.

Prometheus

Early on his career Ridley Scott proclaimed, “The time is ripe for a John Ford of science fiction films to emerge. And I’m determined to be that director.” And he was well on his way with the one-two punch of Alien (1979) and Blade Runner (1982) – cinematic game changers that presented incredibly detailed future worlds. And then he attempted to adapt Frank Herbert’s science fiction epic Dune but the project slipped through his fingers. As if that wasn’t enough, his big budget fantasy film Legend (1985) was a box office flop and received a critical mauling. Understandably frustrated, Scott turned his back on the science fiction and fantasy genres and spent the next few decades tackling a host of other ones, from the cop thriller (Black Rain) to the historical epic (Gladiator) to the war movie (Black Hawk Down) to varying degrees of success. However, fans of his early work had always held out hope that he would return to the genres that established him a cinematic force to be reckoned with.

Not only does Prometheus (2012) mark Scott’s triumphant return to science fiction but it also sees him revisiting a franchise he helped start – Alien. Touted as a prequel of sorts, the veteran filmmaker has been rather coy in admitting this new film’s link to the original, stating that it contains “strands of Alien’s DNA.” However, the impetus to make this film came from Scott’s curiosity as to the origins of the extraterrestrial being, nicknamed the “space jockey” by fans, that piloted the derelict spaceship discovered by the crew of the original film and which contained the series’ alien antagonists. Prometheus has come along at a good time to breath new life into the Alien franchise, which had hit an all-time low with Aliens vs. Predator: Requiem (2007). While the film was financially successful many felt it was creatively bankrupt and there was a desire to return the franchise to its roots and who better to do that than the director of the first one?

It is 2089 and in Scotland, Elizabeth Shaw (Noomi Rapace) uncovers ancient hieroglyphs that are actually a star map, which may provide the location to an alien home world whose residents may have visited Earth several thousands of years ago. She believes that these aliens will have the key to the origins of humanity. Four years later and Shaw heads up an expedition into outer space with a crew of 17 including an android named David (Michael Fassbender) and Meredith Vickers (Charlize Theron), an executive from Weyland Corporation, the company that funded the mission.

Shaw and Charlie Holloway (Logan Marshall-Green), her lover and fellow archaeologist, believe that the planet their spacecraft, the Prometheus, arrives at, deep in space, may have inhabitants that created humanity. Vickers is not too crazy about Shaw’s mission, a pet passion project of her father’s, Peter Weyland (Guy Pearce), and quickly exerts control, which sets up an intriguing antagonistic relationship between the idealistic scientist Shaw and the hard-nosed pragmatist Vickers.

Shaw and an away team make landfall and investigate a massive structure, one of several, in a canyon, which reinforces Ridley Scott’s mastery of establishing a specific mood and atmosphere through incredibly detailed set design and gorgeous cinematography. This results in evocative settings like the pristine sterility of the sleek futuristic Prometheus ship to the dark, dank cavernous interior of the alien structure, which takes what we glimpsed briefly in Alien and elevates it to another level. As with all of his films, the production design is of the highest quality and rich in detail, creating a fully realized and believable world. He also knows how to create a mood of foreboding mystery as our protagonists explore the alien landscape and we wait for something bad that we know is going to happen to these unfortunate people.

As with previous films in the Alien franchise, the Weyland Company doesn’t care about the crew, aside from David, just on how they can make money off whatever Shaw and co. discover. Not surprisingly, David, much like Ash in Alien, has its own agenda and is not entirely trustworthy. If you’ve seen any of the Alien films then you pretty much know how things are going to go down – the humans mess around with something they don’t understand and run afoul of a xenomorph that is hostile.

The seemingly ubiquitous Michael Fassbender is a real standout in Prometheus as the logic-based android with a hidden agenda. The actor is quite believable as an artificial person complete with slightly stiff expressions and gestures that look real enough and yet only have the illusion of humanity. It is a tightly controlled performance complete with precise speech patterns that is fascinating to watch. Noomi Rapace is excellent as the inquisitive scientist whose ambition proves to be her undoing. Over the course of the film she conveys a wide range of emotions as her character is put through the wringer and this is evident in a scene where Shaw is forced to deal with an alien that has invaded her body. It’s an intensely harrowing sequence that comes the closest to recapturing its famous equivalent in Alien. Shaw struggles with notions of faith versus science and is the heart and soul of the film.

On the opposite end of the spectrum, Charlize Theron plays an icy corporate executive at odds with Rapace’s Shaw and yet she is given a scene or two to show, perhaps not a softer side, but that there is more to her than being strictly a business type. With the exception of the always excellent Idris Elba, the rest of the cast is just fine but largely unremarkable but only because they play disposable characters. Like any skilled character actor, Elba makes the most of his limited screen-time, playing the grizzled captain of the ship.

While an easy target for helping engineer the prolonged tease that was the popular television show Lost, screenwriter Damon Lindelof and Ridley Scott should be commended for creating and then getting a major Hollywood studio to release a serious-minded science fiction film during the summer blockbuster season – a time when multiplexes are populated by dumb action films loaded up with car chases and loud explosions or mindless comedies rife with dick and fart jokes. Prometheus wrestles with weighty themes and the big picture (i.e. who created us and why are we here?) while fulfilling one of the oldest tropes of the genre by presenting a story that acts as a warning – don’t meddle with things you don’t understand.

Whether the filmmakers were successful or not in conveying these important themes in a thoughtful and engaging way is certainly open to debate but at least they tried. The film’s third act is certainly problematic as it basically loses its mind and devolves into a pretty conventional action film with a weak climactic battle. This is too bad because the first two-third of Prometheus is so strong and thought provoking. A well-intentioned film loaded with ambition like this one should be championed despite its flaws (weak characterization, plot holes, etc.). The end result is easily the best Alien film in the franchise since James Cameron took over the reigns with Aliens (1986).

Check out The Film Connoisseur's fantastic take on this film and also the Sci-Fanatic's in-depth post, comparing it to Alien.