It's been a while since I was subjected to this one, and I think I reviewed it at the time but managed to lose the original. So bear with me.
The Interpreter is a political thriller about corruption and murder in a ficticious southern African state, interestingly set in the UN headquarters in New York. It has a great (African) opening that's all grit and realism and excitement and portends a great movie to follow. Maybe because there's wasn't a lot of dialogue in this scene, the director, Sydney Pollack (Three Days of the Condor - now that's a political thriller) had scope to achieve this. But come Scene 2 and the film relocates to New York, the script kicks in, and the "stars" get involved.
These last two points are the real undoing of the film. The plot is contrived like you wouldn't believe. For example, Silvia (the heroine who is an interpreter with the UN, more later) discovers an assassination plot and then becomes a target herself because:
1. Before going for drinks after work, she decides it will be easier to leave her musical instrument in the interpreting room rather than carry it around. Fair call for a tuba or a cello, but a flute?
2. Two plotters are discussing their scheme in the delegation hall of the UN, (which is, of course, covered in microphones), rather than in a hotel room somewhere.
3. They sit in their usual seats in the hall so that Silvia's interpreting room picks up the conversation, and she, of course, hearing something from her headphones, puts them on and uncovers the plot.
4. They see her and she runs rather than pretending nothing happened.
The rest of the plot is pretty poor, as well, but if we didn't see films because of a few schoolboy errors like that, we'd never go to the cinema at all. No, the reason not to see this film under any circumstances is Nicole Kidman.
Let's start with her character: she's meant to be a white southern African from a ficticious and corrupt southern African nation (think Zimbabwe) who speaks a ficticious language that is the lingua franca of southern Africa. That's fine, but you'd think that such a woman might have picked up a bit of a tan from her time in Africa. Or maybe some freckles, even. You'd also think her accent would sound kind of southern African. But it's as if Miss Kidman failed to read the script before filming and didn't do any preparation. This is reinforced when she opens her mouth. Her accent is atrocious and her acting is worse. She could have been (should have been) replaced with a potted ficcus. At least that would have been less wooden.
Nicole Kidman is possibly the worst actress in the world. Take away the admittedly tight body, and the reconstructed face and you will see that she is a talentless bimbo who should be relegated to doing films with the likes of Rob Sneider, Paulie Shore and Will Ferrell (no, I have no intention of seeing Bewitched), not Sean Penn. (For all his leftie mumbo jumbo "I've been to Iraq" crap as if anyone really cares what actors think, the bloke can act.)
With the script this film was lumbered with, it had the potential to be a forgetable, middle-of-the-road piece of cinema that not even afficionados would want to watch again. With Miss Kidman in it, it made it to my list of bad films, and earns -2.0 Money Trains.
Thursday, August 31, 2006
Saturday, August 19, 2006
U571 (1.0 Money Train)
U571 is a really dumb film. Clearly the director and screenwriter never saw Das Boot or read any history of WWII. I mean:
1. If you take a WWII sub to around 240m, and the pressure gauge red lines at 160m, surely you'll need to hammer some blocks into the leaks that will spring up. (Aside: there was an American nuclear sub that imploded in the sixties. I'm not sure the depth, but it was probably only around 250m.)
2. When they survive these improbably depths the Chief comments "the Germans really know how to make a boat". And yet a German destroyer explodes in a massive fire ball with just one torpedo fired into it. Good German torpedoes, perhaps? Pity the German artillery that hit the sub directly wasn't that good. Maybe only German boats were good, but their ships were crap.
3. And when little Billy is sent into the bilge to stop a leak, he closes off the first, then catches his breath under a grille and talks to the Weapons guy. Now, his air hose isn't long enough. So why not go back to the entry point and re-enter the bilge at the grille where he was talking to the weapons guy. Then he could get enough slack on the air pipe.
4. But the fact remains his arm is shorter than the distance between the valve and the bulkhead (or whatever it was) that stops him. No amount of talking by the captain will change this fact. The only way to close the valve is by:
4a. Sending down someone with longer arms (or perhaps giving Billy a wrench or jemmy),
4b. Or lifting up the floor panels. I mean, why the hell would you have a valve that was impossible to reach except by swimming through the bilge?
4c. Or waiting on the surface getting shot to pieces so the structure fails and little Billy can reach the valve and save the lives of the men that the captain has endangered by sacrificing little Billy in the first place. Basically, the captain should have been court-martialled and Billy given a posthumous VC (hey, they should have been Brits, anyway. The US hadn't even entered the damned war at this point.)
5. Anyway, it was lucky that when they meet the other U-Boat in the storm that the sea only has a half-metre chop. It was so calm they probably could have gotten much closer. And it's also lucky that a US Navy plane finds the life raft (at the end) in the Atlantic when the U-boat action was mainly off the European coasts and so would have been patrolled by the RAF. (Especially considering the Americans hadn't entered the damned war at this point.)
I only saw bits and pieces of this film over two showings, seeing the ending last night, so that's why this dissection is so short. But I did notice they had a technical adviser on the film. At least in the credits. What they needed was:
a. a technical adviser with submarine experience, or b. a five year old.
But speaking of submarine movies, in The World Is Not Enough, Bond has the chance to kill all the bad guys quietly and quickly in the control room of the sub. But instead, he dithers and lets a fight happen, in which he kills them all anyway, making the success of his mission all the more unlikely. What kind of licence to kill has he got? "The bearer of this licence can kill only in self defence and only when hopelessly outnumbered." He's been a good boy and clearly has no conscience. Give him a real licence. "The bearer of this licence can kill anyone at all whenever he feels like it for the security of Great Britain and Northern Ireland." It's like the way George Lucas remastered Star Wars so Han shoots second. Enough of the honourable no-cold-blood-executions crap.
Score: 1 Money Train
1. If you take a WWII sub to around 240m, and the pressure gauge red lines at 160m, surely you'll need to hammer some blocks into the leaks that will spring up. (Aside: there was an American nuclear sub that imploded in the sixties. I'm not sure the depth, but it was probably only around 250m.)
2. When they survive these improbably depths the Chief comments "the Germans really know how to make a boat". And yet a German destroyer explodes in a massive fire ball with just one torpedo fired into it. Good German torpedoes, perhaps? Pity the German artillery that hit the sub directly wasn't that good. Maybe only German boats were good, but their ships were crap.
3. And when little Billy is sent into the bilge to stop a leak, he closes off the first, then catches his breath under a grille and talks to the Weapons guy. Now, his air hose isn't long enough. So why not go back to the entry point and re-enter the bilge at the grille where he was talking to the weapons guy. Then he could get enough slack on the air pipe.
4. But the fact remains his arm is shorter than the distance between the valve and the bulkhead (or whatever it was) that stops him. No amount of talking by the captain will change this fact. The only way to close the valve is by:
4a. Sending down someone with longer arms (or perhaps giving Billy a wrench or jemmy),
4b. Or lifting up the floor panels. I mean, why the hell would you have a valve that was impossible to reach except by swimming through the bilge?
4c. Or waiting on the surface getting shot to pieces so the structure fails and little Billy can reach the valve and save the lives of the men that the captain has endangered by sacrificing little Billy in the first place. Basically, the captain should have been court-martialled and Billy given a posthumous VC (hey, they should have been Brits, anyway. The US hadn't even entered the damned war at this point.)
5. Anyway, it was lucky that when they meet the other U-Boat in the storm that the sea only has a half-metre chop. It was so calm they probably could have gotten much closer. And it's also lucky that a US Navy plane finds the life raft (at the end) in the Atlantic when the U-boat action was mainly off the European coasts and so would have been patrolled by the RAF. (Especially considering the Americans hadn't entered the damned war at this point.)
I only saw bits and pieces of this film over two showings, seeing the ending last night, so that's why this dissection is so short. But I did notice they had a technical adviser on the film. At least in the credits. What they needed was:
a. a technical adviser with submarine experience, or b. a five year old.
But speaking of submarine movies, in The World Is Not Enough, Bond has the chance to kill all the bad guys quietly and quickly in the control room of the sub. But instead, he dithers and lets a fight happen, in which he kills them all anyway, making the success of his mission all the more unlikely. What kind of licence to kill has he got? "The bearer of this licence can kill only in self defence and only when hopelessly outnumbered." He's been a good boy and clearly has no conscience. Give him a real licence. "The bearer of this licence can kill anyone at all whenever he feels like it for the security of Great Britain and Northern Ireland." It's like the way George Lucas remastered Star Wars so Han shoots second. Enough of the honourable no-cold-blood-executions crap.
Score: 1 Money Train
The Matrix Reloaded (2.0 Money Trains)
I hated it.
This was the stupidest film I've seen since the latest James Bond flick. It:
1. Was incoherent 2. Was atrociously acted (Kevin "Wooden Man" Costner would have been right at home in this film) 3. Had a pathetic plot 4. Was, above all, PRETENTIOUS!
All this dribble masquerading as philosophy, trying to be oh-so-smart by dropping in names like Popper (named in "Animatrix", although he appears in "Reloaded") and Persephone and exploring ideas like "necessary evil" as if its ground-breaking and doesn't date back to the ancient Chinese. And ooh! everything's a computer program and isn't that a mind-trip? Yeah, well, that was dealt with in the first movie: is there really any need to harp on about it for so long in this one? Admittedly, the new ideas revolving around the number of incarnations of the Matrix were interesting but not enough to support the entire film.
So now that the "thinking" element has been dispensed with (and that's what made the first one great: the ideas behind all the action), what we're left with is an action movie that relies on endless special effects to disguise the shortcomings mentioned above. Without these the film would have been NOTHING! With them it was just a whole bunch of stuff that had been seen before with the occasional bit of really obvious computer animation that almost looked like Walt Disney had done it (Neo fighting lots of Smiths, Agent jumping on bonnet of speeding car). Final Flight of the Osiris (last episode of Animatix) did the CGI much better.
And as for the constant slow motion "bullet-time" sequences! Come on! It was like watching a Johnny Woo film. All we needed were the birds taking flight heralding something evil. Oh wait, we had that too. How about something new?
Finally, I've heard it said that this is a film that needs to be watched several times in order to come to grips with all the concepts explored in the film. Well, the concepts aren't that difficult. I reckon it is actually a case of the Emporer's New Clothes and that people are just confusing "incoherence" (point 1) with "sophistication".
The Matrix was a great film. It was intended to be a stand-alone film and that's how it should have been left. It is very difficult to make a worthy sequel, judging by the dross Hollywood churns out. The Empire Strikes Back is the only good one that springs to mind.
In summary, Reloaded's opening sequence with Trinity jumping around is good. Then the handbrake gets pulled on - hard - and the film degenerates from there, chucking in a a big fight (Jacky Chan, where are you?), a chase (see "Ronin" if you want to see a good car chase) a couple more fights and some romance. The best thing about the film was the company and the comfy seats.
My score for Reloaded: 2.0 Money Trains.
This was the stupidest film I've seen since the latest James Bond flick. It:
1. Was incoherent 2. Was atrociously acted (Kevin "Wooden Man" Costner would have been right at home in this film) 3. Had a pathetic plot 4. Was, above all, PRETENTIOUS!
All this dribble masquerading as philosophy, trying to be oh-so-smart by dropping in names like Popper (named in "Animatrix", although he appears in "Reloaded") and Persephone and exploring ideas like "necessary evil" as if its ground-breaking and doesn't date back to the ancient Chinese. And ooh! everything's a computer program and isn't that a mind-trip? Yeah, well, that was dealt with in the first movie: is there really any need to harp on about it for so long in this one? Admittedly, the new ideas revolving around the number of incarnations of the Matrix were interesting but not enough to support the entire film.
So now that the "thinking" element has been dispensed with (and that's what made the first one great: the ideas behind all the action), what we're left with is an action movie that relies on endless special effects to disguise the shortcomings mentioned above. Without these the film would have been NOTHING! With them it was just a whole bunch of stuff that had been seen before with the occasional bit of really obvious computer animation that almost looked like Walt Disney had done it (Neo fighting lots of Smiths, Agent jumping on bonnet of speeding car). Final Flight of the Osiris (last episode of Animatix) did the CGI much better.
And as for the constant slow motion "bullet-time" sequences! Come on! It was like watching a Johnny Woo film. All we needed were the birds taking flight heralding something evil. Oh wait, we had that too. How about something new?
Finally, I've heard it said that this is a film that needs to be watched several times in order to come to grips with all the concepts explored in the film. Well, the concepts aren't that difficult. I reckon it is actually a case of the Emporer's New Clothes and that people are just confusing "incoherence" (point 1) with "sophistication".
The Matrix was a great film. It was intended to be a stand-alone film and that's how it should have been left. It is very difficult to make a worthy sequel, judging by the dross Hollywood churns out. The Empire Strikes Back is the only good one that springs to mind.
In summary, Reloaded's opening sequence with Trinity jumping around is good. Then the handbrake gets pulled on - hard - and the film degenerates from there, chucking in a a big fight (Jacky Chan, where are you?), a chase (see "Ronin" if you want to see a good car chase) a couple more fights and some romance. The best thing about the film was the company and the comfy seats.
My score for Reloaded: 2.0 Money Trains.
Ghost Ship (1.5 Money Trains)
Alex Dimitriadis can act. From his early days in Heartbreak High, to that cop show set in Sydney. His is a laidback style and, I think, very believable.
So that definitely rules out "acting" as what Mr Dimitriadis was doing in the 2002 "suspense" Ghost Ship. He wasn't the only one doing anything but acting, however, and the only suspense I felt was in wondering whether the Token Black Guy or the Aussie would be the first of the heroes to be killed. (Not that he sounded Australian. Why can't Aussies keep their accents the way Poms do in films?) Now, this film is proudly touted as being from the same producers as "The Matrix Trilogy" (ie, good start, followed by rapid slide into pretentiousness), "Swordfish" (I think that had John Travolta, and can anyone name a good film he's been in since Pulp Fiction?), "Thir13en Ghosts" (is it me, or is that just not a wo78rd?) and "The House On Haunted Hill" (never saw it, but with a title like that…). So this should give you an idea already.
Basically, it's about a crew of gung-ho maritime salvage experts (is there any other sort?) who agree to salvage a ship which mysteriously vanished after everyone on board was massacred (including a great cheese-wire trick at the start) back in 1962. Naturally, it turns out evil was afoot and still lurking, this time in the guise of the bloke who commissioned the crew in the first place. (This is meant to be the big surprise in the film, but I'm hardly recommending you see this execrable piece of cinema.) To cut a long story short, they get trapped on the ship in the Bering Sea, some ghosts try to help them escape the baddie, everyone dies except the girl, who miraculously survives exposure after floating in the water for more than three minutes.
And do you want to know the dumb thing? It turns out the baddie is a "collector of souls" who kills people on ships, lures more to save them, repeats. And if he fails to make his quota, if the ship sinks, then these souls (all sinners) somehow escape and he has to start over and "management" isn't happy. Confused? Geez, if you're going to bring quasi-spiritual mumbo-jumbo into a film, at least give a bit of background. Is he working for the devil, or the Man upstairs? Is he like Matt Damon's character in Dogma? I'd say I want answers, but I just don't care enough, and neither will you.
Score: 1.5 Money Trains
So that definitely rules out "acting" as what Mr Dimitriadis was doing in the 2002 "suspense" Ghost Ship. He wasn't the only one doing anything but acting, however, and the only suspense I felt was in wondering whether the Token Black Guy or the Aussie would be the first of the heroes to be killed. (Not that he sounded Australian. Why can't Aussies keep their accents the way Poms do in films?) Now, this film is proudly touted as being from the same producers as "The Matrix Trilogy" (ie, good start, followed by rapid slide into pretentiousness), "Swordfish" (I think that had John Travolta, and can anyone name a good film he's been in since Pulp Fiction?), "Thir13en Ghosts" (is it me, or is that just not a wo78rd?) and "The House On Haunted Hill" (never saw it, but with a title like that…). So this should give you an idea already.
Basically, it's about a crew of gung-ho maritime salvage experts (is there any other sort?) who agree to salvage a ship which mysteriously vanished after everyone on board was massacred (including a great cheese-wire trick at the start) back in 1962. Naturally, it turns out evil was afoot and still lurking, this time in the guise of the bloke who commissioned the crew in the first place. (This is meant to be the big surprise in the film, but I'm hardly recommending you see this execrable piece of cinema.) To cut a long story short, they get trapped on the ship in the Bering Sea, some ghosts try to help them escape the baddie, everyone dies except the girl, who miraculously survives exposure after floating in the water for more than three minutes.
And do you want to know the dumb thing? It turns out the baddie is a "collector of souls" who kills people on ships, lures more to save them, repeats. And if he fails to make his quota, if the ship sinks, then these souls (all sinners) somehow escape and he has to start over and "management" isn't happy. Confused? Geez, if you're going to bring quasi-spiritual mumbo-jumbo into a film, at least give a bit of background. Is he working for the devil, or the Man upstairs? Is he like Matt Damon's character in Dogma? I'd say I want answers, but I just don't care enough, and neither will you.
Score: 1.5 Money Trains
Blade (1.0 Money Train)
It's amazing what one will watch on TV in a foreign country. Take last night as an example when I watched Blade. Was it good? Would I buy it on DVD? Like hell! The main problems are the plot and acting. Subtler items such as cinematography, costumes, music, directorial style, etc, are simply not present in this genre of film, so let's get down to the nitpicking.
Okay, obviously it's a story and one has to suspend disbelief, as they say. Fine. But there's no reason to suspend logic. My big gripe relates to Karen's cure for vampirism:
Late onset vampirism is like sickle cell anemia, she says (ok) With pure bloods, it's part of their DNA (ok) So late onset vamps need gene therapy (Hey? You don't catch genetic disorders) And then she injects herself with some fluid and is cured. (Sure she means late onset is more like a virus, in which case injecting herself would work) Remarkably easy, even for someone as far gone on the road to vampirism as herself. Remember, at this time she had around a day to go until it was all over.
Okay, so that's just bad script writing, but the underlying ideas are sound (well, as sound as you get in a vampire flick with Wesley Snipes). The real killer is as follows:
Blade returns to the garage soon after to find Whistler lying around with a gaping neck wound, some bruises, but no other apparent injuries. It's too late for me, he cries, I'm too far gone. Give me your gun.
Too far gone for what? Not only was he an eyewitness of Karen's wonder-cure, but he was sitting beside all the stuff required to administer himself with said cure. Too far gone? Bulldust! He'd only just been bitten and was certainly no further gone than Karen when she cured herself. Other wounds, perhaps? There was none (other than cancer and a limp). And no-one can claim he was delusional from pain and forgot about the cure, because he was completely lucid when talking to Blade. In summary, Whistler was a tool who didn't need to die. Or maybe he did because he was such a tool.
Next, the blood god. If all the people in the world become vampires, what will the vampires eat? Didn't think of that, did you, Frost? Goose.
Finally, the acting was ... something else. It certainly wasn't acting. It was like watching a black Kevin Costner. Geez it was bad!
However, credit where it's due. Despite expectations, no-one in the film ever said "I've been bit!" They always said "bitten". Well done! For that it gets 1/5 on my Money Train scale. Hey, I just realised what both these films have in common, and it isn't Woody Harelson.
Score: 1.0 Money Train
Okay, obviously it's a story and one has to suspend disbelief, as they say. Fine. But there's no reason to suspend logic. My big gripe relates to Karen's cure for vampirism:
Late onset vampirism is like sickle cell anemia, she says (ok) With pure bloods, it's part of their DNA (ok) So late onset vamps need gene therapy (Hey? You don't catch genetic disorders) And then she injects herself with some fluid and is cured. (Sure she means late onset is more like a virus, in which case injecting herself would work) Remarkably easy, even for someone as far gone on the road to vampirism as herself. Remember, at this time she had around a day to go until it was all over.
Okay, so that's just bad script writing, but the underlying ideas are sound (well, as sound as you get in a vampire flick with Wesley Snipes). The real killer is as follows:
Blade returns to the garage soon after to find Whistler lying around with a gaping neck wound, some bruises, but no other apparent injuries. It's too late for me, he cries, I'm too far gone. Give me your gun.
Too far gone for what? Not only was he an eyewitness of Karen's wonder-cure, but he was sitting beside all the stuff required to administer himself with said cure. Too far gone? Bulldust! He'd only just been bitten and was certainly no further gone than Karen when she cured herself. Other wounds, perhaps? There was none (other than cancer and a limp). And no-one can claim he was delusional from pain and forgot about the cure, because he was completely lucid when talking to Blade. In summary, Whistler was a tool who didn't need to die. Or maybe he did because he was such a tool.
Next, the blood god. If all the people in the world become vampires, what will the vampires eat? Didn't think of that, did you, Frost? Goose.
Finally, the acting was ... something else. It certainly wasn't acting. It was like watching a black Kevin Costner. Geez it was bad!
However, credit where it's due. Despite expectations, no-one in the film ever said "I've been bit!" They always said "bitten". Well done! For that it gets 1/5 on my Money Train scale. Hey, I just realised what both these films have in common, and it isn't Woody Harelson.
Score: 1.0 Money Train
Storm (-4.0 Money Trains)
OK, this is REALLY bad. In fact, for those familiar with my Money Train scale for bad films, this sets a new benchmark. This film makes Blade look high brow.
Luke Perry (never a good way to start a review. Even worse than starting with "Matthew Perry") plays a meteorologist who is developing a means of directing storms with a tiny contraption he tows from a Cesna. You're all intelligent people (probably), so I don't even need to criticise this appalling science explicitly. Anyway, he winds up working for the military who manage to drop a bollock and cause a big-arsed hurricane to hit Los Angeles. Naturally, things go from bad to stupid and pretty soon our hero is the only one left who can save the day. Oddly, he doesn't actually do this: the hurricane wastes LA.
There are plot developments along the way that leave your head spinning and a climax so mind blowingly stupid (if something has the power to direct a hurricane, surely it would be dangerous to manhandle) it makes Freaky Friday look like the Nobel Prize award ceremony. In summary, this film features an appalling plot, one dimensional characters (and that dimension is Time) and more clichés than a Matthew Riley novel. In fact, this film would make a great drinking game: scull whenever something unbelievably dumb happens. You'll be off your face inside 20 minutes.
Some films leave you thinking about them for days (eg, In The Cut); others are a good bit of mental chewing gum to enjoy for a few hours and then forget about (eg, Final Destination). But this was like a Passenger 57 - U571 combo. It had Luke Perry in it, for goodness sake! What was I thinking?
Luke Perry (never a good way to start a review. Even worse than starting with "Matthew Perry") plays a meteorologist who is developing a means of directing storms with a tiny contraption he tows from a Cesna. You're all intelligent people (probably), so I don't even need to criticise this appalling science explicitly. Anyway, he winds up working for the military who manage to drop a bollock and cause a big-arsed hurricane to hit Los Angeles. Naturally, things go from bad to stupid and pretty soon our hero is the only one left who can save the day. Oddly, he doesn't actually do this: the hurricane wastes LA.
There are plot developments along the way that leave your head spinning and a climax so mind blowingly stupid (if something has the power to direct a hurricane, surely it would be dangerous to manhandle) it makes Freaky Friday look like the Nobel Prize award ceremony. In summary, this film features an appalling plot, one dimensional characters (and that dimension is Time) and more clichés than a Matthew Riley novel. In fact, this film would make a great drinking game: scull whenever something unbelievably dumb happens. You'll be off your face inside 20 minutes.
Some films leave you thinking about them for days (eg, In The Cut); others are a good bit of mental chewing gum to enjoy for a few hours and then forget about (eg, Final Destination). But this was like a Passenger 57 - U571 combo. It had Luke Perry in it, for goodness sake! What was I thinking?
Celluar (2.5 Money Trains)
Okay, so it's a bad film, I think everyone who's seen it all agrees. There are plot holes you could sail the Queen Mary through, the acting sucks, and it was written by a roomful of monkeys on typewriters.
But c'mon! It was freaking hilarious. I couldn't stop laughing all the way through. eg, not only can the heroine repair a broken phone, but she manages to contact someone with it who's in the same city, not someone on a business trip to Zurich, or something.
Yep, technically the film totally blew, but for anyone with an IQ above 40 it's a great laugh and you can make a drinking game out of it! All you gainsayers should stop taking everything so seriously and smuggle a hip-flask into the cinema.
But c'mon! It was freaking hilarious. I couldn't stop laughing all the way through. eg, not only can the heroine repair a broken phone, but she manages to contact someone with it who's in the same city, not someone on a business trip to Zurich, or something.
Yep, technically the film totally blew, but for anyone with an IQ above 40 it's a great laugh and you can make a drinking game out of it! All you gainsayers should stop taking everything so seriously and smuggle a hip-flask into the cinema.
Brokeback Mountain (3.5 Money Trains)
Directed by Ang Lee (The Ice Storm, Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon, Hulk), Brokeback Mountain clocks in at a little over two hours, but it seems longer. The action starts, no wait, the story starts in 1963 with two 19 year old lads, Ennis Del Mar (Heath Ledger) and Jack Twist (Jake Gyllenhaal) landing a summer job guarding sheep. And you know what that makes them? Shepherds. Not cowboys, shepherds. Anyway, one bloke is to spend all day and all night with the sheep on the mountain, while the other has to stay in camp cooking and otherwise being superfluous. With limited conversation, and an accent so bad from Our Heath that the film really needed subtitles, these guys strike up an unlikely friendship that quickly progresses to … something more. But we all knew that, so it's not like I'm giving anything away.
Anyway, this summer job ends and our two heroes meet up every so often for the next twenty years to go "fishing" together up in the hills, but of course it's all very difficult because they're both married with kids. Nonetheless, the summer fling becomes a lifelong love, grounded on scintillating conversation and intellectual brinkmanship. Only joking, I have no idea what either character saw in the other. I certainly didn't feel anything for either of them, or for anyone at all in the film, for that matter. This may be how Mr Lee makes it feel like twenty years of your life have actually passed watching the film, even though none of the actors, men or women, appear to age by more than two.
Around the end of the second act, you're starting to wonder how Mr Lee is going to wrap it up and, if you're as jaded as me, you'll come to the same conclusion about there only being one way out of this miserable situation.
But this isn't a film about neat conclusions and happy endings, it's more a film with a message, and indeed I think this one has several. To wit:
All up, 3½ Money Trains
Anyway, this summer job ends and our two heroes meet up every so often for the next twenty years to go "fishing" together up in the hills, but of course it's all very difficult because they're both married with kids. Nonetheless, the summer fling becomes a lifelong love, grounded on scintillating conversation and intellectual brinkmanship. Only joking, I have no idea what either character saw in the other. I certainly didn't feel anything for either of them, or for anyone at all in the film, for that matter. This may be how Mr Lee makes it feel like twenty years of your life have actually passed watching the film, even though none of the actors, men or women, appear to age by more than two.
Around the end of the second act, you're starting to wonder how Mr Lee is going to wrap it up and, if you're as jaded as me, you'll come to the same conclusion about there only being one way out of this miserable situation.
But this isn't a film about neat conclusions and happy endings, it's more a film with a message, and indeed I think this one has several. To wit:
- You can't chose who you fall in love with (which is a pity because it can really destroy your life), so maybe you shouldn't fight it (which could end up destroying your life); ·
- Or you could rephrase to: follow your heart, not social mores, and to hell with your life getting destroyed; ·
- Don't live in a small country town – they're real shit-holes and will probably destroy your life;
All up, 3½ Money Trains
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