Rob Wickings's Blog, page 68

Firing Blanks: Clive Saw “Bullet To The Head”.

As I enter the saloon, I see them: Sly; Bruce; Arnie; JCVD; Dolph; Seagal. ‘80s Action made flesh.

They trade shots of whiskey and tired quips with the tattooed barman. Everything here is worn, weathered and the colour of tobacco. Add in a few six-shooters and we could be back in the Old West. I’m here to meet another veteran of ‘80s American Cinema – a hero of mine – Walter Hill, writer, producer and director of numerous action classics including ‘The Warriors’, ‘The Driver’ and ’48 Hrs’.

But he’s not here yet, so I wander over to the jukebox and flick through the choices. There’s nothing here pre-1988. One song catches my eye and I grin and punch in the requisite code. The song comes on: “Glory Days” by Bruce Springsteen. You can’t go wrong with The Boss, right? Wrong. All conversation stops, twenty pairs of eyes turn to stare at me. Suddenly I feel about 200 lbs of muscle, 30 years and 6 tattoos too light for this situation.

“Hey!” The barman barks at me and stabs a finger at a rusted sign above the bar.

It reads: ‘NO IRONY.’

He punches something behind the bar and ‘Glory Days’ gives way to third-rate Blues-Rock. The conversations around the bar start up again and just then I’m clapped on the shoulder by a living legend: Walter Hill.

‘Okay kid, this is your fantasy, and we both know you’ve never actually met the real me. So, where do you want to do this?’

‘Umm… at the Bar?’

‘You’re buying. And you better not keep these good folks waiting for their review much longer.’

‘I’m creating a mood.’

Hill grunts in reply and holds up two fingers to the barman. We sit, and two shots of ‘2 Bullet’ bourbon arrive. He downs his in one and then pulls out a chrome-plated revolver. The chamber pops out and he slides in one ’45 bullet and spins it. He puts the gun to his temple. “Let’s play a game. I call it: ‘Bullet To The Head’.’

 

‘Bullet To The Head’, is an action movie/buddy movie hybrid adapted by screenwriter Alessandro Camon (‘The Messenger’) from the graphic novel ‘Du plomb dans la tête’ by Alexis Nolent. Sylvester Stallone (‘The Expendables 2’; ‘Rocky Balboa’) plays James Bonomo, a veteran hitman who is forced to team up with straight-arrow cop Taylor Kwon (Sung Kang – ‘Fast & Furious 5’) to take down the Underworld bosses who double-crossed him and murdered his partner.

 

Before I can stop him, Hill pulls the trigger: Click! He shovels the gun over, “Your turn.” I hesitate and the barman breaks a bottle. “You heard the man,” he echoes. I down my slug of bourbon and hold in a coughing fit. The barman chuckles and taps his jagged half bottle on the bar. I pick up the gun (heavier than I was expecting) and place the barrel (cold) to my temple. I pull the trigger…

 

‘Bullet To The Head’, action fans will be glad to hear, avoids one recent pernicious cinematic trend: the de-balling of action films to get the widest possible audience. Both ‘Taken 2’ and ‘A Good Day To Die Hard’ have been released pre-cut so as to get a 12A certificate in cinemas. They then get released to DVD/Blu-Ray/Download in an ‘Extreme Cut’ with all the violence that the distributor cut from the movie now restored.

Like Stallone’s ‘Rambo’, ‘Bullet To The Head’ is brutal and (as might be expected) Old School in its action sequences. In Jason Momoa (‘Conan The Barbarian’(2011); ‘Game Of Thrones’[TV]) it has a charismatic bad guy, and his fights with Stallone are the highlights of the film. Despite his increasing years, Stallone keeps things surprisingly hands-on. Unlike, say, Steven Seagal, he has retained a mobility that belies his steroid-bulked physique. There are (of course) guns and explosions here, but most of the important battles keep it mano-a-mano.

​Unfortunately, that’s where the good news ends as the buddy element of this movie falls flat. Stallone’s ‘buddy’ Sung Kang is a bland presence and their chemistry is non-existent. It doesn’t help that the movie’s idea of police work is for him to pout and make calls to an omnipotent Police IT department whenever he needs to find something out. There’s also a tired cameo from Christian Slater, who’s almost unrecognisable from his days as a dangerous presence in superior teen movies like ‘Heathers’ and ‘Pump Up The Volume’. And surely if we’re going to watch Sly play a hitman for the Nth time, they’ve got to bring something new to the table, right?

 

Click! I breathe out heavily. The Barman snatches the gun from my hand before I can contemplate any escape, and passes it to Hill. “Looks like it’s your lucky day,” He smiles. “My turn…” He picks up the gun. Again the barrel goes to his temple. “Ever watch a man die, Kid?” I shake my head. He pulls the trigger…

 

I’ll admit I was glad when I heard that Walter Hill had returned to the Big Screen for the first time since 2002’s ‘Undisputed’. But like another couple of ‘80s giants who’ve recently had directing comebacks after a long time away – John Carpenter (‘The Ward’) and John Landis (Burke And Hare’) – much of his success was built on the foundation of his writing. Whether it was alone, on the likes of ‘The Driver’, or with his regular screenwriting partner David Giler on films like ‘Alien’ and ‘Southern Comfort’, those scripts boasted a lean, stripped-down approach that built on the pioneering work of Alexander Jacobs (‘Point Blank’; ‘Hell In The Pacific’).

It’s interesting that neither Hill, nor the two Johns wrote the screenplays for their comeback movies. Now whether that’s because they’ve stopped writing, or because they couldn’t get financing for their own scripts – either way it’s our loss, and a reflection on how little the writer part of writer-director gets recognised.

Hill directs the action bits of ‘Bullet To The Head’ with his customary no-frills approach. He also clearly favours those parts of the story which cleave closest to the Western and its mythologies. Like John Ford, Hill has always been a director who made westerns, whether literally in case of ‘The Long Riders’, ‘Geronimo: An American Legend’, ‘Wild Bill’ (or his TV work on ‘Deadwood’) or whether in modern dress efforts like ‘Streets of Fire’ or ‘Trespass’. But even he can’t save a script which is this dumb, generic and boring. However, I don’t necessarily blame screenwriter Alessandro Camon for this. The rot goes a lot more deeply than that.

You get the feeling is that everyone involved in this film at some stage said: “That’ll do.” Okay, they’re not curing cancer, and you don’t necessarily need to re-invent the action wheel each time; but I expect more from both Hill and Stallone. There’s a world-weary cynicism to the hard-boiled voiceover that Sly intones at the end that really sums up the film. I’ll not quote it here to avoid spoilers, but it left me thinking, “If that’s how you felt, why did you bother?”

 

Click! This time he puts the gun in my hand and puts the chamber to his forehead. “Do it,” he orders. I look into his eyes. They’re pleading me to finish this. I pull the trigger: Pffftt! A misfire… Hill looks at the gun quizzically. “Guess they don’t make ‘em like they used to, eh, Kid?”

They really don’t…

 

A Few Quick Thoughts On iPad Gaming

I'm no gamer. I don't have the skill set or the patience.

The idea of spending all night in front of a long campaign of World Of Warcraft is not one that fills me with glee. And the concept of multiplayer is deeply abhorrent to an avowed introvert. X&HTowers is a refuge. I don't answer the phone to people I don't know. Why would I spend time being “fragged” and “teabagged” by pre-teen sociopaths from the Midwest?

However, since I levelled up to an iPad late last year, I've mellowed to the concept of casual gaming. Although I'm thoroughly aware that it eats into time that I could spend writing, I'll quite happily noodle away the odd hour or two on a game like Temple Run or my new favourite, Supermagical.

However, the more I play these games the more I start to get narked by the way the free model isn't so free. Oh, sure, at the start it's great fun and I can get a chunk of the way through the game with a bit of effort. But there are constant reminders that life could be so much easier if I'd drop some cash on a bucket of spells or a sexy new running avatar. And eventually, you realise that, unless you want to spend all your time painfully grinding through old levels to accrue enough stars or tokens to get to the next world, you'll have to buy something.

Now, I'm not saying that games of this quality should be made purely for the love of it. Of course not. But the constant dripdrip nagging reminders to drop some cash are starting to get on my wick. Furthermore, the curve of difficulty in the games is very definitely skewed. Events noodle along quite nicely and simply for a bit and then all of a sudden you hit a level that you simply can't beat. I mean, not even to the point where you can get through the first few seconds of play. Is it just me and my fucknuckled inability to pop the cap in the zombie, or are the mechanics of the game skewed towards a little gentle freeplay before cranking up the difficulty or making it impossible to carry on without that essential item in the inventory? Son, you ain't getting past Scatman Sam without the Fragmaster 6000. That's 50,000 doubloons or £1.49. Get double for £2.

Look, I get it, I do. It's a business. But if I wanted to pay £1.49 for a game, I would. And I have. And even here the in-game purchase opportunities run thick and fast. It's annoying and un-necessary. Why not tweak the gameplay for out-of-practice dweebs (an extra-easy setting, say, or a more limited free game with an option to upgrade to bigger and better if you like it), and give us a chance to finish the game without paying over the odds for armour and magic spiky twigs? I'm not great at games and I hate the feeling that the only way I'll ever finish one is to spend. In fact, the very opposite is likely to happen. Put me in a position where I'm forced to make a choice between continuing and paying an unexpected fee and… well, sorry, game over. A game like Infinity Blade II gets it right, giving the opportunity to grow and progress without the financial fast track. Angry Birds and Cut The Rope start you off for free and sell expansion packs when you feel the need.

I know this all makes me come across as some curmudgeonly tightwad. Why bitch about pocket change? The thing is, what I'm moaning about is game design that deliberately yanks you out of the spell that's been cast to hustle you for money. I'm happy to spend it, but I'd like to be in control of when and how I make that choice.

 

Act Of God: Rob Saw Flight

Sometimes, even hardened atheists like me have to wonder if there's a guiding hand nudging me in the right direction.

It was a simple, straightforward plan. Run a few chores, cycle to the Post Office and be in town in time for a 10:40 screening of Wreck-It Ralph. It was a cold, breezy day, and Disney felt about my speed. All was going well until I tried to buy a ticket. There was no 10:40 Wreck-It Ralph. I'd misread, or there was some scheduling fubar. If I wanted to catch some animation, I'd have to hang around town for a couple of hours.

The alternative was a screening of Robert Zemeckis' latest, Flight, due to start ten minutes later. Not what I'd planned, but hey, embrace the chaos, go where the wind blows.

Readership, Flight is probably the best film I've seen so far this year. Talk about the luck of the draw.

Meet Captain Whip Whittaker. Flyboy, charmer, maverick, played by Denzel Washington with the crumpled wit of Robert Mitcham and the smooth charm of Al Green. He's also a hero, and we're with him as we find out why. He's the pilot of a domestic flight that fell apart in the sky. He safely landed it, saving nearly 100 lives.

The thing is, we're with Whip before the flight too, and we know something that everyone else initially doesn't: the guy's a drunk. He's chugging vodka on the flight deck, and buzzing on coke. In normal circumstances, he would be a threat to everyone around him. But this is a one-in-a-million deal, and he's the only man for the job.

Flight is about a plane crash in the same way that Taxi Driver is about Yellow Cabs. It's a fascinating study of addiction, of faith and of predestination. Whip is a high-functioning alcoholic, who goes through bouts of remorse and pledges to give up that never take. He's a liar to himself, to everyone he loves and to the world. And the thing is, he gets away with it. The thing is, everyone wants him to get away with it. The investigation into the crash has Don Cheadle's smart, tenacious pilot's union lawyer nibbling away at the awful facts at the heart of the case, blanking and nullifying toxicology reports, putting the blame on everyone except Whip. Which would be fine, if Whip would play ball. But Whip is purely self-destructive. If he can help himself, if he knows what he's doing, his innate sense of honour won't allow anyone else to get hurt.

The exploration of the addict's mindset is beautifully picked out in Flight. The gods-honest promises to change, the inevitable slide-backs, the furious declarations that this is all, somehow, a matter of choice. “I CHOOSE to drink!” Whip bellows at his girlfriend Nicole, played with bruised, fragile sweetness by Kelly Reilly. We see through his bullshit in an instant, because Nicole is an addict too. The difference is that she has embraced the willingness to change.

It's the element of inevitability at play that makes Flight such an interesting film. Does Whip choose to drink, or does the drink choose him? It certainly seems to, even on the night before the hearing that will seal his fate, when he's supposedly locked in a hotel room with a dry bar. He finds booze, and there's never really any question that he'll put the bottle away once he knows it's there.

But was there a guiding hand that led Whip onto the flight that would change his life? His co-pilot seems to think so. A deeply religious man, he's convinced that, drunk as Whip was, no other man could have saved those hundred souls. He's not the only one. The aviation authorities run tests with ten pilots in simulators. No-one else could land the plane in the way Whip did. Which brings up a very interesting question. Was it Whip's flyboy skills that put his plane safely in a field, or was it that the booze and drugs in his system kept him calm and allowed him to make unorthodox decisions? There's a moral ambiguity here that Zemeckis and his writer John Gatins leave unanswered right up until the very last moments of the film, when Whip gets the chance to prove what we've suspected all along; he's an honourable man who won't let anyone else take the blame for his mistakes.

Flight is an astonishing piece of work. Tense, funny, sharply observed and played by a crack team of actors, at times utterly jaw-dropping. The plane crash is career-best work from Zemeckis, and had me grabbing the arm of my seat in dizzy panic. But the final hearing is as tense and thrilling as the opening setpiece. If anything, it's more riveting, as you're witness to a man battling for, and regaining, his soul. Whip Whittaker is a complex man, and Denzel Washington nails everything about him, bringing out the ugly with the heroic. Watch out for John Goodman too, who steals every frame of screen time he's in as Whip's drugs guru and enabler.

The smart money seems to be on Spielberg's Lincoln sweeping the board at the Oscars later in the week. I'm not so sure. With a central performance this good, I think Messers Zemeckis and Washington could provide a bit of a surprise on the night.

In the meantime, I'm going to start pitching up to the movies a little more randomly. I like being surprised, especially if the end result is so good.

 

Heart Before Braaaains: Clive Saw “Warm Bodies”.

 

We are legion. We congregate in the dark, seeking… fresh meat… new blood. Our eyes have witnessed countless deaths, innumerable maimings, and no small number of castrations. And now a collective groan rises from the gore-soaked horde; for we are horror fans, and we have just heard the words, “The New Twilight”, used in association with a new zombie movie.

Meanwhile, fans of ‘Twilight’ – or Twi-hards if you prefer – wait with bated breath to see which of a number of competing movies can possibly take the place of their beloved franchise. Team Edward and Team Jacob are spoilt for choice this year. Within the space of two weeks they’re getting both ‘Warm Bodies’ (Twilight with zombies), and ‘Beautiful Creatures’ (Twilight with witches). Then, later in the year comes the adaptation of ‘Twilight’ author Stephenie Meyer’s novel ‘The Host’ (Twilight with aliens). First up: ‘Warm Bodies’.

‘Warm Bodies’ is a Rom-Zom-Com (to use the term coined by Edgar Wright to describe his breakthrough hit ‘Shaun of the Dead’) adapted from Isaac Marion’s novel by writer/director Jonathan Levine (‘50/50’; ‘All The Boys Love Mandy Lane’). It tells the story of R (Nicholas Hoult – ‘X-Men: First Class’; ‘A Single Man’), a zombie who retains a tiny spark of humanity, despite his craving for human flesh. When R meets Julie (Teresa Palmer – ‘I Am Number Four’), a human survivor, he falls in love. R attempts to win the affections of Julie, facing opposition from both his undead kindred, and the heavily-armed humans lead by Julie’s father Grigio (John Malkovich – ‘RED’; ‘Burn After Reading’), who want to shoot him in the head.

So is ‘Warm Bodies’ the new ‘Twilight’? In short: No. Despite casting a lead actress who looks like a younger blonder Kristin Stewart, and having a male protagonist who practices abstinence (of the flesh-eating kind rather than the sexual kind), this lacks both the central love triangle and the sexual chemistry of the first ‘Twilight’ (the only one of that franchise I’ve seen). Regrettably, where it most closely resembles ‘Twilight’ is in its taking of a horror staple and sanding off all the rough edges until you’re left with something NOT-horror. Something… sparkly.

For a movie that snags memes from numerous zombie films, there’s little actual ‘Zom’ in this Rom-Zom-Com. Its one innovation is to divide the zombies into two tribes: ‘normal’ comparatively pretty zombies and the ‘Bonies’ – the inhuman skeletal CGI menaces they eventually devolve into. How fresh this film seems to you will largely depend on how much of a genre fan you are. Hardcore horror fans will recognise the rest of the ‘new’ ideas in ‘Warm Bodies’ from other movies:

Human/Zombie romance – ‘Return of the Living Dead 3’;
Zombies who can speak – ‘Return of the Living Dead’;
The evolution of the Undead – ‘Land of the Dead’;
Music evoking humanity in Zombies – ‘Dawn of the Dead’ (Romero);
Zombie as hero – ‘Colin’.

The list goes on… We also get yet another re-tread of the tired ‘human pretends to be a zombie to fool zombies' bit from ‘Shaun of the Dead’ and an amusing visual reference to ‘Zombie’ (aka. Lucio Fulci’s ‘Zombie Flesh Eaters’).

‘Warm Bodies’ sets up Romero-esque slow moving zombies (R comments wryly on how slow and un-coordinated he is in one of the funnier passages of voiceover). However, it constantly bends its own narrative rules whenever it needs to. Being chased by fast-moving Bonies? Suddenly the ‘normal’ zombies find a burst of speed. Keeping the exact nature of the zombie evolution nebulous means the film just about gets away with these inconsistencies.

Just as Jonathan Levine’s movie uses its zombie film trappings to disguise a conventional Rom-Com, it similarly uses its other main source as mere window dressing. ‘Warm Bodies’ is a very loose adaptation of Shakespeare’s ‘Romeo and Juliet’. All the main movie characters have been named after counterparts in the play. Thus Romeo becomes R, Juliet – Julie, Mercutio – M, and so on. There’s also a version of the famous balcony scene. But just as with the zombie source material, anything from ‘Romeo and Juliet’ that’s dark or passionate or difficult gets jettisoned.

If you can put all of that out of your mind, ‘Warm Bodies’ is a sweet teen romantic comedy. Nicholas Hoult is a warm and charismatic lead, and his voiceover is gently amusing. There’s nice comic support too from Rob Corddry (‘Hot Tub Time-Machine’) as R’s best mate M, Analeigh Tipton (‘Damsels In Distress’) as Julie’s BFF Nora, and from the ever reliable John Malkovich who voices every horror fan’s exasperation with the woolly thinking behind the zombies’ evolution: “They haven’t suddenly become vegan!” Also, there are flashes of wit and self-awareness (see the use of Rob Orbison’s song ‘Oh, Pretty Woman’). This may very well be the first zombie movie made that my Rom-Com loving Mum would like.

The irony here is that ‘Night of the Living Dead’ and the other key New Wave of American Horror movies (‘The Texas Chainsaw Massacre’; ‘The Last House On The Left’) were angry punk films made by disillusioned hippies. ‘Warm Bodies’, on the other hand, is a drippy hippy movie that preaches that love can transform even those who are dead inside. However, the poisonous subtext here is that those who are unable to open themselves up to love are labelled evil and brutally exterminated. Also, this is a movie where beauty is equated to goodness, and ugliness to evil.

Not so sweet after all. Like the High Priest of Punk John Lydon said: “Never trust a hippy.”

 

State Of The Union: Clive Saw “Lincoln”.

It is a face familiar to us all. Not movie star handsome, but strong and instantly recognisable.

The grey flecked beard. The kind eyes bordered with laughter lines. The trademark hat.

Yes, we’re all familiar with director Steven Spielberg. Perhaps because of that, we can and do take him for granted.

The Academy Award winning director who has brought us: ‘Jaws’; ‘Raiders of the Lost Ark’; ‘E.T.: The Extra-Terrestrial’; ‘Schindler’s List’ and ‘Saving Private Ryan’ – to name just a few. The producer who brought us: ‘Back to the Future’; ‘Gremlins’ and ‘Poltergeist’. The co-founder of DreamWorks studios, and the wunderkind turned pillar of the movie establishment. We’ve got used to Spielberg bringing out great movies decade after decade, and his prolific output means you’re seldom more than two years away from the next one.

But lest you think I’m writing this as a starry-eyed acolyte who believes Spielberg can do no wrong, let me just make clear that as much as I love the films I’ve listed above, I found the last three films of his I saw disappointing (‘Munich’; ‘Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull’; and ‘The Adventures of Tintin: The Secret of the Unicorn’ – I’ve yet to see ‘War Horse’).

Now Spielberg has teamed up with Emmy Award winning playwright Tony Kushner (‘Angels in America’) to tackle another piece of American history, and the resulting movie comes garlanded with yet more Academy Award and BAFTA Award nominations.

It’s a project explicitly designed as awards bait, right? America’s greatest living director on America’s greatest president. Tony Kushner, having looked at Aids, now turns his attention to the issue of slavery. Add in Academy Award winning actors Daniel Day-Lewis (‘My Left Foot’; ‘There Will Be Blood’); Sally Field (‘Norma Rae’; ‘Places In The Heart’); Tommy Lee Jones (‘The Fugitive’); and it’s almost pre-ordained that this film be nominated for the big awards.

However the danger with all of that is that from the outside, ‘Lincoln’ seems almost as monolithic as the portrait of President’s Lincoln in Monument Valley, Utah. It’s the cinematic equivalent of being told to ‘eat your greens’. Go and see this movie, it’s IMPORTANT, it’s about an IMPORTANT subject. Worst of all: YOU’LL LEARN SOMETHING.

So let’s strip away all of that awards hoopla, and all of that stuff about this being an important work of Art and get to the film itself.

‘Lincoln’ tells the story of Abe’s attempt to get the 13th Amendment to the United States Constitution ratified by Congress, to make Slavery illegal in the U.S. and safeguard his 1863 Emancipation Proclamation. As if that wasn’t enough, he was balancing the demands of the Civil War against the Confederate states, the warring elements within his own party, the conflicts within his family, and within himself.

This is no great sweeping biopic that skims over the highlights of a well-spent life. ‘Lincoln’ focuses on just one small portion of President Lincoln’s life. This narrow focus enables Tony Kushner (adapting the book “Team of Rivals: The Political Genius of Abraham Lincoln” by Doris Kearns Goodwin) to paint a broad canvas with hundreds of speaking parts. The film is as much a procedural about U.S. democracy as it is about the man himself. We get a major subplot involving Radical Anti-slavery campaigner Thaddeus Stevens (Tommy Lee Jones) allying himself with his former enemy. We’re shown the shadier side of lobbying, and Conservative Republicans attempting to facilitate a peace in the Civil War.

Spielberg has always had an eye for great writing. In the past he’s worked with the likes of Richard Matheson, Lawrence Kasdan, Melissa Mathison, Tom Stoppard and David Koepp, to name but a few. But this may be the first time he’s truly deferred to the writer’s vision. Here Spielbergian touches are so far dialled down as to be invisible to all but the most eagle-eyed of viewers. His eye is as assured as ever, and the cinematography of long-time collaborator Janusz Kaminski has a sepia toned beauty, but this is ultimately a writer’s and actors’ showcase.

Like the President Lincoln presented here, this is a movie that loves to talk. So it’s as well that the dialogue the “Who’s Who?” of acting talent got to perform is good. Some scenes, like President Lincoln’s encounter with a Black Corporal (David Oyelowo – ‘Jack Reacher’) who quotes his own Gettysburg Address lines back to him, show too obviously the hand of a dramatist who’s making a didactic point. But even those scenes still work as dramatic scenes.

This talkiness may put off some people. At times it does feel like the movie boils down to scene after scene of be-wigged and be-whiskered men haranguing each other. But that’s ignoring how witty much of the movie is, with Tommy Lee Jones garnering the lion’s share of zingers. There’s fine comic support too, from dodgy politicos James Spader (‘Secretary’), John Hawkes (‘The Sessions’) and Tim Blake Nelson (‘O Brother Where Art Thou?’), playing nicely against David Strathairn’s (‘Good Night and Good Luck’) straight-laced Secretary of State, William H. Seward. There is also respite from the political struggles in the nicely judged scenes between Lincoln and his wife Mary (Sally Field), and those with his sons Robert (Joseph Gordon-Levitt – ‘Dark Knight Rises’) and Tad (Gulliver McGrath – ‘Hugo’).

Ultimately though, a movie called ‘Lincoln’ will stand or fall based on its Lincoln. Spielberg reportedly courted Daniel Day-Lewis for years before getting his man, and Day-Lewis repays his faith admirably here. Surrounded by great actors, he rises to the occasion and gives a truly great performance. This is magical and magnetic stuff, with Day-Lewis seeming to disappear inside the imposing presence of President Abraham Lincoln. He richly deserves his many award nominations and I’d be surprised if he doesn’t win the Best Actor Oscar.

Perhaps ‘Lincoln’ is too in awe of its leading character to truly show all sides of the man. We get glimpses of darkness in scenes with his wife and his son Robert, but generally this is a very warm portrait. There’s also a sense that Lincoln is being painted as a secular American saint, a martyr to the cause of the United States of America (particularly in a coda scene that depicts a fallen Lincoln like the crucified Jesus surrounded by his apostles). There’s occasional cheesiness too with the John Williams score underlining any emotions in bold minor-scale curlicues.

However, none of these minor qualms can distract from the movie’s many strengths. ‘Lincoln’ is Spielberg’s best movie for a decade; moving, amusing and absorbing. Don’t be put off by the Awards hype – go see it.

The Final Word On Out Of Hours?

An unexpected treat from the Raindance screening of Out Of Hours.

Last year was a hella year for Leading Man Clive. His short film, the tight urban thriller Out Of Hours had its premiere at the Raindance Festival back in September. But the promo work he did for it is only just starting to make its way out into the bloggosphere, Twitterverse and Facebooktown.

Behold, Readership, the interview that Clive and co-writer/producer Stuart Wright recorded for Raindance TV. Short, snappy and filled with good stuff… just like the film.

 

If you're interested in finding out more about the filming of Out Of Hours, Stu and I put together a fairly comprehensive shooting diary between us. If you like low-to-no budget film-making, they're worth your time.

DAY ONE: Available Light

DAY TWO: Darker Light

DAY THREE: God's Own Light

DAY FOUR: Final Light

DAY FIVE: Fading Becomes Extra Light

 

Grail Quest: The Hunt For Meaning And Osama Bin Laden in “Zero Dark Thirty”

The following has been designated EYES ONLY BLACK LEVEL

 

CIA Code Intercept: AA078XHT_13

TOP SECRET – FOR YOUR EYES ONLY

Full Transcript follows:

 

Time: XXXXXXX

Location: INFORMATION REDACTED (Level A1)

 

Speakers Identified as:

Rob Wickings [confirmed links to ‘The Reading Faction’ and the UKZDL] –

HENCEFORTH RW

Clive Ashenden [see file #8H57856969 – Prague; file #8K00017868 - Cairo] –

HENCEFORTH CA

Chris Rogers [suspected M15 case officer]

HENCEFORTH CR

 

 

CA:

‘Zero Dark Thirty’ is the story of the hunt for Osama Bin Laden. CIA operative Maya (Jessica Chastain: ‘Lawless’; ‘The Help’) – a composite character based on several real life CIA operatives – joins up just after the infamous series of al-Qaeda terrorist attacks on US soil on September 11th 2001. We follow the hunt from her perspective from 2001 through to the eventual raid by US Navy SEALS and the death of Bin Laden in May 2011.

The movie starts with a card informing us that ‘Zero Dark Thirty’ is “based on first-hand accounts of actual events”. Then over black we hear audio recordings from 9/11; a simple white on black title card: “September 11, 2001”. After this sober opening we watch as Maya is initiated into the life of a CIA field operative by Dan (Jason Clarke: ‘Lawless’; ‘Public Enemies’); and the use of torture as an interrogation technique.

So, I guess we should begin with the big controversy. There have been lots of heated words bandied around about this film, and a lot of vitriol targeted at director Kathryn Bigelow. It all centres around one question: Does ‘Zero Dark Thirty’ perpetuate the myth that torture is effective? Or to put it even more specifically: Does it say that Osama Bin Laden would not have been found without the use of torture?

CR:

Any film claiming to be based on real events will provoke questions as to the precise meaning of that phrase this time round, and quite rightly too. Not unexpectedly, its director Kathryn Bigelow and screenwriter Mark Boal have been condemned for depicting – wrongly, in those critics’ view – a key piece of intelligence as being sourced from the practise of ‘enhanced interrogation techniques’, including waterboarding, on detainees held in CIA ‘black’ (deniable) sites. Many have also directed opprobrium at the film for condoning, apparently by logical extension from the above, such methods.

Leaving aside whether this type of criticism is relevant when assessing what is after all a drama, the fact is that Zero Dark Thirty’s narrative is bookended with on-screen disclaimers so carefully worded that no-one could be under any apprehension that what falls between is a documentary, in every respect beholden to the truth. The film is more heavily wrapped in caveats than the US flag, which fortunately frees one to adjudicate on its merits as a piece of cinema rather than a piece of propaganda.

Those controversial scenes open the film, which has the effect of dropping the viewer as well as Jessica Chastain’s Maya into the story not at the beginning but at some point thereafter; we do not know how detainee Ammar arrived or what he did, only that what he knows is important. Dan, the CIA agent asking the questions, is a neatly-drawn character for whom this is just another job and where, away from the restrictions of D.C., he can grow a beard and keep pet monkeys. A thoroughly convincing portrayal by Jason Clarke lends real believability to this man who could be from Silicon Valley, California instead of Langley, Virginia. Despite these suggestions of freedom leading to improper behaviour, it is still difficult to understand how Bigelow and Boal’s rather dispassionate delineation of the torture itself could be interpreted as endorsement.

CA:

The movie certainly doesn’t shy away from its torture scenes. As the movie is told chronologically, we get all the torture in the first twenty minutes of the film.

For me, as with much of the movie there’s some ambiguity here. That’s largely due to the spare documentary style Bigelow employs, and the question of just how much US government/military assistance was provided to the production. Writer Mark Boal is a journalist, and brings an unsentimental eye to the hunt. But is this ‘embedded’ journalism? The movie doesn’t say torture works, but crucially it doesn’t 100% say it doesn’t work either. We see torture not working on one suspect, then a more friendly approach yielding results. But would that new approach have worked without applying the torture first? Ambiguity though, is not the same as tacit approval.

RW:

I'm with Chris on this one. I'll admit to a feeling of bemusement around the claims that Zero Dark Thirty is in any way an endorsement of torture. The plain fact is that Dan, Maya and their cohort get nothing useful from their sessions in the black sites. In fact, the opposite is true. Witness the moment before Ammar is locked into a box, when he's asked on what day an attack is likely to happen. Ammar, sobbing, lists all seven days of the week. For me, it's pretty clear that good old fashioned tradecraft and, when all else fails bribery are the tools that led Maya and her team to Osama's compound.

CR:

Moving freely from Pakistan to Afghanistan to Washington, Boal’s screenplay maintains one’s interest whilst Bigelow’s camerawork and Greg Fraser’s superb digital cinematography seduces one’s eye. As in The Hurt Locker, Bigelow often favours medium and wide shots when framing her action and relatively long takes, a refreshing approach that allows the locations to breathe and reflects the evident care put into set decoration, atmosphere casting and location (Jordan and India stand in for Afghanistan and Pakistan, though not without controversy in the case of the latter). This is especially rewarding in two sequences when teams successfully attempt to locate the phone signal from bin Laden’s courier in crowded markets and emplace look-outs along the highway that he travels to find his home. The colour palette shifts from warm oranges, golds and browns in the day-lit desert scenes to cool white office interiors to the startlingly-rendered grey night of the final act.

Both of these stylistic choices come together in one of the film’s most effective scenes, as a CIA team awaits a long-planned meeting with a vital contact. Taking place at an American military base in the open desert, it stretches from the morning to late afternoon and is an essay in tonality and tension that rises to a remarkable height before breaking. It is of course closely reminiscent of the audacious sniper duel in The Hurt Locker, and shows a film-maker in complete control of the medium.

CA:

‘Zero Dark Thirty’ is, by its nature, narrow of focus. This means you really get into the mind-set of Maya, and her mono-maniacal dedication to the hunt. We only get two sequences where Maya isn’t central to things. Both are impressive action set pieces.

This narrow focus also leaves the film open to accusations of being one-eyed in its depiction of Moslems and Pakistanis. Much like another film based on true story where US troops are involved a helicopter crash, which also has a three word title taken from US army terminology: ‘Black Hawk Down’. Just like that Ridley Scott movie (again made with US Military assistance), in ‘Zero Dark Thirty’, we never get to know any non-American characters. However, Bigelow and Boal’s treatment of the story eschews the jingoism and simple ‘Cowboys and Indians’ set up of ‘Black Hawk Down’. Jessica Chastain’s Maya is isolated from the local community, and we see the cost she pays for that.

RW:

For me, Maya's utter monomania is key to a true understanding of the film. She deliberately isolates herself from anything that isn't the hunt. To be fair, when she tries to be a human being, she's punished for it; her friendship with the character of Jennifer Ehle is punished two-fold, in a pair of bomb attacks that have a dreadful cost. You could, I guess, make the point that she is on her own, solitary jihad–a cause to which she dedicates her life. Perhaps that's too neat a comparison, although the fact that you rarely see her in an environment where she isn't working speaks volumes.

CR:

As the links in the chain from the 9/11 attacks – here presented surprisingly coyly and far less imaginatively than in, say, Michael Moore’s Fahrenheit 9/11; a further refutation of the ‘gung-ho’ criticism – to the location of bin Laden are painstakingly forged, a decade passes. Though signposted by captioned re-creations of further real-life al-Quaida attacks, this progression is less clearly marked in Maya. Her evolution from distasteful observer of torture to active encourager seems rushed and unconvincing. Her tears in the final shot read less as a sign of regret at her transformation than a straightforward show of relief at a tough job completed. Much more could have been done with a character that frustratingly remains a cypher, a simple touchstone for the audience, and so disappointingly the petite, flame-haired Chastain is accordingly underserved by writer and director alike. She delivers a performance that can only be described as adequate for the role as seen.

RW:

I disagree, Chris. ZD30 is Chastain's movie, and I think she clearly shows the awful cost that gets paid when you devote everything to a cause. From the very beginning, she's on point and utterly ready to take anything the job throws at her. Her first day on the job has her witnessing, in fact complicit, in detainee torture. I read her final shedding of tears as regret that the job has been done, terror that she needs to find a new purpose in life. Alone, as the loading bay doors of the transport close on her, we see the saddest of creatures–a warrior who has erased her role in an unending war.

CA:

Much like its uber-professional heroine, this is an easier film to admire than it is to love. It starts very dry, its faux-documentary style mixing time-marking reconstructions of real terrorist events with actual news footage. This is an approach reminiscent of the Gillo Pontecorvo 1966 classic ‘Battle of Algiers’. Then it gradually gets more Hollywood movie-like as it goes on, bringing in more of Alexandre Desplat’s score, and familiar faces in cameo roles: Mark Strong! James Gandolfini! John Barrowman! Until it emerges, like a moth from chrysalis as a fully formed thriller in the vein of ‘Zodiac’; another story about a similarly obsessed protagonist on a personal crusade to find one man.

CR:

Bigelow’s selection of actors in their thirties and forties to play the SEAL team principals – Joel Edgerton is 43, Chris Pratt 33 – is a small but telling example of her skill; as Mark Bowden wrote in Black Hawk Down, US special forces soldiers are generally older than their regular army comrades. And with nothing of the true nature of the so-called ‘Silent Hawk’ stealth helicopters used on the raid having yet reached the public domain beyond the now-famous image of a tail boom section from the aircraft that had to be destroyed, production designer Jeremy Hindle and art director Todd Cherniawsky have crafted a compelling representation from a mix of real-world sources. Like angular tadpoles machined from graphite, the helicopters are realised in the physical and digital realms and add a further layer of (un)reality to this most daring of missions.

With the helicopters’ flight through the mountains to their target, Fraser’s cinematography comes into its own. Night-time is rendered an extraordinary, dusty grey, quite unlike the deep blues commonly used, and is far more arresting as a result.

As the team hits the ground in Abbottabad the score fades to silence and the penetration of the apparently dormant compound and its house begins. The SEALs, with their bug-eyed night-vision goggles and advanced weaponry, move from space to space in an extended, real-time sequence that exerts tremendous tension, not least through its presentation as a kind of shared sensory deprivation experience. With no music, minimal dialogue and a limited field of vision that mimics the ghostly green of the soldiers’ goggles, we hear and see what the SEALs hear and see: the concussion of breaching charges, flurries of hot orange sparks, the sickly yellow beams of infra-red laser pointers, the soft sound of suppressed gunshots, the suffocating grey of that night.

That the act leading to the final outcome almost passes un-noticed and is eventually shown with subtlety and restraint is admirable. Throughout this battle histrionics are abandoned in favour of precision, caution and professionalism on behalf of both the soldiers and the film-makers; Bigelow permits her heroes and heroines only the briefest of celebrations.

RW:

The final section of the film is, of course, a masterpiece of action cinema, but it shook me a little. As if the shock of the appearance of John Barrowman as a gruff Beltway commando wasn't enough, all of a sudden we're in Area 51 with a bunch of futuristically-dressed black ops and a brace of stealth copters. It's a setup that's straight out of Aliens, complete with mystery female operative briefing the guys on the most secret of secret missions. Saddle up, ladies. For a moment, I wondered if they'd switched reels on me.

If you wanted to be unfair, you might say that for that sequence Bigelow had cribbed a mood-board from her ex-hubby. I don't, so I won't. But James Cameron's expropriation of razor-edge miltech for his Colonial Marines has bled into action cinema narrative to such an extent that night-vision and queerly silenced full-auto fire feel science-fictional even when they're quite clearly not. Somehow, it feels less real than it should. Maya's dream brought to grainy, flicker-green light.

This shift from tense espionage to balls-out action switches in and out with oiled precision. This is as it should be. The closing 45 minutes of the movie is the bit that a lot of viewers have been waiting for, so it's appropriate that there's a solid, firm gear change. The shift back out is equally smooth–perhaps a little too smooth. It takes you a moment after the film to refocus, to understand that the clean military action included the killing of women and unarmed civilians. Not so clean after all. There's a reason that Bigelow keeps the celebrations to a low glow–there's been too much suffering since 2001 for Osama's death to be any more than a Pyrric victory. Revenge won't unkill any of the victims in Towers One and Two, or the victims of 7/7.

CA:

From its opening card to its end frame “Zero Dark Thirty” is a slippery tale, jealously keeping certain information from the audience, blurring fact and fiction and keeping its true motivations shadowy. So – much like a real CIA operative then. And yet… this film has stayed with me and for one reason: Maya.

It’s an impressive performance by Jessica Chastain, and one deserving of all the award nominations bestowed on it. But there’s something about the character of Maya that’s fascinating. Set up as a kind of modern day Sir Galahad – she’s even taken a vow of chastity, dismissing sex with the words: “I’m not one of those girls that f*ck. It’s unbecoming.” On the search for her Holy Grail (Bin Laden), she forswears all personal relationships in favour of the quest.

‘Zero Dark Thirty’ also casts Maya as the vanguard of a new generation of intelligence agents replacing the old Cold Warriors. The main difference between the two generations is clear: belief. Maya is a believer. Tellingly, she accuses Jennifer Ehle’s Jessica of “Pre-9/11 thinking.” Near the end, James Gandolfini’s bigwig asks for the odds that the compound they’ve found is Bin Laden’s bolt-hole. Only Maya is unequivocal. This is because Maya is a fundamentalist. That’s the subversive moral of this story. ‘Zero Dark Thirty’ says the only way to catch a fundamentalist is to send a fundamentalist.

But Maya can also be read as a portrait of the USA post-9/11. She dedicated everything to getting Bin Laden. Then she got him. But she is left isolated and friendless, with the question of transport plane pilot ringing in her ears: “Where do you want to go?” That’s the haunting question we’re left with. What now for the USA?

CR:

Ultimately Zero Dark Thirty is an extremely competent drama with a handful of stand-out scenes, but nothing more. It does not promote torture and does not seek to present itself as something it is not. These are virtues in context of the subject, but it suffers from a lead role that is disappointingly pedestrian and supporting performances that are arguably too naturalistic for conventional recognition. There are many good points but no cogent argument for greatness.

RW:

Zero Dark Thirty treads the same dirty road as The Hurt Locker, and considers the same subject: 21st century warfare and the dreadful effects it has on the men and women who fight it. By conflating this with the story of the hunt for one of the world's most hated men, though, some of that focus and passion that made the earlier film so memorable is, bizarrely, lost. There's more at stake, and you can't blame Katherine Bigelow and Mark Boal for walking that road with a little more care. ZD30 is a less angry and more thoughtful film than its predecessor. That's understandable, but as Chris notes waaaay back at the beginning of this piece, the film-makers tread so carefully that any lasting footprints become hard to see. Jessica Chastain's muted, realistic performance is a polarising force here. Maya is so central to the film that if you don't buy into her, you don't buy into the film as a whole.

I did. Zero Dark Thirty is an astonishing technical achievement, with a remarkable final action sequence. It also has a handle on the awful attrition grinding away at modern warriors, in a battlefield without traditional boundaries, and a war with no clear goals or end. If Maya seems less than human, then that is because 9/11 and the events thereafter have stripped her humanity away.

 

 

AA078XHT_13: —-Transcript ends—-

 

[FURTHER INTEL: Chris Rogers is a writer on visual culture, architecture and the fascinating intersections between them. You can find him on his very well-respected website, and we heartily recommend you do so. Excuses And Half Truths is both humbled and honoured that he chose to join Clive and I for this epic dissection of Zero Dark Thirty. We hope to be able to invite him back soon.]

http://www.chrismrogers.net

 

 

 

 

 

 

“St Trinian’s On Crack.”

Just a quickie to note that Satan's Schoolgirls has garnered its first five-star review.

For every self-published author, that all-important first review is a big deal. It can make a real difference. A review means that readers have a point of reference as to the quality of the book. That can make the decision to buy the book that little bit simpler.

Thanks so much to Tony Armitt for the glowing review (which you can read here). If you've read and enjoyed Satan's Schoolgirls, I'd urge you to take a minute and drop a review on its Amazon page. You're not just flattering my ego–you're making it possible for me to write more.

 

That Perfect Morsel: X&HT Saw Jiro Dreams Of Sushi

In a tiny, ten-seat restaurant tucked into an unprepossessing corner of Tokyo's Ginza Metro station, a man called Jiro is quietly making the best sushi in the world.

Sukiyobashi Jiro has three Michelin stars. To get in, you need to book at least a month in advance, for a meal that will cost upwards of ¥30,000. You could be finished in 15 minutes. Jiro's place is not a restaurant to sit and relax. He makes your sushi one piece at a time, in front of you, and will watch carefully as you eat it–preferably by popping the whole piece into your gob in one go. If you're left-handed, he will notice and adjust the way the next piece goes onto the plate accordingly. Do you want appetisers? A choice of drinks and nibbles? A selection of entrees, noodles or curries? Tough. Go somewhere else. Jiro makes sushi. That's all he does, and all he's done for the last 75 years.

David Gelb's remarkable documentary explores Jiro's world in a way that the sushi master would find appropriate; in detail, with a careful eye to composition and content. Up front, we are presented with his philosophy. Find your path, and devote your life to travelling it. He is stoic, driven and never satisfied. At 85, he works with as much focus and energy as a man half–hell, three-quarters his age. Initially, you see him as a monomaniac, almost a monster. He has given his life to the creation of morsels of raw fish and vinegared rice. He has talked both his sons into following him into the business. His eldest is still his sous chef, at the age of 50.

Jiro may come across on first impressions as intimidating, scary even. But there's a dry strand of warmth and humour wound through him, a love for the craft and knowledge of making something delicious that has you mellow towards him. He cares so much about the food, about the whole experience of walking through the door at Sukiyobashi Jiro. That passion, that will to sacrifice so much to the perfect delivery of something so very special comes off the screen with such force that you end up feeling a little overwhelmed.

As someone that enjoys cooking, and in seeing the reaction of people enjoy that food, I connected almost instantly with Jiro, his family and the restaurant. It help that the film is so beautifully composed, shot and lit. It's an elegant, carefully constructed and thoughtful experience that lifted me out of Oxford on a rainy Tuesday afternoon.

If you're a fan of food, art, Japanese culture, engrossing family stories or tales of success against the odds, then you owe it to yourself to track down a screening or DVD of Jiro Dreams Of Sushi. A quietly cleansing and wholly engrossing piece of work.

 

Break The Chain: Clive And Rob Saw Django Unchained

This is a very long post about a very long film.

Over the course of the last week, both Clive and I have seen Tarantino's latest, the spaghetti blaxploitationer Django Unchained. We feel that it's nowhere near his best, and we feel that you need to be told that, at length. We apologise in advance for the inconvenience.

 

 

Clive: A man with piercing blue eyes staggers out of the desert into a Western frontier town, dragging a coffin. That’s the striking opening of Sergio Corbucci’s 1966 Spaghetti Western, ‘Django’. Then after many years, and many more sequels (both official and unofficial), another movie bearing the ‘Django’ name hits town. This time, the man dragging a heavy burden behind him is Quentin Tarantino. That’s because every movie he brings to town is “A Film by Quentin Tarantino,” and must carry all the baggage that comes with that.

However, for the moment, let’s have Tarantino lay that burden down and go check those mean looking six-guns in with the local sheriff, while we look at: ‘Django Unchained.’

In the pre-Civil War American South, Django (Jamie Foxx: ‘Ray’; ‘Miami Vice’) is a slave. After winning his freedom and learning a new trade, he teams up with former dentist Dr. King Schultz (Christoph Waltz: ‘Inglourious Basterds’; ‘Carnage’), on a mission to rescue his wife Broomhilda (Kerry Washington: ‘Ray’; ‘Fantastic Four’) from the clutches of monstrous Mississippi plantation owner Calvin Candie (Leonardo DiCaprio: ‘Inception’; ‘J. Edgar’).

Tarantino’s movie-making has explored the notion of the elaborate revenge fantasy for some time. ‘Kill Bill: Vol. 1’ and ‘Kill Bill: Vol. 2’ took the personal revenge movie, stripped it down to its scanties, then dressed it back up with some of his favourite genre tropes. In ‘Inglourious Basterds’ he rewrote World War Two as a revenge story where Jews are able to exact personal revenge on the Nazis. So it was natural to expect ‘Django Unchained’ to similarly reinvent slavery-era American South as a revenge movie.

However – initially at least – Tarantino eschews that path. The first part of the movie plays out in a humorous spaghetti western mode. Django learns the bounty-hunting business from another of Tarantino’s amoral but heroic killers. Indeed, Dr. King Schultz could be the most polite killer the Western has seen since Klaus Kinski’s character in Sergio Corbucci’s ‘Il Grande Silenzio’ (aka ‘The Big Silence’/‘The Great Silence’). Django and King’s encounters with stupid rednecks are played broadly comic, and would not be out of place in ‘Blazing Saddles’.

Rob: and here we start to get to my big problem with the film. It's two stories rolled into one, with the accompanying hit in screen time. Django Unchained is two hours and forty-six minutes long. It's over an hour before we hear mention of the supposed main villain of the piece, let along actually meet the guy. We'll talk more about the unacceptable amount of bloat in the screenplay in a bit, because MAN, does DU start to drag its heels. I don't normally have this problem with Tarantino–my favourites of his both feature extended longeurs, and I delight in his big dialogue-heavy setpieces. And indeed, I like slow elegiac Westerns. But this film is being sold as a pulpy slavengeance cowboy film. It should move more quickly than this.

Clive: In the second half of the film, the two allies journey to Candieland, and we get the main action of the film. To my surprise, I was reminded very heavily of the Michael Ritchie film ‘Midnight Sting’ (aka ‘Diggstown’). Django and King are essentially trying to pull a con on Calvin Candie. There are nods to ‘Mandingo’ too, in the framing of this con. Then, there is a final section, which I will skip over to avoid major spoilers.

Rob: About that sting. I don't get it. Django and King Shultz are successful bounty hunters, with a decent bankroll. Calvin Candie, for all his shortcomings as an evil slave trader and all, is first and foremost a businessman. Why not just buy Broomhilda back? Maybe the reason for that was outlined at the point where I had to take a pee. I'm getting on, can't hold it in like I used to and did I mention that this film is getting on for three hours long? It's not surprising that my attention wandered.

Clive: The good news first: ‘Django Unchained’ has all the strengths of Tarantino at his best. He still knows how to write great scenes which utilise suspense and twist off in unexpected directions. His flair for dialogue and monologues remains undimmed, and in Christoph Waltz, he has found an actor who can speak Tarantino-ese as though it were his native tongue. He coaxes some fine memorable performances from his cast and in particular from his chief villains: Leonardo DiCaprio and Samuel L. Jackson. There’s also the trademark use of excellent music, both found and original.

Rob: Yes, yes and yes. The acting is uniformly outstanding. Christophe Waltz rolls Tarantino's dialogue round his tonsils like a fine wine. DiCaprio shows some threat and venom as the villainous Candie, and Sam Jackson plays the house slave Stephen with reptilian brio. A real nasty piece of work. He's stated in interviews that he wanted people to hate him in this movie. He's done a damn fine job.

Clive: As the film progresses though, the problems begin to mount up. For all the fun stuff you get in ‘Django Unchained’, you have to put up with lot of bloat and repetition. There’s a point in the narrative where it feels like a climax, but then the story crawls on for another half an hour before it ends. If he’d just reworked the first climax, he could still have got the resolution he wanted – and without us having to suffer Tarantino’s grim Australian accent.

One group of stupid racists is funny, by the fourth lot the joke has worn thin – likewise with his stylistic tics. The slo-mo gore that accompanies every gunshot loses its effectiveness as the film wears on. As if aware of this, he ups the body count too, but more isn’t always more.

Rob: Which I'd call the watch-phrase for the film as a whole. Tarantino isn't known for his restraint, but in DU he really piles it on. The gore is extra-chunky. Gunfire launches cowboys backwards off horses. As for the plot–repetitive doesn't really describe it. The film goes round and round, pounding every point it needs to make in with a lump hammer, then pulling it out to be able to pound it back in again. This heavy-handed approach doesn't suit the material, or do anything for the forward motion of the plot.

Then of course, there's that word.

Clive: You could write a book on Tarantino’s use of the N-word in his movies, and here he seems intent on finding every possible use: to shock; to amuse; as a racial slur; to insult; to denote unthinking racism; as punctuation… The main one though is to bait and provoke the audience. Like another filmmaker who’s made a film that’s self-consciously ‘about slavery’ – Lars Von Trier's‘ Manderlay’ – he remains a provocateur. Here he doesn’t so much explore racism as gleefully stick his thumb in an old wound.

We also get that other N-word: nudity – full male nudity. Not in itself a problem. However its appearance here is part of Tarantino’s unthinking regurgitation of some of the worst tropes of ‘Mandingo’- style exploitation cinema: Blacks (particularly women) being whipped and abused by whites. Blacks stripped. Black males forced to fight each other. Okay, you need to show the evil of slavery, but often the depiction here edges into territory that feels like… well, exploitation.

Yes, that is Frank Quitely doing Django. Out some time in February.

Rob: None of which would be a problem, ordinarily. And frankly, we could use a little more full male nudity in the cinema. The problem for me is the way Tarantino tries to have his cake and eat it–playing with exploitation tropes while at the same time making a film about “issues” like slavery. Thing is, we get that slavery's bad, and hanging Jamie Foxx up by his heels with his meat and two veg on display doesn't add anything to the debate.

Clive: The depiction of women in ‘Django Unchained’ is disappointing too. Kerry Washington is a fine actress, but here she gets little more to do than suffer tortures and wait for her man to rescue her. As the film explicitly states in King’s dialogue, Broomhilda is a prize at the end of the quest for her Siegfried – Django. If Disney had a princess like that in their animated films now, they’d be rightly castigated. From the writer who co-created Mrs. Mia Wallace, this is disappointing stuff.

Rob: Absolutely. From Pulp Fiction on, one of Tarantino's strengths has been his tough female characters. Hell, my favourite of his films is Jackie Brown. In Django, by comparison, the women are either dimbulbs, princesses awaiting rescue, or masked and silent. The amazing Zöe Bell is one of the trackers; not that you'd know it under that red bandana, which she never takes off. Frankly, in a film that's full of mis-steps and fumbled moments, that's the one that really had me seeing red.

Clive: In his best work Tarantino quotes from cult, genre and exploitation cinema and then twists those moments into something new and fresh. In Django Unchained it feels like he’s stuck in a creative cul-de-sac making movies about other movies. Perhaps it’s time for Quentin to take a page from the Book of Corinthians, rather than the bumper book of Spaghetti Westerns, and ‘Put away childish things.’ I’d love to see him put all his gifts into making a movie about real human beings. Or if that’s too much to ask, maybe just a genre film that’s as lean, inventive and fast moving as ‘Reservoir Dogs.’ That would truly be… cool.

Rob: Quentin Tarantino famously lives on his own in a huge mansion up in the Hollywood Hills, his only companion a huge home cinema. That isolation is starting to show, percolating out into films that are part parody, part homage, and lacking the hand of an editoral voice other than his. He's becoming locked into an increasingly unoriginal cycle. Django Unchained is his second film in a row that takes its identity explicitly from another movie. Although you could argue that all he's doing here is adding another film to the roster of Django movies, it worries me that he couldn't be bothered to put together a new theme tune, choosing to recycle the one from the classic 1966 Franco Nero starrer.

Clive and I were both horribly disappointed with Django Unchained. It's great in parts–well-acted, sizzling dialogue, some brilliant set-pieces. But as a whole it just doesn't hold together. You end up with something that's flabby, bloated and repetitive. Just like this review. How very fucking meta of us.

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Next week, expect more over-length rantage as Clive and I wallow in the Oscar-nommed exploration of the events that led up to the execution of Osama Bin Laden, Zero Dark Thirty.