BITE-SIZED: Croupier (Mike Hodges, 1998)

After taking a job at a local casino, a struggling writer (Clive Owen) becomes involved in a planned robbery that could give him the means to escape to a better life.

Another tale of a cold-blooded man moving through the world,Croupier makes for an interesting double bill with Mike Hodges’ Get Carter.

It is hard not to watch Croupier and think about the rumours of Owen becoming the next James Bond after Brosnan. When a suave, dark-haired Englishman is in a tuxedo at a casino, it is an easy association to make.

But there is little similarity between the characters.

I have never had any strong opinions of Owen. The first time I had heard of him was when he played the titular character in King Arthur. Not a terrible movie, but the character is not written to take advantage of his strengths.

I have seen him in other movies, but this feels like a genuine showcase. What I was struck by is how good he is as an impassive watcher.

The protagonist is an observer - while he works  as a journalist, he enjoys taking on the role of a croupier because it allows him to do what he likes best: watching other people fail.

His girlfriend (Gina McKee) nails him when analysing the character in his novel: He treats his games’ rules as his conscience, and he only moves when he knows he can win.

Ironically, while he is the narrator, Owen shows no control over events. 

And despite showing knowledge of gambling, and his own attraction to it, in all other respects he is an enigma. By the end of the movie, it seems there is nothing worth knowing about him.

Related

Get Carter

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Why do I write?

When I started this blog (over a decade ago now), I had no set goals or format in mind.

I just wanted to write.

I had started posting reviews and rankings on Facebook notes.

I cannot remember how I ended up on this site, but at first I just used it as a home base.

I wrote a few new pieces, but most of the posts were copied over from Facebook.

For a few years I did not write much of anything.

I was pre-occupied, first with film school, and then a misguided attempt at law school.

This was 2014.

By the end of that year, I had failed law and was looking forward to absolutely nothing.

It was terrifying.

And then, just by luck, I read a Google alert.

I have no idea what key word triggered it, but the link was to an advert asking for freelance writers for a pop culture website.

I put together some samples from my blog and sent them in.

At the time, I did not think much of it. 

I remember going for a walk and stared at the river near my house. I came back home and there was an email from the editor asking for pitches.

I had never thought of myself as a critic.

Ironic, since I had spent almost a decade writing essays on film through high school and University.

I also loved reading film criticism.

I had been buying Empire magazine for about a decade.

And I ranted about movies to whoever was unlucky enough to be in my orbit.

The high I got from that email was so empowering.

For the next two years, I pitched and wrote feature.

A month or so later, a friend asked me if I wanted to review some local theatre shows.

Suddenly, I had these two avenues where I could use my skills.

I had found my own way into writing semi-professionally.

The money was negligible but it did not matter. I had found my lane.

Not everything I pitched was accepted, but that led me back to this blog.

I decided to use the blog as a testing ground for ideas.

It almost became like going to the gym.

If I am not writing something for someone else, I still need to write.

By 2016, my writing had opened another door.

I was able to use my writing as a portfolio to get into journalism school.

THat year was hectic.

Somehow I managed writing articles with my freelance commitments and increased output to this blog.

I was busy and stressed out, but looking back, it was a great time.

At the end of that year, I got a role in communications at a disability support organisation. 

I was on the way up.

And then the US election happened. 

It felt like the bottom fell out.

I have been following politics for most of my life.

I had tracked the increased radicalisation of the GOP through the Obama era.

Trump’s rise - while ridiculous - felt like a logical endpoint for American politics, and rightwing politics overall.

He was being overt about all the things previous Republicans kept quiet about.

It felt - and continues to feel like - we have entered the end-times.

I believe imagination is best served by hope - and mine took a heavy blow in November, 2016.

Ever since that point in time, I have really struggled with maintaining inspiration and drive.

One of the unspoken mandates I have given myself with this blog is that I publish a minimum of ten posts a month.

While this approach can have an effect on quality, I have kept at it because it forces me to focus, and to write.

Sometimes it feels like a joy - I find the right film that I have a lot to write about. Other times, I am just punching in my time card.

And I will take that - because it keeps me writing. 

Writing has been a part of my life as long as I can remember.

I do not know where it will lead me in the future. Or if this blog will be a stepping stone to something new.

At this point, I do not care.

The only thing that matters is that I keep writing. 

xXx (2002)

Extreme sports enthusiast and protestor Xander Cage (Vin Diesel) is press-ganged into becoming a NSA agent. 

His mission is to infiltrate a group of anarchists known as Anarchy 99 and prevent them from releasing ‘Silent Night’, a bioweapon from the Cold War.

TW: mention of sexual assault relating to this film’s director. Because we are living in the seventh circle of hell, it is also worth mentioning Diesel and co-star Asia Argento have faced allegations of assault. 

In 2002, this movie was supposed to be a response to the James Bond franchise, and  consolidate Vin Diesel’s status as a movie star.

It succeeded at the latter goal, but it had its thunder stolen by the unexpected success of The Bourne Identity, which would become the defining influence on the spy genre in the early decades of the 21st Century.

Looking back at xXx now, it feels like a time capsule for the pop culture trends of the 90s:

With its focus on extreme sports, nu metal soundtrack, and bad guys who just want chaos, xXx was out-dated by the time it came out.

I like the premise of the movie - take an outsider and make him a spy - but this movie seems to be all about hyping that idea rather than showing it.

The opening scene - in which a spy in a dinner suit tries to infiltrate a Rammstein show and is murdered - is meant to highlight how outdated Bond is, but it feels undercooked (a guy in a suit would look out of place in a rock concert in almost any era).

As a character, Xander Cage is a hollow vessel. He is established as an extreme sports fan, and an outsider, but his ideology is vague and small stakes - in his first scene, he targets a state senator who wants to ban videogames and rock music. Couldn’t this character have been a corporate shill or anti-environment? 

Watching 2002-era Vin Diesel, it is a time-capsule of the performer in transition.

He does not have the quiet smoulder he has been doing since his return to the Fast and Furious movies. This is the last time he is leaning into the character actor thing he had been doing leading up to this.

While he has a go at embodying Xander’s cockiness and livewire nature, Diesel seems too even-keeled to work as a hellraiser. 

This might be the effect of the last quarter century of Family antics, but Diesel works better as part of an ensemble. He is fine as the solid centre, but he has no one to bounce off of.

His earnestness also works against this movie. This might have something to do with the character’s lack of specificity, but Diesel’s earnestness on top of it just means the character, and the movie around him, feels bland.

In the end, it feels like the filmmakers had no real idea of how to tackle an outsider-as-secret-agent.

Take the scene where X is disavowed - this is a good narrative move, but the film does not make the next step of taking away all the government-approved gizmos, and he had to revert back to using his xXxtreme sports skills to save the day.

Now before we get too far, we have to bring up director Rob Cohen. 

Cohen is allegedly a horrific human being. He has been accused of sexual assault by multiple people, including by lead actress Asia Argento. Thankfully, it appears that his career is over (although in these Trumpified times, who knows?).

He is also a very bad director.

The Fast and the Furious is functional, but with xXx he is trying to approximate the trends of the time, with the emphasis on quick-cutting, dutch angles and speed-ramping.

While these are elements of style, they are deployed without any. 

And while the film uses a lot of practical stunts, they are ruined by Cohen’s shitty editing and lack of composition.

 

The shot choices are so bad - there is no sense of composition and the editing is really choppy. In the action sequences, the angles are often so wide and flat they look like behind-the-scenes footage.

Take the attack on the drug den - the shots of the attack are either too wide or too close, and Cohen overcuts the big showpiece moments (Diesel jumping over the fence; over the exploding building) so they are robbed of impact.

Another dire example is the scene of Yelena (Argento) breaking into Yorgi’s (Marton Czokas) safe - there are no shots where Diesel and Argento are in the same shot to build suspense. It is hard to establish where they are in terms of geography.

There is almost no sense that the filmmakers know the cinematic language for scenes - when Xander is hiding above the guards, we get shots of the guards and shots of Diesel, but no shot with both parties in the same frame.

Marton Czokas is a fine New Zealand actor with a unique presence, but he is a bit of a blank slate here. He comes across a little too young as well. 

He has played an effective bad guy in many other movies (The Bourne Supremacy and The Equalizer), so this is probably an effect of the lack of imagination behind the camera.

xXx is not awful, but it is incredibly, soul-crushingly dull.

This movie shows that you need more than just extreme sports Bond, because James Bond technically does extreme sports. The attempts to appeal to the yoof with nu-metal is kind of funny, but the film is ultimately so unimaginative and poorly made it is just boring.

Skip this movie - watch the sequels.

Related reviews

xXx - The Death of Xander Cage (short)

xXx - State of the Union

xXx - The Return of Xander Cage

The Fast and the Furious

The Fast and the Furious

2 Fast 2 Furious

The Fast and the Furious: Tokyo Drift 

Fast & Furious

Fast Five

Fast & Furious 6

Furious 7

Fate of the Furious

F9 - The Fast Saga (first take)

F9 Redux

Fast X

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.

If you enjoy something I wrote, and want to support my writing, here’s a link for tips!

BITE-SIZED: Born Yesterday (George Cukor, 1950)

Billy Dawn (Judy Holliday) is the kept woman of a thuggish businessman (Broderick Crawford).

When he takes her to Washington DC, Billy becomes acquainted with a local reporter (William Holden) who is investigating her beau’s dirty dealings.

As Billy learns more about the nation’s capital, and the country’s political system, she begins to question her boyfriend’s actions in corrupting it.

I was considering reviewing this movie earlier in the year, but lack of interest derailed it.

Considering the state of US politics now, Born Yesterday’s hopeful idealism makes it feel like a museum piece.

At the time, the film was something of a riposte to the paranoia of the early Cold War (Holliday would herself come under suspicion).

Still, while that context makes it interesting, it does not make the film more engaging.

Thank the maker for Judy Holliday.

She was the best thing in it the first time I watched it, and on every subsequent, half-hearted viewing. 

Holliday is a breath of fresh air as Billy Dawn. The whole point of the character and the film is that she is not the 2D arm candy everyone assumes she is, but she makes this revelation - and the character’s subsequent transformation into a protector of the realm - compelling and real.

Introduced as the silent companion to Crawford’s bellicose, vulgar tycoon, he is the first person to directly retort her boyfriend - mimicking his bellow with a guttural, sarcastic “What?” (a recurring bit that gets funnier the more she does it).

Holliday never telegraphs, showing the characters’ savvy with the smallest turns of phrase. The way she throws away lines about not knowing anything feels knowing without any winking at the audience. 

The character feels wilfully obtuse, rather than oblivious - for a great example, check out the way she sniffs out the snobbery of the congressman (Larry Oliver) and his wife (Barbara Brown).

The one person who comes close to matching Holliday is Crawford. Fresh from his success in All The King’s Men, he goes through the film like a freight train. His delivery and body language is in total opposition to relative restraint of everyone else.

The rest of the cast, including Holden, are strangely muted.

I am sure there are fans of this movie, but aside from Holliday, this movie lost me. When I went back to rewatch it, the back half was a complete blank to me. It might have to do with the idealism of the piece, but it just does not carry the same charge once the film turns into an extended, earnest tour of DC landmarks.

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 Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

If you enjoy something I wrote, and want to support my writing, here’s a link for tips!