Locke Review

Tom Hardy is one of the best actors working today. At 36 the British born performer can completely immerse himself into a role. He’s an actor of incredible range. He can be big and boisterous as in Nicholas Winding Refn’s “Bronson” or as the Batman villain Bane in Christopher Nolan’s “The Dark Knight Rises.” Or he can be subtle and internalized as in John Hillcoat’s “Lawless” and Gavin O’Connor’s “Warrior.” He can be charming and witty—again in Nolan’s “Inception”—or absolutely sloppy and repulsive, again in Refn’s “Bronson.” Like Daniel Day Lewis, Christian Bale, Al Pacino (in his glory days) and countless others he never seems to repeat himself. There’s no such thing as a “Tom Hardy performance.”

In Steven Knight’s--the screenwriter behind David Cronenberg’s “Eastern Promises”—excellent feature “Locke,” Hardy gets to try his hand at the “one man show” movie, playing Ivan Locke who spends the film’s 90 minute running time driving in a car. That’s it. Not exactly an easy task to pull off and yet Knight and Hardy succeed in making an engaging (and yes, exciting) movie in which Locke is developed primarily through dialogue. The supporting characters are only heard in the many phone calls Locke makes and receives.

Knight and cinematographer Harris Zambarloukos shoot “Locke” mainly in medium and close up shots. Sometimes the camera sits inside the car and sometimes it sits just outside the car’s windshields and windows, capturing the glare of streetlights and other car lights--that beautifully illuminate the night sky—as they move across the glass. These shots along with numerous dissolves to the other activity on the freeway give the movie a neat Michael Mann-esque, “Collateral” look. At night in the city, it’s never truly dark.

Before proceeding with this review I must offer a word of warning: those looking for a more conventional exciting crime drama/thriller involving families being taken hostage and gangsters will not find one. Though the movie has a noir-ish look the situation is surprisingly normal, the exchanges Locke has are between his family, friends, and employers. For movie purposes Knight heightens the situation but he still keeps it one hundred percent authentic, nothing feels cheesy or over-the-top and believe it or not Knight does manage to create suspense.

Locke isn’t a hit man or someone who’s desperate for money but a construction foreman. One who’s very knowledgeable about cement and cement pouring. No seriously. Cinema history is full of various “experts” and “professionals,” but Locke is the first “cement expert” I’ve ever seen. He’s so good he can organize a major cement pour over the phone. As silly as this may sound it’s actually refreshing.

As far as plot is concerned, there isn’t much. Essentially the movie is about how Locke’s life falls apart over the course of the drive. Hardy plays him sort of like a hostage negotiator (with the hostage being his own life) trying to maintain order and composure. It’s not a big and showy performance but instead one of remarkable restraint and nuance. Often times it’s his subtle bodily movements and facial features that are most impressive. There are moments while he’s on call with someone when he’s doing his best to keep calm but you can detect a slight look of panic or stress in his face, or the moment when he quickly checks his pulse on his neck during another conversation, suggesting perhaps that he has a history with losing his temper but is going to keep himself together tonight. It’s these little movements—as much as the conversations—that help develop Locke’s character.

The central theme of “Locke” is redemption, or more specifically: taking responsibilities for your actions. There’s nothing forcing Locke to take this drive other than his own conscience. He’s made mistakes in his past, namely having an affair with a coworker and knocking her up. He’s driving to London to witness the birth of his illegitimate child (if this is a spoiler to anyone, I’m sorry but we find this out fairly early on). He also has some pent up aggression against his father who, we gather, was absent from his childhood. At times Locke has imaginary conversations with him in the backseat. In a way, Locke is proving to his dad and especially himself that he can be a good person and take responsibility for what he’s done. He doesn’t have to do any of this; in fact if he didn’t his life probably wouldn’t collapse, but he chooses to do it anyway. And for how dour the movie can be at times, Knight ends it on a hopeful, positive note, suggesting Locke could get things back on track.

Ultimately, everything goes back to Hardy, without him there wouldn’t be a movie. Even though Locke could be looked at as a selfish character Hardy still makes him extremely likable. Hardy seems to get better with each and every role and while it’s very unlikely that he will get any kind of consideration come awards season, Hardy still gives one of the best performances of the year so far.

A-

Fading Gigolo Review

In “Fading Gigolo”—an entertaining and bizarre yet slight picture-- Woody Allen plays a pimp to John Turturro’s Gigolo. Wait! Did I really just write that? Woody Allen and pimp in the same sentence? It’s a fresh and brilliantly absurd bit of casting that’s easily the best part of the movie, especially if you’re familiar with Allen’s history of acting on the big screen.

The now seventy-eight-year-old writer-director has made a name for himself over the years playing the same neurotic, insecure, fast talking fellow again and again, usually in his own movies. Pondering the mortality and the meaning of existence, bellyaching about little things people do, taking Zoloft and seeing an analyst twice a week. The “Woody” persona has practically become ingrained in the culture and is a personal favorite of mine. Ever since being introduced to him in movies like “Annie Hall” and “Hannah and her Sisters” I’ve come to love Allen’s unique presence on screen, almost as much as the movies themselves.

In “Gigolo,” Allen plays more or less the same character. He’s insecure, fast-talking, on Zoloft, seeing an analyst twice a week and pondering mortality and the meaning of existence. However, this time Allen—who plays the character Murray, a bookshop owner who has gone out of business—is more gutsier and proactive. He’s the one who suggests that his friend Fiorvante (Turturro, who also wrote and directed the move), become a Gigolo for some extra money.

You read that right. Usually you’d expect that the Allen character would have to be talked into such an odd endeavor. Not so. In this case, Murray is the confident one who tells Fiorvante that he’s attractive and is good at sex, while Fiorvante is the shy one reluctant to do it. The film is at its best when it focuses on Murray and Fiorvante’s friendship and their adventures in the business that mainly involve two lonely sex crazed women who want to have a threesome. There’s something endearing and wonderfully silly about it and Turturro and Allen play off one another near perfectly.

It’s when “Fading Gigolo” veers away from the friendship and turns into a love story that it runs into problems. One of Fiorvante’s clients is Avigal (Vanessa Paradis), a strict Hasidic widow. They don’t have sex but he does massage her back, which apparently is a big no no in her religion. Never the less it provides her with some pleasure and mends the loneliness she’s been feeling for quite some time. One of the underlying themes of “Gigolo” seems to be that the gigolo service can provide therapy to lonely women.

After there first meeting the two develop a friendship and Fiorvante begins to get feelings for her. Unfortunately, since the movie is only ninety minutes, neither the relationship nor the theme I mentioned above can be effectively explored, and in the end looks inferior when compared to the wacky gigolo stuff involving Murray and Fiorvante. I also could have done without Liev Schreiber as Dovi, a neighborhood watch captain who lives in Avigal’s neighborhood and is also in love with her and becomes suspicious of what’s going on. Again the character and the side plot simply don’t effloresce into anything resonant.

And yet, I still enjoyed myself during “Fading Gigolo.” I enjoyed watching Allen (especially, Allen. I could watch a whole devoted to Murray) and Turturro together as they navigate the male prostitute business. The film also has a jazzy, energetic score by Abraham Laboriel and Bill Maxwell that keeps things moving along nicely, even if the overall movie is rather insignificant.

B-

Blue Ruin Review

“Blue Ruin” is a taut and deliberate revenge thriller suggesting that just because you may have the urge and the drive to exact revenge on someone, it doesn’t mean it’s as easy as picking up a gun and popping a cap in the bastard’s head. In most revenge movies, the protagonists make it look easy and most of the time they have at least some past experience with guns or weapons or fighting. In “Blue Ruin,” the act of revenge feels more like a chore and the protagonist has basically no idea what he’s doing when it comes to using guns and even knives.

Director Jeremy Saulnier throws us right into action without any real setup. Dwight (Macon Blair) has been wandering aimlessly for the past couple years, living out of his old rusted blue car in a beachfront town. Rummaging through trashcans and using other people’s bathrooms to clean himself. Already we can infer that this is the aftermath. Some terrible tragedy has caused Dwight to go off into isolation and live as a vagrant. A little later we find out that a man named Wade Cleveland killed Dwight’s parents and he’s being released from prison.

Saulnier doesn’t employ any flashbacks because he doesn’t need to. Any information we aren’t explicitly told we can assume. Plus we’ve seen enough revenge thrillers to know what that initial act of violence looks like. Instead the film stays in the here and now, and focuses on Dwight’s personal struggle. We don’t get much background on him but we can surmise that this tragedy had a major impact on his psyche, causing him to distance himself from his remaining family and in some ways, society. He’s been dishonored and rendered incomplete and the only thing that can make him whole again is vengeance.

So he tracks Wade down at their family bar and does the deed. Now, I know what you’re thinking: “Drew, you just delivered a massive spoiler” and usually you would be right. Most of the time this is the moment that revenge thrillers build to. The crusader confronting the villain face-to-face, one on one, and doing what’s right. But in “Blue Ruin” things are just getting started. This happens within the first twenty minutes or so and while Dwight may have killed Wade he’s incurred the wrath of Wade’s crazy, gun obsessed family and now they’re coming after Dwight and Dwight’s remaining estranged family; his sister Sam (Amy Hargreaves) and her two kids.

At ninety minutes, “Blue Ruin” is admittedly brisk but Saulnier keeps the pace unhurried, keeping the viewer on edge and letting them soak in every little situation. The movie is also relativity quiet, there’s not a lot of dialogue and the haunting score by Brooke Will Blair hums faintly in the background, occasionally flaring up at intense moments. There are some gnarly scenes of violence—a sniper rifle shot to someone’s head, for example, or the moment when Dwight attempts to pull an arrow out of his leg—but Saulnier doesn’t overdo it, keeping the picture realistic in feeling.

As I’ve already alluded to, Dwight is a man of few words—at one point when he runs into Sam after years and years he mentions how he usually “doesn’t talk this much—and is passive in demeanor. He doesn’t look like he could kill anyone. In that way he’s reminiscent of Ryan Gosling’s quiet and peaceful character in “Drive,” but unlike Gosling’s character who, when provoked, could turn into a vicious killer, Dwight remains timid and inexperienced when he tries to exact revenge. Going back to what I said in the first paragraph, most revenge thriller vigilantes have some kind of prior experience with fighting, they may have even been criminals themselves, but Dwight appears to have none.

He struggles to kill Wade at the beginning and when he has one of the other family members at gunpoint he temporarily loses the upper hand. He has the drive and motivation to avenge his parents’ honor but he doesn’t have the know-how and most of the time he comes off as pathetic.  His own sister says he’s weak at one point. And even though he gets some gun training from an old friend he still looks like he doesn’t know what he’s doing. However, it’s this that makes the character and the movie so interesting. Dwight’s need for revenge is a sickness, a curse, and he can’t live with himself unless he can satisfy it. So it doesn’t matter how silly he may look doing it and it doesn’t matter how crazy the rest of Wade’s family is.

Overall, “Blue Ruin” does an effective job of showing what it might be like if an average, timid man took the law into his own hands. And like all successful revenge thrillers there’s a feeling of satisfaction at the end. Honor has been restored.

 B+

Joe Review

David Gordon Green’s new film “Joe” shares a certain kinship with last year’s “Mud.” In the latter film Tye Sheridan plays a southern kid who finds a paternal figure in Mud (Matthew McConaughey) an outlaw taking refuge on a small island in the middle of the bayou, because his own father is mainly absent. In “Joe” Sheridan plays another southern kid who finds a paternal figure in Joe (Nicholas Cage in his best role in years). Sporting a thick mountain man beard, Joe runs a business that clears forests by poisoning the trees and gives fifteen year old drifter Gary, (Sheridan) a job so he can support his family. Overall, “Joe” is raw, well made, backwoods drama that contains two great lead performances.

To say that Gary’s home/family life is rough would be a massive understatement. Himself, along with his younger sister, mother and father squat in an abandoned house in the film’s southern town setting that’s absolutely filthy and decrepit. His sister and mother don’t do much of anything except breathe and his father, well, his father is terrible. With his white beard and white hair, he slightly resembles an old time-y hobo you might see riding a train with a bindle. While Gary’s out working, he’s out stumbling around the town sorting through trashcans. You can practically smell the alcohol—and whatever he’s rolled in—on him. Who knows when he last changed his shirt or pants, or even showered.

I guess he can be called the film’s villain but he’s just so pathetic and hopeless that it’s a little hard to maintain interest in him as one. Just when you think he can’t get even more hopeless and pathetic he does; he beats Gary and takes most of his earnings to buy more booze and at one point he beats a random homeless man to death with a wrench for a bottle of wine. The biological father in “Mud” may have been lame but he at least was salvageable; this dad is not. And I just wanted him to die.

The rest of “Joe”—for the most part—wallows in this similar misery and hopelessness. It takes place in one of those fading towns, full of abandoned buildings and dreams that is practically being overtaken by the dense surrounding forests. It’s a dead-end town that’s probably just a few years away from disappearing completely. Everyone who lives here has some kind of troubled past, (and a troubled present) including Joe. However, Joe isn’t so pathetic and hopeless. On the one hand he does appear to be angry with and given up on the world. He still runs his business but when he’s not working he’s at home drinking scotch, visiting a brothel in a dilapidated mansion, or going to the general store. There’s a certain amount of mystery behind Joe. We learn he went to jail for assaulting a cop, which clearly suggests he had a history with losing his temper and doing bad things. In “Joe” he’s trying to leave that behind, trying to reform, but in an environment that’s full of the scummiest of lowlifes, that’s kind of difficult.

Part of Joe has given up on the world and yet part of him hasn’t. There’s still a part of him that cares, that’s willing to lend a hand to people in need, like Gary. He’s no saint but he’s not all bad either. The best way to describe this part of his attitude is, in his own words: “I can’t promise you anything, but I’ll try to be nice.” This is why Joe eventually finds himself caring about Gary. Gary is in an awful situation but he’s really the only character with a strong sense of hope. He’s very intelligent, hard working, persistent and could very easily go off on his own and fend for himself. But he decides to stay and tries to mend his crappy situation. He knows his dad is a pathetic mess and that his mother and sister and totally helpless but he still goes to work and still remains optimistic that things will get better.

It’s this genuine and touching relationship between Joe and Gary that propel the movie forward. Without them, there wouldn’t be a movie. I don’t need to tell you that Cage hasn’t made the best acting choices in recent years but in “Joe” he gives his first legitimately great performance in a while. You won’t see him hamming it up as he’s so prone to do; instead he’s incredibly restrained and nuanced, occasionally losing his temper, and even though the character is mostly internalized and remains a man of few words, Cage displays some affection and tenderness at moments. As for Sheridan; not many fifteen year olds can hold their own with experienced actors like McConaughey or Cage. Having done this kind of role twice now it comes off effortless to the audience.

 “Joe” isn’t flawless; sometimes the movie has a tendency to wander, especially at the beginning and the supporting characters remain thinly sketched, such as Connie, (Adriene Mishler) a young gal that Joe also lends help to and Willie, (Ronnie Gene Blevins) another weak and pathetic scumbag, so weak in fact that Gary even kicks his ass at one point. Like Gary’s father he can also be considered a villain but again he’s not too compelling. His justification for trying to molest a little girl is that in this town she’s going to start prostituting anyway. Yeah.  Like Gary’s father, just rid the earth of his presence.

Ultimately though, it’s the performances from Cage and Sheridan that make “Joe” a satisfying watch… at least once. I’m not sure if I’d want to see it again.

B+