New Mexico Noir: Loves Lies Bleeding

A solid, nasty film noir set in New Mexico, Love Lies Bleeding is a stylish blend of genre set pieces and director and co-writer Rose Glass’s distinctive vision of erotic bodybuilding. A tough sell to mainstream viewers, it will build a loyal following of thriller fans.

Glass opens with the camera pulling out of a Jo Nesbø canyon to reveal the gleaming lights of a city much like Albuquerque. That dreamlike landscape is replaced with a tawdry sex scene behind a dive bar between scumbag dad JJ (Dave Franco) and runaway Jackie (Katy O’Brien).

Jackie later wanders into the Crater Gym, a fleapit filled with past-their-prime gym rats who stare at clichéd slogans tacked onto the walls. The gym is managed by clinically depressed Lou (Kristen Stewart), who is instantly drawn to the newcomer. Jackie’s big ambition is to win a Las Vegas bodybuilding competition; Lou just wants to get out of the trap her life has become.

In the grand noir tradition, the two make one wrong move after another. The script, which Glass co-wrote with Weronika Tofilska, jump starts the story before filling in background details. It turns out Lou and JJ are related: JJ has been seriously abusing his wife and Lou’s sister Beth (Jena Malone). Protecting her is the one reason Lou sticks around her crummy job.

JJ works for Lou’s father Lou Sr. (Ed Harris), who runs a gun club while dabbling in drugs and arms dealing. Lou Sr. has a left lot of dead enemies, and his daughter knows where the bodies are buried.Lou’s biggest mistake may be turning Jackie on to steroids (the film takes place in 1989).  When Jackie explodes, it’s hard to tell if it’s the drugs or her own neuroses. The results are catastrophic. Despite Lou’s best efforts to contain the damage, Jackie keeps veering into even worse situations

Critics have drawn comparisons to Thelma & Louise, but that film was positively buoyant compared to this. I was reminded more of John Dahl B-movies like Red Rock West and Kill Me Again, dark, hopeless stories whose dead ends feel inevitable.

Not everything works in Love Lies Bleeding, but Glass is such an accomplished director that viewers can glide over the rough spots. Is the gun club a too obvious metaphor? Don’t worry, Glass handles it perfectly. Ditto the macho bodybuilders Lou and Jackie have to deal with.

Stewart does a great job in a role that seems to mesh with her personal issues and priorities. O’Brien is consistently mesmerizing, able to maintain sympathy even as she goes off the rails. The secret weapon in Love Lies Bleeding may be Ed Harris. An icy father and resolute killer, Harris gives scintillating line readings. He is the most frightening thing in the film.

Credits: Directed by Rose Glass. Written by Rose Glass, Weronika Tofilska. Produced by Andrea Cornwell, Oliver Kassman. Executive Producers: Susan Kirr, Ollie Madden, Daniel Battsek, David Kimbangi. Director of Photography: Ben Fordesman. Production Designer: Katie Hickman. Edited by: Mark Towns. Cast: Kristen Stewart, Katy O’Brien, Jena Malone, Anna Baryshnikov, Dave Franco, Ed Harris.

Photos courtesy A24. Photos by Anna Kooris.

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New York Noir: 5lbs of Pressure review

Getting films completed and released is so difficult that finding fault with them is no longer appealing. As long as filmmakers are trying to be constructive, shouldn’t they be given some credit?

Putting that theory to the test is 5lbs of Pressure, a drama in which an ex-con tries to reassemble his life after 13 years in prison. It’s a film in which everyone is trying to do the right thing, from writer and director Phil Allocco to stars Luke Evans and Alex Pettyfer and the accomplished crew.

Set in the boroughs of New York City (with mysteriously tree-lined streets and parks), the script follows Adam (Luke Evans, capable but stolid) as he tries to reconnect with his ex-wife Donna (Stephanie Leonidas) and son Jimmy (a floundering Rudy Pankow).

But obstacles beset the ex-con. It’s hard finding an apartment, the only job available is a night shift at a dive bar, and Donna wants nothing to do with him. Allocco paints a convincing portrait of how difficult it is for someone like Adam to stay on a moral path, and Evans’ grim demeanor, his sudden violent outbursts, his tentative efforts to apologize for his mistakes are all persuasive.

Other story lines in 5lbs aren’t nearly as successful. First there’s a crime ring run by Leff (Alex Pettyfer). Drugs, guns, cars are all up for grabs. Leff is in charge of his sister’s son Jimmy (a grimly effective Rory Culkin), a wannabe musician who’s stuck making dodgy payoffs and transferring bags of guns and drugs.

An all-around abusive bad guy, Leff holds his sister’s death by OD over Jimmy’s head. With long, stringy hair and black leather outfits, Jimmy is a born target. Culkin plays him straight, adding to the character’s desolation and dim future.

At an AA meeting, Adam reveals that he went to prison for shooting someone on the street as a teenager. Structurally damaging coincidences start piling up as the film progresses. Adam’s victim’s brother Eli (Zac Adams) is goaded by his mother to confront Adam, who for some reason has decided to move back to his old neighborhood.

Eli’s anger management issues reach a crisis point when he discovers that his bandmate Jimmy has stolen his girlfriend Lori (Savannah Steyn). Meanwhile, Jimmy tries to break free from his brother by engineering a heroin deal on his own, only to lose money loaned to him by a vicious gangster.

The gloom keeps mounting: Donna threatens to report Adam to his parole officer (an excellent Julee Cerda), Mike won’t accept him, and not one but two crooks burst into his bar brandishing guns.

Evans does a fair job with Adam, especially during a couple of monologues when he describes his past. It’s a weirdly passive role because that’s what the script wants. But that also means that despite good intentions, he just isn’t a very interesting character.

Nor is 5lbs an interesting film. It tries hard, and its alleyways and therapy meetings and dingy bars and auto repair shops provide a certain amount of atmosphere. (Although most of the film was shot in Manchester, England.)

Ultimately the movie doesn’t have anything compelling to say about its ex-cons and drug dealers, its gangsters and abandoned wives, its orphans and ineffective counselors. It may not be exploitation, but 5lbs of Pressure doesn’t feel much better.

Credits

Written and directed by Phil Allocco. Produced by Zac Adams, Isen Robbins, Aimee Schoof, Dominic Burns, Crawford Anderson-Dillon, Roy Scott MacFarland, Marc Danon, Ford Corbett, Luke Evans, Phil Allocco. Director of photography: Sara Deane. Edited by Seth Anderson. Cast: Luke Evans, Rory Culkin, Zac Adams, Alex Pettyfer, Stephanie Leonidas, Julee Cerda, Savannah Steyn.

In theaters, on digital, and on demand. Photos (Luke Evans; Alex Pettyfer, Rory Culkin) courtesy Lionsgate.

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Float review: Adrift in life

A low-key romance set in the Pacific Northwest, Float rests almost entirely on the appeal of its two leads, Andrea Bang and Robbie Amell (also a producer). They play mismatched neighbors hiding personal wounds. Before the movie ends they will find love as well as solutions to their problems.

Based on a story by Kate Marchant, the film takes an approach so gentle and quiet it erases the plot’s drama. Bang plays Waverly, an immigrant from Taiwan who’s on a fast-track to become a doctor. So driven she hasn’t seen her parents in years, Waverly fears a future of endless hard work with no emotional payoff.

Instead of working in a university lab for the summer, Waverly impulsively visits her aunt Rachel (Michelle Krusiec), an artist and free spirit in a small beach town. Rachel helps her finds a job as a bartender, and introduces her to friends at a beach barbecue, including hunky lifeguard Blake (Amell).

Accidentally knocked into the water by Blake’s sister Isabel (Sarah Desjardins), Waverly almost drowns. Ashamed of her inability to swim, she accepts Blake’s offer to give her lessons at a public pool.

If you can’t see where this is going, you need to renew your Lifetime / Hallmark subscriptions. Director Sherren Lee (who cowrote the adaptation with Jesse Lavercombe) will not let those expecting a happy ending down, even while playing by genre rules.

Forestalling that happy ending are formulaic complications. Blake and Isabel are orphans, leaving the older brother with guilty feelings of responsibility and his sister with a potential substance abuse problem. Waverly needs to tell the truth to her parents about her goals in life. And both have trouble expressing affection towards each other.

Everything proceeds smoothly enough in Float: the swimming metaphors, the wacky but insightful friends, the exceptionally beautiful landscapes (captured by DP Alfonso Chin). A couple of parties, some dancing, and chaste clinches turn up the temperature a few degrees, but Float is at best a slow burn.

Lee, who has worked mostly in TV (Kim’s Convenience, Code 8: Part II), does a good job with an obviously tight budget. Amell is smoothly professional and convincing, but Andrea Bang is a bit too one-note in a role that calls for more edge.

Not much happens in Float, which is how most of us live our lives. That’s a good thing to a point: it’s nice to see believable characters working out issues in credible ways. But it also means Float never engages on a more involving level.

Credits:

Director: Sherren Lee. Writers: Sherren Lee & Jesse Lavercombe. Based on The Wattpad Story by Kate Marchant. Producers: Jeff Chan, Robbie Amell, Chris Pare, Aron Levitz, Shawn Williamson, Aaron Au. Cast: Andrea Bang, Robbie Amell, Michelle Krusiec, Andrew Bachelor, Sarah Desjardins, Rukiya Barnard.

A Lionsgate presentation of a Collective Pictures / Wattpad Webtoon Studios / Brightlight Pictures production. Photos courtesy Lionsgate.

On digital and on demand February 2, 2024.

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Owning up to darkness in The Breaking Ice

Quiet and unassuming, The Breaking Ice follow three dissatisfied twenty-somethings navigating a world that hasn’t turned out the way they expected. Written and directed by Anthony Chen, and featuring excellent lead performances, it is a delicate but beguiling film that operates on a different level than mainstream Chinese dramas.

The story takes place in Yanji, a city near the border with North Korea, during what looks like an endless winter of grim skies and frigid nights. Haofeng (Liu Haoran) is visiting from Shanghai for a wedding. Nana (Zhou Dongyu) leads tour groups when she isn’t blackout drinking. Xiao (Qu Chuxiao), who has been pining for Nana, feels trapped working at his relatives’ restaurant.

The three meet when Hao misplaces his phone while taking Nana’s tour. With no bank card access, he can’t pay his diner bill. When Nana helps out, Hao ends up drinking at her apartment with Xiao. Missing his flight home means touring Yanji with the other two. Hours stretch into days.

Writer and director Anthony Chen fills in complex back stories for his three leads. All three struggle with depression. In fact, Hao’s phone may be missing because he doesn’t want to answer the doctors phoning him from a mental health facility.

An accident in Nana’s past has left her frozen, unable to forget what happened or move forward. Xiao, the poorest of the three, dropped one bleak future for another. The other two could have prospects if they would accept them, but Xiao has little more than a motorcycle that is falling apart.

Chen places his characters in a relentlessly gloomy China of crowded highways and concrete high rises. Factories belch pollution, bars are bedlam, stores sell counterfeits, work is boring and tedious and hard.

Still, the three leads character are cunning enough to realize how they are being victimized. They turn to companionship as much as alcohol for relief, knowing that the only answers to their problems are bad choices. Chen brings a light touch to situations that in other hands would be hard to watch.

The model for The Breaking Ice, as with so many recent Chinese dramas, is An Elephant Sitting Still, Bo Hu’s 2018 drama about lost souls in a wintry industrial city in the north. That film used real locations and long, involved takes to immerse viewers in a reality so desperate that suicide seemed like a viable option.

Like The Shadowless Tower, a similar exercise in middlebrow depression, The Breaking Ice ultimately lacks the courage of its convictions. The three leads talk about “ending it all,” and occasionally one will totter on the edge of a great height, but Chen doesn’t believe that you can’t find solutions. Like Truffaut (whose Jules et Jim is a touchstone here), Chen is an optimist with elegantly pessimistic traits.

If you can’t make up your mind about The Breaking Ice, consider Zhou Dongyu, one of the finest performers working in Asian cinema. Zhou has starred in landmark films like Soul Mate and Better Days, and elevated comedies like This Is Not What I Expected. She is an extraordinary beauty and an exceptional actress, capable of conveying conflicting emotions with the simplest gestures. Liu Haoran and Qu Chuxiao are capable and attractive, but Zhou is magnetic, heartbreaking, utterly assured.

Credits: Director/Screenplay: Anthony Chen. Producers: Meng Xie, Anthony Chen. Director of photography: Yu Jing-Pin. Production Designer: Du Luxi. Costume Designer: Li Hua. Sound Designer: Zhe Wu. Editors: Hoping Chen, Soo Mun Thye. Original Music: Kin Leonn. Cast: Zhou Dongyu, Liu Haroran, Qu Chuxiao.

Photos courtesy Canopy Pictures, Huace Pictures, Rediance

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MoMA’s To Save and Project returns for 20th Edition

One of the highlights of the cinematic year is To Save and Project: The MoMA International Festival of Film Preservation, this year in its 20th edition. A collection of preservations and restorations from around the world, the series is a way to adjust our sense of the history of cinema.

To Save and Project opens with The Black Pirate, introduced on January 11th by Oscar-hopeful Alexander Payne. Starring Douglas Fairbanks, the movie is a perfect example of the problems facing film archivists in trying to present an authentic version of Fairbanks’ vision.

Fairbanks started planning the movie after he finished The Mark of Zorro, and decided early on to shoot in Technicolor. He and DP Henry Sharp tested the negative for months. Fairbanks hired Swedish artist Carl Oscar Borg to supervise the production design, and had illustrator Dwight Franklin prepare what we would call today storyboards of individual sequences. Another important contributor was Belgian fencing instructor Fred Cavens.

By the time Fairbanks donated The Black Pirate to The Museum of Modern Art, the Technicolor process he used was already obsolete, and the film materials were subject to shrinkage. Subsequent releases of the film used alternate takes and footage from 16mm prints. Assembling the most accurate version possible has taken years. This 4K digital restoration of the image is by The Museum of Modern Art and The Film Foundation, with funding provided by the Golden Globe Foundation.

While the restoration is sensational, the movie itself can be a chore. Fairbanks had been making movies for over a decade at this point, and his brand of exuberant, light-hearted action was beginning to wear thin. The Black Pirate was an enormous production, with life-size sets and scores of extras, but the story itself boiled down to confrontations between Fairbanks’ pirate aristocrat and his numerous enemies.

Pacing in individual scenes can be superb, and some of the stunts and swordfights are exceptional. The sight of Fairbanks slicing his way down a furled sail with just a hand-knife is one of the defining images of his time. And you are unlikely to see The Black Pirate in better conditions than at MoMA.

As for the rest of the series, just a glance at the directors involved— Chantal Akerman, Agnieszka Holland, Alain Tanner, Agnès Varda, Wim Wenders, Tsui Hark, Pietro Germi, Buster Keaton, Wong Tim-lam—shows how wide-ranging the schedule is.

Also how relevant. Here’s Joseph Losey’s 1971 melodrama The Go-Between, whose score by Michel Legrand was repurposed for Todd Haynes’ May December. Also the uncut version of Dangerous Encounters: 1st Kind, a thriller by Tsui Hark that was first banned and then shredded by censors. It would be impossible to film today given the political climate in Hong Kong.

Film preservation used to be focused on silent cinema, and then on Hollywood auteurs. Like Arrowsmith, a 1931 drama directed by John Ford. Based on a Pulitzer Prize-winning novel by Sinclair Lewis, Arrowsmith received four Oscar nominations. MoMA is showing a restoration by the Library of Congress based on lead Ronald Colman’s personal print that includes ten additional minutes of material.

Today the concept of preservation and restoration has broadened to include world cinema, shorts, experimental films, even music videos—all of which are represented in this year’s To Save and Project. Acclaimed archivist Rick Prelinger will show two programs of sponsored movies on January 14th. January 27 finds a program of orphan films on 16mm. It’s also a day to celebrate the fiftieth anniversary of DEVO, with rock videos, concert footage, and other material related to the rock group.

Milestone Films is represented by a new restoration of The Dragon Painter (January 20), produced by and starring Sessue Hayakawa, one of the earliest Asian-American stars in Hollywood. Immediately prior is a screening of the 1929 German film Pavement Butterfly starring Anna May Wong, who left Hollywood for Europe to find better projects.

The complete schedule can be found here: https://www.moma.org/calendar/film/5664

Photos: The Black Pirate. 1926. USA. Directed by Albert Parker. Courtesy The Museum of Modern Art Stills Archive

Di yi lei xing wei xian (Dangerous Encounters: 1st Kind). 1980. Hong Kong. Directed by Tsui Hark. Courtesy Spectrum Films

Pavement Butterfly / Großstadtschmetterling: Ballade einer Liebe. 1929. Germany/UK. Directed by Richard Eichberg. Courtesy DFF – Deutsches Filminstitut & Filmmuseum, Frankfurt

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Jason Statham back in business as The Beekeeper

Action icon Jason Statham stars as the titular Beekeeper, an assassin retired from a top-secret, off-the-books branch of government designed to eliminate threats when all else fails. Statham keeps his bees at retired teacher Phylicia Rashad’s farm. When evil scammers steal her money, she commits suicide. That sets Statham off on a mission to kill anyone associated with the scammers. Also blow up their offices. But he can’t injure innocent civilians or any of the many law enforcement operatives who are soon on his tail.

Set in Springfield and Boston but shot mostly in Great Britain, this is the sort of brain-dead filler pushed into theaters before more “solid” material follows in the spring. Twenty years ago Statham (along with Corey Yuen and Luc Besson) changed action movies forever with the Transporter franchise. Its action was tough, physical, and logical, and it was clear that Statham did most of the stunts himself.

Since then he’s alternated between middling-to-fair action films and better-made comedies like Spy. No other action star among his contemporaries has been as successful for so long, largely because Statham is an outstanding physical performer. Also, he limits his dialogue the way Eastwood did with Leone.

But it’s 2024, and age has reduced Statham’s speed and range. He doesn’t kick as high, spin as fast, or jump as much. His fights are poorly staged and repetitive, mostly knocking a bad guy down while others wait their turn. Every now and then a nice touch emerges, like the kick Statham delivers while passing a groping villain on a staircase. But you don’t see a lot of combinations, or variations on previous moves. It’s just one punch after the other.

The Beekeeper moves lethargically, apart from action scenes where Statham kills everyone, sets offices on fire, and flees without a scratch. These bits test credulity. At one point he fights his way up three flights of stairs filled with foes, throws himself out a window, then pops to his feet and walks away.

Occasionally the script flips to smooth, oily ex-CIA director Jeremy Irons, who delivers his few lines expertly. Minnie Driver shows up twice as the current CIA director. Emmy Raver-Lampman is solid as an FBI agent pursuing Statham, as is her partner Bobby Naderi. Josh Hutcherson hams it up futilely as a drugged-out bad guy.

Writer Kurt Wimmer’s dialogue is heavy on things like, “He’s a beekeeper,” with many asides about hives. Director David Ayer has a good feel for tension, but less for pacing.

Statham remains a guilty pleasure, and I never tire of watching him administer a beating. It’s good to see him back in the action genre after misfires like the execrable Operation Fortune: Ruse de Guerre and what amount to cameos in things like Fast X. But The Beekeeper is little more than a place-holder in his career.

Credits: Directed by: David Ayer. Written by: Kurt Wimmer. Produced by: Bill Block, Jason Statham, David Ayer, Chris Long, p.g.a., Kurt Wimmer. Executive Producers: Andrew Golov, Thom Zadra, Mark Birmingham. Director of photography: Gabriel Beristain. Edited by Geoffrey O’Brien. Production design by Ben Munro. Starring: Jason Statham, Emmy Raver- Lampman, Josh Hutcherson, Bobby Naderi, Minnie Driver, David Witts, Michael Epp, Taylor James, Jemma Redgrave, Enzo Cilenti, with Phylicia Rashad and Jeremy Irons.

Photos: Top: Jason Statham stars as Clay in director David Ayer’s THE BEEKEEPER. An Amazon MGM Studios film. Photo Credit: Courtesy of Amazon MGM Studios © 2024 Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Pictures Inc. All Rights Reserved. Center: (L to R) Jason Statham as Clay and Jeremy Irons as Wallace Westwyld in director David Ayer’s THE BEEKEEPER. An Amazon MGM Studios film. Photo Credit: Daniel Smith © 2024 Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Pictures Inc. All Rights Reserved.

In theaters January 12, 2024.

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Andy Lau stars in I Did It My Way

Andy Lau continues his remarkable resurgence in the crime thriller I Did It My Way, yet another variation on Infernal Affairs. Lau plays George Lam, lawyer for a drug ring so powerful it has evaded legal consequences for its crimes.

Battling him is Eddie Fong (Taiwanese star Eddie Peng), a tough, by-the-books cop working under Chung Kam Ming (veteran HK actor Simon Yam). The cops are hindered by corrupt judges and by Lam’s legal expertise. Both crooks and the police have informers, moles who leak details about payoffs and stings. When loyalty is for sale, no one can be trusted.

I Did It My Way is a big production, filled with elaborate sets, massive shoot-outs, and extended chases. The script tries to be up-to-date by incorporating cryptocurrencies, virus-infected social media, and armies of hackers, but its view of the internet is mostly silly montages of lights pulsing through wiring.

Director Jason Kwan, who is also the director of photography, gives the movie a strong, vivid style, with plenty of moody close-ups to go along with the chaotic shoot-outs.

But Kwan can’t do much with a script filled with obvious twists and reversals, with confrontations that lead nowhere, with a narrative that’s needlessly complicated and at the same time largely irrelevant to the central drama.

That narrative core is the relationship between Lam and his enforcer Sau Ho (Gordon Lam Ka Tung). Long-time friends who rose through the crime ring together, they rely heavily on each other. With a wife and child, the blue-collar Sau has the life Lam thinks he wants, especially when the lawyer loses his own family.

The relationship between Lam and Sau is by far the most intriguing element of I Did It My Way, primarily because of the work by two exceptional actors. This has been a great year for Andy Lau, who won a lifetime achievement award last November at the Busan International Film Festival. He reunited with his Infernal Affairs costar Tony Leung Chiu Wai in The Goldfinger, and is absolutely brilliant in the show business satire The Movie Emperor (yet to be released in the US).

But the best performance in the movie belongs to Lam Ka Tung, an actor who has built an impressive resume over two decades, and whose recent work has been revelatory. He was unforgettable as a down-on-his-luck army veteran in Hand Rolled Cigarette, and irresistible as a possibly psychotic spiritual master in last year’s Mad Fate.

Here Lam’s hangdog Sau—bitter, resentful, unable to be honest with anyone—is simply heartbreaking. He conveys so much with a look, a drag on a cigarette, the way he slumps his shoulders. Lam and Lau have worked together for years, and have an easy familiarity here that’s always fun to watch.

Unfortunately, their work is almost erased by the action scenes. Noisy, messy, poorly choreographed, the film’s shootouts are loud and repetitive without adding enough to the story. They (and Peng’s weirdly uninvolving cop) drop I Did It My Way from top-notch to serviceable.

Credits: Director: Jason Kwan. Produced by Li Yaping, Connie Wong, Andy Lau. Director of photography: Jason Kwan. Action director: Chin Ka Lok. Starring: Andy Lau, Lam Ka Tung, Eddie Peng Yuyan, Cya Liu, Simon Yam, Lam Suet, Philip Keung, Hedwig Tam.

In theaters January 12, 2024.

Top: Eddie Peng, Andy Lau. Center: Andy Lau, Cya Liu. Photos courtesy Well Go USA.

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Ranbir Kapoor is an Animal in his latest blockbuster

Clocking in at over 200 minutes, Animal is a film defined by excess. A multi-generational crime drama, it topped the global box office on its opening weekend. It is the highest-grossing opening of star Ranbir Kapoor’s career. Bigger, longer, bloodier: Animal is all that and more.

Kapoor plays Vijay Bilbar Singh, son of one of the wealthiest men in India. Bilbar Singh (played by Anil Kapoor) is a stern, unyielding, often-absent business magnate who has treated his wayward son with anger and disdain. Vijay fully earns that criticism. Arrogant, ill-mannered, impulsive, privileged, he’s the type of student who brings a machine gun to class when his sister is insulted.

Vijay falls for Gitanjali (an affecting performance by the lovely Rashmika Mandanna), from a lower-class family, and takes her to London to escape his father’s wrath. His sisters Reet (Saloni Batra) and Roop (Anshul Chauhan) remain close to home; in fact, Reet’s husband Varun (Siddhant Karnick) becomes a kind of surrogate son to Singh.

Everything changes when assassins attack Singh on a golf course. Vijay returns home to take over the company while his father recovers. He roots out traitors within the organization, including its security force. Vijay hires new bodyguards from the family’s home village, then a body double to portray his father in public.

It turns out another family has a grudge against Singh for apparently icing them out of its share of his fortune. The brothers behind the attacks include Asrar, Abrar, and Abid; Aziz, a fourth brother, will figure into the closing credits. Vijay and his men hole up in a luxury hotel, where they are attacked by scores of Asrar’s men.

That’s just the first half. The rest of the film includes a coma, a heart transplant, Vijay’s affair with and betrayal by Zoya (a very appealing Tripti Dimri), the mute Abrar’s marriage and subsequent wedding-night foursome with his previous two wives, and several attempted reconciliations between Vijay and his father.

Not that the plot matters. Animal is a star vehicle for Ranbir Kapoor, and he makes the most of his role. He’s a lover, an intellectual, a neglected son, but most of all an animal with no control over his feelings. It’s a part with a lot of physicality, a lot of hair changes, and a lot of weird digressions.

Vijay’s rants are the most unpredictable element of Animal, which is otherwise overheated versions of familiar gangster scenes. Vijay talks at length about underwear, and in fact forces an arms dealer to give up his pair. He talks about standards of beauty, a “self-reliant India,” food, cars, anything. He can be funny and surreal at times, but frequently overbearing.

Kapoor goes full-out in his performance. Take a scene where he addresses workers at his father’s steel foundry. It’s a rousing exhortation to work together for the common good — for “victory” — until he starts to go off the rails by promising to strangle his enemies. It’s a brilliant moment in a troubling scene, especially since he’s wearing a uniform embroidered with a swastika. He later raises his arm in a familiar salute.

Vijay actually tries to justify the swastika later in the movie (it’s not “slanted” so it can’t be Nazi). By that time he’s also predicted, “Someone will surely die for me and I will get a transplant.”

Director Sandeep Reddy Vanga’s action scenes are gigantic and chaotic but not especially well choreographed. The attack on Vijay’s hotel is the most complicated set piece in the film. After fighting off hatchet-wielding goons under three lighting schemes, Vijay is told that 200 more fighters are approaching. He mounts a sort of monster machine gun on a golf cart and shoots everyone into submission. It’s a fun but completely unbelievable scene that left me exhausted more than satisfied.

Insane on so many levels, Animal is also noteworthy for the bloodiest closing credits I have ever seen.

Credits: Director: Sandeep Reddy Vanga. Producers: Bhushan Kumar, Pranay Reddy Vanga, Murad Khetani, Krishan Kumar. Writer: Sandeep Reddy Vanga. Director of Photography: Amit Roy. Editor: Sandeep Reddy Vanga. Production Designer: Suresh Selvarajan. Costume Designer: Sheetal Iqbal Sharma.Cast: Ranbir Kapoor, Anil Kapoor, Bobby Deol, Rashmika Mandanna. Language: Distributors: Moksha Movies and Nirvana Cinemas. Hindi and Telugu with English subtitles.

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Life is a cage fight in Rumble Through the Dark

You don’t expect a dark, gritty boxing drama from Chicken Soup for the Soul Entertainment, but that’s exactly what Rumble Through the Dark is. Set in a grim world of fight clubs, liquor stores, traveling carnivals, and orphanages, the film batters its characters and viewers with a story of brutal revenge couched as moral uplift.

Adapting his novel, screenwriter Michael Farris Smith starts Rumble with an infant abandoned by its mother, then skips to an illegal fight club where former champ boxer Jack Boucher (Aaron Eckhart) is trying to earn enough money to save his mother’s home.

Self-medicating with alcohol and pills, Jack risks a heart attack with every fight. He’s also losing his memory after repeated blows to the head. Plus he hasn’t paid taxes on his mother’s house, and is deep in debt to fight club proprietress Big Momma Sweet (Marianne Jean-Baptiste). A big score at a local casino might help extricate Jack from his troubles.

But Skelly (Joe Hursley), a bounty hunter hijacks Jack and his truck from a gas station. Their subsequent fight on a highway leads to a stylishly shot crash through a corn field that leaves Jack unconscious and Skelly near death.

Make that dead after a passing carnival operator asphyxiates him in a mercy killing. Annette (Bella Thorne), a tattooed fortune teller in the carnival, finds Jack’s cash in an envelope and pockets it as Jack watches from nearby.

The film switches storylines to Annette, an orphan searching for her father. She’s unsure about keeping the money, especially after she’s threatened by tilt-a-whirl operator and ex-con Ricky Joe (Mike McCall). When Jack rescues her from Ricky Joe at a convenience store, Annette thinks he’s been sent as a sign.

Annette tails Jack, learning that his mother suffers from dementia in a nursing home. Clues convince her that Jack is her father. But first Jack has to fight one more cage match to appease Big Momma Sweet.

Directors and brothers Graham and Parker Phillips have a good feel for the film’s backwater bayou milieu. The cinematography by David J. Myrick is appropriately dark and moody, but the directors find ways to highlight the futile desperation in their characters.

That said, Michael Farris Smith’s plotting is too derivative. One or two twists and Rumble could be Nightmare Alley, a Gothic filled with con men and born losers. Take two steps the other way, and this is a Southern-fried Fight Club, complete with pointed messages and telegraphed symbolism. Rumble is compelling enough in a grungy way, but it is not offering anything new.

Aaron Eckhart has made a career out of over-performing in vehicles that don’t deserve him. He’s all sinew and bone here, spitting blood, tearing up motel rooms, hallucinating about his mom. He elevates Rumble considerably, but never quite rescues it.

What about Bella Thorne? Annette reminded me of her title role in Girl, an underrated thriller written and directed by Chad Faust that came out during Covid. There she played someone not especially well-educated, but fiercely committed to her goals. Here she’s equally determined to find some way to connect to Jack Boucher.

Thorne doesn’t have the same level of support in Rumble that she did in Girl, but she does what she’s asked to do the best she can. Like everything else in Rumble Through the Dark, it’s not quite enough.

Opening in theaters through Lionsgate on November 3, 2023.

Photos courtesy Crooked Letter Picture Company.

Credits: Produced and directed by Graham Phillips, Parker Phillips. Produced by Cassian Elwes, Cleta Ellington. Written by Michael Farris Smith. Cast: Aaron Eckhart, Bella Thorne, Marianne Jean-Baptiste, Ritchie Coster, Amanda Saunders, Mike McColl, Christopher Winchester, Joe Hursley.

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Shah Rukh Khan’s Jawan: Blockbuster is the latest stage in his comeback

Shah Rukh Khan is the whole show in Jawan, his second blockbuster adventure in less than a year. Despite a strong supporting cast, Khan dominates the film, performing the kind of over-the-top heroics that have made him a box-office favorite.

Absent from the screen since 2018, Khan made a riveting appearance in 2022’s otherwise so-so Brahmastra Part One: Shiva, then thrilled his fans in January with Pathaan. Jawan is more of what his base likes: a fearless, swaggering character; gross injustices to be avenged; melodramatic flashbacks; big production numbers.

It’s narrative is all over the place, rehashing scenes, subplots, and story lines from easily recognizable movies like The Matrix and Fast and Furious. If anything, Jawan has too much plot. A subway hijacking, a corrupt arms dealer, amnesia, girls with guns, farmer suicides, a single mom with a matchmaking daughter, another mom briefly saved from hanging because she is pregnant, military raids, highway chases, and more.

Jawan leaps backwards and forwards in time, often for no real purpose. The three screenwriters, including director Atlee, manage to pull everything together by the end, but the ride is a lot rockier than it has to be. The musical numbers feel more like interruptions than integral to the plot.  While the action scenes are fun, they, like Khan’s dancing, are indifferently executed.

None of this matters to Khan’s fans, who will buy any preposterous twist. Khan survives being shot five times and falling out of a helicopter, for example. He survives being repeatedly smashed in the face with a heavy chain. He survives two-story falls, truck crashes, and a scene-stealing ten-year-old who interrogates him about marrying her mother.

Atlee has helmed several huge Tamil blockbusters, often with Nayanthara, who plays Khan’s love interest Narmada here. A hostage negotiator with the police, she’s betrayed by bureaucracy and winds up in jail—like most of the characters who try to defeat oily villain Kalee Gaikwad (Vijay Sethupathi).

Superstar Deepika Padukone, who was a memorable foil in Pathaan, doesn’t show up until the second half of the film, where she plays Khan’s wife Aishwarya. She is as arresting and effective as always, so good she threatens to tilt the film out of balance.

It says something about the plot that Khan can marry Nayanthara as well as Padukone. In fact, he plays so many roles in Jawan that viewers might lose track. He’s a prison warden, a bald terrorist, a cigar-smoking soldier shooting machine guns like Schwarzenegger, a tech whiz, a father, son, husband, lover, and conscience of a nation. He is, in effect, the whole show.

Jawan is always entertaining, perhaps working best when it is at its most preposterous. Like a big production number in the women’s prison which lasts from day to night, Khan sporting a half-dozen outfits while sending out seriously mixed signals about criminal justice.

For me, the only honest emotions in Jawan came during a scene where Khan meets ten-year-old Suji (Seeza Saroj Mehta), daughter of his future wife. “I’m looking for a papa,” she tells him in forthright tones. It’s staged with admirable clarity and simplicity. “I need a papa to whack my teacher for me,” she adds, after forcing Khan to admit he dyes his hair. I’d watch a whole movie with those two.

Jawan is currently streaming on Netflix in Hindi, Tamil and Telugu languages.

Credits: Directed by Atlee. Screenplay by Atlee, S. Ramanagirivasan. Dialogues: Sumit Arora. Cinematography: G. K. Vishnu. Edited by Ruben. Music by Anirudh Ravichander. Cast: Shah Rukh Khan, Nayanthara, Vijay Sethupathi, Deepika Padukone, Seeza Saroj Mehta.

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