Author: BRWC

Blood is a Friends Divided By Murder-Guilt Drama. If you haven’t seen one of these – Shallow Grave, Very Bad Things etc – the strength of the cast (Paul Bettany, Stephen Graham, Mark Strong, Brian Cox) is enough for a very slight recommendation, and if a Sad Police Murder story starring four of the most accomplished British Indie actors of the age is inviting to you, by all means check the film out, and stop reading this review now for fear of spoilers.

For anyone who has encountered this well-worn ‘murder followed by paranoia followed by net-closing-in’ structure (or frankly anyone who’s even slightly film-literate), Blood is a plodding, frustratingly unoriginal film, whose total adherence to this tired formula left me impatient for the film to just hurry up and get to where I already knew it was going.

Paul Bettany plays Joe Fairburn, a haunted bobby with a cold rage-on for justice. After the suspected murderer of a young girl appears set to walk free, Joe and his brother Lenny (Stephan Graham) take him to ‘the islands’ a place offhandedly recommended for torturing scum by their retired police chief, alzheimer-suffering father (Brian Cox). Push comes to shovel-to-the-head and now Joe and Lenny must cover their tracks before their own police comrades start investigating them. Of course the beta brother “can’t take the guilt”, the alpha brother goes mad, and the film pads its running time with terse family tears until the inevitable conclusion.

The film’s main theme of A Family Divided is unfortunately hobbled from the start, however, as the main brothers are notably miscast. Stephen Graham convinces enough, but Paul Bettany is all wrong here, the physical difference between his tall blonde and Graham’s short brunette exacerbated by Bettany’s attempted London accent never fully covering his clipped RP drawl. They never appear like a cohesive family unit, so there’s not much to tear apart, lessening the weight of the drama from the get go.

It also doesn’t help that film has the wrong protagonist in Bettany’s Joe. A better lead would have been Mark Strong’s loner copper (who we’re told is a loner but spends the establishing moments of the film making easy banter with his fellow co-workers) who slowly tightens the net around Joe and Lenny. His scenes are more interesting because its from his character’s perspective that the Fairburn family actually has any weight. He’s a mistreated, introverted outsider investigating an entire family of policemen, watching each other’s backs and some of the best bits of the film see him tiptoe across the boundaries of social acceptability in trying to gain clues from Joe’s friends and family members. Following Strong’s character might have given the whole film as sense of tension, the Fairburn family seeming a lot more convincing as a unit from without rather than from within. Instead, we’re left to follow Joe who simply does the generic ‘mad with guilt’ thing of lashing out at everyone close to him, fidgeting, hitting the bottle and constantly being one orchestral sting away from bursting into tears. It’s a one-note performance stretched out interminably, whereas Strong’s scant tale of a sidelined man gaining confidence whilst piecemeal taking down a corrupt copper family would have really benefited from the extra screentime.

There’s an really interesting 15 minutes stretch of the film, however. After murdering the prime suspect, Joe discovers that it couldn’t have been him because his alibi seems to check out and for a brief moment, the film becomes a whodunnit wherein Joe is forced to keep investigating the girl’s murder, not knowing if he’s killed the right guy, or if the real killer’s just around the corner, or if he’s a hair’s breadth from being brought down by his own investigation. That is great. An interesting, but more importantly, unpredictable dynamic, because we as the audience don’t have all the facts. We don’t know who the killer is, so we can’t be sure if Joe is entirely damned or what the next plot beat will bring. Sure enough however, they find the real killer in the next scene so now we as the audience know everything, and we spend the rest of the film looking at our watch waiting for Mark Strong to get on with it and close the net. This frustration is multiplied tenfold by the fact that Paul Bettany spends the entirety of the film looking impossibly guilty, hunched over like the world’s most stricken gargoyle, smoking his murderer’s cigarettes with an I Just Straight Up Killed A Guy expression on his sad-sack face.

And speaking of sad, my god the film’s dour. Scenes of cloudy beaches melt into scenes of granite crime scenes, into cloudy, muddy gardens into grey scenes set in grey council estates and grey police stations. Everything so overcast with a grim gloom that, whilst trying to match the sombre tone of the character;s actions, it instead had the converse effect of pulling us out of the drama because it’s trying so hard to look ‘worthy’.

Bettany aside, however, the actors acquit themselves well. Brian Cox walks away with the whole film with his turn as the Fairburn father, no longer able to exercise his own brand of the law, and Stepham Graham throws everything he has into a thanklessly bland part.

Like I say, if this is your first foray into this specific niche of cinematic thriller, your non-familiarity with the plot beats at play will make the film a much more effective and mostly well-preformed thriller. But otherwise, Blood is a by-the-numbers affair, a story that’s been told before and better, and that would feel uninspired as an ITV drama, never mind a big screen release.

Master of British Social Realism heads to America to tell them what’s wrong with them.

Young, idealistic teacher Kathleen has recently moved to Dallas. Interested by the South’s love affair with weaponry and it’s role in history she invites well groomed lawyer Larry to speak to her class about his favourite weapons. After a pleasant few dates Larry’s gentlemanly forbearance disappears as one night he rapes Kathleen at gun point. Unable to find justice via lawful means she decides to learn all she can about guns and how to kill folks in order to exact her revenge.

Writer/director Tony Garnett is perhaps one of the UK’s unsung national heroes. Producing episodes for the series The Wednesday Play, A Play for Today and Kes he was one of the leading exponents of social realist outburst of the late 1960’s. Not just that but Mr. Garnett knows how to pick a compelling story out of seemingly everyday subjects or to treat dark tales with a sober outlook. After a decade in television he released his first feature film Prostitute (you can probably guess what that’s about) before heading to the US where he independently made Handgun. Not content with showing UK audiences how grim live really is up North he decided to show Americans how grim it were down South.

When reading its synopsis it is easy to take Handgun in as a simple revenge thriller. In which case it’s modest budget and unobtrusive camerawork may have you thinking that it’s quite a slow-moving affair directed by a made-for-tv hack. It’s only as the revenge plot comes into effect half way through that you realise the director has taken a deliberately detached approach and allows scenes to play out much more naturally than you’re standard American thriller. Through much of the second half i felt as though I could be watching a Robert Altman film. It’s definitely better to approach Handgun with the understanding that this is a critique of a certain culture that happens to be using the revenge thriller as its conduit. This ain’t no Death Wish with ladies.

Many supporting actors come across as non-professionals – which I’m not using as a criticism – and therefore sound like they really believe it when they talk about the virtues of gun ownership. Throughout the film Garnett gives time enough for all sides of the argument to say their piece about gun ownership. From it’s role in history, to it’s pros and it’s cons all sides are heard but it’s always clear which side Garnett is on. The overall message taken from Kathleen’s vengeance is tried and trusted – violence only begets more violence but in his hands it comes across much more cold and clinical. If his stance is not clear enough just wait for the montage scene displaying a plethora of guns whilst, a frankly disturbing country song, calling for the slaughter of liberals and hippies plays over the top. The film looks at subjects which are openly being debated even now – who can own a gun, what you need to own a gun, how many, what kind and so on. As Garnett also likes to point out, among the law abiding hobbyist there are always the deranged with sinister thoughts.

As Kathleen, Karen Young puts in a great performance. Transforming from a naive, fresh school teacher (in fact she looks younger than some of her students) to a Travis Bickle-esque weapons expert. Actually if there is a note of criticism it would be that at times the film was verging dangerously close to a Taxi Driver copy, but it stays just about the right side of homage. In fact the entire film has a look that it was made in the mid-1970’s not the 80’s. But that could be down more to the locations. Peter Bogdanovich’s Targets also lept to mind a few times. British and American social realist films have always had a different style from each other. US directors such as Cassavettes often went handheld and the scenes were frenetic  with dialogue. British social realists such as Ken Loach often keep dialogue sparse and let silence do much of the talking. Seeing Garnett’s style in an American setting takes a little getting used to but overall Handgun is a highly rewarding and surprisingly disturbing watch. It’s great to know that Garnett’s next project was to produce the Sesame Street movie.

Given the seemingly ever-present discussions about gun control these days, Handgun’s message won’t be anything new to anyone. Depending on your standpoint you could see it as yet another anti-gun film to throw on the pile or as prescient today as when it was made. Which given it was made thirty years ago is a slightly depressing thought.

Movies about a loving family should be joyous, heartwarming tales. Even the most dark and depressing examinations of family values have at least a bit of humour in them don’t they? Comedy is, after all, an ever present in life…no matter how grim. Not so much in Belgium it would seem, as Joachim Lafosse’s Our Children is a tragedy void of anything the slightest bit whimsical, but when hearing about the true story the film is based you can kind of understand why.

Inspired by the heartbreaking story of Genevieve Lhermitte, Our Children is an exquisite yet ultimately tragic expression of mental suffocation with a stunning lead performance at its core. Emilie Dequenne is Murielle, a young woman who falls madly in love with Moroccan native, now Belgian citizen, Mounir (Tahar Rahim). As their life together develops, through marriage and the birth of 3 children, their domestic life becomes manipulated by Mounir’s adoptive father, Dr Andre Pinget (Niels Arestrup). Taking it on himself to financially support the family, Murielle gradually becomes stifled by his presence and the inevitable cracks begin to emerge in the relationship of the young couple.

Emotionally arresting and profoundly moving throughout, the film is extremely fast paced for its subject matter. Utilising clever edits to develop large chunks of time, the film persistently skips forward and spans several years in a heartbeat. Of course such a technique is essential in documenting Murielle’s gradual mental descent, and it’s a testament to both the acting and the direction that its narrative progression never becomes confusing nor convoluted. There are occasions when proceedings become a bit of a chore, but then such forays into monotony only heighten one’s sympathy for Murielle and her evidently mundane and suffocated existence.

As the film wears on, it becomes increasingly heartbreaking to see Murielle deteriorate as the chauvinistic ideals of her husband, and unwanted landlord, take their toll. Essentially seeing her physically and emotionally fall apart due to the unwarranted pressures that besiege women, the film plummets southward for Murielle in the final third conjuring a truly horrifying finale that will render even the most talkative of people speechless.

In a word, Our Children is tragic. It’s unsettling, upsetting and at times haunting thanks Lafosse’s powerful script and his cast’s phenomenal acting. Exuding a nuanced honesty throughout that only seems apparent in films from mainland Europe, every performance is great to watch. From Emelie Duquenne’s gradual deterioration to Niels Arestrup’s ever present creepiness, Our Children is as engrossing as it is sombre. From top to bottom, Joachim Lafosse’s latest truly is an old fashioned Greek tragedy of the very highest order.