Author: Mark Goodyear

I was ready to pan up and coming auteur Oliver Laxe’s newest film “Fire Will Come”. I was fully prepared to write it off as an underdeveloped and empty mass of images with no depth. And yet, that’s not the position I’m about to take. Yes, Laxe makes clear he has no interest at running any faster than the most languid of paces, and the lack of depth remains egregious, but when the titular fire finally comes, the devastation hits like running into a glass door, and it shattered my negative opinion and changed my mind. 

A quiet and timid pyromaniac is our protagonist; his name is Amador (Amador Arias). When we first meet him, he is fresh out of prison for igniting a blaze that burnt out two-thirds of a mountainside. With nowhere else to go he returns home to his mother Benedicta (Benedicta Sánchez) in his hometown located in the Galicia community of Spain. He arrives to a town he wronged with his crime, and silently takes their mockery as he tries to live life anew. 

Amador living life is the bulk of the film, which is the biggest problem. His life is far from exciting, and if it weren’t for the beautiful landscapes of the region, this could never have worked. Galicia is sublime and rich with the most picturesque mountains and bushland, it just makes you wish anything about this section of the film was interesting. Amador’s life is monotonous and draining. He spends his days near speechless tending to his mother’s three cows. When he does speak to people, it’s all empty words developing the already obvious fact that he wants to be alone. Everything comes across as if Laxe was making a character study with no interest in actually studying his character.

Thankfully this changes, and as harsh as everything I said is, the best is very much yet to come. When it does, it comes in the form of a bush fire up a mountain heading directly for houses. We see Amador inconspicuously driving away from it as firefighters begin to arrive. Then we leave him and follow the men in harm’s way. Their priority is to save homes, as it is for all firefighters, and thankfully none seem to be in danger. However, en route they get the unwelcome news that the fire is closer to a village than anticipated, a village with no fire station. Chaos ensues, two young men are sent up a path through the bush to get to this village while the others head on to fight the flame directly. 

For all the incredible imagery in Fire Will Come, nothing is more impactful than the few minutes we get inside the village of La Vegia. An old man stands amongst it as everyone else evacuates, and he’s holding onto a garden hose, spraying water on what he believes will soon be the burnt-up surrounds of his house and achieving nothing. The two young men try and get him to stop, but he refuses, and at that moment, the entire film clicked in my mind. 

It’s still heavily flawed, but it became clear that this is something I had never seen anything like before. A community, swarmed by fog and rain, forced to fight something trying to destroy them. And once again Amador is the clear suspect. Potentially, his depiction of living life amongst them is that of a perverted criminal scouting his prey, leading up to the film pointing to its title and saying, “I told you so”. He could also be a monster who indulges destruction only to sedate himself, with no ability to care for others. On the other hand, Amador may well be a simple man trying to turn his life around, who found himself in the wrong place at the wrong time. The film provides no answer, but the brilliance lies in the question even existing. Amador doesn’t so much as light a match throughout, he appears reformed, yet regardless he reeks of guilt by the end.

Fire Will Come is undeniably flawed. Yet it ends with such an impactful crescendo that you can’t help but think there’s something brilliant hidden in the flames.

The cinema release date is March 20th.

Braveheart makes a myth of a real man and real events; in that respect, it’s a heavily flawed film. Yet, in my eyes, Mel Gibson’s epic will always be one of the finest films ever made. No film has struck me emotionally quite like Braveheart. William Wallace (Mel Gibson) was the first freedom fighter I ever truly knew, and his trials and tribulations against the British awed me for every second of its vast 3-hour runtime. When I first saw the film, I was struck hard by the ending. Watching those men charge the fields of Bannockburn, I realised I had unwittingly become attached to this film forever. So, 25 years after its initial release, I thought I would write on what makes this best picture winner my personal favourite movie.

For those who don’t know, Braveheart loosely follows the story of William Wallace and the Scottish revolt he led against King Edward I of England (AKA Longshanks). It tells of his courage and his love, and while there’s more fiction than fact, Braveheart is a powerful and captivating example of how to glorify an individual from a bygone era.

We see the battles of Stirling and Falkirk with all their intense rebel vigour and inspirational message of independence. Those battles and all the others are brutal. The infantry swings their weapons with reckless abandon resulting in plenty of bloody impalements and crushings. The combat sequences were so ambitious in scale they required 1600 extras to film, and the final result is breath-taking. Indeed, they are engrossing and memorable in their execution, but Braveheart offers so much more. 

We also witness love in a time where hatred ruled. From his tragic relationship with his wife Murron (Catherine McCormack), the death of whom acts as a catalyst for the rebellion. To the unrequited dedication, Wallace receives from Princess Isabell (Sophie Marceau), the incredibly brave daughter in law of Longshanks (Patrick McGoohan). We experience a depth and emotional development that few epics ever get close to by comparison.

There are many other complexities to the narrative; betrayal and internal Scottish politics to name a couple, but the film is only bettered by them and never gets bogged down in over-explaining specific points. Rather than exploring the dry world of politics, Braveheart opts to grow its massive heart ever larger. In the process, Mel Gibson proved, as he did with Hacksaw Ridge, that he can endear you to lost causes from the past, ones many of his audience cannot relate to, but they nonetheless feel for and champion. And that’s precisely why this film redefined what an epic was to me. I’m an Australian of English and Irish descent, and Scotland’s independence becomes my number one issue every time I sit down to watch, just purely because of the overwhelming emotion that washes over me from beginning to end. 

To that point, despite the monumental amount of work which went into the film, I would label it effortlessly epic. For all it’s false depictions, some of which are brazenly obvious, Braveheart feels real. Maybe because Randall Wallace wrote with his feelings more so than his mind; generating an atmosphere which emphasises the mythical nature of everything, earning the film forgiveness for all the falsehoods. William Wallace is an all-time movie hero, whose cry of freedom is known worldwide as the ultimate piece of melodrama, and he is what makes this film the epic. Writing him with rigorous historical fact and via the means of meticulous recreation would only serve to distort Braveheart into a much lesser film.

Mel Gibson became a deserving Academy Award winner in the wake of Braveheart and there’s little to say to discredit his win. The way he captures both love and war will always be utterly evocative and mesmerising. He couldn’t have done it without his Academy Award-winning Cinematographer John Toll who stuns with his lens. And yet one person, who the Academy tragically failed to honour in 1996, adds more to this experience than maybe even Mel himself.

The late great James Horner is known first and foremost for composing Titanic, a monumental piece of work to be sure. But his efforts composing Braveheart with the London Symphony Orchestra is the stuff of dreams. From his “Outlawed Tunes on Outlawed Pipes” to “The Execution Bannockburn” Horner’s score is a cinematic achievement of the highest order. As the film comes to its conclusion, he hypnotises and escorts you to one of cinemas most magnificent crescendos both musically and narratively. His loss is irreparably tragic, and we should be forever thankful for the magic he skilfully made for us while he was alive. 

Braveheart is a masterpiece, and remains as irresistibly epic as it always has.

Hollywood legend almost isn’t enough to describe Clint Eastwood. He is the perfect example of someone who’s given their life to the art of movie-making. And he’s not faultless, “The 15:17 to Paris” proved that.

To put it nicely that particular endeavour was a nonsensical mess, but he followed it up with the dubiously charming film “The Mule” which saved him some face. Now he reminds just how good he really is by curtailing last decade with his best effort in many years.

Richard Jewell tells the true story of the man who inspired the title. Richard (Paul Walter Hauser) was a security guard based in Centennial Park on July 26, 1996, during the Atlanta Olympics. He was the very security guard who found the bomb which went off in the park that day and saved countless lives by ensuring as many people as possible were out of harm’s way before it went off. Without a doubt, Richard was a hero. A hero America ridiculed when the FBI leaked to a journalist that he was the prime suspect in the hunt for the terrorist. 

The film follows both the event itself and the fruitless and frankly pathetic investigation that followed. With the relationship between Richard, his mother Bobi (Kathy Bates) and his lawyer Watson Bryant (Sam Rockwell) being the focal point. Throughout they combat the naïve duo of FBI investigator Tom Shaw (Jon Hamm) and journalist Kathy Scruggs (Olivia Wilde).

All the while Richard Jewell becomes the punchline to a nation’s jokes, a nation unwittingly insulting someone who was only doing his job and saving people in the process. 

There is a lot to love and respect about this film, but there is one breathtaking aspect that rises above all others, the performance of Paul Walter Hauser in the title role. He starts off simmering as the goofy and frankly strange man Jewell was and manages to evolve that into a commanding and downright engrossing depiction of a man who refuses to be anyone he’s not. It becomes staggeringly clear he will do whatever he can to get his situation resolved and go back to living life the way he always did. This performance shows Hauser is so much more than the hilarity inducing roles in “I, Tonya” and “BlackKklansmen” he’s a Hollywood leading man with all the potential to take the stage during any future awards season as a winner.

Sam Rockwell and the Oscar-nominated Kathy Bates are also spectacular and serve to highlight the intense toll something like this takes on people. Bobi Jewell is a particularly endearing character, she loves her son with every fibre of her being, and to label her reaction to the scandal as utter devastation would be an understatement. That’s what makes this an essential film, a film that had to be made. Clint Eastwood has a knack for highlighting the stories of hero’s who don’t or didn’t get their due while they were alive, and Richard Jewell is the epitome of that.

Not only did he not get his due, but he was also torn apart by the media when he had done nothing wrong, this film highlights that and spreads the truth to the world one last time. 

Eastwood doesn’t spare much time for certain complexities that amount to the truth here, but the basics are spot on, and when it comes down to it, I am totally fine with that. Yes, the depiction of Scruggs is harsh, and at times blatantly untrue, but she still wrote the articles she wrote, and they were horrible and wrong; history must not forget that, even if she is unfairly treated in this film. The FBI also come off as utterly incompetent, but all things considered, this wasn’t their finest hour, and they didn’t deserve anything more than they got from this film. 

Paul Walter Hauser’s powerhouse performance firms this tale of an American hero robbed of his glory as one of Clint Eastwood’s most exceptional efforts from the last decade.