Review Category: Movie

Based on true events, Beeba Boys is the Thrill Gala film at the 2015 London Film Festival. Let’s hope this isn’t the best they have in store for the Thrill category this year.

Set in Vancouver amidst warring Sikh gangsters, Jeet is the leader of his crew of Beeba Boys and is intent on cutting in on the action of rival gangster Grewal’s turf. Dealing drugs and guns, while trying to maintain a normal family life in a suburban home with his mother, father and young son Peter, Jeet struggles to balance the two sides of his life, but is insistent on antagonising his enemy nonetheless.

Meanwhile, young wannabe gangster Nep has infiltrated Jeet’s gang in order to help Grewal bring him down, and Jeet further complicates his life by falling for a white woman who he must keep away from his traditional Punjabi family.

Desperate to be a hip take on Indo-gangsters in Canada, Beeba Boys tries too hard to be funny and fails at almost every turn. Critically for a thriller, it never gets any momentum going in order to actually do any thrilling. It wants to have the blasé attitude to casual violence of a Tarantino film, but then expects its audience to care about the characters in melodramatic household scenes between Jeet and his son, or Jeet and his Polish girlfriend.

It doesn’t help that Randeep Hooda as Jeet is a charisma vacuum and the script is full of tired clichés and increasingly ludicrous plot points as it attempts to crawl to a climax. Writer and director Deepa Mehta tries to liven things up with crunching guitars and Asian flavoured hip hop, not to mention so much dashing camera movement that it becomes tedious, but with a highly flawed script full of completely unlikeable characters, Beeba Boys just repeatedly misses the mark.

Every time it looks like there might be a fun action scene full of flying bullets, there is a tension-sapping scene of lifeless domestic drama. Every time Manny, the joker of Jeet’s group tries to inject some humour, the joke falls flat. The acting largely goes completely over the top and fails to bring the laughable (in all the wrong ways) script to life. It could have been an interesting look at a community underrepresented in film, but instead uses ridiculous gangster clichés to create a fairly loathsome depiction of Vancouver’s Sikh gangsters. Scorsese this isn’t, though Mehta tries her best with the kinetic camera.

Beeba Boys aims high with its influences worn proudly on its multi-coloured sleeves. It’s directed with some flair, looking and sounding like it should be a lot more fun than it is. The tone swings wildly from comic violence to stern titles that remind us that this is all based on true events, but with so much overacting and lifeless drama, it’s impossible to get behind these boys. If Beeba means ‘decent’ or ‘good’, they definitely chose the wrong title.

BEEBA BOYS / CERT: TBC / DIRECTOR & SCREENPLAY: DEEPA MEHTA / RANDEEP HOODA, ALI MOMEN, SARAH ALLEN, WARIS AHLUWALIA / RELEASE DATE: TBC

Expected Rating: 6 out of 10

Actual Rating:

 

If Netflix’s first film production, the Idris Elba-starring drama Beasts of No Nation, is anything to go by, the increasingly popular phrase ‘Netflix and chill’ will soon become a thing of the past. This beautiful but harrowing look at African soldiers is anything but the kind of film you flick on to relax with on a Friday night.

Caught between the government troops who maintain the peace in his little village in an unnamed African country and the rebels outside, imaginative Agu (Abraham Attah) lives a happy life with his family, coming up with inventive ideas to make some money. When the threat of nearby rebel activity causes the men of the village to send the women and children away and to relative safety, Agu is left behind with his father and oldest brother. But when government forces start slaying those they suspect of being rebels, Agu soon finds himself alone and forced to fend for himself.

Just as it seems things couldn’t get any worse, Agu is picked up by a rebel Commandant (Idris Elba) and his group of young fighters. Agu is easily manipulated into becoming a soldier and seeking revenge on those who killed his family, but will he ever escape and find what is left of his family?

The fact that child soldiers even exist is a truly depressing stain on humanity. To see how a young, vulnerable boy can be so easily turned into something so vicious is not an easy watch. With only the presence of Idris Elba to draw in any crowds (and guarantee a decent budget), Beasts of No Nation is a frighteningly bleak dissection of how a child soldier is created.

Cary Fukunaga of True Detective fame pulls together a cracking cast of unknowns and never lets the charismatic Elba overshadow them or dominate the drama. His Commandant is a truly terrible creation, but despite his many horrendous acts he isn’t a bog standard bit of cardboard villainy. Far from it. This is a fully rounded character, father and tormenter to his lost souls… a man who is capable of exploiting the weakest, but is exploited and ultimately a casualty of war himself.

But even with Elba delivering an incredibly powerful performance, both inspiring to his troops and sickeningly abusive, this is newcomer Abraham Attah and Fukunaga’s film. As Agu, Attah is a revelation. From bright-eyed, creative and carefree child to stone-cold killer who may lose all hope of compassion, so much of the performance comes through his haunting eyes and increasingly tragic face.

Pulling double duty as director and cinematographer, Fukunaga captures the beauty of the country as the backdrop to some unflinching brutality. It’s bloody and its nasty, but with Dan Romer’s brilliant score, silhouettes caught in the sunlight and some stylistic flourishes (watch out for the steadicam shot following Agu as he raids a house) dotted throughout, Beasts of No Nation will reward repeat watches… if you can stomach it.

Ultimately it’s not without hope either. While Beasts of No Nation is far from easy viewing, it is powerful, urgent and heartbreaking filmmaking and a stark reminder of how boys become beasts in a war without end.

BEASTS OF NO NATION / CERT: 15 / DIRECTOR & SCREENPLAY: CARY FUKUNAGA / STARRING: IDRIS ELBA, ABRAHAM ATTAH, AMA K. ABEBRESE, OPEYEMI FAGBOHUNGBE / RELEASE DATE: OCTOBER 9TH (SELECT CINEMAS), OCTOBER 16TH (NETFLIX)

Expecting Rating: 8 out of 10

Actual Rating:
 

Exiled to her backwater hometown for an unspecified indiscretion, Police Constable Rachel Heggie is about to start her first shift with new colleagues, picking up a mouthy teenage joyrider before she’s even made it to the station. However, after the arrival of an ominous man with no verifiable past who is placed in the cells along with the young criminal, a murderous doctor and a wife-beating teacher, things take a turn for the terrifying. It soon becomes clear that everyone is harbouring a dark secret and they are all about to descend into their own personal hell.

Although the plot of Let Us Prey (not to mention its title) is reminiscent of any number of horror films you could call to memory with little effort, it’s in the execution, rather than the set-up, that the movie excels.

Right from the doom-rock credit sequence of barbed wire dripping with fresh blood, squadrons of crows swarming in slow motion and darkened thunderclouds rolling overhead while a storm-tossed ocean lashes at coastal outcrops upon which a human silhouette stands defiant, it seems that subtlety is going to be in short order. However, despite being a sinister and bloody horror movie with increasingly overt religious undertones, Let Us Prey‘s first time feature director, Brian O’Malley, also exercises a perfectly utilised level of restraint that prevents it from crossing the line into farce. That doesn’t mean to say the film is without humour; the gobby bravado of the young ned is amusing, as is the occasional flash of self-awareness (“What is it with this fucking town?”), which prevents the film from becoming too bleak to be entertaining.

The small cast (eight characters of appropriately varied prominence) allows the events to remain tight and confined without becoming cluttered and the gradual reveal of the true extent of each person’s wrongdoings keeps things interesting.

The central mystery of what’s truly going on is anchored by the taciturn enigma of Liam Cunningham’s nameless vagabond. He seemingly manipulates events from his cell via matchsticks used like eldritch marionette control bars while uttering cryptic pronouncements of doom that are thankfully devoid of the irritating sense of patronising condescension all too frequent in such dialogue. Although his precise nature is never specifically stated, it’s clear he’s a supernatural avenging force targeting those who are so far beyond guilty they are now the irredeemable, the damned, the truly evil for whom salvation was a chance long since squandered. On the other end of the morality spectrum is Pollyanna McIntosh’s Rachel, seemingly the only one without a violent past, but whose own buried secret goes a long way to explaining her icy exterior and disgust for violent sadists, while her height and leanly muscular frame allow her to convince as a natural action girl.

The setting is deliberately vague (the town of Inveree doesn’t exist and the police officers’ uniforms have no area designation), and as the desolate, decaying settlement seems utterly devoid of all other (living) people, it’s entirely possible that they are all already in purgatory without realising it, with only the memories of their misdeeds to torment them as they await their sins to be counted out.

O’Malley has marked himself as a talent to watch. Striking a perfect balance of suspense, violence, humour, story and action, Let Us Prey feels at once classic and modern; horror the way it was always supposed to have been made. You will not be disappointed.

LET US PREY / CERT: 18 / DIRECTOR: BRIAN O’MALLEY / SCREENPLAY: FIONA WATSON, DAVID CAIRNS / STARRING: LIAM CUNNINGHAM, POLLYANNA MCINTOSH, BRYAN LARKIN, HANNA STANBRIDGE, DOUGLAS RUSSELL, BRIAN VERNEL / RELEASE DATE: OCTOBER 19TH 

Man of the moment Tom Hardy, fresh from his triumphant turn as Max Rockatansky, delights his fans in the double role of the Kray Twins, but the film itself, however, has a few shortcomings.

The story of Reggie and Ronnie Kray is the UK’s equivalent to the Capone/Mafia tale; a piece of folklore passed to each generation, with the nasty reality made more palatable with each re-telling. And it certainly is the case with this latest version of the boys’ lives. Narrated by Reggie’s wife, Frances (Browning), this is less a gritty underworld story and more a series of not-quite-as-brutal-as-they-should-be events. Her besotted character is meant to be the audiences’ ‘in’ to the world of the country’s most notorious gangsters, but we can’t help but feel she’s on the road to ruin from the start. Particularly as she attempts to steer Reggie – portrayed as more business-minded and focused than his psychotic brother – on the straight and narrow, an act that seems as futile and ill-advised as stealing from them. Not to mention the anomaly of her accounts of events she would have obviously had no way of being privy to.

Where the film does shine is the loose cannon sibling – Ronnie. Here, Hardy really acts. He embodies all the mannerisms and traits we would expect from seeing photos and footage of the real-life twins. A character whose personality could turn on a hairpin – and does. It’s a shame, then, that writer/director Helgeland doesn’t go all out with the violence to show us how absolutely reprehensible these people were. At least it doesn’t overplay the ‘well they loved their mother’ angle like the earlier Kemp Brother’s version. Indeed, mother here (played by Jane Wood) is a much more blinkered matriarch, turning a blind eye rather than encouraging the strength of the family.

Poor Christopher Eccleston doesn’t fair well, either. His character, Detective ‘Nipper’ Read, a man who was driven to bring the twins to justice is relegated to an ‘also ran’ role. His importance in their story should not be underestimated, as hinted at in the opening scenes in which the cocky Reggie chats to the frustrated copper on surveillance outside his home.

It’s not all lost, though. Legend is visually stunning and possesses a feel for the period that instantly draws you in. It’s not too flashy, but has enough flair to appeal to those brought up on Lock Stock rather than the crime dramas of the ‘60s and ‘70s. The narration actually gives it an almost noir-esque feel, which would have worked wonders had it been shot in black and white.

All in all, it’s not quite a misfire, but could have been so much more. Hardy, however, will come out of it higher than ever as he cements himself as a true acting powerhouse.

LEGEND / CERT: 18 / DIRECTOR & SCREENPLAY: BRIAN HELGELAND / STARRING: TOM HARDY, CHRISTOPHER ECCLESTON, EMILY BROWNING, COLIN MORGAN, TARA FITZGERALD / RELEASE DATE: OUT NOW

Expected Rating: 8 out of 10
Actual Rating: 
 

Matter of Fact was made for The Sci-Fi London Film Festival’s 48 Hour Film Challenge, where a short film had to be written, shot and edited within the two-day restriction, given a specific title and incorporate a certain prop and line of dialogue. Although not the overall winner, it made the final shortlist of ten, and it’s easy to see why.

The BNP wet dream story takes place in the near future where the UK is now under the rule of a party of right-wing racists who have vowed to purge the land of its blight of undesirables. “White is Right: Matter of Fact” goes their credo, and is heard in faint staccato echoing from the streets outside where protagonist Victor is holed up, presumably chanted by roving gangs of skinheads as they swarm the streets in jackbooted mobs to hunt down anyone deemed to have too much skin pigmentation.

Ethnic cleansing is often used as a euphemism for genocide, but be the perceived taint national, religious, racial or even cultural, orchestrating mass murder takes effort and co-ordination. It would be so much simpler for these modern-day Blackshirts if the country could be purified with greater efficiency, and the film suggests that ways far more insidious than mere violence can be used for the fascists to achieve their goal.

Science fiction has a long tradition of employment as a vehicle for social commentary, and in such a vein Matter of Fact tacitly asks us to ponder how absolute power could have been given over to such blinkered ignorance in the first place. We live in a country where many people take Britain First seriously, The Daily Mail is cited as a reliable source, and people with the least authority and influence are blamed for the nation’s biggest problems, so the average person displaying the required complacency required for it to happen is all too easy to envision. The film also feels like a concentrated episode of Black Mirror; although it might be fiction, it nevertheless portrays a future that’s terrifyingly plausible.

MATTER OF FACT / CERT: TBC / DIRECTOR: ADAM LANNON / SCREENPLAY: STUART BLACK, NICK MATHER / STARRING: JUSTIN MAROSA, ALICE HENLEY, HOWARD CORLETT, ANDY BAINBRIDGE / RELEASE DATE: TBC
 

As disaster strikes a mother and her newborn baby, we are given a brief glimpse into the life of a woman living alone on an empty country manor, loneliness and isolation making each day a struggle. A nocturnal funeral rite in her backyard necropolis of dying flowers and tiny skulls make us wonder as to her history.

The film has very little dialogue, instead relying on visuals to tell the story, and with some slightly surreal shots featuring snakes and scorpions lining the floors and stone birds swinging lifeless from a mobile above an unoccupied cot it initially has the feel of an extended music video. However, it is soon revealed to be a modern day gothic tragedy as the woman glides in grieving somnambulism through the corridors of her lonely mansion where the barren rooms echo the silent judgement of voices from the past that haunt her every step.

The script was written for The ABCs of Death 2, and since the submitted shorts were required to begin with M, you’ll quickly realise what its original title would have been as you figure out the woman’s unstated but self-evident identity. As well as the mythological overtones, the film is also a statement about depression, and when you believe yourself to truly be the monster that others would perceive you as, there is a limit to how much you can take. Serpent’s Lullaby is a serene and sorrowful tale, the music and imagery combining into an experience darkly emotional and endlessly chilling.

SERPENT’S LULLABY / CERT: TBC / DIRECTOR: PATRICIA CHICA / SCREENPLAY: CHARLES HALL / STARRING: JENIMAY WALKER, ANABELLA HART / RELEASE DATE: TBC
 

We’ve been blindsided by stories of Arthur and Merlin, beguiled by their fabled exploits in a multimedia barrage that’s left creatives working overtime to attract any attention. BBC’s Merlin took the wizened sage and showed off his troubled younger years to great effect, and first-time feature director Marco van Belle has done one better.

Arthur and Merlin is ostensibly an origin story, starting off in childhood to see the duo’s fractured start in life, before flashing forward fifteen years. Where it differs from the uber-realism of 2004’s Clive Owen vehicle King Arthur, is a total reappraisal of the source material and upping the fantastical with a twist in the myth. Arthfael, a young Celtic warrior, teams up with the reluctant wizard Myrrdin to defeat an evil druid and save their people.

It’s a hearty return to sword and sorcery when the landscape of fantasy is getting bloated and po-faced. Even in the constraints of its meagre budget, the cinematography is staggering, capturing a picturesque England across twenty-one different locations. Because of the lack of tangible sets, besides a few tents, it’s easy to believe in its Dark Ages setting.

The script, written by van Belle and Kat Wood, has the wonderful clunky dialogue of a David Eddings novel. By extension, many of performances are wonky, with Arthfae himself (Kirk Barker) on the wooden side. Genre alumni David Sterne makes for a charismatic and powerful King Vortigern, and relative newcomer Stefan Butler leaving a surprising impression as the titular wizard.

Arthur and Merlin is a triumph of British independent filmmaking and a modern fantasy staple. Van Belle has conjured an atmospheric adventure, full of quirky campiness, rollicking good humour and, most importantly, fun.

ARTHUR AND MERLIN / CERT: 12 / DIRECTOR: MARCO VAN BELLE / SCREENPLAY: MARCO VAN BELLE, KAT WOOD / STARRING: KIRK BARKER, STEFAN BUTLER, NIGEL COOKE, DAVID STERNE / RELEASE DATE: OUT NOW
 
 

Kids being forced to sing Nirvana in Neverland? No thank you very much. When Hugh Jackman’s pirate Blackbeard is introduced in Joe Wright’s Peter Pan prequel Pan, his minions below him sing grunge’s most famous anthem Smells Like Teen Spirit. It begs the question, has Wright been binging on Baz Luhrmann and who thought this would be a good idea?

Taking liberties with source material and beginning in the Blitz as the bombs fall over London, Peter Pan is under the watchful eyes of the nasty nuns at the Lambeth Home for Boys. Dropped there as a baby 12 years earlier by his mother, he dreams of the day she will return to collect him. While the nuns hoard the limited wartime rations and treat the boys like slaves, escape comes one night in the form of pirates bursting through the roof of the orphanage. 

Spirited away to Neverland on a flying pirate ship, Peter finds himself imprisoned in the mines where the most feared pirate of all, Hugh Jackman’s Captain Blackbeard rules over his kidnapped victims. While mining for fairy dust which has rejuvenation properties for those who inhale it, Peter hooks up with James Hook and his mate Smee, finds out he is the subject of a prophecy and plots an escape to search for his beloved missing mother.

Pan fans (or just anyone who’s ever been to a pantomime) will recognise the character names and Peter’s search takes him across the familiar world of Neverland, meeting the pirate-fighting natives including fearless Tiger Lily (Rooney Mara) and on to find mermaids, crocodiles and fairies. Blackbeard is of course always in hot pursuit with nice guy Hugh Jackman shouting and threatening and trying his very best to be menacing. Meanwhile, Wright shoehorns in some foreshadowing to the J. M. Barrie story we know and love with Hook being intimidated by a crocodile and Peter getting a brief moment to meet Tinkerbell.

But this is Peter’s story and newcomer Levi Miller just about manages to avoid making this look like a big budget stage school production. That’s made harder because he’s surrounded by over acting, with both Jackman throwing it all out there from beneath an outrageous costume and Garrett Hedlund also overdoing the roguish charm of his James Hook. What Hedlund and Jason Fuchs’ script fails to do is convincingly hint at the darkness to come in Hook’s story. If Pan gets a sequel, the arc of Hook’s fall to the dark side will be the real draw, but don’t expect much of a hint of the nasty pirate here.

For while there is some menace, and younger children might find the odd moment scary, this is mostly pantomime stuff, just with added lashings of CGI. Typically for a Joe Wright film, Pan looks lovely, particularly when bringing storytelling to life. One early sequence uses stars to create character imagery, another uses a ‘memory tree’ to carve out a narrative in wood, and then later water is used to invoke a sort-of flashback to a pivotal moment in Peter’s family history. These moments are exquisite, so it’s a shame that the action sequences, including a pirate ship dogfight with spitfires over London and the climactic Blackbeard showdown with Peter are often a bit of a mess of overused CGI.

In contrast, the production design of the native’s territory is wonderful and the multi-coloured costumes of the tribes people will remind older audiences of what has made Peter Pan and Neverland so enduring all these years. The racist undertones of any previous Peter Pan stories are brushed aside by casting the ‘savage’ natives as a multi-cultural bunch of jungle dwellers.

Pan manages to tread on the toes of its source material, at the same time as heading into previously unexplored prequel territory only hinted at by J. M. Barrie. It all feels like a set-up for a sequel (where we might get to the good stuff) and if that manages to get Hook’s story right, it could be a hell of a lot better than this lively, but flawed flight through Neverland.

PAN / CERT: PG / DIRECTOR: JOE WRIGHT / SCREENPLAY: JASON FUCHS / STARRING: HUGH JACKMAN, LEVI MILLER, JIMMY VEE, AMANDA SEYFRIED, ROONEY MARA / RELEASE DATE: OCTOBER 16TH

Expected Rating: 7 out of 10

Actual Rating:

Following the death of Mark (a high-profile war correspondent) outside the apartment that he shared with his girlfriend, Sarah, Jack finds his self-imposed isolation violated by the journalist’s confused spirit. Explaining that he simply wants Jack to help him say goodbye to Sarah, Mark not so much haunts as stalks Jack until he gets his way. The result of which does not go smoothly.

While we see inside Jack’s tormented world, we also see it from the outside, presenting us with an all-too-familiar sight of a dishevelled and erratic man who talks and shouts to himself with little regard for his surroundings. The consequences of this behaviour are evident throughout as he’s (literally) kicked out of pubs, chased down the street and ridiculed. Yet Jack is no Derek Acorah, he has no ulterior motive for passing on the messages of the dead; in fact, he’d rather they left him alone completely. Driven almost to the point of madness, the only solace Jack has is in the arms of his sister, Emma (Cole) and her troubled son who seems to share Jack’s unwanted gift.

There is a lot of heart and soul in this film. While comparisons can easily be brought with the likes of The Sixth Sense, there is very little attempt to glorify the thriller aspects of the story (which are there for the taking but are instead left largely unanswered). Instead, the focus is squarely on Jack and his battle both internal (fleshed out through intermittent flashbacks to a life-changing event as a child) and by default external as self-harm begins to seep into the picture.

Without a doubt, Sheehan is the standout star of this beautifully crafted film. His portrayal of someone who is both outwardly suffering from mental illness and inwardly struggling to help those grieving is outstanding. Coupled with Blair’s stark yet beguiling direction and Ian Livingstone’s haunting score, The Messenger is a unique film that, while not necessarily playing well to the masses, is a thought-provoking and unforgettable experience.