The SPECTRE of defeat?: Why Bond 24 is the movie I am most/least looking forward to this year

And so the time approaches. A new Bond movie is on the horizon, in its traditional end-of-year release slot.

First, a short personal history. I consider myself a James Bond fan. The first Bond movie I saw was GoldenEye on video. The tape broke just after the tank chase, so for a couple years I had no idea what happened. Regardless, I thought it was great and over the next couple of years I saw all the other films. There was a great period in 1999 where we were renting a Bond movie a week. It was awesome. I was too young to figure out which ones were 'good' and 'bad', 'Connery' and 'Moore', and for some reason I got it into my head that George Lazenby was the first actor to play James Bond.

The first Bond I saw in the theatre was The World Is Not Enough. It was not great. The next one I saw was Die Another Day. This was the first Bond movie I saw after having read Ian Fleming's original novels. After reading the books, my interest in the film series took a dive, and Die Another Day only cemented my dismissal of the films. To me most of them lacked stakes and an investment in the characters. While the novels have problems (sexism, racism, classism), they also have characters and stories and atmosphere. These were things I wished were in the series. Sure, occasionally you would watch something like On Her Majesty's Secret Service or The Living Daylights, which made an attempt to humanise Bond and adapt Fleming's stories, but they were few and far between.

When Casino Royale came out, it was not what I expected. It was better. It took the best of Fleming, stripped out the racism and the sexism, and made James Bond a human being with flaws and weaknesses. Suddenly, I could believe that this guy could bleed and feel. And the relationship with Vesper Lynd was the most real and affecting thing I had felt in a Bond movie since I had been traumatised by Diana Rigg getting a bullet to the brain in OHMSS. Suddenly I was back in. The films since have varied in my estimation. While I can appreciate it a bit more now, Quantum of Solace is still a slog (basically, I loathe the action scenes, and appreciate everything else). Skyfall was more enjoyable, but felt like a retreat. Where Casino Royale had broken out of the prison of the Bond formula, it felt like Skyfall, as well made as it was, was rebuilding the walls.

Which brings me to Spectre, and my reasons for writing this piece.

THE REASONS IT COULD BE GREAT

1. The teaser trailer was amazing. 
2. The cast - I have no complaints. The additions of Lea Seydoux and Monica Bellucci fill me with excitement that we will see more fully developed female characters along the lines of Eva Green's Vesper Lynd.
3. Hoyte van Hoytema as DP. If the teaser trailer is anything to go by, Spectre is going to look gorgeous.   
4.  The return of Jesper Christensen's Mr. White from Craig's first two films means we will get some kind of closure to the Quantum story arc. While they were not onscreen for very long, Quantum was one of my favourite aspects of Quantum of Solace and I am glad that we will see something of them in the new film, even if it is only to act as a bridge to the revival of the SPECTRE group.
5. Blofeld might be back. After 50-something years of legal action, the lover of Nehru jackets and Persian Cats might be making his return. We'll see how that turns out, but for now I'm excited. 

THE REASONS IT COULD BE TERRIBLE

The rule of four: Spectre is Craig's fourth film, which by itself is commendable. However, every actor's 4th film before now has been either a notorious bomb (Moonraker, Die Another Day) or extremely bloated (Thunderball). Largely, this is due to the producers trying to replicate their previous success. Thunderball followed Goldfinger but just went bigger, while Moonraker is a carbon copy of The Spy Who Loved Me, just in space. Which leads me to...

Repeating the formula: Spectre is coming on the heels of the highest grossing film in the franchise. Therefore, it is possible that it will suffer from the producers' desire to replicate their previous success (see 'the rule of four' for previous examples). While I enjoyed certain parts of Skyfall, there are aspects which I felt were highly suspect. One was the plot, which was both over-complicated (Silva's plan; the NOC list plot which disappears halfway through the movie) and full of holes (Bond is established as out of shape, then the movie forgets about this subplot halfway through).

The other was the revival of classic Bond tropes, which felt at odds with the movie's attempts at realism -- the crux of this problem was the character of Severine. She is established as simultaneously a femme fatale AND a victim of the child sex trade. While this initially feels like another of the Craig era's attempts to re-work an old convention with an injection of context and character development, within the context of the film's plot Severine is ultimately little more than a sex object, and then as a sacrificial lamb to establish Silva's cruelty. The attempt to flesh out her character has the unintended effect of revealing the cynicism of the filmmakers by coming off as window dressing, and casts Bond as a manipulative misogynist who will undermine Severine's tortured psyche in order to sleep with her.

While Bond has always been a misogynist to varying degrees, the Craig version of the character has been (till now) characterised as an emotionally locked down man who is in the process of re-negotiating his relations with women. First there was Vesper, who broke down his emotional armour and forced him to reconsider his views of women as disposable objects. Though she winds up betraying him, Bond is unable to re-claim his old lady-killing persona. When he recklessly sleeps with Agent Fields in Quantum of Solace, the villain sees her as a way to get to him and has her killed. At the end of Quantum, Bond aborts a potential romance with Camille, finally recognising that while he is capable of taking care of himself, his enemies will treat anyone around him as a means to get at him. Bond finally takes responsibility for his actions.

This is completely undone by the events of Skyfall, where Bond, bafflingly, decides to have a tryst with Severine, while under the watch of Silva's men. While it is possible Silva would have killed her anyway, as it stands Bond's action dooms Severine. While her subplot feels like old-school Bond, it also carries with it the misogyny of the era in which Bond was originally created, and the filmmakers' attempts to fill out her backstory only highlight the tokenism of her character.

My hope is that Spectre will find a way to be considerably more nuanced in how it renovates the old archetypes, rather than merely giving them a new coat of paint. By way of example, Casino Royale had a compelling female lead, who also fulfilled the role of an unwilling femme fatale. There is a precedent for reinvention within the new series, and therefore no reason why Spectre cannot continue in a similar vein.

The script: My issues with this are two-fold. Firstly, thanks to the Sony hack, we know that the original script was considered deficient and had to undergo a massive overhaul. This is where my second problem comes in -- the writers tasked with the revision are Robert Wade and Neal Purvis. They have had a hand in every previous film since World Is Not Enough, and have the unofficial status of being the franchise's in-house scribes. During their tenure, they have produced one great film (Casino Royale), a good one (Skyfall), two flawed ones (Quantum of Solace and World Is Not Enough) and one bad one (Die Another Day). Their record is spotty, to say the least, and is really the keystone of my reservations.

Jumping on Trends: This is a recurring theme with the series. Of course, with such a long-running franchise, re-invention and a certain level of trend-following are to be expected. Sometimes it works -- Live and Let Die with blaxploitation being the major example. Mostly, it does not -- Man with the Golden Gun tried kung fu, Moonraker went Star Wars, Licence to Kill basically copied the look of every action movie in the late Eighties and Quantum of Solace tried to replicate the Paul Greengrass Bourne movies. The Bond movies are at their most successful when they take note of a trend and then follow it in a way that feels like a James Bond movie.

Spy Who Loved Me took note of the new blockbusters and then used a previous movie, You Only Live Twice, as a template for creating a Bond movie on a more epic scale. GoldenEye was a response to Indiana Jones, Lethal Weapon and Die Hard, and yet it did so by simply updating every recognisable element of the old series to the Nineties (which would become a problem after Austin Powers). Casino Royale was a response to the Bourne films, Austin Powers and the excesses of the Brosnan era. Rather than replicating the shaky-cam style, the filmmakers simply scaled back, adapted Ian Fleming's first book and removed the reverse-engineered gadgets and lame puns. Casino Royale does not look like The Bourne Supremacy, and feels like a Bond movie because it was still based in Bond lore rather than simply copying what was popular. Quantum of Solace, by contrast, went for the shaky-cam and wound up feeling like ersatz Bourne.

While Skyfall had elements of the Nolan Batman style, especially in terms of Silva's plan, it still had its feet on familiar territory. It mined old tropes (the Aston Martin DB5), made references to earlier films (Bond jumping on the komodo dragon ala Live and Let Die) and continued the Craig era's exploration of Bond's psychology by literally going back to where he began. Where the danger lies is whether Sam Mendes and his team will be able to maintain the balance between following Nolan and charting their own course. The danger is always there that Spectre will take the character of Bond further into Batman territory by dwelling too much on Bond's childhood trauma, which, while it has its possibilities, could diminish the uniqueness of the character, and result in the same feeling of dislocation as Moonraker, Licence to Kill and Quantum of Solace.

Excess: In danger of repeating myself, but I feel like this point needs to be emphasised. The Bond series has always swung between two extremes -- on the one hand, cartoony excess in which gadgets, gags and epic set pieces take precedence. And on the other -- more down-to-earth, character-based narratives with closer ties to the work of Ian Fleming. The shift between the two is gradual but perversely consistent. In the Sixties, the swing went from Dr. No to You Only Live Twice. This film was seen as so over-the-top, the next film, On Her Majesty's Secret Service went back to basics. Through the Seventies the films slowly became more large scale until the release of Moonraker, which was a massive hit but a creative dead-end. Thus the next film, For Your Eyes Only became a small-scale Cold War thriller. The latest of these shifts was Die Another Day, which is, more than anything else, responsible for the direction the series is now on. With Spectre's budget rumoured to be north of $300 million, and the success of Skyfall still fresh, the potential for another swing is possible -- the recent production vlog detailed a car chase between Bond's Aston Martin and a Jaguar. Both vehicles are, it teases, packed with toys. Something about that rubs me the wrong way -- while I am not opposed to gadgets, the last time we had a car-on-car duel was in Die Another Day.

Gadgets: The problem with gadgets in the modern Bond franchise is that they are hard to do. Gadgets are far more commonplace now than in 1962. The other, more important issue, is how they are used in the film. My contention is that when Bond is solely reliant on hardware, his worth as a character diminishes. You want to see his tenacity and his wits. Just remember, the Bond series was doing fine before he got the DB5.

Be your own Bond: This was a major problem in the Brosnan era, and I feel like this is beginning to affect Craig. While they all play essentially the same character, each actor who has played James Bond played a variation on the character that was distinct from his predecessors. This is part of the fun of the series. The worry I have with Spectre is encapsulated by what I felt was one of the chief flaws in the Brosnan films -- the production team never figured out which Bond they wanted Brosnan to play.

The problem I had with Brosnan was that, especially in World is Not Enough and Die Another Day, his Bond felt somewhat nebulous: Was he a comedian like Moore? Was he a brute like Connery? Or a tortured soul like Dalton?  Partially this is the result of poor writing. It is also a result of the era in which these movies were made, an era which I believe extends to this day, and has ramifications for every actor that will play the role in the future. When Brosnan became Bond, the series was an established piece of popular culture and, with the rise of home video and the Internet, it was no longer possible to have an actor cement himself as Bond in the same way that Connery and Moore did. If you don't like the current Bond, you can watch another one at home. Brosnan fell a victim to this, and his movies tried to cater to everyone rather than trying to give him his own unique take on the character.

Daniel Craig managed to break out in a way that Brosnan never managed, but he did so with a creative team that had a clear idea of what kind of Bond they wanted. However, the mixed response to Quantum of Solace dented his standing and, with the release of Skyfall, we saw a return to what was termed 'classic' Bond. Skyfall was a massive hit, and so the reversion to the old style was seen as a success. This led to Spectre, which will see the return, in one form or another, of the iconic Connery-Lazenby era organisation. But where does this leave Craig's Bond?

The return of a kitted-out Aston Martin and the new teaser poster showing Craig in a variation of Roger Moore's Live and Let Die garb leave me feeling uneasy. Is Craig's Bond going to suffer the same fate as Brosnan's, and just become a mannequin for the fashions of his predecessors? This is pure speculation at this point, and only time will tell as to whether Spectre will perpetuate the sense of renewal that Casino Royale created, or stifle it in favour of pure formula.

COULD GO EITHER WAY

Continuity: Before Craig, the Bond films were infamous for their complete lack of continuity. Felix Lieter changed actors every film. M, Moneypenny and Q stayed on through successive eras of Bonds. Bond and frequent nemesis Blofeld meet for the first time twice (and are played by different actors) in You Only Live Twice and On Her Majesty's Secret Service. What is even crazier is that these films follow each other, and are THEN followed by Diamonds are Forever, which pretends that OHMSS never existed. The Dalton movies ignore the Moore movies but remember Lazenby's. Bosnan's first movie begins by retconning Dalton's tenure, but remembers everything else. It's insanity if you try to work it out (I mean, the filmmakers didn't give a crap, so why should you?).

However, the Craig movies are clearly trying to do something different. And by different, I mean they are doing what every other franchise is doing now and trying to create multi-film sagas. This started when Quantum of Solace was a direct sequel to Casino Royale. While Skyfall was a standalone, Spectre, based on the teaser trailer, is going to try and bring together the unresolved plot strands left over from Quantum and Skyfall. This might be cool. It might also result in a mess.

While continuity has been a problem for the Bond series (try watching Quantum and Skyfall back to back), this (lack of a) strategy allowed each film to be its own beast, and meant any of the movies could be the entry point for new fans. By tying itself to its predecessors, Spectre might alienate new viewers and ruin its own story by making accommodations for events in previous movies.

A smaller problem with this is the transition to a new actor. Looking ahead, Craig has one more film in his contract, which means a new actor in about 8 years or so (unless Craig returns for more). I am hoping that the powers that be will simply conclude the Craig era and start fresh. It worked before, and it can work agin, allowing the Craig movies and those of his successor to be their own entities.

CONCLUSION
This is all speculation at this point. But my underlying point is this: The simple fact is that while previously the series could produce a bad movie and carry on, the stakes have been raised since Casino Royale and Skyfall. Both movies made money but, more importantly, they received an unprecedented level of critical acclaim. This puts the franchise in an interesting bind -- while they have to provide the same ingredients people have come to expect, the creative team has now set a qualitative bar that means that, for the first time, a new Bond movie is treated with the same kind of critical regard as other movies. Failure suddenly means more, when the precedent is now so high.

Enough of my ranting. I look forward to Spectre, as I do every other Bond movie -- but I do so with the full knowledge of the lows as well as the highs. The production team for Spectre is pound for pound, one of the most talented currently in the business -- they have it in their power to make the best Bond ever. I hope they do.

As the song goes, nobody does it better. Now it is just up to Sam Mendes and his team to prove it.

Three Shades of Gere

I've always felt that Richard Gere is an underrated performer. While often criticised for coasting on his looks in movies like Pretty Woman (Gary Marshall, 1990) and Runaway Bride (Marshall, 1999), Gere also displays a willingness to subvert the very qualities which make him a star. What is often overlooked in overviews of Gere’s career, is that his rise to prominence was based on a series of darker, more ambiguous characters such as a violent thug in Looking For Mr. Goodbar (Richard Brooks, 1977) and as a male escort accused of murder in American Gigolo (Paul Schrader, 1980). In his romantic features, Gere generally plays a successful, superficial cynic who learns how to feel through love (for example, his cold business executive in Pretty Woman ends up rejecting the business practices which have sapped his humanity). It’s a conventional, predictable arc that has been both the source of Gere’s success and the basis of the criticism levelled against him. However,  this arc - a superficial man discovers depth - is also the foundation for some of Gere’s more interesting work.

American Gigolo (dir. Paul Schrader, 1980)

In his breakout performance, Gere plays Julian, an emotionally detached male escort. Throughout the first half of the film, Julian is shown to be all about surfaces - whether exercising, picking out clothes or meeting clients. His perfect existence is unbalanced by a murder investigation, and his detachment, till now an asset in both in his personal and professional lives, proves to be a major weakness when he becomes the chief suspect. As the noose tightens, the formerly cool Julian finds out that his ability to detach himself from intimacy of any kind has left him with no alibi, and no one to turn to. 

Gere’s natural reserve is perfect for the role of Julian, his natural containment and lack of overt emotional outbursts complimenting his director’s objective approach to the material. He is unafraid to make Julian unlikeable, and plays up the character’s ambiguous sexuality - an aspect of the role that scared off early contender John Travolta. Gere’s best moment comes during a pivotal monologue to his new girlfriend. Julian tells the story of how he managed to loosen up a frigid client, as an example of the benefits he provides - not just physical pleasure, but emotional catharsis for a middle-aged woman in a loveless marriage. “Who else would have taken that time? Cared enough to do it right?” This story highlights the way Julian believes his job is a vocation - a selfless way to help others - while emphasising his ego - melting a repressed client is is an endorsement to his skills as a professional lover. Gere plays the whole scene in a long shot, completely nude. Physically and emotionally exposed, Gere underplays Julian’s total self-absorption. He is more like a priest than a street hustler, someone who sees himself as divorced from the seedier aspects of his profession, but who can still reap the benefits. It is one of Gere’s best performances and served as a template for the kinds of remote, damaged characters he would return to over the course of his career.

The casting of Gere in the title role is partially dependant on his physical presence. Gere’s well groomed appearance does not project the kind of aggressive machismo represented by contemporary sex symbols like Burt Reynolds and Clint Eastwood. Compared to these examples, bastions of Seventies masculinity, Gere projects a softer, more metrosexual appeal based on more attention to aesthetic details (hair, clothes). Schrader’s camera objectifies Gere in a manner more consistent with a female sex symbol. The first act features Gere in various stages of undress, in sequences which foreground his physical attributes. The most famous of these scenes, one which helped cement Gere’s status as an Eighties sex symbol, features the camera following Gere around his apartment while he exercises wearing a pair of extremely small shorts. These early scenes of Julian preparing for work resembles the ‘makeover’ sequences the female lead in a romantic comedy goes through (such as Pretty Woman).  There is even a scene in which Julian lays out a variety of outfits while strutting around bare-chested and dancing to music in a way that cannot help but evoke this hoariest of cliches. This alignment of Gere’s body with a visual strategy that recalls images of female sexuality plays into the ambiguity surrounding the character’s motives and deepest desires.  While Gere’s physical attributes play into the character’s central goal to be an object of desire, his performance provides few clues as to to exactly what kind of ‘customer’ Julian is trying to attract.   

Internal Affairs (dir. Mike Figgis, 1990)

Following a decade of flops such as Francis Ford Coppola’s The Cotton Club (1984) and King David (Bruce Beresford, 1985), Gere marked the dawn of the new decade with a pair of diametrically opposing roles. Released in the same year as his comeback hit Pretty Woman, Internal Affairs features Gere as corrupt police officer Dennis Peck. Playing both sides of the street, Peck has created a mini-empire for himself - running protection rackets, blackmailing fellow officers, taking out contract kills and maintaining a collection of ex-wives and mistresses. However Peck’s perfect little world is tested when Internal Affairs begins to sniff around, and he takes drastic action to maintain his operation.

Peck is probably Gere's best performance. Oozing contempt from every pore, Gere excels at playing a complete and utter sociopath. Where the American Gigolo had been cold, Peck is an iceberg - coldly manipulating lovers and fellow officers with equal skill and little compunction about sacrificing anyone who comes under his sway. Peck’s good looks and easy charm mask a murderous home fatal, a spiritual father to Denzel Washington's equally corrupt cop in Training Day (Antoine Fuqua, 2001). 

Rather than the blue-collar tough guy the script implies, Gere’s portrayal of Peck is a more refined, preventing the character veering off into the cartoon bad guy he could have been. Lacking a physically imposing physique, Peck’s power is more insidious. Like a combination of Shakespeare’s Iago and Richard III, he is a master manipulator, with an almost supernatural ability to sniff out a person’s weakness and exploit it. Refracted through Gere’s performance, Peck comes across as a seducer, both in terms of his ability with women and with the small cadre of fellow cops and criminals he has under his thumb. Unlike the American Gigolo, who is defined by his isolation, Dennis Peck ingratiates himself among both colleagues and friends. There are no boundaries between his job and personal life. Throughout the film, Peck  constantly refers to himself as one of the team - a martyr who will lay down his life for his fellow officers. The opening scene introduces us to Peck and his modus operandi. While on a drug bust, a fellow officer shoots an innocent bystander by mistake. Peck places a knife in the dead civilian’s hand. While doing so, he convinces the cop that this is part of the job. Like the central character in American Gigolo, Dennis Peck justifies his actions as a necessary service to his fellow officers: “How many cops you know, huh? Got nothing. Divorced, alcoholic, kids won't talk to them anymore, can't get it up. Sitting there in their little apartments, alone in the dark, playing lollipop with a service revolver.” He treats their various infractions as part of an unstated reciprocal agreement between street cops and the system they are supposed to protect - if the system is going to use them, they should use what power they have to get a piece of the action. Like Julian in American Gigolo, Peck masks his selfishness in humility. Peck loves his fellow officers, his ex-wives and his many kids, but only as symbols of his own success. 

Richard Gere’s smile has been a prime component of his appeal in his romantic comedies. Its presence as a selling tool - the posters for Pretty Woman, Runaway Bride, Mr Jones (Figgis again, 1993) and Chicago (Rob Marshall, 2002) - highlight how much of a convention this smile has become to his performance style. In Internal Affairs, director Mike Figgis juxtaposes this smile with Peck’s actions. A prime example is the scene where Peck is caught having anal sex with another man’s wife. Gere’s smile becomes a punchline - not just as a signifier of Peck’s debauchery, but a meta-textual commentary on the vaucuous sincerity Gere’s smile had become associated with in his more crowd pleasing roles.  

Gere’s best moments are in his confrontations with the film’s protagonist, a fresh faced Internal Affairs officer, Raymond Aliva, played by Andy Garcia. Throughout the film, Peck plays upon his opponent’s frayed marriage, turning the initially contained Aliva into a paranoid, violent wife-beater. During an early confrontation in a public park, Dennis Peck provokes the normally cool Raymond into beating him up. This scene is unsettling for several reasons. Firstly, the location - a public space, filled with ordinary people heading to work or playing with their kids. Then there is the unflappable, jocular way Gere plays the scene. With no tact, he interrogates his adversary about hissex life and makes (correct) assumptions about his adversary’s past infidelities. Gere’s casual delivery, and his mocking tease of smile contrast well with Garcia’s crumbling, volatile performance. The speed with which Peck is able to provoke the ostensible hero of the film into assaulting him would be laughable in any other context, but Gere’s preening, measured cruelty makes Aliva’s reaction all the more understandable. 

Having already discussed the importance of Gere’s smile to his performance, it is fitting that the film ends on it. Even after Aliva has filled him with lead, Peck gloats at how he was able to bring turn his opponent into a deranged paranoiac. “You're so fucking easy, Raymond. Like a big baby with buttons all over.”  Gere’s grin has become a grimace, a sign of his failure to defeat Aliva, but also a sign of the pyrrhic victory he has scored over the hero’s soul. In this way, Dennis Peck is like a vampire. While Raymond is able to kill Peck, the damage has already been done - Peck’s corruption has been passed on to his conquerer. 

Gere’s performance, as well as the film, went under the radar on its initial release. While a modest success, its dark tone and compromised characters did not catch on with contemporary audiences. Gere’s best work thus far was overshadowed by the blockbuster success of Pretty Woman, which jumpstarted his career and gave him a second wind in Hollywood. One can only wonder what his career would have been like had Internal Affairs, and not Pretty Woman, had caught on. Gere’s trajectory may have been completely different, and possibly more interesting.

Arbitrage (dir. Nicholas Jarecki, 2012)

Watching Arbitrage, one is struck by how much the character of Robert Miller feels like an extension of his previous roles. Taken as a triple bill, it's possible to see how the character in American Gigolo could have grown up to become his character in Internal Affairs and then failed upwards to become the character in Arbitrage. The Gere character has grown up, both in age and social status. While the American Gigolo strived for upper class sophistication, and Richard Peck rebelled against it, Arbitrage’s Robert Miller is everything they are not. A giant in the financial industry, like Julian, Miller is a man with everything at his fingertips. However, like the protagonist of American Gigolo, once again Gere plays a man with a seemingly perfect life (at least in his own mind) - complete with a French mistress. And like Julian, his life is thrown into turmoil. 

We are introduced to Robert Miller explaining his personal philosophy in the context of a television interview. With an adoring audience of technicians and family in the wings, Miller provides an initially innocuous soundbite of financial prudence that is ultimately rendered meaningless by the character’s future actions. In hindsight, this interview sequence performs the same function as the openings of American Gigolo and Internal Affairs - showing that the character Gere is playing is himself involved in a type of play-acting. In this scene, and throughout the film, Miller plays the role of successful businessman. Like the protagonist of American Gigolo, the perception of other people is an essential part of the character’s life. It is important to both characters because both of their jobs are dependant on the characters’ abilities to sell themselves. Robert Miller plays the role of a principled, tough businessman and a dedicated family man. These aspects of his character are introduced right at the beginning. This perfect facade is destroyed shortly thereafter when we are then introduced to Miller’s other life - first, a mistress he stashes in an apartment on the other side of town, then the fallacy of his business success. Like Julian in American Gigolo, Miller’s world is one of constant performance.

Like the central character in Internal Affairs, Robert Miller’s success is dependant on a lie. While Gere had given the role of Dennis Peck a diabolical vitality, he gives Robert Miller an air melancholy. Like an ageing prize fighter, Miller knows his best days are behind him, but is unwilling to let go of another shot at a title fight. Gere is good at scenes where he has to maintain his cool while his back is to the wall. Arbitrage features a great example of this. As his personal and professional lives hang in the balance, Miller tries to win over a sceptical buyer for his company. Allowing his usual slick veneer to crumble, Miller launches into a profanity-laden tirade. Finally cutting through the niceties of their class, Miller’s candour wins over the buyer, and the scene ends with each of them complimenting the other on their respective performances - even when they are being real, they are still acting. 

Ultimately, Miller’s victory comes at the expense of his personal happiness. His marriage and his business are now as one - financial transactions have trumped emotional connections. The ending provides an ironic mirror of the opening, with Miller holding court before an adoring audience as he accepts an award for his humanitarian efforts. However, unlike the opening, Miller has lost everything. He has all the material trappings of success, but he has lost his daughter’s respect, and his marriage is now sham.

Final thoughts

Casting is an important piece of of the filmmaking process - put the wrong person in a role and the entire picture can be thrown off course. The casting of stars makes this process even more complicated. Even if the star is talented enough to play the role, the baggage he or she brings from previous roles can completely undermine the credibility of the entire film. However, when intelligent filmmakers take established stars and place them in roles which undermine the qualities viewers have come to expect from them, the results can be spectacular - take Robert Mitchum playing the villain in Night of the Hunter (Charles Laughton, 1955), or Sean Connery completely destroying his Bond persona as a cop confronted with his own failings in The Offence (Sidney Lumen, 1972). Rather than a two dimensional pretty boy, Richard Gere has shown that he is at his best playing against the very qualities which make him a star. In films such as American Gigolo,  Internal Affairs (Mike Figgis, 1990), and Arbitrage (Nicholas Jarecki, 2012), the characters Gere plays reject and invert the character arc associated with his more popular work. In many ways, these films act as a thematic trilogy, in which Richard Gere embodies three different iterations of morally ambiguous characters. Like his mainstream work, in these films, Gere plays a self-made man who is incapable of intimacy. Unlike films like Pretty Woman, the characters in American Gigolo,  Internal Affairs, and Arbitrage  recognise and justify this superficiality. The only change that takes place is their recognition of their superficiality, combined with the knowledge that they are unable to escape the lives they have created for themselves.

While contemporaries such as Michael Douglas have built their careers on playing morally compromised anti-heroes, Richard Gere has been stuck in the image of his popular roles - a teflon-coated yuppie in search of love. With his days of being a matinee idol long over, with roles in films such as Arbitrage, Gere has made the transition into a being a character actor. With its relative critical and commercial success, hopefully this bodes well for both the next stage in Gere’s career, and a critical reappraisal of his body of work.    

Further viewing

Days of Heaven (Terence Malick, 1978)

Sommersby (Jon Amiel, 1993)

The Hoax (Lasse Hallestrom, 2007)

A look back at 2013

This year, I'm going to try and write a blog about the Auckland Film Festival. As a dry run, here are my personal favorites from last year's line up.

FRANCES HA (dir. Noah Baumbach) 

Everything about this movie seemed designed to turn me away: the mumble-core trappings, the polly anna protagonist, the New York hipster setting... For some reason however, I decided to go.

Everything I was afraid this movie was was there. And yet, all this stuff worked. This movie is a lovely little curio about a woman who remains determined to achieve her dreams while everyone around her  has made compromises to achieve something more realistic.

This film rides the edge of being an overly cutesy, self-indulgent eulogy to New York hipsterism. One move out of place and the whole structure could have collapsed, but somehow Baumbach and star Greta Gerwig never put a foot wrong, elevating FRANCES HA above most of the dross which constitutes the post-mumblecore indie scene.  After DAMSELS IN DISTRESS and now this, I am a big fan of Gerwig, and I look forward to checking out the rest of Baumbach's previous work.

PRINCE AVALANCHE (dir. David Gordon Green)

I've been a fan of David Gordon Green for awhile. My first exposure to him was PINEAPPLE EXPRESS. It's a good movie, but it wasn't till I saw SNOW ANGELS that I became a real fan. When I heard this movie was in the festival line up, I jumped at the chance.

This movie is the kind of indie I like. Small, loose, and set in a microcosm of reality. It's not a big story in any way, just two road workers re-painting the centre lines on a road after a major forest fire in the backroads of Texas.

As our central protagonists, Emile Hirsch and Paul Rudd, still somewhat under the radar but relatively known quantities, establish a lo-fi, unpredictable, and intimate rapport that allows them to play off each other in ways that give them a chance to really stretch. Emile Hirsch, looking disconcertingly like a young Jack Black, delivers a loose, hilarious performance as a simple-minded party-animal in a quarter life crisis. Paul Rudd, still underrated, delivers an excellent performance as a man who tries to keep everything under control, but is just as lost and confused as his comrade.

With Green's mix of kitchen-sink realism and poetic mood-setting, PRINCE AVALANCHE is a great  boost to his creative mojo after a slew of increasingly moribund Hollywood ventures.

OTHER FESTIVAL HIGHLIGHTS: 

The Spectacular Now (dir. James Ponsoldt)

My third and final favorite of the festival. Great performances, a terrific script, and understated, empathetic direction combine to make a film that actually lives up to the overused term, 'coming of age'. 

Suspiria with live soundtrack by Goblin

I've seen Dario Argento's classic before, but watching this in the Civic on a massive screen with Goblin, the band behind the film's lauded soundtrack, blasting out the score right in front of me, took the whole thing to another level.

OTHER FAVS

Outside of the festival, I had a few other favorites.

Blue is the Warmest Colour (dir. Abdellatif Kechiche)

I actually saw this at the start of this year, but since it's a 2013 release and bloody brilliant, I had to say something about it.

Put aside the controversy over the director and its sexual content, this is a truly great film. Heck take away the lesbian angle, and it still stands as an achingly real and deeply visceral portrait of the life cycle of a relationship. There's nothing exceptional about the people involved, or the way they meet, or live, or how they break up, it just feels lived in.

An epic treatment of a mundane situation, BLUE IS THE WARMEST COLOUR is a truly superlative experience I cannot recommend enough.

NEW OLD FAV: 

Imitation of Life (dir. Douglas Sirk, 1959)

I've got a working version of a top ten of all time that's up to about 6 now. Whatever iteration I finally go with will definitely include this.

Telling the dual stories of two mothers and their daughters, IMITATION OF LIFE uses its parallel narratives to offer a terrifying commentary on race and class in fifties America. Words cannot begin to describe the sheer, subtle genius of this movie as both a traditional melodrama and a savage satire on the gap between Hollywood 'reality' and the social context outside the studio gates. 

It's rare for a 60 year old movie to feel like a punch in the gut, but IMITATION OF LIFE is a unique and multifaceted beast with a nasty sting in its tail...

The Chronicles of Bill

New post! Switching things up a bit. 

I'm testing the waters with a book review. Now, this is not entirely new. I've taken an old review and re-jigged it a bit, but I'm going to try and include more reviews like this in the future. Enough from me, read on!   

MASTERING THE PRESIDENCY is a biography on US President Bill Clinton by respected English author Nigel Hamilton. He's written some other biographies on other famous people including an earlier book he'd done on Monty (the WWII general, not Python).

It's the story of Clinton's first term, and how he evolved into a respected world statesman. I sniggered at the last part (everyone remembers what happened in his SECOND term), but it did get me thinking. I had been nay but a youngling during Clinton's presidency. The only time I remember him existing was during the Lewinsky scandal. However, even without knowing that much about him, I realized something else.

While Clinton's personal failures were certainly detrimental to his image, compared to the colossal failures of his successor, he was almost saintly. Intrigued, I decided to invest in this doorstop of a book.

It was actually pretty good. First of all, Hamilton doesn't eulogize Clinton.The portrait he constructs is of a man with both great empathy and genius-level intelligence but compromised by a pathological desire to please everyone, hazy principles and a complete lack of personal discipline. The fact that Hamilton is not American helped make this book more appealing to me, since most American biographies seem to BLAST "THE STAR-SPANGLED BANNER" THROUGH YOUR BRAIN AS SOON AS YOU OPEN THE FIRST PAGE. Moving on...

The book describes events starting from the transition of power in 1992-1993 to Election night 1996, and is divided into both volumes and books. It sounds complicated but it really isn't. Quite frankly, it aided my reading immensely, as I can't help fiddling the pages and it gave me specific places to mark. Not to mention the fact that I could go back to remember a name or event I had forgotten which had popped up again. These separations also work dramatically, to signal the transition between both major events and the evolution of Hamilton's subject as both a man and a politician.

The book works as two halves, bisecting the four years between 1993 and 1996. The first half is interesting in showing how a government gets started, and this portion is probably the funniest, as the government is thrown into disarray by Clinton's indecisiveness. However, as 1993 rolls into 1994, the parade of snafus gets longer and more monotonous, and Clinton's inability to get his (White) house in order begins to get tedious.

By this point I was wondering how the hell Clinton won a second term. It would only be after I had finished the book that I realized this question was why Hamilton wrote it in the first place.

Objectively however, this section of the book suffers from a lack of real drama, and a lot of policy which will probably turn off readers. There are suspensful episodes, such as the well known events in Somalia, Waco, Haiti, the World Trade Centre bombing and Clinton's showdown with North Korea, which almost led to war.

The problem is, and this has more to do with history than with Hamilton's book, is Clinton's handling of most of the above. While the screw ups at Waco are well known, a few of the more successful crises, such as his dealings with North Korea, are not really because of him. By the time you're a quarter through the book you'll be wondering why Hamilton didn't write a book about ex-prez Jimmy Carter, after he manages to defuse both the Haiti and Korea situations.

Things pick up around the same time Clinton's healthcare bill gets sent down the gurgler. Then the shit really hits the proverbial fan - which is about the time I really started enjoying the book.

Every protagonist needs an antagonist, and history has provided Hamilton with a great one: Speaker of the House Newt Gingrinch. What's better is that his entrance is perfectly timed to coincide with Clinton's biggest problem: the loss of both Houses of Congress to the Republican Party. My understanding of the situation is pretty basic, but it basically meant that Clinton would have a VERY hard time passing any laws. It's pretty tame in light of the present Congress's (in)action and a sad reflection of how low the bar is now. 

The real dramatic meat of the book is the struggle between Clinton and Gingrinch. Super-smart and super-sexed,Gingrinch is like Clinton's doppleganger. He's a great antagonist and a worthy opponent to Clinton, lacking Clinton's humility (he asks his first wife for a divorce while she's undergoing cancer treatment), world view and, most critically, his media savvy.

Gingrinch's arrival on the scene seems to galvanize Clinton into action. If this were an action movie, Clinton would be tooling up with weapons in some glorious montage complete with some wonderfully overblown martial music while Gingrinch cackled in his evil lair. In real life, this involves alot of back room negotiation and the appointment of Leon Panetta as Clinton's Chief of Staff to instill a sense of structure and discipline over the woe-fully disorganized Clinton White House. More importantly, in regards to this book is that this battle of the political titans gives Hamilton's prose the steriodal energy boost it needs, and the rest of the book flies by. My lack of knowledge was beneficial at this point, since it meant I could enjoy their struggles without any fore-knowledge of the climax.

And then there's Monica...

I won't spoil the rest for you, but by the end of the book, I was pumped. Especially since Hamilton ends the book on a cliffhanger ending, with Clinton celebrating his re-election completely unaware of the shit storm of controversy his personal indiscretions were about to unleash.

The second half of the book is inarguably better than the first half, and this is one of the few books I've read (fiction or non-) that actually gets more exciting as it heads into the home stretch. While this heavy tome might be hard going at first (politics...), it's worth it just to see how Clinton turned his administration around and went toe to toe with the Grinch. From then on it's like the Rumble in the Jungle with Clinton as Ali and Gingrinch as Foreman, with better suits and flabbier pecs.

Another interesting bonus feature is comparing how Clinton did with how Obama's faring - a nice postscript to the book for me was watching Newt Gingrinch's failed presidential run in 2012. Oh sweet justice...

All in all, I really enjoyed the book. Nigel Hamilton was supposed to be working on a sequel ( I guess the working title for that would be 'Un-Mastering the Presidency'?). Based on the strength of the material he has to work with, CLINTON PART II ought to be both more dramatic (the impeachment) and funnier (the impeachment) than its predecessor. While there's been no new developments, hopefully this second tome comes to pass.

Original post: 11-8-2010

A little tribute to one of Bollywood's finest

KAJOL

Okay, this one is a bit of a stretch since there's over a billion people around the globe who are well aware of this fine actress's considerable talents. However, Kajol remains an example of the kinds of acting talent that lie outside English language (not to mention, Western) cine-sphere.

While Hollywood (and any heterosexual man with a pulse) swoons over her contemporary Aishwarya Rai, Kajol remains under the radar.

A pity, since Kajol's range and gravitas would give the Winslets and Streeps (yes!) a serious run for their money. 

One of the most talented actresses to emerge from Bollywood in the Nineties, Kajol is best known for her pairings with superstar Shahrukh Khan, and their collective chemistry is always a joy to behold (and really helps during the really, really long song-and-dance numbers).

While most Bollywood films are weighed down by sentiment and melodramatic plotting (not to mention 3 hour running times and 6-12 song-and-dance numbers...), Kajol is the rare talent that can bring a film back to some semblance of (movie) reality.

With decent comic timing and a penchant for the zany, she is also a pretty good comedienne, as shown by her performance in KUCH KUCH HOTA HAI (1998), in which she comes close to channelling the spirit of screwball queen Carol Lombard (another fine talent awaiting rediscovery!). 

A character actress blessed with a movie star's looks, Kajol has played everything from villainous femmes to romantic heroines (check out her award-winning work as a blind lover in 2006's FANAA). 

She's also rather unique in India for not constantly working (a trait generally unheard of in Bollywood), choosing to spend time with her family while choosing roles that will stretch her talents. 

Still only in her thirties, Kajol is an exciting talent who continues to grow and develop as one of the world's most popular and respected thespians. 

Am I smitten? Of course, but my personal endorsement aside, take a look and you'll soon be convinced that Kajol is the real deal.

Original post 6-8-2010

Die Hard. In a building

This is a post about movies in which a person or persons are trapped in a building by other persons. Kinda. Read on!

REAR WINDOW (1954)

Not really an action movie, but in many ways, the forerunner of every claustrophobic thriller from WAIT UNTIL DARK to DIE HARD. Enough has already been written about the virtues of this masterpiece. Go watch it. NOW.

THE MARAUDERS (1955)

I have not seen this movie in 12 years. It might be shit. But from what I remember it was about a lone farmer protecting a watering hole from a gang of unpleasant reprobates with only an immigrant woman and her little son to help. It also boasts one of my favorite genre cliches - the main villain who initiates the plot is taken out early and his place is taken by his insane and depraved subordinate. Thus a tense standoff is turned into a bloodbath. Or in this case, a dustup. Surprisingly dark for a mid 50s western, it boasts a memorably ironic climax. 

WAIT UNTIL DARK (1967)

Maybe the first proto-slasher movie, the climax to this tense thriller works just as well as a mini-action movie, with its disabled heroine using all her wits to MacGyver the baddies' attempts to break into her basement apartment.

Audrey Hepburn makes for an unlikely badass and Alan Arkin makes an equally strong impression as  her terrifying antagonist. Director Terrence Young, a veteran of the Bond films, earns his stripes with a cruel, ironic touch which turns a hoary premise into a truly hair-raising ride.

ASSAULT ON PRECINCT 13 (1976)

Scary as hell, this movie gets LA in a way I can relate to. It's the movie that put John Carpenter on the map, and it serves as an inspiration to low budget filmmakers everywhere on how to turn out a memorable genre film on limited resources.

DIE HARD (1988)

The macdaddy of 'people stuck in a something' action films. While movies like SPEED and THE RAID come close, DIE HARD's clockwork plotting, sense of verisimilitude and a cast of memorable characters elevate it beyond the realm of mere genre classic.

THE RAID (2011)

This movie is great. I'm not as high on it as a lot of other people, but it is great to see someone pick up the bloody mantle of John Carpenter and John McTiernan to deliver an action movie that feels like a genuine roller coaster ride. 

Some people say it's better than DIE HARD. It isn't. But on its own terms, it's excellent and boasts a final fight that stands with the best of them. 

DREDD (2012)

This feels like the kind of movie Walter Hill used to dash off in his late 70s/early 80s heyday. A stripped down vehicle for Mega City One's resident badass, every aspect of this film is pared to the bone, from the terse dialogue, action-speaks-louder character moments and the economical choice to keep the story contained to one mega-block.

While not as imaginative in its set pieces as THE RAID, DREDD is far from the poor second cousin some critics shrugged it off as. Like ASSAULT ON PRECINCT 13, DREDD is a tribute to the work of a talented group of filmmakers overcoming the economic constraints imposed by a low budget.

WHITE HOUSE DOWN (2013)

Okay, so this movie is Die Hard. And it's set in the White House. But it is awesome.

If OLYMPUS HAS FALLEN felt like an 80s throwback (earnest, R rated, kinda racist), WHITE HOUSE DOWN feels like it just fell out of a time warp from 1996, sharing the same ironic bluster of Roland Emmerich's INDEPENDENCE DAY, the heavy hitter of that year's blockbusters.

Fast and funny, the makers of White House Down know exactly what kind of movie they are making. The kind where Channing Tatum threatens a squirrel with his gun, the President fires a rocket launcher and someone wears a necklace of hand grenades.

A breath of fresh air in a summer of grim'n'gritty misery (MAN OF STEEL, WORLD WAR Z), WHITE HOUSE DOWN did not get the love it deserved. But that love starts here, dammit! Go see it now!

Random post to show I am not dead

Rocket, SUCKER PUNCH [22-8-2011]

Jena Malone is a fine actress, with street cred up the wazoo, and a chin that remains an endless fascination to me. Which makes it all the more interesting when she takes on a more commercial project.

Sadly her instincts in these cases can be hit-and-miss. CONTACT was cool, apart from the crazy ending. STEP MOM was hokey, mawkish nonsense that'll make your grannie cry. Her last fling with Hollywood was jungle horror THE RUINS. She was pretty good in it, turning a token 'final girl' into an untrustworthy, mixed up twenty-something. THE RUINS  could have been great, but it was about killer weeds. So I laughed at it.

However, just as her performance in THE RUINS was rather better than it deserved, so it goes with Zack Snyder's idontknowhathehellitsabout movie.  

Now I'm not suggesting her performance is Oscar calibre, but she certainly made me care a damn sight more about Rocket than Emily Browning's Babydoll. A part of this is in the writing. Generally speaking, it sucks. HOWEVER, intentional or not (hey we can hope), Malone is considerably better served by the script (okay stop laughing) than most of the other actors. Her characterization and backstory are also better served by the fact that writer-director extraordinaire Sack, I mean, Zack Snyder does not show said backstory in flashback, thus allowing the viewer to imagine what could have landed her in a brothel/madhouse/whateverthehellitis, without the ridiculously over-stylized aesthetic he brings to Babydoll's "tragic" past (although I can understand how she's so traumatized. I'd be pretty screwed up too if the first twenty years of my life were telescoped into a music video).

Another factor is looks. Without meaning to sound cruel, Malone is not traditionally good-looking. Which is not to say she is not good-looking or sexy, she is just not as idealized. She stands out from the other actresses, who are a little more along the lines of classical notions of feminine beauty (certainly the kind you find in a brothel/comic book/video game/whathefuckisthispos). For this rather superficial reason (hey remember what we're dealing with here) Rocket comes off as a little bit more relatable. 

The final factor is the performance itself. As I said before, it ain't perfect. There are (quite) a few moments where she seems to strain with the "dire-logue" Snyder gives her. While I may be suffering from the delayed effects of some forgotten hallucinogen, here's my take on why Rocket works and the rest of the movie doesn't:

As I said before, while the script is poor, it does give Malone's character the barest pieces of an arc (or at least more of an arc than Browning), and the actress does manage, however inconsistently, to produce a more solid characterization than her peers. 

At first, Malone plays her as a sarcastic and less tough version of her sister Sweet Pea (Abbie Cornish). However, as the story progresses (READER: What story?) there are several key moments in which our perceptions of Rocket are forced to change. The moment after Babydoll rescues her from being raped is a great little character moment. She attempts to laugh it off and resume her sarcastic veneer, yet in the following scene we see her lose the fake smile as she turns to get a glass of water with deadened eyes. When she tells her sister that she can't "take much more of this", Malone utters the line with a tremulous voice, as though she fighting the mother of all panic attacks. There is a sense of fragility about Rocket which is lacking from the other girls. Rocket seems to be the only character with a believable reaction to being stuck in a brothel/WTFdontcarenomore - and that makes us (or me, at least) care.

I don't want to overburden Malone with too much praise. If the other actresses had been better served with more developed characters, and the whole fantasy action crap ripped out, I'm sure they would have delivered proper performances, instead of striking manga poses. However, as it stands, her performance makes SUCKER PUNCH just a mite more tolerable.