On average, 22 people are killed in traffic accidents every day in Argentina. That's over 8000 deaths a year, with an estimated 12000 suffering injuries through incidents on the road. These statistics open Pablo Trapero's Carancho, along with some grisly black-and-white photographs of wrecked cars and lives, but the most telling line is yet to come: "The compensation market is booming." Where there is tragedy, you'll find people ready to pounce and profit from the misery of others. Carancho translates as "The Vulture," and its central character lives up to that description. He's an ambulance-chasing lawyer who spends his evenings listening in on the police radio so he can be first at the scene. Sosa (Ricardo Darín) immediately goes after the victims with the aim of getting them to sign their power of attorney over to people he works for, ensuring a hefty slice of the insurance money they should be receiving will instead go to his employers.
On one level, Trapero's film is a critique of Argentinean society's dark underbelly and a study of the conflicted souls who traverse it, but it's also a love story between two complex characters who meet under unusual circumstances, and their relationship is vital for giving this uneven movie a gripping emotional thrust. Luján (Martina Gusman) is a young doctor burning the candle at both ends in one of the city's many hectic emergency rooms. For the extra money, she works an additional ambulance shift, but these long hours are taking their toll; Luján has developed a serious drug problem and the beautiful Gusman appears gaunt and ghostlike in her appearance. Both of these troubled characters see an opportunity for positive change in the other, but they approach with caution. Can she fall in love with a man whose profession repels her? Can he risk dragging her into the murky, dangerous world he exists in? Can they both escape their fates and find a better life together?
Ricardo Darín will be a familiar face to many filmgoers having appeared in two of Argentina's major crossover films in the past decade, Nine Queens and the Oscar-winning The Secret in Their Eyes. He's a great leading man, possessing a soulful quality that underpins his authorative but unshowy performances. Perfectly cast as a decent character deeply conflicted over the path he has chosen, he gives a superb display that quickly captivates the audience and earns its empathy. Martina Gusman may be less well known than her co-star, but she is no less talented. She gave an outstanding performance in 2008's Lion's Den – also directed by Trapero (her husband) – and she fully invests herself in a character who is barely holding it all together. The director makes great use of Gusman's big, tired-looking eyes, and the central couple have a wonderful, fragile chemistry.
Of course, Trapero puts them through the mill during Carancho's bruising 107 minutes. He's a tough, confrontational filmmaker who delights in setting the audience on edge and plunging us into the midst of the often-violent action. He does this with consummate skill and confidence too, orchestrating some impressive sequences with inventive camerawork and sharp editing. Julián Apezteguia's cinematography creates an evocative, noir-ish atmosphere, and it all adds up into a pretty formidable package, but something about Carancho just doesn't hang together. Trapero sometime struggles to segue elegantly between the slightly over-plotted thriller aspect of his movie and the quieter, more intimate scenes between Darín and Gusman, and the film sometimes fails to flow as smoothly as I hoped it would, but it's always stimulating and always engrossing, right up to its extraordinarily ambitious climax. Regardless of how involved you are with the movie to that point, Carancho's ending will leave you reeling.
In 2007, producer Judd Apatow and director Greg Mottola were responsible for one of the surprise hits of the year with their teen comedy Superbad. The film was about three high school outsiders determined to lose their virginity at an upcoming party, who embarked upon a night that quickly spiralled out of control in unexpected ways. The central characters comprised of a sensitive, upstanding lead harbouring a long-term crush; his rambunctious best friend, who is responsible for most of the trio's boneheaded decisions; and a character who takes awkward geekdom to new heights, despite his misguided stabs at suavity. Superbad's popularity was built largely on its outrageous, raunchy humour, but there was much more to the film than that. It had likeable characters, a neatly developed narrative and – most crucially of all – a sense of heart that gave a surprising emotional shade to the climactic scenes.
In 2012, we have Project X, a vision of what Superbad may have been if it had been made by people without an ounce of talent or empathy (or Todd Phillips – a colder, more cynical Apatow), and a depressing vision of what is deemed acceptable fare for mainstream audiences these days. You want characterisation, plot and wit? Forget about it. Project X is all about anarchy and noise. The central characters are drawn from the same template as Superbad's three leads, but they have been stripped of the real, human qualities that made those characters so relatable, leaving us with three of the most obnoxious and instantly loathsome creations I've ever had to spend 90 minutes with. Thomas (Thomas Mann) is the sensible one led astray, whose birthday party is the catalyst for the disaster that ensues, while JB (Jonathan Daniel Brown) is the fat nerd, but the chief offender here is Costa (Oliver Cooper). He's an unrepentant loudmouth with big ideas who refers to women as "bitches," men as "faggots," and fails to offer a single line worth remembering despite his constant flow of self-aggrandising chatter.
Actually, there's a fourth character worth mentioning. His name is Dax and as he has been hired by Costa to record the party planned for Thomas's 17th birthday, so we see most of the action through his eyes. Yes, Project X is a "found footage" film; a phrase guaranteed to strike fear into my heart in the same way that "3D" or "directed by Michael Bay" does for many filmgoers. The idea of basing your whole movie on footage inadvertently shot and later recovered remains a ridiculous one, especially when it is handled as incompetently as it is here. What is material shot on Dax's camera and myriad phones supposed to add to the film experience? All it offers is an extra layer of contrivance, as we sit through scenes wondering who exactly is shooting them and why (watch for the final conversation between Thomas and his father), and a constant distraction, although given the repugnance of what's taking place on screen, a few distractions may actually be welcome.
The height of Project X's comic invention occurs when a midget is stuffed into an oven and then proceeds to punch a number of people in the balls. That's the level we're working at here, but for the most part director Nima Nourizadeh focuses on the film's strengths: destruction, misogyny and chaos. Endless cacophonous montages shows us anonymous teens getting wasted, smashing up property and generally behaving in an irresponsible yet consequence-free manner. Fine, you might say, what's the problem with that? It's a teenage fantasy writ large – the party every nobody has dreamed of having in order to turn himself into a somebody. But there is no progression here, there is no sense of character development, there is no moral compass. Shouldn't a movie consist of something more than barely coherent depictions of mayhem? Shouldn't the protagonists develop in some way, learn something from their experiences or at least be affected by their actions? Am I simply getting too old for this shit?
Of course, the charge levelled at most critics who write damning reviews of Project X will be that the film isn't made for us anyway, and that it is aimed at teens who just want to have a good time and don't care about irrelevant details like "characters" or "narrative." But if that's the case, then why is Project X rated as an 18-certificate film in the UK? Do the filmmakers honestly believe there is an adult audience that will want to endure this toxic garbage? Maybe they're right, but I hope to God they're wrong. The idea that the British public could embrace a film as overwhelmingly odious as this is too depressing for words.
Few directors are as adept as Roman Polanski at maximising the pervasive, anxiety-filled potential of confined spaces, so locking him in a single location with four of the finest actors around must have seemed like an unbeatable idea. His new film is Carnage, an adaptation of Yasmina Reza's play God of Carnage (the director and playwright have collaborated on the screenplay), and the film takes place almost entirely within the confines of a plush Manhattan apartment. Occasionally, two of the characters will attempt to leave and they may even make it as far as the elevator before being yoked back inside by some unfinished business. As in Sartre's No Exit, the entire cast consists of four characters, here divided into two married couples who have met to discuss a fight between their children, but before long it's the adults themselves who are behaving like kids.
Much of the appeal of Carnage lies in watching four very good actors be at their best while portraying characters who are at their worst. At first, all social niceties and proper etiquette is observed as Penelope and Michael (Jodie Foster and John C Reilly) invite Nancy and Alan (Kate Winslet and Christoph Waltz) into their home, the latter couple's 11 year-old son having inflicted some damage with a stick in the playground. There's a little awkwardness and embarrassment in the air, but the atmosphere is one of congenial politeness as the two couples agree on a statement and sit down to settle things over a drink and some cake. As Carnage is barely 80 minutes long, however, it doesn't take long for cracks to begin appearing in this façade. The personalities of the four begin to clash, comments take on a more poisonous tone, and each character finds it increasingly difficult to keep their emotions and opinions in check.
Such a progression is entirely predictable. Carnage is a comedy of manners that shows us how awful people's true selves can be when they are no longer bound by the constraints of societal refinement, and how easy it is for those constraints to be shaken off in pressured situations. It's hardly a startling revelation, but Reza's writing displays a consistently sharp edge as she sets up four distinct characters before mercilessly peeling back the layers of their personalities. Very little attempt has been made to open up the play in its translation from stage to screen, but with a master like Polanski in command of the material there is little risk of Carnage feeling too stagebound. He brilliantly utilises the limited amount of space available to him, notably through his unerring use of the four actors within his perfectly composed frames, and the manner in which he allows the film to loosen up as the characters do, with Pawel Edelman's camera lurching drunkenly through the chaotic final third.
As for those actors; well, Carnage is a thespian dream and this cast doesn't disappoint, even if the male half of the ensemble fares much better than their female counterparts. Foster and Winslet are initially highly strung and they both slip rapidly into hysteria, and while it's oddly transfixing to see them explode into such vomit-specked rage, watching Reilly and Waltz work in a more relaxed register is considerably more pleasurable. Reilly is all laid-back, working class bonhomie, and he nails some of Reza's funniest lines ("Well, you certainly perked up since you tossed your cookies," he says following the puking incident) while his encroaching rage is good for a few laughs too. Waltz plays his character with an aloof reserve and a brilliantly dry delivery, getting a laugh every time his attention is drawn to his perpetually ringing Blackberry rather than the trivial arguments the rest of the characters are engaged in.
But while Carnage is a very funny film, which commendably doesn't hold back in its more outlandish moments ("I'm glad our son kicked the shit out of your son and I wipe my ass with your human rights!"), it does feel like rather flimsy material, despite being padded with pointless exterior shots. What exactly is the movie trying to say? Does it in fact have any goal beyond offering audiences a few diverting laughs? If that's all that Reza and Polanski were aiming for, then you have to say Carnage is mission accomplished, but when you get a cast and director of this calibre together, I think it's fair to expect something more than a minor, if enjoyable, diversion.
It's easy to imagine Dave Brown (Woody Harrelson) exploding into vivid life on the pages of a James Ellroy novel. The protagonist of Oren Moverman's second film Rampart – which the director developed from an Ellroy script – is a misanthropic, volatile, hard-drinking, womanising LAPD cop who swims in a sea of moral ambiguity. He has been given the nickname "Date Rape" by his colleagues, following his suspected but unproven murder of a serial rapist ("I can neither confirm nor deny," Brown says with a smirk, enjoying the lustre of this legend), and he's not averse to bending rules or beating the answers he wants to hear out of a suspect. He has gotten away with his corrupt and violent behaviour for over two decades – largely due to his quick-wittedness and ability to eloquently talk his way out of trouble – but when a camera catches him attacking a black driver who crashed into his patrol car, the walls of Dave Brown's life start to fall in on top of him.
All of this would be ripe material for one of Ellroy's vast, dense books – a man on the edge, his machismo being eroded by insecurities and paranoia. Unfortunately, when condensed into a single movie and embellished by some hopelessly misguided directorial choices, Rampart is a total disaster. Moverman and Harrelson's previous collaboration was The Messenger, an emotionally charged but restrained film that won plaudits for the debutant filmmaker and an Academy Award nomination for Harrelson. There's nothing restrained about their follow-up, however, with both the director and star turning it up to 11.
The problem with Rampart is that the filmmaking keeps drawing attention to itself. Simple dialogue scenes are shot from unusual angles, such as a meeting between Brown and a retired cop (Ned Beatty), during which the director cuts – seemingly at random – between close-ups, medium shots and even shots of the back of their heads. Instead of focusing on what was being said in the scene, I was focusing on Moverman's choices, and wondering what on earth was motivating them. Shortly after that scene we are treated to Brown's disciplinary hearing, which is filmed in an appallingly clumsy and hugely distracting 360-degree panning shot around the table that stands as one of the single worst pieces of camerawork I have ever seen in a movie. Rampart is an ugly movie, both in what it shows us and how it shows it to us, with Moverman and his cinematographer Bobby Bukowski opting for lurid, clammy lighting in the second half of the picture. An extended sequence in an underground sex club is supposed to mark Brown's irrevocable descent into the abyss, but it's overly stylised and straining way too hard to be in any way convincing.
In fact, very little about Rampart does convince. Dave Brown lives in adjacent houses with the two sisters (Cynthia Nixon and Anne Heche) that he had consecutive relationships with, and the daughters each of those relationships left him with, with the five of them living as some kind of awkward quasi-family. There's also a gimmicky cameo from Harrelson's The Messenger co-star Ben Foster as a crippled addict who furnishes Brown with information, but his appearance comes off as nothing more than, well, a gimmicky cameo. Brown also strikes up a relationship with a lawyer (Robin Wright Penn), who may or may not be investigating him, but she never develops into anything other than a plot device, which is something that can be said for most of the supporting players. There's also the ever-present shadow of the real-life Rampart scandals that give the movie its name, but Moverman never explores any of this and what it meant for the LAPD in the 90's, trusting that the exploits of his film's central character will be sufficient to act as a microcosm of that widespread corruption.
Unfortunately, while Dave Brown is an arresting and explosive character, he is never a particularly interesting one. Instead of getting inside his head and understanding this man, the film just repetitively presents us with his repellent behaviour, which grows incredibly boring to watch. Perhaps a lack of context is the real issue. Bad Lieutenant brought the weight of its character's Catholic guilt to bear on his behaviour, Training Day viewed its bad cop through the eyes of an idealistic rookie, and Rampart's closest antecedent The Shield (the show's working title was Rampart) had almost 60 hours to explore the nuances and complexities of its characters and their relationships; and while this film is a platform for Harrelson to show how incendiary he can be as an actor, he's just shouting into a void. Rampart is an abysmal piece of work, and its botched anticlimax of an ending offers no reward for all those who have stuck with it.
Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close is a film about a troubled boy attempting to make sense of his father's death on 9/11, but a greater challenge might be to try and make sense of this film. Stephen Daldry's screen version of Jonathan Safran Foer's novel presents us with a story built upon contrivances and implausibilities, and attempts to mine moments of catharsis for a number of individual characters in the shadow of a recent national tragedy. To negotiate such a minefield of taste and emotional turbulence successfully would require filmmakers of rare subtlety and delicacy, but Daldry isn't that director and Eric Roth, who adapted the screenplay, isn't that writer. Perhaps predictably, Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close doesn't work – it's messy, ridiculous and often downright annoying – but the act of filtering an event as significant as 9/11 through a story this cheaply manipulative makes it look many times worse than it probably would do otherwise.
The film is populated with star actors but the bulk of the story rests on the shoulders of newcomer Thomas Horn, making a striking debut as the precocious and borderline autistic 9 year-old Oskar Schell. Oskar's father (Tom Hanks – depicted as a too-perfect dad in flashbacks) died when the Twin Towers fell, leaving Oskar alone with his mother (Sandra Bullock), with whom he has a strained relationship, and his grandmother, who lives across the street and clandestinely communicates with him via walkie-talkies. Oskar has kept a number of secrets from his mother – most gravely, the answering machine that contains her husband's final six messages from "The worst day" – and when he is rooting around in his father's closet, he uncovers another. Inside a blue vase there is a key tagged with the word 'Black.' Intuiting that Black is (a) a person's name and (b) some kind of cryptic message from his father, Oskar sets out to meet the 472 Blacks listed in the local telephone directory.
This plot is ripe old nonsense that gets sillier by the minute, and Daldry's handling of the story doesn't make it any easier to digest. The film is too much, in every way. It's garishly over-directed, frenetically edited – as if to reflect the anxious mindset of its protagonist – and constantly reaching for big, tearjerking moments that it hasn't put in the spadework to earn. So many of its cloying affectations immediately grate; from the gas mask Oskar wears on the subway and the tambourine he rattles to calm his nerve, to the mute and mugging performance from Max von Sydow as a WWII veteran who communicates through notes and 'yes/no' tattoos on the palms of his hands. It turns out that 'The Renter' is Oskar's grandfather, which you may regard as a spoiler, but surely no audience member will fail to discern this from the moment he makes his entrance, so heavily telegraphed and clumsily played is every single 'twist.
A fine cast struggle to breathe some life into this appalling material (Viola Davis is always moving; Jeffrey Wright's cameo is welcome but too late) but the film reeks of schmaltz and artifice in every frame, despite the reliably classy contributions from cinematographer Chris Menges and composer Alexandre Desplat. By the time the film has wrung out the false suspense of the final unanswered phone message and implemented an absurd plot development involving Bullock's character, Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close has long exceeded its welcome, and it left me wondering if any director could have wrangled this problematic book into something cinematically worthwhile. It needed a director with a real feel for New York, one with a greater sense of storytelling imagination, or one less prone to straining for prestige status, but instead it got Daldry, whose dead hand renders it almost insufferable. With films that use 9/11 as the focus or backdrop to their story, people are still inclined to ask the question "too soon?" However, that's not the issue with Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close – it's simply too fake, too exploitative, too bad.
On average, 22 people are killed in traffic accidents every day in Argentina. That's over 8000 deaths a year, with an estimated 12000 suffering injuries through incidents on the road. These statistics open Pablo Trapero's Carancho, along with some grisly black-and-white photographs of wrecked cars and lives, but the most telling line is yet to come: "The compensation market is booming." Where there is tragedy, you'll find people ready to pounce and profit from the misery of others. Carancho translates as "The Vulture," and its central character lives up to that description. He's an ambulance-chasing lawyer who spends his evenings listening in on the police radio so he can be first at the scene. Sosa (Ricardo Darín) immediately goes after the victims with the aim of getting them to sign their power of attorney over to people he works for, ensuring a hefty slice of the insurance money they should be receiving will instead go to his employers.
