Review - Goal

Football and cinema have something of a rocky relationship over the years. While American sports have provided the backdrop to some great films it appears that the beautiful game is the hardest of all to get right, with most football-related films falling prey to hackneyed storytelling, unconvincing action, footballers who can’t act and actors who can’t play football. The latest attempt to bring the sport to the screen is Goal, an ambitious production which will eventually form a trilogy following a young man’s rise from nobody to global superstar. The team behind Goal have made every effort to make this the most realistic football film possible, securing the support of FIFA, The Premier League and Newcastle United to ensure authenticity, but the can it avoid the storytelling pitfalls which have afflicted previous football films?

For the most part, Goal works rather well. While it is hardly an unqualified masterpiece, the film is certainly one of the best attempts at bringing football to the big screen. The screenplay by British sitcom veterans Dick Clement and Ian Le Frenais follows a predictable trajectory; a rags-to-riches tale concerning Santiago Munez (Kuno Becker), a young Mexican living in LA who lives for football alone. His blunt father would rather see him stop wasting his time and dedicate himself to the family business, but Santiago just wants to play and it’s during a local game that he’s spotted by a former Newcastle player on holiday. Glen (Stephen Dillane) likes what he sees and tries to convince Santiago to go to England, promising him that he will organise a trial with his former club if he turns up.

Santiago hardly impresses at the trial, finding the rough-and-tumble of the English game hard to take, and his dream of being a professional footballer looks like it’s about to die, but a couple of team-mates and staff who recognise his raw talent convince Newcastle’s Wenger-like manager (Marcel Iures) to give him a chance. Soon his brilliant ball skills start to make people sit up and take notice but he still has a number of obstacles to overcome. Can he establish himself in the first team? Can he stand up to the team’s bullying hard man (Kieran O’Brien)? Can he win the respect of his father? Can he stay on the straight and narrow or will he be led astray by the likes of playboy striker Gavin Harris (Alessandro Nivola)? And will he win the heart of the lovely team nurse (Anna Friel)?

Well what do you think? It’s giving nothing away to state that the answer to most of the above questions is “yes”. Danny Cannon’s film is a fairytale vision of football in which all of Santiago’s dreams will come true if he works hard, is honest and learns the importance of teamwork. This moral stance is perhaps understandable as the filmmakers would surely have had a tougher getting the support of FIFA and Newcastle United if their lead character was more George Best than Alan Shearer. For this, we should be thankful because the unprecedented access Goal gains within the club is what really gives it the edge over other films in the genre. To see the actors in and around St James’ Park, training with the real players, adds a sheen of legitimacy over the whole enterprise. The match sequences are impressive as well, with shots from Premiership matches cleverly spliced together with footage of the actors filmed in close-up. Of course, the games are all last-minute winners and 30-yard screamers but it generally works extremely well and successfully conveys the excitement of a big match.

But it’s the moments in between the games which are a little less convincing. The scenes where Cannon attempts to develop the narrative or create some drama are clunky and mishandled, and the film experiences particular problems in the second half when Santiago is overloaded with endless personal and professional setbacks in a breathlessly short space of time. Much of the dialogue is dire, sometimes hilariously so, and it seems the filmmakers never saw a sporting cliché they didn’t want to incorporate into the script. It still seems that while the creation of a realistic football environment on film is more achievable than ever, the ability to place a little of that realism in the mouths of well-rounded characters is still beyond cinema’s capabilities.

As the hero of the tale, Kuno Becker looks the part but he’s far more comfortable with the ball than with the acting side of the role. He lacks the emotional range to fully draw us in to his story and you can really see him straining in some of the film’s more taxing scenes. Fortunately, the supporting cast make amends with performances that make the most of their stereotypical roles. Alessandro Nivola gives the best performance in the film with a very funny and endearing display as the reckless and egotistical Gavin Harris, Marcel Iures is a strong presence as the boss and Anna Friel (despite sporting a Geordie accent which tends to wander at a moment’s notice) is pretty and effective as the love interest. There are a couple of pointless but highly amusing cameos too, with Alan Shearer and David Beckham getting speaking parts. Shearer handles his line well enough but Beckham delivers his with all the grace of a Dalek with a sore throat and his rabbit-in-the-headlights expression indicates that he shouldn’t consider giving up the day job just yet.

Goal deserves credit for being a serious attempt at giving us a credible football film, and it will be interesting to see whether they can take it further in the forthcoming instalments. Part II, which is currently filming, sees Santiago at Real Madrid while I understand the third film will take place in the 2006 World Cup. Whatever happens with the rest of the trilogy, the first part is a decent launching pad and hopefully the filmmakers can iron out the annoying flaws which remain; and if they do, then perhaps we’ll finally have a football film to cheer about. Now that really does sound like a fairytale.

Review - Cinderella Man

The last time Russell Crowe joined forces with the unholy trilogy of director Ron Howard, producer Brian Grazier and screenwriter Akiva Goldsmith; the result was the glossy, shallow and shamelessly manipulative garbage A Beautiful Mind. Predictably, this film was music to the ears of the Academy and A Beautiful Mind undeservedly won plenty of Oscars. So it looks like they’re aiming for the same sort of success with Cinderella Man, another schmaltzy biopic which is crafted to within an inch of its life and is determined to wring out those audience tears by any means possible.
This time our hero is James J Braddock (Russell Crowe, effortlessly better than the material) a boxer who was enjoying a nice run of success in the late 20’s before the great depression bought everything to a crashing halt. With his fortune gone, Braddock scrapes a living working on the docks while taking any low-rent fight his manager Joe (Paul Giamatti) can get for him. But when he breaks his hand in a fight even that source of income is lost, and Braddock’s fighting license is revoked by the Boxing Commission (led by the underused Bruce McGill). Braddock’s wife Mae (Renee Zellwegger) remains staunchly behind her man throughout the tough times, believing that he will find a way to end their woes and provide for her and their three children.

These were difficult times for sure but, just in case you weren’t aware of what people were going through, Goldsmith and Howard helpfully spell it out to you at every turn. The throng of workers jostling at the dock gates for work manage to avoid standing on a newspaper headline which screams “Unemployment Reaches 15,000,000!”; Braddock throws the milkman’s ‘past due’ note on top of a pile of final demand letters; Mae dutifully washes James’ only pair of socks. This spoon-feeding approach to storytelling is unsurprising from Howard but it still grates. He is determined to pile as much adversity and tragedy as he possibly can on the boxer’s shoulders so that his comeback will be all the greater.

And what a comeback it is! Braddock was thrown into a high-profile match after another fighter pulled out and, with his surprise victory, he was suddenly back in the fight game. This time around he wasn’t just fighting for his family, or his pride, but for the whole nation; as his phoenix act caught the attention of the unemployed masses and he became a symbol of hope for them - a personification of the American dream.

This is unquestionably a great story and Braddock’s tale deserved to be told, but it deserved a better rendition than this. Cinderella Man is well-crafted, well-acted and staggeringly banal in every way. I have nothing against a film adhering to a well-worn formula, but you have to add a little something into the mix yourself, and Akiva Goldsmith simply takes this underdog tale and fills in the gaps with cliché, after cliché, after cliché. He pads out Cinderella Man’s 144 minutes with some incredibly trite dialogue, with Mae Braddock’s “you are the champion of my heart” marking the film’s nadir. Renee Zellwegger’s shrill, one-note performance (in an admittedly one-dimensional role) doesn’t do much to sell lines like this either.

Other actors manage better with the words they’re given to say, and Russell Crowe delivers another accomplished performance. With his hangdog face and reluctant smile, Crowe plays the part of the humble underdog to the hilt and his sensitive, generous performance makes the saintly Braddock a compelling figure. Paul Giamatti is every bit Crowe’s equal as Braddock’s loyal manager and friend Joe Gould. Like a younger, more sprightly Burgess Meredith, Giamatti gives an energetic and unflagging display in Braddock’s corner and provides some much-needed humour to prick the pomposity surrounding the production. The scenes between Crowe and Giamatti come to form the emotional centre of the film, an honest and touching portrayal of friendship which is almost enough to convince you that the movie has a heart. Almost, but not quite.

But Ron Howard works like a demon to make us believe that there is something genuine under the polished veneer of this picture. He jabs away at the audience’s emotions but never comes close to landing a knockout punch. Howard is the most unremarkable and conservative of American filmmakers and his work in Cinderella Man is typically solid and uninspired. There is never a surprise in store, nothing close to ambiguity or complexity in the entire film. Braddock’s comeback fight was against the savage champion Max Baer (gamely played by Craig Bierko) and, just in case we weren’t on our hero’s side already, the film makes Baer a sneering Hollywood villain who hits low and makes suggestive comments about Mae Braddock. Howard’s determination to control every emotion the audience feels stifles any genuine sense of connection we may feel with the picture.

The director’s handling of the boxing sequences is fine, although anyone making a boxing film these days must cope with the fact that Martin Scorsese has already called all the shots in that department. The fights here are nicely staged and convincing enough, with the build-up to the climactic Baer bout effectively depicting Braddock’s new status as a man fighting for the hopes of a nation. But, again, Howard makes sure we get the point during the fight by inserting subliminal shots of the poor huddled masses, or images of Braddock’s family. If you didn’t know what he was fighting for then you do now, and it’s a move which sums up this film’s deficiencies. Crowe, Giamatti and James Braddock himself deserve much better than this simpleminded nonsense - and so do we.

Review - Red Eye

Red Eye is an 85-minute thriller which is happy to be just that. It has no pretensions, no desire to be seen as a ‘great film’, it simply wants to give us an enjoyable time, a rollercoaster ride, and in this intention it succeeds admirably. Director Wes Craven mostly focuses his film on two people in a confined space and - with the help of a couple of terrific performances - delivers a tense, witty and hugely entertaining piece of work.

The two people at the centre of the drama are Lisa (Rachel McAdams) and Jackson (Cillian Murphy), who meet-cute at an airport where both are waiting for a delayed overnight flight to Miami. Lisa is the manager of a five-star hotel while Jackson is a little more guarded about what he does for a living (although his surname of Rippner may give a clue - yes, that’s Jackson Rippner!). The pair kill time by sharing a couple of drinks but soon their flight is called and it’s time to depart, and the prospect of losing sight of this handsome and charming stranger clearly disappoints Lisa. Remarkably it isn’t too long before they meet again, as Lisa’s seat is right next to Jackson’s - what are the chances?

Well, it seems the chances were pretty high as this is all part of Jackson’s sinister masterplan. He’s part of a political assassination plot and Lisa has to ensure the politician in question is moved to a different suite at her hotel, one which will be more vulnerable to attack. If Lisa doesn’t comply then Jackson assures her that she will never see her dad (Brian Cox) again.

Craven sets up the plot with brisk efficiency, hooking us into the story before the plane has left the runway, and once we’re in the air he proves his mastery of the genre with his consummate handling of the various twists and turns that follow. This is something of a change of pace for Craven, and it proves to be a welcome one, while still giving him the opportunity to show the abilities which has made him a legendary figure among horror directors. He builds the tension with real skill, providing a couple of smart and ingenious set-pieces. Red Eye is full of plot-holes and much of the action is implausible, but Craven constantly maintains the film’s forward momentum and doesn’t give us time to question what we’ve just seen.

As the heroine and villain of this tale, up-and-coming actors Rachel McAdams and Cillian Murphy give tremendous displays. The beautiful McAdams is especially impressive as Lisa, brilliantly portraying her vulnerability and fear while also skilfully charting her developing strength and determination to salvage the situation. It’s a beautifully measured and subtle performance. Murphy is great too, laying on the charm at the start of the film and then using those piercing eyes to genuinely chilling effect when his true nature is revealed. The pair have a strong chemistry and the underlying sexual tension between them adds another dimension to their scenes together. There are a couple of actors on the plane who make an impression with their brief screen time and Jayma Mays, in her first screen role, gives a lovely supporting turn as the young hotel clerk who has to deal with the chaotic scenes at ground level.

Red Eye doesn’t stay airborne all the way to the finish, and it’s here that the film begins to disappoint a little. Like last year’s Collateral, the film is a model of taut efficiency while it centres on two characters’ interplay in an enclosed space and once it ventures outside it starts to slip into genre conventions. The film’s climax is hectic and violent, involving Lisa being chased around by the psychotic Jackson, and there is an air of familiarity to it all. It’s the kind of stuff that Craven can do in his sleep and has done better on numerous occasions in the past. The last twenty minutes or so feels rather flaccid and never manages to match the tension and excitement that Craven gave us earlier.

The disappointingly conventional climax doesn’t do too much lasting damage though and Red Eye is ultimately that rarest of things: a Hollywood thriller which genuinely thrills. Some Craven fans might see it as a minor work for Craven but it’s a treat to see a film which succeeds so well on its own terms. Red Eye is smart, tense, witty and there’s nothing that feels superfluous in its 85 minutes - sometimes that’s more than enough for a night at the movies.

Review - Crash

“I am angry all the time and I don’t know why”. This is the statement Sandra Bullock comes out with halfway through Crash, and she could be speaking on behalf of every character in the movie. Everyone in this film is angry, frustrated and unhappy. Oh, and racist too. Crash opens and closes with a car crash (hence the title) and during the intervening two hours every character - Black, White, Hispanic, Asian, Arab - will reveal the bigotry they manage to keep under wraps most of the time.
Set over the course of a day in Los Angeles, Crash is an ensemble drama following a dozen or so characters who cross paths (often in ludicrously contrived fashion). Matt Dillon is a bigoted cop who pulls over a black couple and molests the woman (Thandie Newton), much to the horror of his partner (Ryan Phillippe) and her husband (Terrence Howard). District Attorney Brendan Fraser and his wife Sandra Bullock are car-jacked at gunpoint by two black youths (Chris “Ludacris” Bridges and Larenz Tate) and she starts to have suspicions about any minority, including kind-hearted locksmith Daniel (Michael Pena). Don Cheadle is a local cop who finds himself being used as a political pawn. These characters repeatedly ‘crash’ into each other throughout the film, resulting in scene after scene of anger, hatred and prejudice.

Paul Haggis, a successful TV writer for many years, is best known for his Oscar-nominated screenplay for Million Dollar Baby, and Crash marks his first attempt at directing a feature. His film is ambitious in scope, tackles an important theme and features a starry cast, many of whom deliver their finest work in years. Unfortunately, Haggis is guilty of taking a preachy, heavy-handed approach which makes Crash feel like less than the sum of its parts. Given the nature of the film’s structure, Crash inevitably draws comparisons to the work of PT Anderson and Robert Altman, but the comparisons do Haggis’ film no favours. Anderson brought an epic grandeur and operatic sweep to Magnolia which helped make the often incredible coincidences and contrivances more palatable to the viewer, something Crash’s more realistic approach doesn’t manage, and while Altman filled his films with numerous themes and ideas, Crash has one thing and one thing only on its mind - racism.

The opening car crash sets the scene with Jennifer Esposito asking the Chinese driver in the other car if she couldn’t see over the steering wheel or see her ‘blake lights’ properly. The next scene features a Persian man being called Osama by the owner of a gun shop and told to “plan the Jihad on your own time”. It seems every person in this vision of LA resorts to racial stereotyping when pushed to the edge and Haggis just keeps it coming. In the opening half hour every scene seems to end with some kind of racist insult being hurled and it all becomes a bit wearying before too long. It doesn’t take long for the minor shock value of such robust racial language to dissipate and after that you have to ask Haggis “what else have you got?”.

The answer, depressingly, is not much. Haggis hammers home the same point with every scene, an approach which simply dilutes the power of the issue. He’s careful to paint every character in a shade of grey, with each of them shown making racist remarks as well as being on the end of prejudice themselves. Haggis is lucky that his well-chosen cast give such committed performances as they manage to raise his material a notch or two. Matt Dillon gives his best performance for a long time and shares two electric encounters with Thandie Newton, Sandra Bullock plays against type effectively, and Michael Pena is a soulful presence as the closest thing to a truly good character in the film.

Haggis struggles in the second half to ensure that all the disparate characters interact in some way, resulting in some ridiculous coincidences and plot developments which will strain audiences’ credibility to breaking point. Two of the film‘s ‘big’ moments - one involving an overturned car and one with a gun being fired - are handled in overblown fashion by Haggis, with syrupy music and slow-motion laying it on far too heavily. Finally, despite the writer/director’s intent to provide a gritty, edgy portrait of racism in contemporary USA, he goes soft at the end, and the film climaxes to the sound of many “I love you’s” and plenty of hugging.

Crash is undoubtedly very watchable, mainly thanks to the first-rate cast, but it never fully engages the viewer’s emotions and is nowhere near as brave or important as Haggis clearly thinks it is. Haggis loses the fight by trying much too hard, which is hugely disappointing as he can stage an effective scene when he takes his foot off the race pedal a little. The most compelling sequences in Crash are the ones that have the least to do with colour, a scene between a father and daughter or a mother and son, and show glimpses of what the film could have been, but such delicate moments tend to be swiftly lost under the juggernaut of Haggis’ overriding theme. With its broad strokes and ridiculous plotting Crash would probably work best if you don’t take it too seriously but - there’s the rub - Crash simply demands to be taken seriously. It likes to think of itself as being some sort of great statement on the issue of racism but, while it tries to say everything about race, it ends up saying nothing new.

Review - Dear Wendy

Dear Wendy opens with a teenage boy writing a letter to the Wendy of the title. From the longing, mournful tone of his voiceover we assume that Wendy is a girl he loved, a girl who broke his heart, and that Dear Wendy will be a rites-of-passage tale of teenage love. In a way, the film is a kind of love story - taking us from the first meeting and the early excitement of the romance to the betrayal and painful parting - but it takes on an extra dimension when you realise that Wendy isn’t actually a girl at all. Jean Luc-Godard once claimed that all you needed to make a movie was a girl and a gun, in Dear Wendy the girl is the gun.

Scripted by cinema’s chief provocateur Lars von Trier and directed by his fellow Dogme95 founder Thomas Vinterberg, Dear Wendy is another of von Trier’s scathing attacks on American values. This time his gaze has focused on the USA’s right to bear arms and von Trier builds a story about a group of teenagers who are emboldened and have their personalities defined by their obsession with guns.
The story follows Dick (Jamie Bell), a sensitive, lonely teenager living in a dead-end American mining town. Rebelling against his father’s wishes that he should forge a career in the pits, Dick (instead of turning to ballet) takes a position as a supermarket shelf-stacker. His co-worker Stevie (Mark Webber) initially appears uncommunicative and surly, but the pair find a common interest when Dick reveals the small silver pistol he likes to carry around. Stevie is a gun enthusiast, who has named his own wartime weapon ‘Bad Steel’, and he decides to open Dick’s eyes to the fun there is to be had from carrying a gun. Dick has never fired his pistol (he’s a pacifist) but soon the pair are down in the mines enjoying a bit of target practice before spending many hours discussing everything and anything on the subject of guns.

A firm friendship is formed, and both boys appear more confident as if simply carrying their ‘partner’ added a couple of inches to their stature. Their new found sense of self-worth encourages Dick to offer the same escape route to other teens in their situation, and he invites Susan (Alison Pill), Huey (Chris Owen) and Freddie (Michael Angarano) to get in on the act. Between them the kids form The Dandies, a group who devote their time to celebrating their weapons and forming a strong bond between themselves and their guns. The Dandies respect the power of their firearms though, swearing that they will never be brandished against another person.

Vinterberg captures the group’s developing togetherness and the formation of their new identity with real flair, delivering a stylish and entertaining opening half. Assisted by Anthony Dod Mantle’s cinematography, which gives everything a bright, dreamlike sheen, and the eclectic soundtrack; Vinterberg skilfully portrays the youths growing devotion to their weapons, which they treat almost like sexual partners, and builds up nicely to the point where it all inevitably turns sour for The Dandies. Unfortunately, it’s here that it starts to turn a little sour for Vinterberg too.

The first sign of trouble for the group occurs when the local sheriff (Bill Pullman) asks Dick to watch over a local boy who has just got out of jail. Sebastian (Danso Gordon) is uneasy with the rituals of The Dandies at first but Susan is instantly attracted to him and he wins over the others with a gift of some guns. But the when he fires Wendy, with an ease and accuracy that sickens Dick, the relationship between Dick and his weapon is damaged irrevocably. However, an even bigger crisis is about to hit The Dandies.

A good deed going awry is the catalyst for the carnage that occurs in the final third. Unfortunately, the nature of this twist is so ludicrous, and the fallout from it so unrealistic, that all sense seems to suddenly fly out of the picture. Dear Wendy suddenly lurches into a different kind of movie, one Vinterberg seems much less sure with, and for some time the film stalls and stutters as Vinterberg tries to manipulate events leading up to the climax. He stages an effective, Peckinpah-style shootout to end the film but it’s hard to see exactly how we reached that point and why. The film seems to fluff whatever messages it’s sending out, touching on any number of gun-related issues without ever exploring them in real depth, and despite the exciting climax I was left feeling fairly deflated and frustrated by Dear Wendy.

The young cast are fine throughout, with Jamie Bell giving yet another hugely impressive display, and Vinterberg keeps the film engaging while never really letting it catch fire, in the way von Trier would likely have done. The shadow of Lars von Trier hovers everywhere over this film and Vinterberg clearly struggles to do justice to his screenplay while still crafting a film that he can claim as his own. After the amazing Festen, it’s hard to know what to make of Vinterberg seven years and two films down the road. He still has a lot of unrealised potential but, while his films have become bigger and more ambitious, he seems to have regressed in terms of basic storytelling and still hasn’t developed a defining filmmaking personality of his own. Working with his mentor von Trier again, on such a potentially explosive issue as the United States’ fixation with guns, must have seemed like a great opportunity to get his career back on track after the dire It’s All About Love. Unfortunately, much of Dear Wendy finds both the director and screenwriter firing blanks.