Cultural Mining

Hi, this is Daniel Garber at the Movies for culturalmining.com and CIUT 89.5 FM.

We’re in the middle of a heat wave, so this week, I’m looking at three new movies that start right in the middle… in the middle of action, thrills and violence. There’s a whistle-blower in the midwest, the take-down of a hero of the middle ages; and a fight between a trafficking ring… and two middle-aged guys.

Disclosure Day

Co-Wri / Dir: Steven Spielberg

It’s midwestern America. Dr Daniel Kellner (Josh O’Connor) is a mathematician on the run. Until yesterday, he worked for Ward X, a shady corporation with Top Secret ties to the US government. Today, though, company thugs have kidnapped Daniel’s girlfriend, Jane (Eve Hewson). The company head, a creepy and controlling  Englishman named Noah Scanlon (Colin Firth), says they’ll trade her in exchange for a mysterious metal bar that Daniel holds. Scanlon claims the device could destroy this earth as we know it, so he’ll stop at nothing to get it back. And he sends his ruthless henchman, Casper (Henry Lloyd-Hughes), to get him. Meanwhile, in Kansas City, TV weather-caster Margaret Fairchild (Emily Blunt) has noticed a big change in her life ever since a red cardinal flew into the apartment she shares with her boyfriend that morning. Immediately afterwards she found herself speaking fluent Russian, and able to intuit other people’s minds. What is going on? Margaret and Daniel have never met, but they share something unusual in common.

You see, in addition to the metal bar Daniel has, he’s also holding a gym bag  filled with government hard drives. And on those drives are top secret files dating back a century, showing photos, films and videos of flying saucers, and crop circles and aliens with enormous heads. It’s all true! The aliens are among us! That’s why the government keeps covering it up. So Daniel — like Ellsberg, Snowden and Manning before him —  plans to release the entire contents on Disclosure Day… But not if Ward X can stop him. 

Disclosure Day is a fun romp about earthlings and aliens, full of surprises, chase scenes and cliff hangers. It has intriguing plot elements and impeccable special effects. The acting — especially Blunt and O’Connor — is terrific. I think Steven Spielberg is trying to recapture the pathos of movies like ET and Close Encounters of the Third Kind, but this one is more like Jurassic Park or Indiana Jones. It’s a family movie — no nudity, sex, or killing, and no tears — and most of the villains behave like keystone cops. The movie is fun to watch. It’s also kind of stupid, with dozens of plot holes, obvious impossibilities, and cartoonish escapes. Ten or 20 years ago, a movie like this would have gratuitous nudity. Now it’s a gratuitous nunnery! Why nuns? I think he wants to add a sense of gravitas that just isn’t there. 

See Disclosure Day for the entertainment value, just don’t think too hard or look for anything deep.

The Death of Robin Hood

Wri/Dir:  Michael Sarnoski

It’s the middle ages,  in a desolate part of England. Robin Hood (Hugh Jackman) is a bitter and penniless old man, who roasts rats over a campfire for sustenance. Though stories of his exploits — and that of his Merry Men — reach far and wide, he describes himself as a brigand and a rogue. And a rogue he is. Anyone who sneaks up on him, or looks at him sideways gets their throat slit and a hammer through the skull. He has killed more men, women a and children than he can remember. Among his Merry Men, only Little John (Bill Skarsgård) remains alive. He murdered a prospective groom, stole his identity and married the bride. And now the dead groom’s family is back with a vengeance, culminating in a massive non-stop orgy of gruesome death and destruction involving trapping men in a burning house, piercing an arrow through a young boys eye, and various stabs, jabs, and the hideous tearing apart of a living man’s face. Robin Hood is also critically wounded, but Little John takes his unconscious body in a rowboat to a remote, wind-tossed island where he is gradually nursed back to health by Sister Brigid (Jodie Comer), a lovely caregiver at a cliff-side priory. 

The island is filled with other lost causes, like a Leper (Murray Bartlett), Little John’s daughter Little Margaret (Faith Delaney), the only survivor, and a young man name Arthur (Noah Jupe), another ghost from the outlaw’s past. But will he ever atone for his sins before his ultimate death?

The Death of Robin Hood is a recasting of the beloved folk hero, who stole from the rich and gave to the poor, into an unforgivable ogre. It features a stellar cast — Jackman, Skarsgard, Comer and Jupe — and the director, Michael Sarnoski, previously brought us truly great movies like Pig. I love this director.

That’s why I was so shocked by how bad a movie the Death of Robin Hood is. The first half hour is a senseless and disgusting onslaught of blood, death and destruction. And then it gets even worse, turning on a dime, from a frenzied berserker to a glacially slow snoozer. Every… line… is… now… spoken… in… slow… motion… with long gaps before each reply. It is absolute torture to watch. I’d rather watch paint dry. If you can last to the very end, let me say the final 5-10 minutes are not bad. But why subject yourself to such a dreadful film?

I recommend you stay far away.

The Furious

Dir: Kenji Tanigaki

It’s a big city in southeast Asia. Navin (Joe Taslim) is a man looking for answers. His wife, a noted investigative journalist, was looking into a corrupt kidnapping and trafficking ring that captures and sells defenceless children in the black market. But his wife has disappeared, and he suspects a certain group of gangsters as responsible.  He decides to track them down and free his wife. 

Wang Wei (Xie Miao) is a mysterious man from China with no online presence — a total cypher —  who makes his living doing odd jobs in a SE Asian metropolis. A widower, he is afraid his tomboyish tween daughter Rainy (Yang Enyou) isn’t safe there. He insists she practice Kung Fu moves, everyday, so she can defend herself. To keep her safe, he plans to send her back to mainland China. But when he tells her, she doesn’t want to go. You don’t love me anymore, she says, and storms out the door…Where she is promptly kidnapped by human traffickers! Wang Wei tries to rescue her, fights hard, but the bad guys triumph and whisk her away. Wang reports the kidnapping, but the corrupt police chief says there’s nothing we can do. So he decides to confront the kidnappers himself. Eventually, he makes his way to a sketchy nightclub and kickboxing emporium, where he recognizes the men who kidnapped Rainy: Ho (Brian Le) an enormous man with a shaved head, and Tak (Yayan Ruhian) a ruthless and wiry killer. Navin and Wang Wei are fighting the same bad guys, but both assume the other is evil. Can the two men learn to trust each other and join forces to fight off a veritable army of ruthless killers? And will they ever find Navin’s wife or Wang Wei’s daughter? 

The Furious is a non-stop martial arts movie about two ordinary men with extraordinary fighting skills confronting the powers that be — a corrupt, upper-class family with close ties to organized crime. It’s exciting and fast moving, with fantastic chase and fight scenes. All the main actors, plus the director himself, don’t need stunt men; they’re all accomplished martial arts fighters in their own right. And they’re trained in a wide variety of styles. 

China was the major source of tourists in Thailand until the numbers plunged a few years ago after a high-profile kidnapping of a Chinese actor, and a later movie called No More Bets which further terrified potential visitors. This film builds on that fear, but has, at least, dubbed out any Thai dialogue or references to that country. It’s actually a polyglot film: shot in Thailand with a Japanese director, Indonesian-style fighting, and Chinese, Indonesian, Thai and Vietnamese-American actors, with dialogue switching back and forth between English and Chinese. 

The fighting in this movie is fantastic, a constant, choreographed spectacle. skilfully done, with ingenious fights in unexpected locations: in a Muay Thai kick-boxing ring, aboard a speeding flatbed truck, or within a dark police station, late at night. OK, the plot is pure melodrama, but way better than most action films.

The Furious is one top-notch martial arts movie.

The Death of Robin Hood, starts next week, and Disclosure Day and The Furious both open this weekend in Toronto; check your local listings. 

This is Daniel Garber at the Movies, each Saturday morning, on CIUT 89.5 FM and on my website  culturalmining.com