Review #1,464: 'Vice' (2018)

After spending most of his career larking around with Will Ferrell in the likes of Talladega Nights: The Ballad of Ricky Bobby, Step Brothers and The Other Guys, writer/director Adam McKay took a huge leap towards 'serious' film-making in 2015 when he released The Big Short, a funny, intelligent and unexpectedly engrossing account of the 2007-2008 financial crisis. The Big Short may not sound like much fun on paper, but McKay latched onto this idea, making the tedious subject of subprime loans and triple-A ratings interesting by entwining it with pop culture, employing the likes of Margot Robbie and Selena Gomez to dumb it down for the audience in a manner that was too wickedly clever to ever be patronising. With Academy recognition now under his belt, McKay strides into his next project - a biopic of one of the most fearsome yet enigmatic political figures in U.S. history - with confidence, and dare I say it, a touch of arrogance.

McKay is eager to perform the same trick again with Vice, a sporadically inspired but frustratingly blunt quasi-biography that feels to penetrate the skin of its subject or answer the big question of just what was the driving force behind the man who turned the symbolic position of Vice President into one of great power and influence. Rather than dig deeper, McKay prefers to allow Dick Cheney's actions to speak for themselves, occasionally cutting away to a visual metaphor, such as, in the case of Cheney's key meeting with Sam Rockwell's George W. Bush, a cheetah bringing down its prey. Cheney is a man McKay clearly views as a highly functioning psychopath, tracking his journey from working under Steve Carell's Donald Rumsfeld in the Nixon Administration, to his opportunistic lunge for control in the immediate aftermath of the 9/11 attacks. He fought to grant more power to a President he easily manipulated, praying on his short attention span and lack of political know-how, and to legalise torture, finding a massive legal loophole in the shape of Guantanamo Bay.

Vice is structured like a classic coming-of-age movie, with its 'hero' rising and falling, before dusting himself off and getting to his feet to rise again. After President Ford (Bill Camp) is voted out of office, seemingly closing all political doors for Cheney, McKay rolls the credits and pans away from the Cheney household, before an abrupt phone call reminds us that this story has barely begun. Like many of the jokes in Vice, the credit-roll-fake-out is funnier in theory than execution, and the film often takes the trickery so far that it threatens to undermine the seriousness of the subject matter. Satire must be funny, but it must also carry an emotional wallop that McKay struggles to find. At the centre of it all is Christian Bale's powerhouse performance, which explores a man whose obsessiveness could be compared to that of the actor's own extreme approach to his craft. Once again Bale takes his own body to the limit, piling on the pounds to resemble a man who suffered multiple heart attacks throughout his life (it becomes a running gag in the film), and adopting a deep growl capable of subtle intimidation. The performances of Bale, Carrel and Rockwell are all worth the entry fee alone, but Vice stutters to engage on a deeper level, failing to explain just how an oil company CEO can seize control of one of the most powerful countries in the world, and execute his plans with such cold indifference.


Directed by: Adam McKay
Starring: Christian Bale, Amy Adams, Steve Carell, Sam Rockwell, Alison Pill, Eddie Marsan, Justin Kirk, Jesse Plemons, Bill Camp, Tyler Perry
Country: USA

Rating: ***

Tom Gillespie

Review #1,417: 'Choke' (2008)

If you've ever had the fortune of reading a novel by Chuck Palahniuk, the novelist behind the likes of Fight Club and Invisible Monsters, you'll know that attempting to envision the writer's nihilistic style and sketchy characters for the cinema screen is a monumental task. It takes a master director like David Fincher to make something truly wonderful, as he did with 1999's Fight Club, and to understand that simply plucking the best scenes from the book, stringing them together, and hoping it'll somehow flow, simply won't work. Choke, based on Palahniuk's 2001 novel, is written and directed by Clark Gregg, the actor now best known as Agent Coulson in the Marvel Cinematic Universe and TV's Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. It's a commendable effort, and Gregg certainly gives it his all, but Choke is all over the place, and is ultimately forced to hack the complex novel into a collection of vignettes that don't really fit together.

Our protagonist is Victor Mancini, a sex addict and theme park employee whose ultimate goal seems to be to piss off anybody he comes across. His only friend is chronic masturbator Denny (Brad William Henke), a fellow underachiever who is almost saintly when compared to Victor. To his credit, Victor pays frequent visits to his hospitalised mother Ida (Anjelica Huston), although she doesn't recognise him, so Victor spends much of the time pretending to be somebody else or trying to bang any of the many nurses in the ward. If Victor wasn't already loathsome enough, he earns some extra cash on the side by pretending to choke on food at restaurants. The con is that a good Samaritan will perform the Heimlich manoeuvre on the blue-in-the-face stranger, and when the airwaves are clear and the food flies across the room, they will feel responsible for the person they have just saved. As a result, Victor frequently receives cheques from his saviours. In anybody else's hands, Victor would be too much of a scumbag to bear for 90 minutes, but he's played by Sam Rockwell, and the great underappreciated character actor somehow makes him sympathetic.

If Choke sounds like a mess, it's because that's precisely what it is. Along with everything else going on, Victor finds some comfort from the chaos in his life in the form of nurse Paige Marshall (Kelly Macdonald), who comes up with her own theory about Victor's birth when Ida reveals that there's something she hasn't told him. Despite the haphazard nature of the story, Gregg just about pulls it off by getting the very best out of his actors. Rockwell and Huston are fantastic, but that's to be expected. Henke, an actor I don't think I've seen in anything else before, gets a lot of laughs out of his loveable schlub, and is so good that it often feels like his character has the more interesting story to tell. Macdonald is charming as the nurse with her own unique approach to dealing with the strung-out relative of one of her patients, and Gregg himself, in a smaller role as Victor's brown-nosing colleague, is responsible for some of the film's funniest moments. But in the end, that's all that Choke is: a collection of funny moments. It certainly captures the idiosyncratic tone of the novel, but doesn't quite know how to fit it all the pieces together.


Directed by: Clark Gregg
Starring: Sam Rockwell, Anjelica Huston, Kelly Macdonald, Brad William Henke, Paz de la Huerta, Clark Gregg, Bijou Phillips
Country: USA

Rating: ***

Tom Gillespie

Review #1,306: 'Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri' (2017)

Along an overgrown, disused highway somewhere outside Ebbing, Missouri, three formerly dilapidated billboards still bearing the torn remains of whatever advertisement was previously displayed there over a decade ago, have suddenly sprang back into life. Only the messages delivered aren't in the name of some big-name brand or local company, but they are the deliberately confrontational words of grieving, thoroughly pissed-off mother Mildred Hayes (Frances McDormand). The first billboard reads 'Raped While Dying', followed by 'And Still No Arrests', and finally 'How Come, Chief Willoughby?' The opening scenes of Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri, which see Mildred negotiate a deal with businessman Red Welby (Caleb Landry Jones) and quickly install the provocative messages, set up a David-versus-Goliath story, in which a justice-seeking woman sets out to shame and spring into action the police department she feels has failed her following the brutal rape and murder of her daughter.

Yet, this being a film written and directed by Irish playwright Martin McDonagh, the kind of story suggested in the trailer is only the tip of a far more engaging and complex iceberg, and one that isn't afraid to take you to some incredibly dark places and urge you to accept the redemption of a truly repulsive character. The police department, led by family man and all-round likeable pillar of the community Chief Willoughby (Woody Harrelson), take the billboards as a declaration of war, but Willoughby, being a sensible officer of the law, pays a visit to Mildred for some one-on-one time in the hope of resolving the matter peacefully. They chat almost like old friends, or former lovers who have stayed on good terms, but Mildred is unmovable in her quest. Even the revelation that Willoughby has terminal cancer and is close to death isn't enough for Mildred to think twice about her actions, and it turns out that she was already privy to this information before renting the boards. "They won't be as effective after you croak," she admits, almost like it's her way of apologising.

The role of Mildred was written specifically with McDormand in mind, and the result is her best performance since 1996's Fargo and will surely bring her second Oscar win come March. The first time we lay eyes on her she is marching into town like a gunslinger seeking revenge, dressed in blue overalls and sporting a tightly-wound bandanna. Despite the pleas of her teenage son Robbie (Lucas Hedges), who is bullied in school because of his mother's antics and performance on the local news station, as well as threats from the drunken, racist Officer Dixon (Sam Rockwell), Mildred is unwavering in her strides for justice. Even her deplorable, wife-beating ex-husband Charlie (John Hawkes) voices his disapproval, but it all falls of deaf ears. Yet despite her questionable methods and finger-pointing at a police department who seem to have genuinely run into a dead end with the case, you stay with her until the end. I can't think of any other actress working today who could pull of a feat with such conviction, especially when dealing with a character who spends most of the movie keeping her real emotions close to her chest, or channelling them into rage.

McDonagh views small-town America as tightly-knit and full of big characters, a place where everybody knows everybody and gossip spreads like wildfire. In many ways, Three Billboards shares much in common with Calvary, the under-appreciated effort by the director's brother John Michael from 2014, and is structured almost like an ensemble piece. By bringing in a wealth of colourful supporting characters, played by the likes of Peter Dinklage, Abbie Cornish, Kerry Condon and Clarke Peters, as well as those already mentioned, McDonagh can explore themes of anger, bitterness, loss and loneliness on a far grander scale. While the wonderfully obscenity-laden script will keep you both laughing and wincing throughout the running-time, the film is at its most compelling when showing genuine compassion for the characters inhabiting the story. It refuses to judge anybody too harshly, even peeling back the layers of the most loathsome character in the story, the permanently hungover Dixon, who is played by a career-best Sam Rockwell. Three Billboards somehow manages to be both enormous fun and utterly heart-wrenching, and coming off the back of the underwhelming Seven Psychopaths, this is a huge stride in the right direction for the enormously talented McDonagh.


Directed by: Martin McDonagh
Starring: Frances McDormand, Woody Harrelson, Sam Rockwell, Lucas Hedges, Abbie Cornish, Caleb Landry Jones, Peter Dinklage, John Hawkes, Clarke Peters
Country: UK/USA

Rating: *****

Tom Gillespie

Review #922: 'Seven Psychopaths' (2012)

Even though I wasn't blown away by Irish playwright Martin McDonagh's directorial debut, In Bruges (2008), the film contained enough memorable one-liners and great performances to have me anticipating his next feature. In the four years that elapsed between In Bruges and his follow-up Seven Psychopaths, Martin's brother John Michael wrote and directed the offensively hilarious The Guard (2011), and in 2014 gave us Calvary, one of the truly great films of that year. Martin's limelight has been stolen somewhat, and Seven Psychopaths is a slight let-down. It's a movie about movies, or rather a movie within a movie, or even a movie without a movie - either way, it's a bit of a mess.

Script-writer Marty (Colin Farrell) has writer's block. He knows what his next movie is going to be called - Seven Psychopaths - but the title is all he has. Struggling with alcoholism, he tries to keep his girlfriend Kaya (Abbie Cornish) happy while his unhinged best friend Billy (Sam Rockwell) tries to worm his way into a writing credit. Looking to avoid creating yet another movie glamorising violence, he wants his psychopaths to retain some humanity and have the message of his movie be about peace and love. Billy suggests he takes inspiration from the 'Jack of Diamonds' killer, who only kills high-ranking mobsters and is currently on a killing spree in Los Angeles, and they take an ad out in the local paper asking for real-life psychopaths to come and tell their story.

Billy also kidnaps dogs from rich folk for a living along with his partner-in-crime Hans (Christopher Walken), but they have just stolen a Shih Tzu from the wrong man - gangster and madman Charlie (Woody Harrelson) - a man we first meet trying to fix his gun so he can shoot the young girl who had the dog in her care in the face. Marty has the vaguest of ideas about his other psychopaths - one being a Vietnamese war veteran (Long Nguyen) dressed as a priest looking to avenge his family's murder during the war, and another a quaker (Harry Dean Stanton) who stalks his daughter's killer for decades - but no way of connecting them and one story possibly accidentally stolen. With Charlie on their tail, Marty, Billy and Hans flee to the desert to contemplate their fate and finish the script once and for all.

This is an odd film from start to finish. The opening scene depicts two gangster (Michael Stuhlbarg and Michael Pitt) discussing famous murders of people being shot through the eyeball, before being blown away themselves by the masked Jack of Diamonds killer, It's reminiscent of the Tarantino-inspired wave of self-aware crime flicks of the 1990's, where pop-culture references and quirky humour trumped anything dark and serious. The use of freeze-frames to introduce it's collection of psychopaths also reminded me of the 1990's, when Danny Boyle's Trainspotting (1996) opened the floodgates for countless inferior imitators in Britain to do the very same. Are these the kinds of movies McDonagh was offered in the wake of a successful debut and is now satirising them? Or did he just run out of ideas and resort to emulating a now-dated era?

I found this the main problem with Seven Psychopaths, and I felt like I could never be sure if McDonagh was being smart, lazy, or both in an ironic clever-clever way. At the half-way point, the film begins to drag and meander as if McDonagh had genuine writer's block (there's a reason the main character is Irish and called Marty) but kept writing in the hope that it would eventually work itself out. But Seven Psychopaths does have moments of inspiration. As Hans, Christopher Walken makes the welcome return to the large roles that seem to have evaded him of late, and delivers a performance of real humanity. The dialogue too, is as quotable and vicious as you would expect from the man who penned In Bruges, with the humour providing a welcome distraction from the barrage of exhaustive violence - and maybe that's the point. But whatever the point, this will more likely leave you scratching your head trying to figure it out.


Directed by: Martin McDonagh
Starring: Colin Farrell, Sam Rockwell, Christopher Walken, Woody Harrelson, Tom Waits, Olga Kurylenko, Abbie Cornish, Harry Dean Stanton
Country: UK

Rating: ***

Tom Gillespie

Review #616: 'Iron Man 2' (2010)

Set a mere six months after the events of 2008's Iron Man, Tony Stark (Robert Downey Jr.) has almost single-handedly achieved world peace. Only he is now facing opposition from Senator Stern (Garry Shandling), who is demanding he hand his weaponry over to the government, and, unbeknownst to others, is slowly dying from the palladium core in his chest designed to keep him alive. In Russia, Ivan Danko (Mickey Rourke), son of engineering genius Anton Vanko, who worked with Tony Stark's father, seeks revenge against the Stark family who caused his father's exile many years ago. He develops an arc reactor similar to Stark's, and publicly attacks him at the Circuit de Monaco, getting arrested in the process. Facing deportation and years in prison, Danko is approached by rival weapons expert Justin Hammer (Sam Rockwell), who wants Danko to help him destroy Stark's legacy, and secure military funding.

The first Iron Man was so successful mainly due to the success it brought to Tony Stark's transformation into the big red and gold suit, anchored by Downey Jr.'s magnetic central performance. Number 2 sadly does not step up the proceedings a la X2 (2003) or Spider-Man 2 (2004), which both developed the central story even further, as well as adding better characters/villains and amping up the action. Iron Man 2 disappoints on all of these fronts. Stark's gradual 'maturing' throughout the course of the first film was relatively perfect in terms of pacing and execution, but this is replaced here by Stark dealing with some dull daddy issues (although Howard Stark is played by Mad Men scene-stealer John Slattery), and Stark's concerns about his poisoning, which confuse above all else.

Of the three new main additions, only Rourke's Whiplash is remotely successful, yet is kept oddly muted throughout the movie as he sets up shop in Hammer's workshop, carefully engineering a not-very-surprising attack at the upcoming Stark Expo. Hammer's over-the-top sliminess fits in with the shift in tone, moving away from the grounded feel of the first, and entering the more supernatural realm of the Avengers' world, where we have to accept intergalactic journeys and a character like Thor. Scarlett Johansson's Nastasha Romanoff does little apart from looking good in Lycra and bringing Stark into S.H.I.E.L.D., which heralds the return of Samuel L. Jackson's Nick Fury in what is nothing more than an extended cameo,

So we are ultimately left with James 'Rhodey' Rhodes, this time played by Don Cheadle, who came in to replace Terrence Howard. Their relationship forms the best aspect of the film, and also leads to the best moment in the film when Rhodey finally dons a Stark suit (becoming a premature War Machine), and attempts to restrain a drunken Stark, dressed as Iron Man. It's the only scene with any real heart. Still, it's still quite fun overall, and it's interesting to watch Marvel's big plan slowly move closer together, with glimpses of Captain America's shield, the Hulk ripping it up on a news report, and Thor's hammer. When the credits rolled, I felt like I'd been slightly ripped-off by the climax, which pales in comparison even when compared to the first film. But it still left me wanting more, which can't be a bad thing.


Directed by: Jon Favreau
Starring: Robert Downey Jr., Gwyneth Paltrow, Don Cheadle, Scarlett Johansson, Sam Rockwell, Mickey Rourke
Country: USA

Rating: ***

Tom Gillespie