Flick of the Day: The Iceman

I like surprises. I especially like surprises when I go to the cinema. I like entering the theatre with little or no expectations and being pleasantly surprised by the two hour traffic of my stage. Of course such things are relatively rare in this age of endless interconnectivity and near constant reviews of everything that a human being can consume. Generally you know what to expect. Today was a nice exception.  

Michael Shannon has developed a career out of playing intense and often brooding characters to great effect. He was the crazed young man who is perhaps the only truly sane character in Revolutionary Road, he was the family man driven over the edge by his nightmares in Take Shelter and the crooked cop having a bad day in Premium Rush. Such is his talent that with the right roles he will surely become a star. Today he plays Richard Kuklinski, a real life Mafia hit-man who built a career on a pathological coldness yet maintained a relatively happy family life until his arrest in 1986.

Our tale opens in Jersey City, New Jersey in 1965, Richard is a quiet and brooding young man attempting to woo Deborah played by Winona Ryder. The pair fall in love and marry though Deborah remains unaware that Richard works as a pornography distributor on the fringes of the underworld.  He soon displays a propensity for great violence at the least provocation and comes to the attention of local boss Roy Demeo played with a vicious charm by Ray Liotta. Richard becomes a man who removes the little problems that Roy encounters. The years pass and the body count rises and meanwhile Richard and Deborah have  had two daughters who seem to worship the ground on which their father walks. Business has been good to Richard and he has become a wealthy man. He explains his largesse to his unsuspecting friends as being down to his skill as a foreign currency trader. Things are almost too good and so it proves as the actions of Roy's deadbeat friend Josh Rosenthal, played by an incredibly sleazy David Schwimmer, conspire to drive a wedge between Roy and Richard. Richard's life begins to spiral out of control and as his well appointed facade falls apart so does his grip on his psychosis.

What separates today's flick and indeed Michael Shannon's performance is that unlike so many films it does not in any way seek to glamorise the lives of what are deeply disturbed men. They do not live normal lives like the rest of us, they live violently. It is the violence and the underlying psychosis which anchor their lives. Richard Kuklinski is a very scary individual, always on the edge of violence. Yet so is Ray Liotta's Roy Demeo and Richard's fellow contract killer Mr. Freezy played by Chris Evans. They are men who hurt small animals, men who engage in domestic violence. They are in short, not to be admired or normalised in the manner so many gangsters are in hagiography-like biopics. 

The film is blessed to have a really excellent supporting cast with fine turns from the likes of Robert Davi as a Mafia boss, John Ventimiglia who is perhaps better known as Artie Bucco in The Sopranos and a blink and you will miss it turn from James Franco. All in all this is a very compelling look at a man consumed by violence. It manages to both detail his crimes and his love for his family which I don't doubt was genuine. Some of the most interesting scenes involve the interplay between Richard and his unassuming family. Shannon's performance makes you feel like anything could happen. 

Flick of the Day: The Raid: Redemption

According to Homer Simpson "Everybody knows Rock achieved perfection in 1974". Whatever about the truth of Homer's assertion, everybody knows that the action genre reached its high point with the release in 1988 of John McTiernan's Die Hard. Since then there have been derivatives, there have been sequels and there  have been high concept action pictures galore along with the usual direct to DVD tripe starring the fallen idols and the never been but along the way the genre has become moribund and worst of all dull. Perhaps today's flick of the day is redemption then in the unlikely form of an Indonesian film directed by a Welshman Gareth Evans, The Raid.

The Raid

In the slums of Jakarta, there is a 12 storey building controlled by a ruthless gang lord. On the orders of the higher ups, a 20 man Swat team begin a dawn raid on the building with the aim of taking down the bad guys. Of course as is so often the case with these things, their arrival is expected and they quickly become bogged down and the body count rises. In some spectacular action scenes, the remaining members of the team must fight their way through 15 floors to get their man and escape with their lives. There are a few twists along the way but ultimately it is one extended battle. Each of the characters brings their own baggage, the leader Rama has a pregnant wife at home and a brother he hasn't seen in years while the gang lord Tama has bought every cop in town to keep himself safe.

No discussion of this film would be complete without noting the incredible level of violence that prevails throughout. Much like the hardbitten action cinema coming out of South Korea and Hong Kong over the last few years, this films wears its lust for blood on its sleeve. In general I am not a fan of excessive violence unless it forms a necessary part of the tale and in this case it does. Whereas the likes of Drive are violent for no apparent reason other than some pretentious commentary on society, The Raid is a violent tale of violent men and all the better for it.

The real strength of the film is the choreography of its fight scenes. Incredible isn't the word, I have seen nothing like it. One particularly gruelling scene climaxed to cheers and applause in the cinema where I saw it. Fast paced and balletic, they are gripping throughout. The film has been a real audience winner wherever it has appeared, winning the audience award at the recent Dublin International Film Festival. There is not much else that can be added really. It's stupid, violent and a lot of fun. After  the last few years, it may just be the shot in the arm, the action genre needed. 

Flick of The Day: Casino

The relationship between director Martin Scorsese and Robert De Niro goes back a long way and is perhaps one of the most fruitful in recent film history. Starting with Mean Streets in 1973 and including such classics as Taxi Driver, Raging Bull and past flick of the day Goodfellas. Thus far their final and eight collaboration is today's flick of the day, Casino, an epic telling of the rise and fall of the Mafia in Las Vegas in the 1970's and 80's.

Casino 

Based on a true story, Casino attempts over the course of nearly three hours to tell the life and times of three characters central to the story of the American Mafia in the Las Vegas casino industry. Robert De Niro is Ace Rothstein, a masterful gambler and tipster who after a successful career making money bookmaking for the mob is sent to Las Vegas to take over the running of their new prize, the Teamsters funded Tangiers Casino. Joe Pesci is Nicky Santoro, a vicious thug with an eye for making money who is sent to Vegas to keep Ace safe. Finally there is Sharon Stone, as the coked out hooker Ginger McKenna, Ace's partner of choice and a woman with little or no redeeming features and a lust for money and jewels. In comparison to the other two, Ace is a model citizen by Vegas standards and out to run a fair game and make the Tangiers the best house in town. Shot with the feel of a docu-drama, although perhaps the best acted one ever, it gives the film the feeling of one long anecdote about the city. The film is littered with voice-over dialogue as Ace and Nicky feel their way first to success before the inevitable overreach and ultimately a bloody and disastrous end. 

On its release in 1995 hopes were high for Casino bringing together as it did the team that had created Goodfellas in 1990, still one of the all time great gangster pictures. While this is not in the same league as that film, it has moments of genuine greatness. An explosive (literally) opening credits set the scene perfectly and promise much. It as much about Vegas in the 70's as it is about the characters and again I come back to the docu-drama feel. There is just so much detail of the period packed in that it can be at times overwhelming. Roughly the opening 90 minutes detail the rise to power of Ace and Nicky with Ace building the biggest and best casino in town and Nicky taking an iron grip of the underbelly of the city while the second half details the downfall as the FBI and the gaming authorities crack down. It is with typical Scorsese flair that the minutiae of  how the mob skimmed money out of a supposedly legitimate business are played out.

While De Niro and Pesci give typically bravura performances and Stone achieves the dubious honour of being perhaps the most annoying screen character of all time, ultimately this doesn't satisfy in the same manner as some of their earlier collaborations. Perhaps it is just a case of excess in every area of the film. It is more violent than Goodfellas or Taxi Driver to a sometimes shocking degree, it carries an epic running length of 3 hours and a level of detail in its examination of a period in Vegas history. I suppose I am saying it is less than the sum of its parts. Perhaps that is too negative because when the film is at its best, it is very good indeed. It just isn't the classic it promised to be.

All in all, a very entertaining piece of cinema history containing perhaps the last collaboration between two of the all time greats. It perfectly captures a time and a place while the period costumes and sets are easy on the eye, the kind of technically gifted film-making that Scorsese is the master of. Each of the leads captures their characters to a tee and if ultimately it isn't a classic, it is an enjoyable 3 hours.

Flick of The Day: Drive

Canadian actor Ryan Gosling has carved out a niche for himself over the past few years as the American Indie scene's go-to guy for quirky leading roles, with star making turns in Half Nelson, Lars & The Real Girl and Blue Valentine. His performance as an inner-city teacher struggling with drug addiction in Half Nelson earned him an Oscar nomination. I was then very much looking forward to his latest film, Drive which is today's flick of the day.

Drive

The story such as it is revolves around the unnamed Gosling as a Hollywood stunt driver and mechanic who moonlights as getaway driver for hire. He is the quite taciturn type that might have been played by Steve McQueen back in the 1970's. Before you let your mind wander off there to McQueen's classic car chase filled Bullit and wonder about similarities, let me disabuse you of any such notions immediately. This is not that kind of film. Gosling's Driver works for shifty looking Shannon, a crippled businessman with a heart of gold and an eye for it too, played by the seemingly ubiquitous Bryan Cranston. All is going well and profitably until Driver meets and falls for his new neighbour Irene and her son. Irene is a woman with a husband about to get out of jail, ably played by Carey Mulligan. Of course her husband soon returns and all is not well. For reasons known only to himself and the screenwriter, Driver decides to help out this down on his luck husband by acting as his getaway driver. Inevitably things go awry, and Driver falls awry of local hoods Nino and Bernie played by the always reliable Ron Perlman and Albert Brooks. Along the way is a blink and you won't miss her departure cameo by the lovely Christina Hendricks of Mad Men fame.

This is where the film begins to go badly awry. It starts well with a great opening sequence, some classic synth tunes and 80's style credits and you could be forgiven for thinking you are in for a treat. It is when Driver begins to get himself in trouble that the film falters. Out of nowhere, the up to this point peaceable Driver becomes mindlessly violent and the director, Nicholas Winding Refn seems to revel in showing it to us in all the gory detail. A head is kicked to a bloody pulp, another explodes in a shotgun blast. Driver is not the only violent man, Bernie played against type by Brooks gets in on the act, with wrists and throats slashed and arterial spray the normal result of almost any confrontation. It is this revelling in the gore which is so misplaced. The director is so focused on showing us the physical effects of the violence that it never shows us any emotion. Think of cinema violence back in the days of the Hays Code when it couldn't be shown directly, yet we still saw its effects and the anguish on a characters face. I have no problem with screen violence for it  represents the world we live in yet I see no point in it being the sole focus of a film to the detriment of the story. Early works from Tarantino such as Reservoir Dogs were violent but it always felt necessary and human. If the slow agonising death of Tim Roth's Mr Orange thought us anything it is that sometimes death is slow and painful but it was never done gratuitously.

Apart from this, its pretty standard B-Movie stuff. The kind of thing you might have caught on a lazy Saturday afternoon back in the day. It is a strikingly shot film with some gorgeous shots of a night time Los Angeles and there is an excellent score to carry the piece through. At times, it was the only thing keeping me interested.

Driver: If I drive for you, you give me a time and a place. I give you a five-minute window, anything happens in that five minutes and I'm yours no matter what. I don't sit in while you're running it down; I don't carry a gun... I drive.

Gosling carries his role well but he isn't given a whole lot to work with, dialogue wise he says very little over the course of the film and it is to his credit that he manages to convey emotion and mood silently. His relationship with Irene's son is compelling. Overall the cast are excellent, its just not as good  a film as it thinks it is and that's a shame.

My only other criticism would be that for a film which promises so much in terms of its title and smashing trailer, it delivers precious little in terms of car chases or action driving. Oh sure, Driver drives about the city looking stern but we never really see him take on all these getaway jobs.

All in all, this is a slick film with a lot of style from the opening credits to the final shot and Refn is a director with an eye for framing a shot, but there is no real heart here. I left the cinema disappointed but there you go, such is life. Draw your own conclusions.

Flick of The Day: Scarface (1983)

"Say Hello to my little friend...", so ends one of the most overblown and hyper violent gangster epics ever to hit the silver screen. A film that was largely derided or worse still ignored by critics upon its release in 1983, criticising it for its violence and supposed glamorisation of the drugs trade, something that was very much a no-no in the Reagan '80s.

Scarface (Widescreen Two-Disc Anniversary Edition)

This film, scripted by Oliver Stone and directed by Brian De Palma bears little resemblance to the original 1932 version directed by Howard Hawks apart from the fact that both films would prove controversial upon release. After being rejected by censors in 1931, Hawks was forced to add an alternate ending where the gangster hands himself over to the police as opposed to going down in a hail of bullets and the subtitle "The Shame of The Nation" added. De Palma's version would prove equally controversial with a number of the most violent scenes removed  to give the film an R rating in the United States as opposed to the dreaded X rating.

For the uninitiated, this is your classic tale of rise and fall. Al Pacino is Tony Montana, a Cuban immigrant who goes straight from Castro's jails to the streets of Miami. Quickly rising from the streets to the drug trade, he eventually usurps his boss, Frank Lopez played by the excellently over the top Robert Loggia, to become top dog.  Of course before long, it all ends in tears. That's the interesting part though.

This is very much Al Pacino's film though. He drives it from beginning to end in a stunning performance as an almost personification of evil. He would go on later in his career to play the devil himself in The Devils Advocate but this the scarier performance. Throughout the film, his character keeps everyone including the audience on edge, as you know he could snap into violence at any moment.

Scarface (Universal Cinema Classics)

The film is over long, coming in at an ass numbing 170 minutes and at times the violence is excessive, though not gratuitous. Excessive in the sense that you gradually become desensitised to it, its loses its shock effect as the film drags on, though the chainsaw in the bathroom scene early in the film still retains that shock effect nearly 30 years after its release. I don't feel the violence is gratuitous in that it is necessary to remain true to a realistic portrayal of the excesses and violence of the drugs trade in the 1980s. However for its flaws, this remains a modern classic, which as a cinephile you have to see if only for the spectacle and Pacino's grand standing performance. This is epic film-making of the highest order.