The Judge (2014)

(SPOILER ALERT: DO NOT READ THIS POST IF YOU DON'T WANT TO KNOW WHETHER PAST DEMONS CAN EVER BE SLAIN?)

[Now for a "never mind the quality, feel the heft" movie bust.]

The Judge (2014) is an American drama film directed by David Dobkin, starring Robert Downey, Jr. and Robert Duvall.

In the end, seemingly invincible hard-ball, conscience-free defence lawyer of the guilty rich, Robert Downey, Jr. is reconciled with his estranged, disapproving, hard-ass small-town provincial judge father, Robert Duvall, after unsuccessfully defending him against a hit-and-run manslaughter charge, which sees Duvall briefly incarcerated, before compassionate parole allows him to die on a fishing trip, in the company of Downey, who Duvall now recognises to be the best lawyer he has ever met.

Returning to his home-town for his mother's funeral, Downey is forced to defend the most uncompliant and self-incriminating client of his career, when his terminally ill father is accused of the murder of a recently released felon he had once shown uncharacteristic leniency to in court, only for the man to then commit brutal murder, immediately on his release.


Of course, there is considerably more detail decorating David Dobkin's A Few Good Men (1992) in Steel Magnolias (1989) clothing (with a dash of Rain Man (1988)) concoction than this plot bust would suggest, no doubt meant to invest characters with the audience. Backers and actors, alike, may have even got a whiff of award potential from the dis-functional family scenario, and the serially re-written script's surfeit of crackling one-liners. But Downey and his spouse's production amounts to little more than daytime television viewing, albeit with a stellar cast. In the end, though, it is Thomas Newman's jauntily incongruous incidental music that sucks the tension out of Dobkin's first dramatic outing, which could have done with a few more good men and a lot less rain magnolias.

[Best line in the movie is delivered by Denis O'Hare: [to Downey] "Wow, it's not just an act. You really are that unpleasant."]

Source(s):
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Judge_(2014_film)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Few_Good_Men
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steel_Magnolias
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rain_Man

'71 (2014)

(SPOILER ALERT: DO NOT READ THIS POST IF YOU DON'T WANT TO KNOW WHETHER A RAW ARMY RECRUIT SURVIVES HIS FIRST DAY OF ACTIVE DEPLOYMENT)

[Another of the number of past-their-sell-by-date busts languishing in this blog's drafts folder, this time of a movie plot that proves you don't need big budgets or trick Hollywood endings to write compelling thrillers.]

'71 (2014) is a British recent history action drama starring Jack O'Connell, Sean Harris, David Wilmot, Richard Dormer and Paul Anderson, directed by Yann Demange.

In the end, rookie private, Jack O'Connell is rescued from the hands of murderous republican gunmen by the British Army unit that accidentally left him behind during a riot on the streets of Belfast.

Fresh out of boot camp, on his first day of deployment on the streets of Belfast, at the height of Northern Ireland's "Troubles", O'Connell finds himself abandoned by his unit, along with another soldier, as they try to recover rifles snatched by a mob of republican sympathisers during a street riot following an arrest operation that quickly escalated out of control.

O'Connell takes flight when the soldier with him is shot in the face at point blank range by a pair of gunmen who appear out of the crowd.

Chased through the back streets and alleys, O'Connell eventually gives his pursuers the slip by sheltering in a little used outhouse.

Returning to the body of the dead soldier, the gunmen are rebuked by republican king-pin, David Wilmot, for carrying out the shooting. Despite this, and against Wilmot's specific instructions, their dissident gang leader (Killian Scott), decides they should continue to hunt O'Connell.

Under cover of darkness, O'Connell ventures out, covering his uniform with a knitted pullover, stolen from a washing line.

Lost in the unfamiliar streets, O'Connell runs into a young masked loyalist petrol bomber, but is initially reluctant to accept the boy's offer to lead him back to his barracks.

On the way, though, the boy and O'Connell call at a loyalist bar, interrupting a British Military Intelligence officer, Paul Anderson, as he briefs a pair of would-be loyalist bombers.

Telling O'Connell to wait for him at the bar, Anderson leaves to consult with his senior colleague, Sean Harris, waiting in a nearby car.

But, before Anderson has a chance to return for O'Connell, the bar is blown to bits by the hapless bombers, O'Connell only surviving after momentarily stepping outside to see where Anderson had disappeared to.

Dazed and confused, the injured O'Connell staggers through the streets, before collapsing against a wall, in which state he is found by a young woman and her father, Richard Dormer.

Mistaking him for an injured republican, Dormer carries O'Connell to the flat he shares with his daughter in a republican stronghold, where, realising their perilous error, the pair patch up O'Connell's wound, before Dormer seeks help from Wilmot in smuggling him to safety.

The bombing of the loyalist bar, however, has only intensified the factional struggle between Wilmot and the dissident leader, each of whom blames the other for the attack, leading both to decide that the other must die. And when Wilmot visits Dormer's home to see O'Connell for himself, he unwittingly leads the dissidents to the location of their quary.

Spooked, after Wilmot leaves, by an overheard argument between Dormer and his daughter, O'Connell slips out, unseen, only just before the dissident republicans force their way into the flat and demand to know what business Wilmot has there.

With a gun pointed at the head of her father, Dormer's daughter breaks down, revealing that Wilmot was there to help return O'Connell to his unit. But finding O'Connell gone, the dissidents decide to search the vicinity, leaving a single gunman behind to watch Dormer and his daughter while waiting for Wilmot's return.

Having struck a deal to help Harris and Anderson recover O'Connell in exchange for their murdering the dissident who has been challenging his authority, Wimlot leads the Intelligence officers and a contingent of soldiers from O'Connell's unit, to Dormer's flat, where they shoot their way past the waiting gunman, only to find O'Connell gone. But Wilmot claims that if the dissidents have O'Connell, he knows where they will have taken him.

The dissidents have indeed captured O'Connell, despite him killing one of his pursuers, the murderer of the soldier earlier that day, and take him to a nearby derelict bar, where the leader urges a teenager who had failed to shoot the cornered O'Connell during the original pursuit, to execute their unarmed captive.

Again the boy hesitates, giving Wilmot enough time to lead the British soldiers to the bar, which they storm, allowing Anderson to shoot the teen while Harris goes after the fleeing dissident leader.

Harris then betrays Wilmot by revealing the deal he made for the dissident leader's murder, before allowing him to escape in return for the dissidents dispatching Wilmot on behalf of the British.

And in a second betrayal, having saved O'Connell from execution, Anderson then attempts to strangle him, before he himself is shot by the teenager, who Anderson failed to finish off, only for the teenager to be then shot by O'Connell's squad leader, who happened upon Anderson as he attempted to finish off O'Connell.

An invalided O'Connell is discharged from the army under a cloud, after his senior commanding officer dismisses his and his squad leader's accusations against Anderson.

Disillusioned, O'Connell returns to the mainland to collect a young boy he refers to as "our Darren" from a secure children's home, he himself had spent time in.

The pair are seen riding off into the sunset on a coach.


Despite a plot that includes a few too many improbable coincidences, with his first big-screen feature outing, Demange manages a white-knuckle ride of tension and emotion, that grabs its audience from the get-go (right up until the somewhat laboured and slightly corny ending) and puts recent American offerings, in the same genre, with ten times the budget, to shame. (Indeed, since this bust was first penned, O'Connell has gone on to star as the lead in one such production, to much less effect.) Look and learn, Hollywood. Look and learn.

Source(s):
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/'71_(film)

Gone Girl (2014)

(SPOILER ALERT: DO NOT READ THIS POST IF YOU DON'T WANT TO KNOW WHO DID WHAT AND WHETHER THEY GET AWAY WITH IT.)

[There are still a few more much delayed busts from my time-capsule yet to be posted. Here, at least, is one of more recent ones; an example of a thriller that starts with a bang, only to end with a whimper.]

Gone Girl (2014) is an American mystery thriller film directed by David Fincher, starring Ben Affleck, Rosamund Pike, Neil Patrick Harris, Tyler Perry, and Carrie Coon, adapted for the screen by author Gillian Flynn from her 2012 novel of the same name.

In the end, cheating husband Ben Affleck is trapped in a loveless marriage to his controlling, murderer wife, Rosamund Pike, for the sake of the unborn child she claims to be carrying for him.

On the morning of his fifth wedding anniversary, after downing some liquid courage at the bar he runs with his twin sister, Carrie Coon, in the Missouran town of their birth, Affleck returns home to find his wife, Pike, from whom he intends to seek a divorce, missing and their living-room in disarray.

Summoning the police, Affleck's cool and at times glib demeanour soon raises suspicions in the investigating detective, who orders a full forensic search of the property, which uncovers an increasing amount of circumstantial evidence that suggests Affleck may know more about his wife's disappearance than he claims.

The inspiration for a universally loved children's literature block-buster creation of Pike's author parents, it's not long before the media-savvy pair has the whole community involved in the search for their missing daughter, the story being picked up by tabloid television reporters, who have Affleck tried and convicted in the public eye, even before the luminol sweeps for blood in the couple's kitchen have had a chance to dry.

Most damning for Affleck is a diary discovered by the investigating detective while following a series of clues, part of an anniversary treasure hunt tradition of Pike's, in which she documents the gradual decline of their relationship from its fairytale romance beginnings, through disappointment, doubt, distrust and even fear, on Pike's part. And when Coon discovers her brother ushering a strange young woman out of her home, that he is obviously involved with and who has spent the night there with him, even she begins to doubt her brother.

Worse still, when a claim emerges that the missing Pike was pregnant when she disappeared, the candle-lit vigil held to publicise the search for her turns on Affleck, forcing him to bolt for the cover of a police squad car.

Not until Affleck solves the final treasure hunt clue that leads him and his sister to an incriminating cache of up-market purchases he is supposed to have run up huge credit debts buying, hidden on her property, along with a taunting note and Punch and Judy toy from Pike, does Coon realise it is her brother who is the victim of Pike and not the other way round.

In reality, Pike's diary is mostly fiction, part of an elaborate revenge plot after Affleck's infidelity, designed to put him on death row. However, the scheme falls apart when Pike is robbed of the large amount of cash she is carrying while on the run, the final part of her plan to stage her own murder.

Broke and desperate, Pike turns to super-wealthy former Ivy League suitor, Neil Patrick Harris, who is delighted to take her back and use his huge fortune to save her from her, as she says, abusive husband.

Daunted by the case his wife has fabricated against him, Affleck seeks the help of notorious wife-murder defence attorney, Tyler Perry, who, while admiring Pike's Machiavellian brilliance, cannot resist the challenge of representing someone in such a tight spot as Affleck.

Perry's advice is that he should immediately confess his marital sins on national television, and throw himself on the mercy of the court of public opinion.

Watching Affleck's contritious chat show performance, while safely tucked away in Patrick Harris's remote and luxurious cabin in the woods, Pike convinces herself that, having learnt his lesson, Affleck is at last ready to become the perfect husband she always hoped she could transform him into. Unfortunately for Patrick Harris, who is keen for Pike to reveal her survival, he now forms the means by which Pike intends to return from the dead.

After secretly brutalising herself and staging a one woman show of supposed incarceration for the benefit of the cabin's security cameras, Pike completes her framing of Patrick Harris for her abduction by murdering him with a box cutter, before "escaping" in blood soaked lingerie, for a dramatic re-union with her husband, broadcast live by the national news channels camped out on their front lawn.

So relieved is the public by Pike's miraculous return, that not even the F.B.I. question the inconsistencies in her story that seem obvious to Affleck, Coon, Perry and the investigating detective who (for no apparent reason) has (conveniently for Pike) been taken off the case. And despite Affleck's adamant misgivings, Pike still manages to persuade him to continue with their marriage, on account of some fertility treatment chicanery that she has managed to pull off, while all this was going on.

Or, perhaps more briefly...

Psychopath wife frames husband and murders ex-boyfriend to save marriage and gets away with it.


Fincher has such an enviable reputation for producing edge of the seat rides that it is hard to imagine him ever putting a foot wrong on the big-screen thrill-o-meter. Sadly, with Gone Girl, we no longer have to imagine.

Not that there isn't much to admire and enjoy in the first act mystery scene setter, which is 24 caret Fincher, worthy of the film's promotional references to his classic Seven (1995).

Neither can the blame be laid at the feet of his excellent cast, who do their very best as the plot shifts gear into second act soap opera, then slides, unbelievably, into pantomime farce (even the characters laugh at the implausibility of the plot, at times) for the final third of a movie that, despite being a whole hour longer than most Hollywood fare, seems in a rush to wrap things up before anyone notices the sink-holes appearing in its plot.

Only the under-used and under-rated Patrick Harris, who seems to have drawn the short-straw of portraying the one-dimensional rabbit required by the story to be pulled out of its get-out-of-jail-free trick ending hat, struggles to breath believability into his character.

So disappointed was the audience at the screening I attended that there was a collective groan of resignation when the closing scene played. It's the exact same scene that opens the movie. Only our perspective is supposed to have changed, based on what we've learned.

All I learned was that even the considerable talents of Fincher cannot fashion a silk purse movie out of a sow's ear script. To misquote a famously misquoted quote "the fault, Brutus, lies not in our stars. But in our author."

Source(s):
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gone_Girl_(film)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seven_(1995_film)

Spectre (2015)

(SPOILER ALERT: DO NOT READ THIS POST IF YOU DON'T WANT TO KNOW WHETHER THERE'S STILL LIFE IN THE OLD DOG, YET or IF HELL HATH NO FURY LIKE A STEP-SIBLING SCORNED)

[It's been a while, but here's a bust fresh off the digital projection presses.]

Spectre (2015) stars Daniel Craig and Christoph Waltz, and is director Sam Mendes second contribution to the long-running British espionage action movie franchise.

In the end, licensed-to-kill super-spy Daniel Craig spares the life of cornered step-sibling rival and global super-villain Christoph Waltz, before driving off into the sunset with Lea Seydoux, the daughter of a deceased former enemy assassin.

Following secret instructions from his late former boss, Craig causes an international incident at the height of Day of the Dead celebrations in Mexico City, while tracking down and spectacularly murdering a notorious Italian criminal plotting a terrorist outrage.

Suspended from duty on his return to London, Craig nevertheless persists with his secret mission, clandestinely travelling to Rome in order to seduce his victim's widow into revealing the location of the latest assembly of the criminal network for which her husband worked.

Using the man's stolen signet ring to gain access to the gathering, Craig witnesses the murderous induction of his victim's replacement, before being exposed by the organisation's head, Christoph Waltz, the grown up son of Craig's childhood guardians, who Craig thought had perished as a youth with his adoptive father.

Craig is chased from the building by the new chief henchman, racing through the streets of Rome, before being forced to crash the one-of-a-kind Aston Martin super-car, stolen from his MI6 quartermaster, into the Tiber.

Piecing together clues, with the unofficial help of his new boss's secretary, Craig tracks down a former adversary, holed up in an isolated alpine lodge, who confirms, on the brink of death, the existence of the overarching organisation of which he was a part, before being poisoned for leaving their criminal employ.

Seeking further clues, Craig inadvertently leads the organisation's henchmen to the man's daughter, Lea Seydoux, and is obliged to rescue her from them, after making a death-bed promise to her father.

Sceptical of his ability to keep her safe, Seydoux is eventually convinced to take Craig to a north African hotel, long frequented by her parents, where, after interrogating a local rat or unclear allegiance, he uncovers a hidden cache of intelligence that points to an unmarked destination deep in the desert.

As the pair travel by train towards the mystery location, Seydoux demonstrates some of her father's skills, helping Craig dispatch the surviving chief henchman, who has caught them up. Their shared exertions lead to a passionate encounter.

Despite alighting unannounced at an abandoned train stop in the middle of nowhere, the couple are collected and chauffeur driven to Waltz's soon-to-be operational global surveillance hub contained in an ancient meteor crater.

Jealous of the attention shown the adopted Craig, Waltz admits responsibility for his own father's death and reveals his ambition for revenge, proceeding to torture Craig in front of Seydoux. But with the help of an exploding wristwatch, the pair escape and destroy the facility.

Returning to London, Craig is in the process of uncovering Waltz's inside man, the head of a new joint intelligence body that has subsumed Craig's new boss's responsibilities, when he is abducted and delivered to the derelict former MI6 Thames-side headquarters.

There, a now badly scared Waltz presents him with a stark choice of saving either himself or Seydoux from the building's demolition explosion which he is about to trigger.

Searching desperately, while Waltz departs by helicopter, Craig only manages to find and flee with Seydoux in the nick of time, while his boss confronts the traitor, who is killed by a fall, after a struggle.

Firing wildly with his revolver as the couple make chase by boat along the river, Craig damages the helicopter's engines, forcing it to crash-land on Westminster Bridge, where Craig, Seydoux and the authorities catch up with an even more badly injured Waltz, who now wants to be known by a name derived from his maternal bloodline.


If Spectre doesn't quite match the achievement of its immediate predecessor, then perhaps that is to be expected from what could only be described as Bond's Greatest Hits: Volume 2. Even so, Mendes second offering stands head and shoulders above all but his first. Maybe if he gets the chance to do a third there'll be a villain motivated by something other than personal revenge :P

Source(s):
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spectre_(2015_film)