What I've been watching this week

Shooter – 3/5

This is a film for everybody who loves a good conspiracy theory. The plot, such as it, follows Mark Wahlberg’s Bob Lee Swagger (how’s that for an all-American name) – an expert marksmen, left for dead when a mission in a country he shouldn’t have been in goes wrong. Having survived, several years later his patriotism is played upon to recruit him to try and work out how a potential assassin is going to make an attempt on the president’s life. Too late he realises that he’s actually there to take the fall for the assassination. What follows is less an attempt to clear his name than an effort to wipe out those responsible through the standard twists and turns.

In reality its nothing new – its all been done before and done better. Without giving too much away, the conspiracy revolves around securing oil supplies in the developing world, which you guess is supposed to add some contemporary relevance, but without the seriousness of, say, a Syriana, it just feels a bit bandwagon-y and old hat now. Danny Glover, his voice husky to the verge of incomprehensibility at times, is the year’s least surprising villain to date. And the implied treatment of token woman/romantic interest (Kate Mara – seen in last season of 24) when she’s captured feel unnecessarily nasty for a film which is fundamentally about entertainment. All in all the film’s just not really as smart as it would like to think.

On the plus side, director Antoine Fuqua (Training Day) handles the action and set pieces very well and the action is very entertaining. This is aided by Wahlberg’s increasing confidence as a leading man/action hero – carrying the movie more or less by himself for the first time. He’s come a long way since the Funky Bunch! He’s ably assisted by the excellent Michael Pena as the FBI agent who twigs that something’s not quite right.

So, nothing original – but entertaining conspiracy thriller/action piece. Despite its best efforts it can’t compete with Bourne, but if you like this sort of thing is probably worth checking out.

The Lives of Others (Das Lieben der Anderen) – 5/5

This is the film that to the surprise of many (most of whom, myself included, probably hadn’t seen it yet) beat Pan’s Labyrinth and Days of Glory to the Oscar for Best Foreign Film. I’ve got to admit that, despite the critical acclaim I approached this film with a fair amount of wariness. I guess I kind of resented the defeat of Pan’s Labyrinth, which was one of my favourite films of last year. I was also aware of Oscar’s tendancy in the Foreign Film category to reward overly sentimental mush over genuinely innovative and excellent films (Nowhere in Africa – Exhibit A). Finally a German film about the Stasi observing people in the old East German promised to be, honestly, just a little bit grim.

Having seen it, my opinion is that the Oscar was well deserved – this film is utterly compelling and enthralling, brilliantly scripted and acted and subtly, yet powerfully, moving. The plot centres around Stasi Captain Wiesler (Ulrich Mühe) who is assigned the task of surveilling playwright Georg Dreyman (Sebastian Koch – seen recently as the SS officer in Black Book). Gradually, as he is drawn more into Dreyman and his actress girlfriend’s lives, the more he moves from observer to participant – manipulating and controlling events.

Koch is suitably charismatic as the committed socialist writer who still falls under suspicion and Martina Gedeck (Matt Damon’s German secretary in The Good Shepherd) is excellent as the girlfriend. However, the film belongs to Mühe’s subtle and complex portrayal of the Stasi captain. In contrast to his self-interested superiors, Wiesler is a true believer in the rightness of his role – his cold detachment describing interrogation techniques to students in the film’s opening is truly chilling. However, the more he is drawn into Dreyman’s life, the more he begins to change himself. I have seen parallels made with Robin Williams’ Sy in One Hour Photo, but the difference is crucial. The more Sy gets drawn into the life of the family whose photos he develops, the creepier and more divorced from reality he becomes. However, Wiesler, through Dreyman’s life, starts to re-discover his humanity and seek more connetion with the world. He emerges as the true hero of the film, risking and ultimately losing much as he plays a dangerous game.

A post-script, set after the fall of the Berlin wall, could potentially have been a mis-step, but as with the rest of the film, the obvious grandstanding moments are sidestepped in favour of more delicate and convincing touches. And the final scene of recognition between the two leads is entirely appropriate for two me who impact each others lives greatly without ever actually meeting and is carried out with a brilliant yet careful touch. The final line is astoundingly simple, and yet profoundly works on several levels – a fitting climax to an intelligent, gripping, original, thought-provoking and moving film. A film made even more remarkable by the fact that this is writer/director Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck’s debut feature.

Following on the heels of other recent successes like Downfall and Goodbye Lenin, this is further evidence that German cinema is thriving both creatively and commercially. A genuine must-see movie – don’t let any preconceived ideas about it, put you off!

The Curse of the Golden Flower – 3.5/5

The latest film from Zhang Yimou, the director who gave us The House of Flying Daggers and the brilliant Hero, is as you might expect visually striking. In fact, its so striking that, like staring at the sun, its in danger of burning a permanent image on your retina. The exquisite beauty of the previous two films is replaced by the jaw-droppingly spectacular in excesses of silver and gold and a variety of gaudy colours. At one level, this reflects the moral decadence and corruption of the royal family at the centre of the film, it does all feel just that wee over the top. This is also a much gorier film than the previous two – whereas in the Flying Daggers blood dripped poignantly onto the snow at the end, here it splatters just about everywhere. Finally, it is a much less fight/action driven film than the previous ones.

Other critics have compared the plot to Shakespearean tragedies like Macbeth or King Lear, but in truth the characters lack that amount of depth, and if a Western cultural comparison must be made, Greek tragedy is perhaps a better point to start from. The royal family at the centre of the film and whole new layers to any understanding of dysfunctional. The emperor is slowly sending the empress demented by poisoning her medicine with a black fungus. The empress is plotting the overthrow of the emperor, recruiting the middle of his three sons to her cause. The eldest son is a bit of bumbler who manages to get romantically involved with both his step-mum and, unwittingly, his half-sister. Whilst the youngest son has nobody-loves-me, I’m going to kill you all issues.

Three things lift this above the average. Firstly, Chow Yun Fat’s coolly restrained, smug-glint-in-the-eye, beard-stroking villain as the emperor is a joy to watch throughout. Secondly, Gong Li adds real depth and a strange kind of dignity the empress, who is forced by circumstance and protocol to repeatedly drink the medicine she knows is killing her. Her performance adds real tragedy to the mix. But most of all, when the fight scenes do come, we are given evidence yet again that Zhang’s are the surest hands in the business at this kind of thing and he can still turn out the stunning and exciting that leave other directors in his shadow.

This is no Hero, but if you go with lessened expectations, its still worth checking out, sitting back and just drinking in the spectacle for a couple of hours. You probably won’t see anything quite like it for a very long time.