Film Review - Che

Hailed by many critics as the first great film of 2009, Steven Soderbergh's epic study of the Cuban Revolution's poster boy is a welcome return to form for the director who has spent the past few years wrestling his indie sensibilities with more mainstream fodder. In Che Part One (Part Two is released in February) he presents a complex and relatively fast-paced account of the revolutionary leader, centring on the 1958 campaign to take Cuba with Fidel Castro.

Benicio Del Toro takes on Ernesto 'Che' Guevara in a performance of impressive restraint which showcases the actor's range considering he first came to most people's attention as the flamboyant Fred Fenster in The Usual Suspects. Fifteen years and one Oscar later and Del Toro portrays Che as an introverted intellectual who follows Castro to Cuba in the late 50s in the hope of spreading the revolution to Latin America.

Dedicated to the cause but never seeming entirely comfortable with a gun, Del Toro's Che is a mysterious and meditative individual around his own people, emanating quiet charisma as he busies himself with the organisation of Castro's grand plan.

Portrayed as a doctor first and military strategist second, his ideological passions are largely restricted to the UN where he picks verbal fights with assembly members in successive flash-forwards to the 60s.

As with Traffic, for which Del Toro won his Oscar, Soderbergh punctuates the film with impressively stark visual styles, the Cuba campaign intercut with scenes shot in grainy black-and-white of Che addressing the UN and facing penetrating questions from Julia Ormond's journalist, his answers to which double as a voiceover narration.

Soderbergh presents both a human drama, and, in the final act, a gripping war movie as the 1959 assault on Santa Clara is depicted practically bullet-by-bullet in an impressive sequence of tense street-fighting.

What's perhaps missing are more probing details on Che himself. While his ideology and personality are depicted with broad brushstrokes, attempts to form a greater understanding of the man beyond the front-line or the training camp are largely sacrificed for the wider view.

First published on InTheNews in January 2009.

Film Review - Max Payne

Let's get one thing straight. There has never been a good movie adaptation of a videogame. From Resident Evil through to Silent Hill and Tomb Raider, while the atmospherics are fairly straightforward to nail, the lack of audience interactivity leads to abject failure via paper-thin plotting and airy substance.

Still, audiences keep paying to watch them and the bottom line is enough motivation for the studios. Unfortunately Max Payne does nothing to break free of genre expectations. As a character, Payne is an almost laughably tough nut. While haunted by a periodic, sepia-toned flashback of his family's murder, he spends his downtime cleaning his guns and blows doors open with his cannon-sized six-shooter when he's chasing a villain. Although Mark Wahlberg does Repressed and Angry very well, probe a layer or two below his limited repertoire of scowls and furrowed brows and you'll be left wanting.

The support cast offers little back-up. Mila Kunis is essentially a poor man's Trinity, who has little to play with and has nothing to offer besides some extra firepower and a handy foil when the audience needs some laborious exposition. Then there's current Bond girl Olga Kurylenko who suffers the indignity of a slink-on, slink-off part in which she loses her clothes and then falls victim to one of the most embarrassing death scenes of the year.

Director John Moore (Behind Enemy Lines, the remake of The Omen) has a history of providing flashy visuals in place of any real substance, and he tries to pull the same trick here. Occasionally diverting action scenes will keep the teens happy but they're ultimately far too Matrix-lite to be truly effective. Of more interest is the look of the city itself, a frozen and barren New York which manages to make an impression throughout, while a series of impressive set-pieces marking the finale will produce an involuntary nod of satisfaction. Would've made a good ten-minute music video, perhaps... You'll find yourself wishing they'd paid as much attention to the screenplay.

First published on InTheNews in November 2008.

At first I thought: 'What am I supposed to do with this?'

Marc Forster reacted in much the same way as the rest of us when the producers of the biggest franchise in cinema history told him the name of the new Bond film. Only thing was, he was the one whose job it was to make it.

Hardly the obvious choice to help pick up where Casino Royale left off, Forster initially took some convincing to sign on the dotted line. He came from a more modest, albeit critically-acclaimed, filmmaking background with the likes of Monster's Ball, Finding Neverland and The Kite Runner on his CV. "Yes, I was surprised," he says, describing during a recent BFI interview the moment the offer came in: "My agent called me and said are you interested in the next Bond film? I said: 'No, not really'."

Despite being very comfortable making lower-budget films ("I could do whatever I wanted, I had final cut, pretty much most of the actors wanted to work with me"), the director set aside his concerns that a blockbuster flop would put him out of work for five years and decided to rise to the challenge of making his first action film.

Climbing onboard the Bond juggernaut with a firm release date but no locked screenplay, the film collected screenwriters, including input from acclaimed writer-director Paul Haggis, whose work on Casino Royale is widely considered to be one of the core reasons for its success. "Paul did a great job on the [Quantum] script and I was very happy but he was also working on his own movies, so what he gave us still needed more development," Forster says diplomatically. Forster and star Daniel Craig added their own input, as did at least one other writer who missed out on a credit, but the director admits the script "was sort of a work in progress" while the crew looked to the various exotic locations to inspire them into creating exciting action set-pieces.

Carrying the promise of even more action after the electrifying free-running opening of Casino Royale, the film starts as it means to go on, hurling audiences into a manic car chase within the opening seconds before launching into a bruising sprint across Sienna's skyline with barely a pause for breath between. "I thought, if I'm making an action movie I want to do actually a lot of action," he explains, adding: "Because that's sort of the challenge for me; I've never done that before."

Forster was also keen to develop the relationship between Bond and M (played once again by Judi Dench), by having "that verbal tension between them, sort of like a little bit of this mother-son thing going on" between the two characters. As a result, Dench gets more screen-time as Bond's behaviour starts to alienate him from both the British government and the Americans, in a series of tense and increasingly fraught scenes designed to give more insight into Bond's character and his motives. Forster had carefully considered elements of the previous film to get a feel for Bond's mental state and used this to inform Quantum of Solace. He says: "I was mainly interested in the last five minutes of Casino [Royale], where Bond was as a character and where we left him and what kind of emotional state we left him in."

Forster is philosophical about the mixed critical reception the film received, although of course its box-office success makes it easier to stomach. "You know, I like polarising people!" he says, adding: "I think there's a discussion happening. Some people seem to really love it and some people really hate it. I think discussion is always good and it's not the last Bond film ever made."

Despite its success, he won't be returning for Bond 23, despite being offered the job. "They did ask me to do another one, but at this point I need to do something smaller." He gives a sly smile, unable to resist: "But then you can say never say never again..."

First published on InTheNews in March 2009.