Zurich Film Festival - Sicario

Sicario (121 mins)
Director: Denis Villeneuve
★ ★ ★ ☆ ☆

Kate Macer (Emily Blunt) is an FBI agent whom we first meet discovering a house full of dead bodies as she leads a kidnap response team working in Arizona.

Catching the eye of her superiors, she volunteers for a cross-agency task force taking on Mexican drug cartels. This brings her into contact with another pair of agents (Josh Brolin and Benicio Del Toro), who may be DEA or CIA or something else entirely, such is their reluctance to share information with Kate.

They take her into Mexico where she’s thrown into the midst of a big operation with no clue what she’s getting into or with whom. It’s as an expose of the grim reality of the effect the drug trade has had on Mexico where Sicario really scores, sparing no punches in showing the violence and vengeance tearing apart a country overrun with criminality.

Of slightly less interest is Macer’s concern that they have no jurisdiction over the border and that her two associates seem to have agendas of their own, and the question of motives and trust hangs over Sicario. The title comes from the Mexican word for hitman and it’s a solid and grown up drama, muscular and hard hitting.

Other than one very well staged shootout, much of the first hour is Kate shadowing and learning and events are seen through her eyes as she observes and questions. The tension comes from her and us not knowing anything though it starts to labour that point a bit in the middle, but there’s always a feeling that everything is under control and it’s heading in the right direction.

The problem is we’re led in to it in the belief that it’s Macer’s movie when in fact many of the best scenes feature Brolin and Del Toro, with the latter in particular growing to dominate the story. And a question begins to surface of whether Macer is actually much of a character and not simply something of a sideshow in a bigger picture, a passenger in her own movie. In many ways that’s fine, because fortunately the men played by Brolin and Del Toro are highly compelling, and this trio of excellent performances carries it through.

As an exercise in finely tuned craftsmanship, Sicario is certainly very impressive, and Denis Villeneuve continues to be a director to keep an eye on. There’s no real template for what it is as a movie, being very much its own beast which is definitely a good thing.

If it’s a standard cops and drugs thriller you’re after then Sicario is not that kind of movie. But if you go in prepared for something other than what you might be expecting then there’s a lot to take away.

Zurich Film Festival - Regression

Regression (106 mins)
Director: Alejandro Amenabar
★ ★ ★ ☆ ☆

Supposedly inspired by real events involving satanic rituals that took place in the States in the 90s, this decent thriller stars Ethan Hawke as a cop investigating the case a young woman (Emma Watson) who is suspected of being abused by her father. The father believes he’s guilty but doesn’t actually remember anything about it, leading the authorities to try regression hypnotherapy to unlock his mind. What follows is not a possession horror, thank goodness, because we’ve certainly had enough of those recently. All the same, some of the regression stuff is quite creepy when it comes to visions of black masses and the like, though the investigation doesn’t exactly rattle along and a few too many scenes are just people being interviewed. But Hawke is on good form, going for a forceful earnestness that recalls Tom Cruise, and the effect the case has on him is well handled. So while Regression is by no means great, the film’s ability to develop in unexpected directions is probably its strongest card and its cumulative power is eventually more than the sum of its parts.

Mad Max: Fury Road review

Mad Max: Fury Road (15/R, 120 mins)
Director: George Miller
★ ★ ★ ★ ★

There have been reasons to be cheerful and reasons to be fearful regarding the release of Mad Max: Fury Road. On the one hand George Miller, director of the original trilogy of Mel Gibson movies, returns at the helm, and we know he knows how to shoot action.

But cameras started rolling on this reboot over three years ago, and that’s rarely a good sign, with potential release dates coming and going. Yet hopes were raised when the footage started to surface, until earlier this when we were granted quite simply the greatest movie trailer ever unleashed on the public, a fast and furious tease that promised us an action assault like no other.

For once the trailer wasn’t lying; in fact, it doesn’t begin to do justice to the finished film, a kinetic cinema experience probably unseen since Gravity. Taking place in a properly and completely demented world, it’s essentially a two hour chase, and there has quite simply never been anything like it.

Fury Road is not remotely a Mad Max remake, more a continuation of the universe, with backstory swiftly dealt with in an opening voiceover. We’re filled in on the apocalypse and on Max Rockatansky (Tom Hardy), the one-time cop whose family was murdered, sending him into a spiral of madness and barely surviving in the wasteland that is now Australia.

Chased through the desert by goons, Max is taken prisoner to a cliff-side community run by Immortan Joe (Hugh Keays-Byrne, who played villain Toecutter in the original Mad Max). Fuel was the driving force of the original movies, but the writers seem to have finally realised that water is more precious than oil, and the Immortan rations out the water as a way of keeping the people in check.

Charlize Theron is Imperator Furiosa (look at these character names!), a lieutenant of the Immortan who defies him and goes on the run with his wives in hope of finding the Green Place. With Max in tow, first as a prisoner and then a helper, what follows is not a series of action set pieces held together by a threadbare plot, it’s one action set piece that spans almost the entire course of the movie.

This is filmmaking to melt the eyeballs, packed to bursting with breathtaking stunt work and imagery and rapid, bruising fights. With Max, Furiosa and others driving a tanker, and the Immortan and his hordes chasing in heavily armoured cars, the carnage unleashed as people and vehicles leap and tumble every which way is enough to make you marvel at how they could have achieved it. And it’s CGI-augmented rather than CGI-driven, so even though once in a while you can see the join, it’s there to enhance the spectacle.

The pounding score propels the chase along, some of it provided by the Immortan’s own band, with one of his trucks loaded up with drums and a flame-spitting guitar. It’s exhilarating and insane and in constant motion, with maybe two points where they stop long enough to have a conversation and for the audience to remember to breathe.

If there's a sticking point, it's that Max is barely a character; he's a figurehead, a recognised name to hang the film on. This isn’t a world of heroes though, it’s survival that’s the only imperative, and with his growls and grunts and handful of words, Hardy makes him as enigmatic and dangerous as he needs to be. Theron is immense too, with Furiosa every bit as capable as Max and in many ways the real hero.

Also it could be argued that the best action is used up before the climactic melee, where the level drops slightly from astonishing to just very good. But that’s a small complaint, and if the world belongs to the mad as the film’s marketing suggests, then prepare to go crazy for this world of blood and sand.

Spooks: The Greater Good review

Spooks: The Greater Good (15, 104 mins)
Director: Bharat Nalluri
★ ★ ★ ★ ☆

Spooks finished its television run on the BBC four years ago after nearly a decade of spy action. It’s a curious thing to bring to the big screen, a show which no doubt has a loyal following, but also one that needs to work to satisfy long-term fans but also stand alone and be accessible to newcomers.

Whether it manages the first can only be answered by those in the know, but that it undoubtedly manages the second is to its great credit. It begins with a prisoner transport, with a terrorist named Qasim being moved in an armed convoy, with his bad guy cohorts in pursuit.

MI5 boss Harry Pearce (Peter Firth) makes the call to allow the prisoner to be rescued by his associates rather than risk a gunfight in an area busy with people. It might be realistic that they don’t put up much of a fight around civilians, but it doesn’t necessarily make for exciting cinema. What it does do is kick off the plot, which quickly reveals that it wasn’t so much feeble police work as it was about signs that point to a conspiracy.

The CIA are miffed that Qasim is on the loose, and Harry is forced to carry the can, leaving him out of a job and faking his own death in order to do his own digging. This in turn forces Harry’s former bosses to bring in Will Holloway (Kit Harington), an ex agent currently in Moscow who is brought back to London to track down Harry. Harry has disappeared, intent on finding the mole himself while also trying to stop Qasim from orchestrating a major attack on London.

It’s once Harry and Will get together that the film starts piling on backstory and histories which may or may not be part of the show’s mythology. It doesn’t really matter, since it works just fine either way, and it’s soon clear that this is serious, tough stuff, full of life and death decisions that give the title its resonance.

Harington may be the marquee guest star, but Firth is the beating heart of Spooks and Harry is a tremendous character, and pretty much the only main player to have made the transition from the TV show. Honourable, but also dangerous, uncompromising and full of tricks, his insistence that agents can either do well, which is to follow orders, or do good, which is to do the right thing, gives the film an edge of questionable morality over others of its ilk.

There’s not much glamour going on here though; this is British spying, where the reality is London traffic and pouring rain. Harington gets to do a small amount of Bourne-style clambering and acrobatics, but it’s playing wannabe in these scenes and close-up fights, something for the trailer rather than a true representation of what the film is.

Wisely it doesn’t try to overplay the action though, with the focus on intrigue making it gripping as a result. Mostly it’s very good at detailing actual spy-work, something that’s often missing from modern day espionage movies. It’s Bond without the superhero, mired in politics and really quite absorbing, with secrets and hidden codes all part of the shenanigans of this particular spy game.

The plot barrels along, twisting this way and that, stretching out several genuinely tense sequences, and always leaving the question hanging of who is on what side. Some previous investment in this world might offer even more value, but even for audiences discovering Spooks for the first time it’s still a lot of fun.

The Gunman review

The Gunman (15/R, 115 mins)
Director: Pierre Morel
★ ★ ☆ ☆ ☆

Sean Penn becomes the latest actor to take a shot at over-50 action stardom with this overwrought Euro-pudding that has ideas way above its station for a movie from the director of Taken. A prologue set a few years ago in war-torn Congo introduces us to Penn as part of a team of mercenaries protecting a humanitarian aid crew. While they're there they also happen to have a sideline in assassinations, and Penn’s shooting of a government official comes back to haunt him in the present day when he links an attempt to kill him to the plot. As an exercise in globe-trotting, The Gunman is slick, its fights are crunching and the body count is massive, and Penn does get to showcase some nice skills in a couple of decent action sequences. But it’s all rather dour and much too leisurely to convince, jazzed up with a classy cast (Javier Bardem, Mark Rylance and Idris Elba are in there too) yet hardly any more legitimate than The Expendables, with its attempt to call attention to humanitarian issues proving risible. It’s a Jason Statham movie that thinks it’s fancy, too silly to be taken seriously and too serious to be any fun.

Run All Night review

Run All Night (15/R, 114 mins)
Director: Jaume Collet-Serra
★ ★ ★ ☆ ☆

There’s something to be admired about the ambition of this thumping thriller that looks on paper like another delivery from the Liam Neeson action assembly line. Playing a much more interesting character than he often has recently, Neeson works as a hitman for neighbourhood mobster and long-time friend Ed Harris. When Harris’s wayward son botches a deal, Neeson is forced to kill him, in turn forcing him and his own estranged son to go on the run. It’s muscular stuff, featuring the standard punch-chase-shoot shenanigans, and every bit as daft as you could hope for. It may be called Run All Night, but it’s not quite as non-stop as the title suggests, with quite a few diversions along the way to slow the pace. Still, that offers some moments for reflection between Harris and Neeson, and a good deal more character depth than expected, even if it does borrow its plot points liberally from Road to Perdition. Neeson still has a particular set of skills, this time with some substance to back it up, topped off with a fun cameo from the only actor in the world even more grizzled than he is.

Interstellar review

Interstellar (12A/PG-13, 166 mins)
Director: Christopher Nolan
★ ★ ★ ★ ☆

There are very few directors out there who would be given a budget the size of Interstellar’s for a non-franchise or non-adaptation movie. But very few directors are Christopher Nolan, and this is 2014’s most anticipated movie, and has been since it was first announced.

It’s also been a fine year for Matthew McConaughey, and he caps it with the lead in this vastly ambitious sci-fi epic that’s two parts magnificence to one part frustration. He plays Cooper, a one-time pilot who is now a farmer, as are many people since a crop blight led to a world food shortage and turned many parts into a dustbowl.

But life has to go on in this near-future world for Cooper and his son and daughter. He’s all about the pioneer spirit, living in a world where he’s no longer able to use his skills, until he encounters a team of scientists led by Professor Brand and his daughter Amelia (Michael Caine and Anne Hathaway), They have a plan to leave earth in order to find new inhabitable worlds since, as Brand puts it, “mankind was born on earth, it wasn’t meant to die here”.

This sends Cooper, Amelia and another pair of astronauts on a two-year journey to a wormhole that’s been discovered near Saturn, and to whatever lies beyond that. That’s all you really need to know, because from this point in there are many thrills and surprises to be discovered in a film that’s all about what we leave behind for future generations. There are echoes of 2001 in its silent, balletic space sequences, as well as in some of the more surreal imagery that Nolan unleashes in the later stages.

A lot of the time it’s hard science, as actual rocket scientists come up with plans for how to save mankind. Questions of relative time may scramble the brain, but it’s done with the utmost sincerity and not without humour, which is a welcome touch. It’s not an action film, certainly not a single-minded one like Gravity, so that shouldn’t be expected, but when Nolan does throw some in, he runs with ideas and visuals that make for jaw-dropping sequences.

For all its spectacle though, it’s the immense force of the human drama that gives Interstellar its impact. The implications and the scale of what we’re dealing with here can be difficult to contemplate, and when it concentrates on its profound examination of humanity, it approaches brilliance.

In most regards, this is exactly what we should be demanding from our blockbusters. It’s conceived with intelligence and far-reaching intent and executed with immense skill, yet it never quite achieves that moment of transcendence that it seems to threaten for the first two hours.

There’s plenty of room for trimming in its much too generous running time, and Nolan throws into the mix the kinds of characters and plot developments you might expect from lesser filmmakers, undoing a lot of good work in a final hour that at times can be sluggish and ponderous.

So the year’s most anticipated film has turned out to be a good one, at times a very good one. But in the end does it really amount to much more than you might find in the very best episodes of Star Trek?

Zurich Film Festival review - '71

'71 (99 mins)
Director: Yann Demange
4 stars

Gary (Jack O’Connell) is a young British soldier who, on completion of his army training, finds himself on his first tour in Belfast in 1971. As part of a peacekeeping force supporting the RUC, their mission goes badly wrong during a stunningly well-staged street riot sequence, leaving Gary lost and alone in hostile streets. Not a political film but a heart-pounding thriller, ’71 is like a modern updating of the James Mason classic, Odd Man Out, with Gary on the run and trying to survive the night. It’s keen not to take sides, with good and bad in both loyalist and republican camps, though a strong anti-war streak runs through it. Unflinching in its violence, it triumphs through the immediacy of its action and, in what has been a top year for O’Connell, another compelling performance that cuts through sectarianism to focus on a young man fighting for his life.

The Equalizer review

The Equalizer (15/R, 132 mins)
Director: Antoine Fuqua
★ ★ ★ ☆ ☆

Shave half an hour off this sporadically fun but often flabby thriller and you might well have the lean and mean action machine it ought to be, instead of the overegged, cheese-inflected pudding that it sometimes is. Based loosely on the old Edward Woodward TV show, Denzel Washington is Robert McCall, a seemingly saintly loner who works in a hardware store, never sleeps, and likes to help anyone and everyone. But it’s clear he’s hiding a mysterious past, and the catalyst for stirring this up is when a young girl (Chloe Grace Moretz) is beaten up by her pimp, taking McCall into a world of Russian mobsters who want him dead. A measured, deliberate opening is stretched to the point where we’re itching for the vengeance we know is coming, and when it does it’s certainly visceral and fleetingly satisfying. We’re signing up to see Washington battering everyone in sight, and even if too often all we see is the aftermath, he’s a monumental presence, dead-calm and dangerous as the silent protector. But there’s an awful lot of movie padded around these bones, and The Equalizer lumbers when it should sizzle and the finale, though at times exciting, borders on the interminable.

A Walk Among the Tombstones review

A Walk Among the Tombstones (15/R, 114 mins)
Director: Scott Frank
★ ★ ★ ★ ☆

Anyone expecting more of the kind of escapades that have become Liam Neeson’s bread and butter in the last few years may find themselves surprised, though hopefully not disappointed by his latest. Instead of the marauding action man we’ve become accustomed to, he’s a thinker and puzzle solver here. But though it may not be personal, that doesn’t mean he’s not going to get deeply involved.

Neeson is Matt Scudder, a one-time New York cop turned private investigator, and the protagonist of several books by crime writer Lawrence Block. Jeff Bridges played Scudder in 8 Million Ways to Die back in the 80s, but that’s the only time the character has been brought to the screen until now.

We first meet Scudder in a prologue that shows us how, in his cop days, he was a big fan of shooting first and asking questions later. But now it’s the late 90s and Scudder is asked by Dan Stevens to find the men who killed his wife; they're some very nasty types, which takes him into a murky world of serial killers and drug traffickers.

There’s a lot of talking, but it’s all done in the course of actual detective work, which you don’t see a lot of these days. We see Scudder do a lot of walking and observing, and talking rather than punching his way through the film. He’s more likely to take a beating than give one, and even talks his way out of a fight at one point.

It’s not brisk, but it’s lean, able to get to the point with a minimum of fuss thanks to economic writing that does its very best to avoid cliché. So though Scudder is a recovering alcoholic with a dark past, it doesn’t make a big thing of it.

There’s an emptiness and a brooding menace to the way it’s filmed that really makes it feel less like the 90s and more like the 70s, which when it comes to this sort of film can only be a good thing. It’s the sort of thing Robert Mitchum and Sidney Lumet would have gone to town on back then.

But though the likes of Marlowe is referenced frequently by Scudder and the young associate who he takes under his wing, this isn’t Elliot Gould we’re talking about here, it’s Liam Neeson. We learn almost nothing of his personal life and see him do nothing but work the case, which results in a steady build of tension with the possible assurance that he’s going to do something violent and exciting at some point.

But that’s secondary to the rock solid detective plot, and it’s been a while since we’ve seen a good sturdy mystery thriller such as this.

Stolen review

Stolen (12A, 96 mins)
Director: Simon West
★ ★ ☆ ☆ ☆

Nicolas Cage’s latest cash-in is a howlingly silly crime thriller that sees the once bankable star playing a master thief who ends up in jail after a job gone wrong. Eight years later he’s out and looking to reconnect with his teenage daughter, when his wronged former partner (Josh Lucas) kidnaps her, demanding a share of the missing $10m from their botched heist. Cue multiple scenes of Cage bumbling around New Orleans on Mardi Gras, while a feeble script chucks in body parts from all sorts of sources, from his and director Simon West’s own Con Air to The Fugitive. It’s pretty tired stuff, even though Cage is reasonably watchable and Danny Huston has fun as the Fed on his trail, but Stolen is the kind of film where the audience is always two steps ahead of the writer, and where a man who has been in prison for eight years can work an FBI computer but doesn’t know what sat-nav is.

Maniac review

Maniac (18/R, 89 mins)
Director: Franck Khalfoun
★ ★ ☆ ☆ ☆

1980 slasher Maniac gets the remake treatment with the added hook of a first person point of view, with the slaughter seen through the eyes of Elijah Wood’s killer. We only ever see him in reflection, and it’s a clever bit of casting to present an actor known for his cuddliness as a psychopath whose thing is to scalp his victims for wigs, Vincent Price style, for his mannequins. Maniac is certainly grotesque, and sometimes that’s all horror fans ask, but getting involved in this savage and scuzzy little film is harder. The arrival of a photographer whom Wood wants badly not to kill shakes things up a little, but it’s not enough to dispel the need for a point to his journey, and repetition sets in quickly. Ed Gein, Hannibal Lecter and more are the touchstones, but simply referencing them is not enough, and no real comment on audience voyeurism is offered in the way that Michael Haneke might. Where it does succeed is in making modern day Los Angeles look like hell on earth or, at the very least, New York in the 1970s, but that’s really not enough to hang an entire movie on.

The Paperboy review

The Paperboy (15/R, 107 mins)
Director: Lee Daniels
★ ★ ☆ ☆ ☆

Lee Daniels’ first film since his Oscar-winning Precious certainly serves up a combustible hodgepodge of flavourful ingredients, even if the finished dish lacks a certain something. We’re in sweltering 1960s Florida, where a murdered sheriff leads to John Cusack’s convicted killer on death row, and Nicole Kidman’s white trash Charlotte who claims to be in love with him. Enter Zac Efron as a young writer assisting his journalist brother (Matthew McConaughey) on an investigation into Cusack’s possible innocence, with his relationship with Charlotte getting him into bother he never dreamed of. Though unapologetically lurid, The Paperboy is never quite fun or demented enough to overcome the thinness of a story that has to be garnished with sleaze to disguise it shortcomings and the complete lack of a third act. One particular scene, which we’ll call the “jellyfish” scene in the interests of good taste, will live on in infamy far beyond the film itself, which should tell you everything you need to know. Filthy and sweaty it certainly is, and fans of Efron in his pants will be over the moon. But engaging, or dramatically satisfying? Not even close.

Fire with Fire review

Fire with Fire (15/R, 97 mins)
Director: David Barrett
★ ☆ ☆ ☆ ☆

Josh Duhamel’s fireman enters the witness protection programme after seeing an Aryan crime boss (Vincent D’Onofrio) murder a shopkeeper in a gang related slaying. While waiting to testify, Duhamel is relocated to New Orleans where, eight months later, he’s involved with Rosario Dawson’s FBI agent, part of the team assigned to look after him, with the baddies on his tail all the while. Pedestrian in the extreme and dressed up with flashy gunplay, Fire with Fire is a sloppy excuse for a thriller, dimly plotted and thoroughly uninvolving, lacking any sense of momentum or excitement. It’s a miracle such a low-rent and borderline inept movie hasn’t crashed straight to DVD, but perhaps that can be attributed to Bruce Willis who, as the officer in charge of the case, has a minimal, rather pointless role at the head of an over-caffeinated cast doing shouty, unconvincing work.

Arbitrage review

Arbitrage (15/R, 107 mins)
Director: Nicholas Jarecki
★ ★ ★ ★ ☆

This riveting drama stars Richard Gere as a super-rich business mogul, married to Susan Sarandon and hitting 60, who wants to sell his company. But his empire is a house of cards which has left him with a $400m hole if a merger doesn’t go through, before a plot development that’s best left unspoiled sends his life in another direction entirely and leaves him trying to juggle financial meltdown and a police investigation. This twisted morality tale is the complete package, working as both a polished thriller and a savage indictment of the abuse of power of the rich and privileged. As the lies spiral and it grips firmly, Arbitrage is topical, multi-layered and hugely entertaining. Tim Roth adds sly support as a dogged cop, but it’s Gere’s show, and in his polished malevolence he has quite simply never been better.

Jack Reacher review

Jack Reacher (12A, 130 mins)
Director: Christopher McQuarrie
★ ★ ★ ★ ☆

Fans of the Lee Child novels which brought us the character of Jack Reacher are apparently up in arms because he’s supposed to be a massive, hulking former soldier turned drifter. Reacher here is played by the distinctly non-massive Tom Cruise, but that really isn’t a problem unless you’re totally hung up on the height thing, because Cruise is a movie star of the highest order.

In a coldly terrifying opening, a gunman takes out random passers-by from a distance with a high powered rifle. An arrest is made, with Richard Jenkins as the DA looking to put the guy away and Rosamund Pike as his daughter, a defence lawyer who hires Reacher as an investigator to find out the truth.

This first adaptation of Child’s books is being sold as some sort of revenge thriller in the style of Taken, when in fact it’s much more of a traditional police procedural, albeit a highly compelling one. Reacher is a man of action though, and capable of beating up anyone who crosses his path, which he does frequently.

Everything about it screams ridiculousness, and luckily it knows it, otherwise the would-be slick banter and clunky exposition would be too hard to swallow with a straight face. Reacher’s past gets explained to us in a way that would be moronic if it weren’t so tongue in cheek, but it could sometimes do with an injection of pace or a complete commitment to luridness to match its silliness.

Werner Herzog of all people turns up as the bad guy heading the conspiracy, and he adds ripeness, Cruise is magnetic, and Pike is terrible, all making for a hugely enjoyable slice of pulp.

The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo review

The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo (18, 158 mins)
Director: David Fincher
★ ★ ★ ☆ ☆

Though it would be nice to think that this English language remake of the hit Swedish thriller has been made for any reason other than financial, with over 60 million books sold there’s a very sizable audience out there of people who couldn’t be bothered to read subtitles when the original trilogy was released in cinemas last year, so that plainly isn’t the case.

The basics are identical, so it’s in the details that the justification of whether or not this ought to exist lies. The addition of demented title credits that play out like an oil-slicked Bond sequence to a cover of Led Zeppelin’s Immigrant Song is an interesting start.

It even retains the Swedish setting, which throws up the daft situation of having Swedish characters being played by Americans, Canadians, Swedes and Brits, speaking to each other in English with Swedish accents, expect star Daniel Craig, who more or less stays English.

Craig plays Mikael Blomkvist, a journalist for the acclaimed Millennium magazine (which lent its name to the title of Stieg Larsson’s original trilogy of books), who is tasked by an elderly, and very wealthy, businessman (Christopher Plummer) to look into the mystery surrounding his niece, who was murdered on the family’s private island 40 years before.

He believes someone in the family killed her but no one has ever been convicted, and he would like one more investigation of the events while he’s still around. But Blomkvist was only hired after a report by investigator and computer hacker Lisbeth Salander (Rooney Mara) confirmed he was right for the job.

Lisbeth has her own problems; with her guardian gravely ill and her finances held in trust, she is brutally assaulted by the man controlling her money. By the time she and Mikael come together, with Lisbeth as his research assistant, we know exactly what she’s capable of.

Like the Swedish version, it’s all about the sensational character of Salander, an avenging punk angel brought to life in a startling performance by the relatively unknown Mara. Craig, so often solid but boring, is very good too, straight talking but not physically intimidating or able, which lends him some vulnerability.

A quietly insistent score twists the tension of what is, in the main, a talky affair, as Mikael interviews a sprawling collection of shady family members on the search for clues. As he does so, it takes on the dimensions of a classic murder mystery, full of files, photos and puzzle solving, ground that director David Fincher has been over before in his meticulous Zodiac.

It gets its point across without hanging about, though you could also never accuse it of rattling along, not with that running time. Yet it’s never dry or dull, done with enough grit and visual style to ensure it holds the attention. It’s on a more ambitious scale than its forebear, and though a little less scuzzily graphic than first time round, no punches are pulled.

In the credit column is a streamlining of all the Millennium shenanigans, meaning we don’t have to sit through a lot of office politics or the fact that Mikael is due to go to prison. But like the original film, it’s guilty of trundling on way too long once it seems to have peaked, and there’s also a curious switch in the timeline in the latter stages that dampens the impact of Lisbeth’s characterisation.

And if you’ve seen the original you’ll know every bend on the road, meaning this lands somewhere between workable and pointless. Though it’s the same film, it’s still a fine one, and you can probably add a star if you haven’t seen the Swedish version.

Justice review

Justice (15, 104 mins)
Director: Roger Donaldson
★ ★ ☆ ☆ ☆


The original title of this batty thriller was The Hungry Rabbit Jumps, a coded phrase that crops up early as we open on a man being secretly filmed while being questioned by persons unknown.

Moments later he’s in his car and being pushed off the roof of a car-park by another vehicle, and how these events are connected with husband and wife Will and Laura (Nicolas Cage and January Jones) soon becomes clear.

He’s a New Orleans teacher and she a musician whose lives are turned upside down when Laura is brutally assaulted. Will is approached by someone calling himself Simon (Guy Pearce) who says he’s with an organisation who will “take care” of the problem. After a bit of thought, it’s an offer Will accepts, and sure enough, Laura’s attacker ends up dead, killed by the husband of a previous victim of crime.

But, just like in The Godfather, Will may be called upon by Simon to provide a service, which starts out innocuously enough, just deliveries and observation. But soon he’s being asked to murder a suspected criminal as payback for the service provided for him, and if he refuses, things are likely to turn very nasty indeed for Laura and him.

Vigilantism always makes for an interesting and provocative subject matter, though one that’s rarely treated well by modern movies. But Justice doesn’t really ask any moral questions of the audience, preferring to quickly turn into the usual innocent man wronged tropes.

It also doesn’t take very long at all to go from silly to preposterous. It’s one of those daft thrillers where practically everyone in it is part of a network of operatives, a springboard for moronic twists that provide absolutely no clue just whose side Xander Berkeley’s cop is supposed to be on.

It’s cheap looking and over-egged when it’s being serious, and twee and unconvincing when it’s trying to be a bit lighter, and all you really get in the way of excitement is shady guys watching and doing things unseen and some extremely low rent chases.

Cage in normal guy mode is like Fun Bobby from Friends when he’s sober – just not enjoyable for anyone to be around, and you realise you miss the wacky, off the wall Cage, who at least brings a certain manic energy to films that are invariably rubbish anyway.

Red State review

Red State (18/R, 88 mins)
Director: Kevin Smith
★ ★ ★ ☆ ☆

Burned by the subpar box office and critical mauling of his Bruce Willis-starring action comedy from last year, Cop Out, Kevin Smith has gone back to his edgy, low budget roots with his latest, Red State, which is being actively marketed as something unexpected from the director.

To say it’s his best film in years might be damning with faint praise, like calling each new Woody Allen film a return to form, but the fact remains Smith hasn’t made something this interesting since Dogma over a decade ago.

But though ambitious and bold, it ultimately tries to be too many things. It achieves a fair level of success in its early stages as a backwoods horror, the kind we’ve seen a thousand times, where a bunch of unsuspecting teens get lost in a remote area and are preyed upon by nasty types.

The remote area in question here is Cooper’s Dell, home to the Five Points, a fundamentalist church group given to staging protests at the funerals of gay teenagers, and who are so right wing that even the neo-Nazis distance themselves from them.

Three high school friends have driven to Cooper’s Dell, seemingly by the lure of a girl on the internet. But this was a setup by the Five Points, and the boys end up drugged and held captive, possibly to be sacrificed for their wickedness.

By the time John Goodman turns up as the FBI agent in charge of what has become a hostage situation, some of the good work gets undone when events take a turn into a lengthy gun battle, lacking the sense of space and geography necessary to make a decent action film work.

The boys’ dialogue is foulmouthed and perfunctory, making it difficult for us to warm to them, though the three young actors are fine. But as Abin Cooper, the sect leader, Tarantino regular Michael Parks is sensational, leading his outwardly happy family in prayer as they declare their hatred for sinners and revel in their biblical literalism.

It’s paced at a lick and skilfully constructed, and Smith knows how to create suspense through visual storytelling and uncomfortably oppressive violence. He’s adept at pushing the right buttons, mercilessly lampooning the gun-toting Christian far right, piling on the anger and rage for the audience, albeit with a very easy target and no hint of subtlety.

Which takes us on to the next object of Smith’s ire, and what really drags the film out in its disappointing later stages. As well as having a pop at the real-life events in Waco, the Patriot Act comes under detailed scrutiny, so that what could have a tight and effective horror becomes a political diatribe full of indignation that might have been better saved for another day.

Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy review

Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy (15, 127 mins)

Director: Tomas Alfredson 

★ ★ ★ ☆ ☆ 

John Le Carre’s 1974 espionage novel Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy, set among the big players in the British Intelligence Service, met with great success when it was made into a 1979 television adaptation starring Alec Guinness.

Retaining the 70s setting, this big screen updating begins with Mark Strong’s spy sent to Budapest by John Hurt’s controller to meet the person who knows the identity of the double agent working for the Russians who holds a powerful position within British intelligence.

But he gets himself shot, and in flashback the blanks are filled in as George Smiley (Gary Oldman) is brought out of retirement to find, as Hurt says, the mole right at the top of the circus. He’s known to be one of several high ranking agents, among them Colin Firth, Ciaran Hinds and Toby Jones, who have been designated Tinker, Tailor, Soldier and so on.

When this is good it can be very good, and it’s such an overwhelmingly strong group of actors that the attention is held even when events on screen are, shall we say, minimalist. And what’s best about it are the performances, none more so than Oldman, who for the first 15 minutes or so of the film, doesn’t say a word.

Everything is in his body language, his gestures and glances, and though when he does finally speak there’s a hint that he’s doing a Guinness impression, it’s certainly not a distraction from a riveting portrayal.

Subtlety is the key in everything here, but as a consequence it suffers as a thriller, lacking the flair and cinematic pizzazz that may have been expected from the director of Let the Right One In. It’s full of interesting conversations and enigmatic phrases, but so deliberately paced that patience can be tested, and as far removed from a typical spy caper as you can get.

It’s more of a museum piece than a thriller, a stuffy parade of dull, shabby little men in grey suits, dedicated to paperwork and one-upmanship, largely focussing on how empty and pathetic their lives have become. But as the layers of the puzzle are added, it does gain traction and grips steadily without ever coming close to actually providing any excitement.