NOIR WATCH 2020: Decoy (Jack Bernhard, 1946)

Gangster Frankie (Robert Armstrong) has a fortune in cash hidden away. His merciless compatriot Jim (Edward Norris) and girlfriend Margot (Jean Gillie) want a cut.

After Margot seduces an innocent prison doctor, Craig (Herbert Rudley), the pair facilitate Frankie's escape from prison by faking his death and stealing his body from the morgue. 

And then everything goes wrong... 

Released by one of Hollywood's smaller studios, Monogram Pictures, Decoy is a gloriously bitter noir that benefits from its limited resources.

The low budget adds to the movie's brutish economy. There is no fat to scenes, no sugar-coating of motivation and no deviation from the characters' inevitable fall. All that matters are these characters and their obsession with obtaining Frankie's money. This world has literally no time for sentiment or doubt.

The movie opens with the ending, as the surviving participants riddle each other with bullets - watching the rest of the story play out in such limited surroundings reinforces the sense of predestination as these characters race toward their own destruction.

Confined to a small collection of sets (a doctor's surgery, an apartment, a diner), It reminded me of Detour, Edgar G. Ulmer's even more micro-noir. These are people who want to expand their horizons, but are limited by the movie around them.

In the role of Margot, British actress Jean Gillie is the movie's secret weapon.

Largely known in England for comedic roles, Gillie was married to director Jack Bernhard when this film was made. She only made a few American pictures before her return to England where she died in 1949 at the age of 33.

As the femme fatale of the piece, Margot is a remarkable. Like the movie, she is the archetype stripped to pure self-interest: tough, unrelenting and completely in control. In one sequence she coolly drives over one of her accomplices and then, when confronted by another weak-willed henchman, hands him her pistol.

When he loses his nerve, she gently takes it back and they drive away to find the money.

Even as she lies dying, Margot is still in charge. She commands the tough cop Joe Portugal (Sheldon Leonard) to give her the box filled with Frankie's loot, and clutches it to her chest.

After telling the whole story to Joe (who she has given the childish nickname 'Jojo'), she invites him to give her a kiss, and break the romantic tension that has underpinned their animosity. The taciturn cop lets his guard down and leans toward her. As he draws near, she laughs in his face. It is breathtaking.

After her death, the film's ends on a cruelly ironic gut punch.

Joe opens the box to discover it is filled with garbage. Sifting through it, he finds a dollar bill pinned to a mocking note from Frankie, declaring victory over those who betrayed him. The money will be left to the worms, just like everybody associated with it.

A short blast of ice-cold noir, Decoy is a delightfully nasty piece of work that is well worth a look.

Related

Death of a Cyclist

Night and the City

Ossessione

Elevator to the Gallows

Odd Man Out

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Warcraft (Duncan Jones, 2016)

An army of of Orcs led by an evil warlock has arrived in a new world, Azeroth. With their own world dying, they are looking for a new place to live.

Concerned with the welfare of his people (and his newborn baby), orc chieftain Durotan (Toby Kebell) is suspicious of the warlock's motives.

As the invasion begins, Azeroth military commander Anduin (Travis Fimmel) is tasked with figuring out who their new foe is and how to defeat them.

Throw in a corrupt wizard (Ben Foster), a Golem and a half-orc (Paula Patton) ostracized by her tribe, and you have Warcraft.  

Warcraft is one of those movies where you can see what the filmmakers are striving for, but the execution just cannot live up to the intention. That being said, I really enjoyed this movie (with some qualifications).

Now, I do not know much about World of Warcraft, but the sense I get from the movie is it is trying to  reflect the multiplay-ability of the game by covering multiple perspectives, and avoiding clear black and white moral divides between the inhabitants of Azeroth and the Orcs. This aspect of the movie is both its greatest strength, and its biggest weakness - because one of these narrative perspectives feels fleshed out and the other does not.

Let's start with the good stuff, which is basically everything involving the Orcs.

The protagonist of this part of the story is Durotan (Toby Kebbell), who emerges as the most well-rounded character in the film. The key difference betwen Durotan and the Azeroth characters is that the script grounds Durotan with strong motivations -  he is concerned with looking out for his family's future, and the lives of his tribe.

And as the movie progresses, he finds himself doubting the motives of his leader (who, in a nice complication, saves Durotan's son when he is stillborn). Durotan's conflict is the most interesting aspect of the film, and highlights the emphasis on nuance with the Orcs and their perspective that deepens half of the movie.

From the outset, the movie is intent on presenting Durotan and his people as complex empathetic creatures - he is introduced in bed with his pregnant wife, musing on the future. If you take away the CG, this could be a scene of any couple having an intimate conversation.

There are other scenes scattered throughout where the Orcs are shown going about everyday tasks. There's even a scene of them waiting. They get bored and start throwing stones at each other. This seems silly but because the movie spends time with the Orcs, they feel more real.

It helps that Toby Kebbell gives a subtle, heartfelt performance as a taciturn warrior who is struggling between growing distrust of authority and helping his people find a new home. He gives the movie a soul.

It is just a pity that the movie's success is dependant only multiple perspectives when only Durotan's is dramatically functional. And that is the key issue - there is half of acompelling movie here, but it is anchored to another story that cannot hold a candle to Durotan's conflict.

Every time the movie focused on Durotan and the orcs, the movie has focus and heart.

But then we have to cut away to the humans and the movie loses its centre.  

It is a strange movie where the characters giving you uncanny valley are played by human beings, while the motion captured performances feel totally natural.

Enough has already been said about Paula Patton's fangs, but the big issue is scripting. The problem is the orcs get the more interesting storyline - do we trust the intentions of those who lead us?

On the human side, there is an attempt to replicate that idea with the wizard Medivh (Ben Foster), but there is a lack of focus and intensity to the conflict here. There is nothing as personal or relatable as Durotan's love for his family and comrades - the closest we get is a tired revenge subplot that exists solely to give human Anduin (Fimmel) a motivation for the finale.

This would have weight if the movie had devoted some time to Anduin's relationship with his son, but nothing about their relationship resonates as much as Durotan's with his wife and friends.

In his week-long podcast about Mission:Impossible - Fallout, Chris McQuarrie talked about the importance of emotion over information. With Warcraft, Durotan's conflict is couched entirely in emotion; the Azeroth storyline is all exposition, with no real emotional stakes.

There is a lack of verisimiltude to the human characters that is incredibly distracting - even when they are on sets, it feels like people are composited into environments. The production choices in this movie work well for the Orcs, but the look of human actors in these environments and costumes pushed me out of the movie.

There are parts of Warcraft that I found rather involving but any time a human character appeared, it felt like a completely different movie - it was like an adult animation meeting a LARP campaign.

The movie really flags whenever we have to sit with the inhabitants of Azeroth - it does not help that there is no Han Solo or Aragorn among the cast to ground it, and provide some sense of drama. Everybody is so po-faced, it feels like a blocking rehearsal.

There are no bad performances - Fimmel is okay, and Patton probably would be fine without those teeth - it is more a case of miscasting and a script that does not know how to make these characters feel like people with interior lives. Having to cross-cut between Azeroth and the Orc casts highlights just how much of a gulf there is between the different halves of the movie.

Other than this, as a viewing experience, while the exposition was a little disconcerting early on, the story is fairly easy to follow - it just feels so inert when the focus is not on Durotan and his tribesmen.

Warcraft is a movie about conflict that is deeply conflicted and compromised at almost every level. It is not a disaster on the scale of a movie I reviewed recently, but it is a mixed bag. That being said, it does hit at least 50% of its aims, and as such it is definitely worth checking out. 

If you are new to this blog, I also co-host a podcast on James Bond, The James Bond Cocktail Hour. 

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BITE-SIZED REVIEW: The Decks Ran Red (Andrew L. Stone, 1958)

Following the mysterious death of its captain, Captain Edwin Rumell (James Mason) is flown to New Zealand to take over the SS Berwind.

While Rumell gets used to running the ship, conspiratorial crew members Scott (Broderick Crawford) and Leroy (Stuart Whitman) are planning to kill the crew, sink the ship and collect a reward for the salvage.

As the ship gets underway, crew members start dropping dead. Will Rumell figure it out before it is too late?

I watched this movie for free on Youtube. At first I thought I had stumbled on a hidden gem: James Mason? Dorothy Dandridge? Broderick Crawford? In a murder mystery at sea?

And the title made it sound awesome.

Sadly, this movie takes the set up, the cast, some fun ideas for sequences and does almost nothing with any of them.

We know the villain's plan almost from the beginning, so there is no mystery. With this knowledge, one would then expect the movie to emphasise the suspense of our heroes trying to figure out what the villains up to, as the bodies pile up.

Nope.

The whole movie lies there - Stone shoots scenes largely in well-lit master shots, ruining any sense of atmosphere.

The sequence of the villains stalking the unsuspecting crew members in the engine room is incredibly stilted. Stone has no feeling for how to lay out the geography of the environment, nor how to block the action to create tension as the villains kill their victims. There is not even any chiaroscuro.

And while it is obvious that Stone is aiming for some kind of 'realism', he completely fails to create a sense of verisimilitude and bring the viewer into this environment. This is an engine room - noisy, smelly and dirty. The way Stone shoots it, it comes across like one of those showpiece ships they run tours of at naval museums.

The acting is solid, but the script gives nothing for the cast to do - there is a vague theme class in the relationship between the urbane Rumell and the crew, but that is never brought to the fore.

The movie only comes alive toward the climax, when Crawford, armed with a high-powered rifle, has the crew cornered in the mess hall.

The crew are allowed to escape on a lifeboat, but unknown to them Crawford plans to turn the ship around and sink their tiny vessel. Rumell swims back to the ship and sneaks aboard, where the cook's wife (Dandridge) uses her wiles to foil the villains' plan and give the captain the upper hand.

This finale is kind of fun, but probably because it is the only time in this movie where it feels like the story is going somewhere.

The acting is solid, but the characters are either types or baffling. It is hard to tell exactly what the script wants Rumell to be - is he an intellectual? Is he too green? While the finale would make you think Rumell is discovering his mojo and proving himself to the crew, he never really has a moment of failure to justify his redemption.

The one moment that is kind of interesting is when Dandridge takes it on herself to help Rumell by disarming Leroy (Stuart Whitman), Scott's flunky. Until this point, she has been an exotic object for the camera and Rumell, who brings it up when she arrives onboard with her husband (who conveniently decides to fight a gunman with a throwing knife and fails). It is a neat sequence, but it is built on nothing.

It is especially frustrating because the moving parts in this sequence are there. On paper, the idea of a hero having to swim back to a ship and overpower a gunman before the ship reaches his crew-mates' boat sounds awesome - you have a ticking clock and plenty of obstacles to turn out a real slam dunk of ending. Sadly, it never comes alive.

The Decks Ran Red is the textbook definition of a movie crying out for a remake. With better direction and a fleshed-out script, it could be a fun potboiler.

If you are new to this blog, I also co-host a podcast on James Bond, The James Bond Cocktail Hour. 

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IN THEATRES: Underwater

In the depths of the Mariana Trench, an underwater oil drilling station is hit by an earthquake. In order for Nora (Kristen Stewart) and the other survivors to reach safety, they will have to trek across the ocean floor to reach another part of the complex.

However, they quickly realise that there is another danger out there waiting for them. Something hungry...

Oh the ignominy. Delayed and dumped in January by Fox's new overlords, Underwater initially comes across as something to avoid. Which is a shame because beneath the simple title is a fast, nasty genre thriller with a strong cast and a firm grasp of how to milk the suspense and terror from its familiar premise.

Evoking Alien, Jaws and the enjoyable cheese of Leviathan and Deep Rising, Underwater is one of the most enjoyable mainstream genre movies I have seen in a long time.

While the movie is not original, the filmmakers know why the movies they draw from work, and apply the same approach - the deliberate pacing; the focus on tight, claustrophobic framing and hyper-real sound design.

Even when the characters leave the collapsing station to trek across the ocean floor, the water is so murky that it is almost impossible to differentiate the setting from the creatures tracking them.

The frame is filled with broken debris from the station or limited by depth of field. We only ever get a sense of the immediate surroundings, creating a sense of claustrophobia that is maintained throughout the film.

The filmmakers emphasise the limitations of the human form and the technology we have created to protect it. Some of the most effective moments in the film are tight close-ups of Stewart's face in profile inside her helmet.

The cinematography rarely goes to a wide shot - the few establishing shots we get of the exterior of the station are god's eye-view shots of our heroes sluggishly moving in heavy diving suits. Not only does it emphasise their vulnerability in this environment, it continues the film's focus on disorienting the viewer, and preventing us from getting a clear grasp on where they are and where their foes could be.

In a film filled with pleasant surprises, the most welcome was the way the filmmakers show their antagonists. While the creatures are mostly produced by a computer, ala Alien they are kept out of frame, or obscured by mine-en-scene. Sometimes it is just because the water has such a shallow depth of field the characters and the viewer cannot grasp what is out there. It makes the effects uncanny but in a way that works for the film, rather than taking you out of it.

As far as the acting goes, this is Kristen Stewart's show. Stewart has proven time and time again, from Panic Room through Personal Shopper, that she can anchor a movie and provide an emotional credibility. She is marvellous in this movie - delivering an understated, vulnerable performance that never feels like cookie-cutter action heroine. She gives Nora a nervous energy that feels totally organic to the situation, and finds ways to make the inevitable adjustment feel natural without turning the character into a tote action hero.

What takes this movie over the top is the ending, which offers a reveal that expands the threat our heroes face while giving a tip of the hat to horror fans. I will not spoil it, but what was great about this reveal was that once again, the filmmakers never offer a clear look at what our heroes see, while still giving it a sense of scale and weight that highlights how totally screwed the humans are.

While its components may be familiar, Underwater is an example of filmmakers taking the right lessons from their influences, and delivering a solid piece of entertainment. Check it out before it leaves theatres.

If you are new to this blog, I also co-host a podcast on James Bond, The James Bond Cocktail Hour. 

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BOOTLEG REVIEW: Starboy (The Weeknd, 2016)

[A version of this review was published in 2017]

Following the pop success of his sophomore LP Beauty Behind The Madness, The Weeknd heads deeper into his musical inspirations to come up with an album that blends his thematic progressions with the sounds of eighties synth-pop.

Compared with his previous work, Starboy is more of a refinement of The Weeknd’s aesthetic than a progression. It’s like being stuck in the head of a party animal after a bad night — albeit if his inner monologue was in the form of song. Guest stars include Daft Punk, Lana Del Rey, Kendrick Lamar and Future.

‘Party Monster’ is a plaintive cry, this time from a lothario who loses himself in meaningless one night stands while pining for the attentions of his lost love. ‘False Alarm’ signals a turn into more ominous territory with a heavier focus on EDM-like beats and processed vocals. It ends with a wordless female vocal that segues into ‘Reminder’, in which our hero tries to remind his love that he has always been honest about what kind of man he is (i.e. one who drinks and sleeps around).‘Rockin’’ is more of an up-tempo dance number about the price of fame and relationships.

Around this point, individual songs start to blur into each other. If there is a flaw, it is a sady common one. The fact is, Starboy is about eight tracks too long, and the recurring themes of rejection and self-loathing start to feel repetitive.

The second half of the album picks up considerably. Songs like ’Secrets’, ‘Love to Lay’, ‘A Lonely Night’ and ‘Nothing Without You’ counter the dour, repetitive subject matter with stronger melodies and dance beats. The vague disjunction between the production and theme adds a certain ironic bite, while also softening the darkness of the lyrics.

Built on a snippet of Tears For Fears' 'Pale Shelter', 'Secrets' ended up being my favorite track from the album. For me, it best epitomized The Weeknd's ability to blend the melancholic with the ecstatic is at its best here (the music video is pretty good as well).


’Love to Lay’ and ‘A Lonely Night’ are built on similar lines but push the bass to the fore (the latter even includes an EDM break during the bridge). The lyrical themes remain the same: He’s a bad boy; she’s a bad girl, yadayada.

There are plenty of good songs, but such a long track list demands a level of ambition and eclecticism that is somewhat lacking. If you are a fan, you will be satisfied, but casual listeners are probably better cheery-picking songs on Spotify.

If you are new to this blog, I also co-host a podcast on James Bond, The James Bond Cocktail Hour. 

You can subscribe on iTunes, or wherever you get your podcasts.

BOOTLEG REVIEW: Anything But Words (Banks & Steelz, 2016)

[originally released in 2017]

In a year filled wiht great albums, Anything But Words is one of 2016’s real surprises. On the surface, the debut of super-duo RZA and Paul Banks sounds like a gimmick. An unlikely collaboration with one of rap’s greats and uh, the lead singer from Interpol, Banks & Steelz goes against the wisdom that musicians from different musical genres can’t mix.

Right from the start, Anything But Words dispels any fears of a mismatch. ‘Giant’ speeds along on roving guitar as RZA speed-shouts verses like he’s plugged into a city grid. The fact that it manages to avoid sounding like nu-metal or a novelty single is a testament to just how well their dynamic works.

Their success is even more evident on tracks which should favour one of the collaborators over the other. Listening to the synth pop of ‘Ana Electronica’ or the post-punk rock of ‘Speedway Sonora’, the interplay between RZA’s raps and Banks’ baritone is so deft that it never jars. They feel like they have been at it for years.

Even the guest stars don’t feel like intruders. Kool Keith appears on ‘Sword in the Stone’ (featuring some welcome touches of fuzzy guitar and electronic piano), while Florence Welch plays RZA’s love interest on ‘Wild Season’, Method Man and Master Killa on ‘Point Of View’, and Ghostface Killah on ‘Love and War’.

The film is filled with surprises. ‘Conceal’ is a slow, prowling groove that exists on the border between nu wave and a seventies slow jam, while ‘Can't Hardly Feel’ and ‘One By One’ highlight the diverse origins of trip hop, mixing Banks’ drone-like chorus with RZA’s verses in a way that recalls hip hop and electronica.

A winning combination which never comes across as a gimmick, Banks & Steelz are one supergroup that is worth paying attention. If you missed Anything But Words the first time, it is worth checking out.

If you are new to this blog, I also co-host a podcast on James Bond, The James Bond Cocktail Hour. 

You can subscribe on iTunes, or wherever you get your podcasts.

BOOTLEG REVIEW: The Electric Lady (Janelle Monae, 2013)

[originally published in 2017]

With Janelle Monae gaining attention following their prominent role in Oscar favourite Hidden Figures, it is worth taking a look back at the work that brought them to prominence.

A Monae album is akin to a Russian doll — a variety of pop surfaces covering a nugget of something more profound. Their music is a unique blend of RnB, soul, dance, jazz and basically any other genre you can think of. This blend of influences serves as the vehicle for Monae’s fascination with science fiction, which itself is a conduit for exploring themes of gender, race and sexuality.

Monae’s music is based around telling the story of Cindi Mayweather, an android on the run for falling in love with a human. A metaphor for the ‘other’, Monae’s focus on androids acts as a stand-in for societal others — racial, sexual, class etc.

The Electric Lady is Monae's third album, following the 2003’s self produced effort The Audition, and the fourth and fifth parts in their Metropolis concept project (if anyone is interested in catching up on the previous chapters, check out their EP Metropolis: Suite I (The Chase) (2007) and 2010 album The ArchAndroid).

If that sounds like a lot to swallow, don’t worry. The great thing about Monae is that the music is extremely enjoyable. It’s like getting the key to the ear candy store. You might end up with cavities and a headache, but you’ll have a great time.

Opening with  an overture that sounds like a cross between the theme between a spaghetti western and John Barry’s score to the sci fi flop The Black Hole (1979), The Electric Lady launches into ‘Givin Em What They Love’, a sweet groove featuring Monae’s idol Prince on vocals. Lifted by some some sanctified organ and a scintillating guitar solo from the Purple One, it sets the stage for the album perfectly.

Even better is ‘Q.U.E.E.N.’ a terrific anthem Monae shares with Erykah Badu. Highly danceable and oddly poignant in light of recent events, it is an ode to black femininity and sexual positivism. ‘Primetime’ is a duet with Miguel and plenty of plaintive guitar. ‘We Were Rock & Roll’ is psychedelic soul, complete with added sanctified call and response choruses. ‘Dance Apocalyptic’ is a duwop song by way of armageddon. ‘Look Into My Eyes’ is an old school torch song — and by old school, I mean it sounds like something you would hear Julie London or Sarah Vaughn toss off in 1961.

Signalled by another overture, the second half of the album continues Monae’s musical magpie adventures. ’It’s Code’ is a slow jam from the Seventies, with smooth production and light synth touches which recall Leon Ware’s productions for Marvin Gaye’s I Want You and his own Musical Massage. Monae’s stay in Seventies textures continues with the funky ‘Ghetto Woman’, which reaffirms the empowering mantra of ‘Q.U.E.E.N.’ 

The album does run out of steam a wee bit towards the end, aside from ‘Dorothy Dandridge’s Eyes’, another Ware-style slow jam (with a cameo from Esperanza Spalding) and an inspired use of shredding guitar on the fade-out.

Overall,  The Electric Lady is a fantastic album and a great entry point for anyone looking to getting into Janelle Monae’s music. Hopefully Monae's success with Hidden Figures does not delay their next musical adventures. 

If you are new to this blog, I also co-host a podcast on James Bond, The James Bond Cocktail Hour. 

You can subscribe on iTunes, or wherever you get your podcasts.

IN THEATRES: The Gentlemen

Drug lord Mickey Pearson (Matthew McConaughey) is keen to retire and sell off his empire. As word spreads of his decision, various forces arise to claim as much of it as they can, including an upcoming gangster (Henry Golding) and an unscrupulous journalist (Hugh Grant).

As the bodies pile up and unseen enemies attack his infrastructure, Mickey and his right-hand man Raymond (Charlie Hunnam) scramble to figure out what's going on.

After a decade of big-budget Hollywood efforts (including the Sherlock Holmes films and, uh, King Arthur - Legend of the Sword), Guy Ritchie returns to the world of the British criminal underworld of his debut Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels (as well as Snatch and RocknRolla).

Weirdly, the film this most reminded me of was Jon Favreau's Chef, in that it represents the filmmaker returning to a smaller but familiar template to regain his mojo - with McConaughey's character as an avatar for the veteran filmmaker trying to maintain his business in a rapidly changing world (while trying to deal with American interests who attempt to betray him).

Now I have not seen any of the above films, so I cannot judge how far this movie diverges from or emulates his previous work.

As a film in its own right, The Gentlemen has an interesting conceit - the story is told as a series of flashbacks as a muckraking tabloid journalist (Hugh Grant) tries to blackmail a gangster (Charlie Hunnam) by revealing what he knows of his dealings with his boss (McConaughey).

Throughout the movie, something about it rubbed me the wrong way.

The focus of the film is on middle-aged gangsters, and the younger characters are presented as either villains or victims. There is a sense of helplessness to these characters that can only be resolved by our heroes' maintaining control.

While conflict between generations can make for interesting cinema, The Gentlemen is only interested in using that conflict to preserve the status quo. There is a subtext of generational rage and racism running through the movie that made the whole experience somewhat unpleasant.

The film is concerned with themes of ageing and the changing face of London. While the film has a diverse cast, the story is filled with caricatures who are all presented as various kinds of antagonists or obstacles for Mickey and Raymond.

This is most obvious in the character of Dry Eye (Henry Golding), one of the film's antagonists. He is presented as the most despicable character in the film, a psychopath with no respect for the rules the other characters live by. While it is interesting to see Golding take on a different role from the somewhat milquetoast characters he has played recently, the character of Dry Eye feels like check list for the worst bad guy cliches. His final act feels like the worst kind of lazy misogynistic writing, and when combined with the film's presentation of POC, it evokes Birth of a Nation.

There is also a clear disdain for anyone who is not white, male and well-off - our heroes run into gangs of hooligans on drugs, Youtube-obsessed rappers-boxers. The ultimate antagonist behind the scheme taps into such an old stereotype I was shocked that it made it to screen.

What is worse is that Ritchie plays the whole thing for laughs, but there is no satire here - the punchline is that all of these people fulfilled their stereotypes.

It is a bummer because in the middle of all this, Hugh Grant is really good as a seedy tabloid journalist (which feels like an in-joke on his relationship with British tabloids).

Other than that, The Gentlemen just feels angry and tired.

If you are new to this blog, I also co-host a podcast on James Bond, The James Bond Cocktail Hour. 

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The Intruder (Deon Taylor, 2019)

Young couple Scott (Michael Ealy) and Annie (Meagan Good) are looking for their dream home to raise a family. When they find a beautiful property for a steal, they think their dream is realised.

What they do not count on is former owner Charlie Peck (Dennis Quaid), who is determined to keep the property exactly as it was, at all costs...

Like 6 Underground, The Intruder is a throwback - in its case, the thrillers of the 80s and 90s. Movies like Fatal Attraction, The Hand That Rocks The Cradle and Unlawful Entry, in which a young couple find their lives turned upside down by an antagonist who invades their home (literally and metaphorically).

The biggest surprise of this movie is that it was a theatrical release in the US. These kinds of movies used to be big business, but the genre has largely gone the way of courtroom thrillers and gone to the small screen (the prime example is Netflix's You).

The Intruder comes from the pen of David Loughery, who previously wrote Lakeview Terrace and Obsessed, the film which inaugurated Screen Gem's line of thrillers aimed at black audiences. Where Obsessed was based around a murderous temp, The Perfect Guy featured a murderous boyfriend and When The Bough Breaks (my personal favorite) debuted the archetype of the killer surrogate*, The Intruder is a former home owner who is a little overprotective of his former home.

Of all of these films, The Intruder actually feels like something original. Sure, the bones are familiar, and the movie makes little sense, but there is something about this movie that made it more... unsettling.

While the film is PG13, there is a simmering nastiness to the film that feels far more visceral than the soft-pedaled scares of its predecessors - and a major reason for this is Dennis Quaid's performance as Charlie.

Often compared to Kevin Costner, Quaid has always been more willing to pick roles that play against his good looks. In The Intruder, there is a whiff of permanent agitation to Quiad's performance that energizes the movie.

While the filmmakers largely keep the viewer aligned with protagonists, there are moments peppered throughout the where the focus shifts to Charlie's POV: during a sequence when Charlie visits the house after the new owners have moved in, diegetic sound dies away and is replaced by an increasing whine as he sees what has happened to 'his' living room.

This shift in perspective is only employed in a few moments the movie - the only other major beat I noticed was a violent fantasy Charlie has involving Scott and Annie's friends. I liked these moments - they come out of nowhere, and the filmmakers do not return to them - I took it as a sign that they recognized that audiences can put together that the bad guy is the bad guy, and we can put together what he is thinking.

This brief detour inside Charlie's noggin does allow the filmmakers to hint at other ideas which are not necessary to see onscreen, such as his growing obsession with Annie. From the first scene, it is obvious that Charlie sees her love of the property - and her affinity for country life - as qualities he desires, and it is clearly her that he is transferring the property to, rather than the couple.

Charlie sees Annie as an addition to his home, and as the film progresses, Charlie's plotting is based around not only reclaiming his home, but destroying his rival Scott.

My big complaint with The Intruder is that it blows a potential source of tension as a final (and obvious) twist: at the climax it turns out that Charlie has a hidden room inside the house where he has been living ala Bad Ronald and whoever Gary Busey played in Hider in the House.

It is not as shocking as the film makes it out to be, and underlies the film's inability to lean into to the tension of losing control over your home. I have a feeling the movie could have had more suspense if the film revealed this early on (it might have also saved us from a couple of hack jump scares).

The one time in the movie where it felt like I really get a sense of our heroes' vulnerability is the one sequence where I appreciated the PG13 rating: While she is home alone, Annie has a shower - unaware that Charlie is outside in the hall. The camera stays on Quaid's face as he watches her. His face tenses and he removes his shirt. He is prevented from further action when he hears Scott's car outside. Even though nothing happens, the implications are disturbing, and solidifies just how much (potential) power Charlie has over the protagonists.

Aside from Quaid, the acting is pretty good. Ealy and Good are solid as the leads, and helped get over some of the script's contrivances, especially Annie's belief that Charlie is completely innocent. Good plays Annie as a bit of a pollyanna, which made it more credible.

In this respect, I would credit the script for adding a wrinkle of un-trustworthiness to Scott (his predilection to flirt with women) that makes Annie's willingness to accept Charlie's odd visits more believable. I wish the movie had focused more on this potential fissure, but as is it works to destabilize our heroes' equilibrium.

While the film does define the conflict between Scott and Charlie's different brands of masculinity - white-collar anti-gun hero and the macho gun lover - the subject of race is never overtly raised.

However, it feels more present than previous Screen Gems thrillers - there is something intentional about having the villain be an old white man trying to hold onto his property while falsifying his personal history and covering up his own inadequacies with deceit and violence. It does not feel subtle - Charlie even has a red baseball cap - but for a movie that wants to be a crowd-pleasing thriller, it is low-key enough that it could be overlooked.

The Intruder is not an underrated masterpiece. There are a couple of easy jump scares, and as already highlighted, the film's approach to suspense is too inconsistent for it to really sustain tension. However, Quaid's performance gives the movie a lot of juice, and the final action sequence - complete with a falling chandelier - is ridiculous but fun, with a surprisingly brutal button as the ending.

While it may not beat Obsessed's final brawl, and it is not as OTT as When The Bough Breaks, The Intruder is the closest this 'franchise' has gotten to the 90s thrillers these films are indebted to. 

*I think?

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6 Underground (Michael Bay, 2019)

In an attempt to right the world's wrongs, a mysterious billionaire gathers a team of specialists to take down the threats no government will touch. Having faked their deaths, and boosted by their leader's financial resources, this oddball team turn their sights on a despotic dictator responsible for war crimes against his own people.

After a decade of Transformers, Michael Bay has returned to R-rated mayhem.

In many respects it feels like classic Bay: arbitrary angle and camera moves, rapid editing, magic hour, bizarre lashings of comedy, general tonal incoherence and a complete disdain for human characters.

Despite the presence of Reynolds and his writing collaborators Paul Wenick and Rhett Reese (Zombieland, Deadpool), there is little to differentiate this movie from Bay's previous work. I am not a fan of Bay, but there was something weirdly reassuring while watching this film.

Amid the shapeless dross of most Netflix product, 6 Underground looks and feels big - Bay's aesthetic has its critics, but with how flat and uninteresting most Netflix releases are, there is something pleasing about his overheated nonsense.

That being said, the film is far less nuanced when it comes to other aspects of its story and characters.

The plot is based around our hero - a billionaire tech bro - discovering his humanity after watching thousands of people lose theirs in a chemical attack orchestrated by a brutal central Asian dictator. After faking his death, he assembles a team of experts in various eclectic fields and turns them into a private version of the Dirty Dozen.

The parallels to Assad are as subtle as a bus to the face, and while the movie does reference how major powers play a part in installing these regimes, the answer the movie has to have our heroes' mission be focused on toppling the tyrant and replacing him with his benevolent brother.

While the premise is interesting, 6 Underground is best viewed as a collection of set pieces. The characters get some business to do - there is a romantic subplot between a former cartel gun man and an ex-CIA agent that takes up most of the non-action moments - but this is not a movie that delves too deeply into making its core group make sense.

The film is more interested in the idea of a group of outsiders finding family together than making that a major element of the text. Outside of Reynolds' One, we never really get a sense of what motivates our heroes.

And One's backstory does not make him that endearing - he just comes off as a bit of a prick. While his motive is understandable, there is something odious about a rich white guy learning empathy from watching the genocide of thousands of poor brown people.

It might be the affect of the filmmaking, but outside of the gassing sequence, the film never feels that concerned with humanising the people of the country - other than the Tyrant's brother, the group have no ties to the country. While it is arguable wether it is necessary to get too into the sociopolitical context of an imaginary country, it is hard to see what the group is fighting for. They do not even have allies among the locals.

While Bay's return to full-throttle action will be welcomed, at a certain point I began to think about how expensive this movie was, and the number of other filmmakers with similar pedigrees who could have used some of Netflix's largesse. 

If you are onboard for Bay, 6 Underground is worth a look. Otherwise, the John Wick movies are readily available.

If you are new to this blog, I also co-host a podcast on James Bond, The James Bond Cocktail Hour. 

You can subscribe on iTunes, or wherever you get your podcasts.