Review: The Debt
The Debt, director John Madden’s remake of 2007’s Israeli thriller Hahov hits UK cinemas this Friday, featuring another superb performance from Jessica Chastain as she continues to take 2011 by storm. Set in 1997, The Debt focuses primarily on events taking place in 1966 when three Mossad agents set out to bring Nazi war criminal, Dieter Vogel aka the surgeon of Birkenau (a character based on the infamous Josef Mengele), to justice in Israel.
Sam Worthington and Jessica Chastain in The Debt
The film begins quietly enough in 1997 as now-retired Mossad agent Rachel (here played by Helen Mirren) attends a booking reading of her author daughter who has penned Rachel’s life story. A mysterious road-side death later, the action moves to East Berlin in 1966 where Chastain (as the younger Rachel), along with Sam Worthington (David) and Marton Csokas (Stephan) take over the reins of the narrative. What follows is a suspenseful operation to capture the man they believe to be Vogel. It is once their enemy has been detained that The Debt truly excels. Jesper Christensen provides fantastic support as the smarmy, manipulative Vogel. As good as Chastain, Worthington and Csokas are it is Christensen’s performance that provides the foundation.
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Review: Page One: Inside The New York Times
Andrew Rossi’s latest documentary, Page One: Inside The New York Times examines the struggle print media faces for survival by embedding the filmmaker within the Times newsroom for an entire year, from 2009 into 2010. Focus centres on the media desk of the NYT, which reports on changes in the media, both print and online, including the NYT itself. The star of the show here is charismatic New York Times journalist David Carr, a sharp-tongued, reformed drug addict and convict whose wit makes this an enjoyable, rather than dry, affair.
The New York Times' David Carr discusses the survival of the Gray lady at the Soho Curzon
A montage of news clips highlighting newspapers closures and bankruptcy opens the film by providing the context of the difficult period print media, specifically in the US, is currently facing. The point of how any person or group can self-publish monumental news scoops thanks to the internet is illustrated by juxtaposing WikiLeaks first significant exposure of the US military strategy in Iraq (video footage of US attacks on civilians) with the Pentagon Papers scandal in 1971, where the only method of bringing attention to the information contained was by feeding it to a huge national paper, such as the New York Times.
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Review: Drive
Drive is a perfectly crafted thriller that blows away just about any film released so far this year. From the incredibly terse opening scene, Drive grabs the viewer and refuses to let go until the end credits hit the screen. Director Nicholas Winding Refn brings together a cast that hits every note spot-on. The suspense is laid on thick, often in the most subtle of fashions, and hangs in the air throughout the film.
Ryan Gosling and Carey Mulligan in Drive, where a look says it all.
As the nameless driver, Ryan Gosling is a man of few words. Instead his body language speaks volumes and when he does act, he does so decisively and without hesitation. Part-time Hollywood stunt driver, full-time grease monkey at Shan’s (a terrifically rough Bryan Cranston) garage, “the kid” also takes jobs as a hired wheel-man. Sticking to his five-minute rule, he has getaway driving down to a science and puts his survival above all else. The opening chase scene beautifully establishes Gosling’s character as anything but an average criminal and Drive as a crime thriller with a unique approach.
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Review: Soul Surfer
While the events of surfing champion Bethany Hamilton’s young life would almost surely make for a touching and inspirational documentary, the dramatised Hollywood portrayal of her life, Soul Surfer, is marred by clichés and Christian propaganda. It also features perhaps the most anti-climactic shark attacked ever committed to film. With Hawaii as the locale, what Soul Surferdoes accomplish is highlighting how lovely and carefree life on the Hawaiian islands must be. In fact, it certainly appears worth braving a shark bite to two for. Using the ever-popular family life montage to set the stage, it’s not long before the audience sees Bethany (AnnaSophia Robb) best her chief rival, Malina Birch (Sonya Balmores, kitted out in black to really drive the point home) in a regional competition and secure a sponsorship deal alongside her best-friend and fellow amateur surfer, Alana.
Soul Surfer, brought to you by God.
With two-loving, surfer parents (Helen Hunt and Dennis Quaid), a pair of good-natured older brothers, a lifelong best-friend and her pop-video styled church, Bethany’s life appears perfect. Now sponsored and needing to focus on training, Bethany forgoes a church trip to Mexico to work with needy children. Having been made to feel sufficiently guilty about her priorities, tragedy soon strikes in the dullest of fashions and Bethany is rushed off to hospital. As poor-writing would have it, said hospital is the same one where her father is about the go under the knife, in a needlessly shoehorned plot thread that is forgotten about immediately after it attempts to artificially inject an amount of tension into the scene.
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