Review #1,262: 'Wind River' (2017)

If you weren't already aware going into Wind River of just who is the brains behind this tough, tense and distinctly masculine drama, then it won't take very long for you to guess that it is Taylor Sheridan, the so-hot-right-now scribe behind the likes of Sicario and Hell or High Water. Rounding off his trilogy based around the American frontier, Sheridan directs for the first time here, and proves to be as equally adept with bringing his work to life as he is with penning it. To dub him the new Cormac McCarthy may be slightly condescending to the talented writer, but the comparisons are certainly there to be made. This is the world of tough, lean men doing what they have to do in order to survive or get by in their increasingly dire economic surroundings, and it's certainly a setting Sheridan feels comfortable in, or at least wishes he was part of.

While Sicario placed us in the terrifying, claustrophobic choke-hold of the Mexican drug cartels and Hell or High Water delivered outlaw hi-jinks with serious social and economic undertones, Wind River is a movie of quiet, simmering tension played out against the backdrop of the freezing, desolate mountains of Wyoming. Hard times have come to the titular Indian Reservation and the surrounding areas, but so little apparently occurs here that a police force of over 6 officers is trusted with covering an area the size of a large city. When a young Native American girl (Kelsey Asbille) is found barefoot and dead in the snow 5 miles from the nearest residence, the minuscule department find themselves clearly ill-equipped for the investigation. The girl died from suffocating on the blood in her lungs, brought on by the sub-zero temperature, but she has also been raped. The man who found her, U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service agent Cory Lambert (Jeremy Renner), uses his knowledge and experience as a hunter to start making connections.

Renner has spent so many years in superhero costumes or starring in forgettable, little-seen box-office under-performers that it's easy to forget just how he made the jump from supporting character actor to leading man material. In movies like The Hurt Locker and The Town, he demonstrated an uncanny skill at playing introverted characters emotionally scarred by past experiences. Yes, he was an outright psychopath in Ben Affleck's thrilling The Town, but it always felt like he was masking something deeper. Lambert is living with his own trauma. He pays visits to his Native American ex-wife to see his son, but their separation was clearly brought on by tragedy. In a moving monologue to the father of the murdered girl (a marvellous Gil Birmingham), he reveals through choked-back tears that his daughter had passed years earlier. It's quite possibly the best work he's ever done; utterly convincing as the strong, silent hunter who can spot a snowmobile track from a mile away, and as a potential romantic interest for FBI agent Jane Banner (Elizabeth Olsen).

She is sent from her office in Las Vegas, and arrives completely ill-prepared for the brutal conditions of Wind River. When she quickly realises she's out of her depth, Banner leans on Lambert to help her navigate the perilous conditions and vast landscape. It's a character seen many times before - even in Sicario - and although Olsen is perfectly fine, her role seems somewhat diminutive and over-reliant on her male counterpart. It's an issue Sheridan should perhaps address in his next venture, but Wind River proves that he is more than capable of visualising his own work. He shoots the wilderness as a cold, unforgiving place, where only the toughest - humans or animals - can survive, turning them wilder and more primitive in the process. The score by Nick Cave and Warren Ellis also give the land a mystic ambience, similar in many ways to their work on The Proposition. Although it does digress into Quentin Tarantino territory and the final pay-off seems over-eager to highlight good from bad, Wind River deserves some recognition come awards season, as does Sheridan as a director to watch.


Directed by: Taylor Sheridan
Starring: Jeremy Renner, Elizabeth Olsen, Graham Greene, Gil Birmingham, Kelsey Asbille, Jon Bernthal
Country: UK/Canada/USA

Rating: ****

Tom Gillespie

Review #1,250: 'Baby Driver' (2017)

It feels like decades have passed since British writer/director Edgar Wright pulled away from Marvel's Ant-Man, apparently in fear of the studio's insistence on having the action take place within their Cinematic Universe and jeopardising his singular vision in the process. And it feels even longer since the underwhelming closure to the 'Cornetto Trilogy', 2013's The World's End, graced the big screen. But Wright has clearly been making the most of his spare time, finally completing the script for a movie that has been clattering around his head for over 20 years (he had the idea back in 1994). Drawing inspiration from a line in Simon & Garfunkel's song Baby Driver ("They call me baby driver, and once upon a pair of wheels," and a collection of his favourite petrol-head movies, he has delivered what is by far his most accomplished work to date.

Shortly before the release of Baby Driver, Wright hosted a film festival entitled 'Car Car Land' - a collection of his favourite car chase movies, featuring everything from William Friedkin's The French Connection to Walter Hill's The Driver. It has been quite rightly said that great cinematic action feels like a dance - elegant, brutal, and pieced together with delicate invention and skill. It is fitting that Wright named his festival after one of the finest musicals of recent times, La La Land. He has also taken this theory quite literally with Baby Driver, a movie as much at home with dazzling musical numbers as it is with high-speed pursuits and gun-fire, combining them beautifully without a hint of smugness. Our hero the getaway driver times his entire life to the beat ever-blasting into his ears from his loaded collection of iPods. A menial task such as making a sandwich becomes a toe-tapping dance number.

His name is Baby ("B-A-B-Y, Baby," as he confirms to practically everybody he meets), and his hipster blend of skinny jeans and sunglasses may have been grating without Ansel Elgort. Like Channing Tatum, his physicality and grace prevents you from taking your eyes off him once he starts to move, and cinematographer Bill Pope make sure to capture these moments in all their glory (including one terrific tracking shot at the start). Baby needs his music to block out the tinnitus constantly ringing in his ears, but also to remind him of the music-loving mother he lost in the very accident that caused his affliction. His short life has been spent in the debt of gangster Doc (Kevin Spacey), who employs the youngster's superhuman skills behind the wheel as a getaway driver for his ever-changing roster of low-life bank robbers. Each of them eye Baby with both curiosity and suspicion, when all he wants to do is pay off what he owes and leave town with adorable waitress Debora (Lily James). But one last job is never one last job.

Opening with a bank job that will leave you stunned at both the editing and choreography (no CGI is used), there's an early sense that Wight may have blown his load too early. But this only kicks off two hours in the hands of a craftsman who truly understand the mechanics of cinema. Not just action cinema, but musical and dramatic, and the film offers its fair share of belly laughs too. It's as much of an exaggerated world as Shaun of the Dead and Hot Fuzz, but contains itself in its own little world. The characters are larger-than-life but tangible, incredibly brought to life by the likes of Jamie Foxx, Jon Hamm, Eiza Gonzalez and Jon Bernthal. There's an almost ever-present soundtrack, with the characters speaking and moving in sync with the rhythm, which lend the film a unique energy. When the music stops and the soundtrack screeches to reflect Baby's tinnitus, we long to be thrown straight back into Wright's fantasy world. The car chases, the love story, the testosterone-fuelled exchanges - there's nothing new here, but Edgar Wright knows this. Baby Driver is so swaggeringly confident and stylishly hypnotic that it becomes a genre film like no other, causing most other action movies to hang their heads in shame.


Directed by: Edgar Wright
Starring: Ansel Elgort, Kevin Spacey, Lily James, Jamie Foxx, Jon Hamm, Eiza González, Jon Bernthal
Country: UK/USA

Rating: *****

Tom Gillespie

Review #1,144: 'The Accountant' (2016)

Audiences are obsessed with superheroes these days. Perhaps it's down to these caped crusaders offering a more straightforward answer to crime and corruption or the genre's lack of grey morals in our increasingly confusing world, but it's nearly impossible to avoid coming across a meta-human of some description in the multiplexes. While he may not have been bitten by a radioactive spider or possess the mutant gene, Ben Affleck's Christian Wolff is every inch a superhero. His power, as he describes it, is high-functioning autism, which means that he makes sure everything in view is at its proper angle before tucking into a meal, and tends to freak out when he doesn't see something through to the very end. Oh, and he's also a master of hand-to-hand combat and owns an arsenal of weapons so ridiculously huge that even Chuck Norris would blush at the sight of it.

Gavin O'Connor's The Accountant begins by introducing us to Wolff, who at first appears to live a low-key life for a small-town accountancy firm, eating dinner alone every night in what is clearly a strict routine. He's also a mathematical genius, using his skills as a mental calculator to cook the books for some of the world's wealthiest and most dangerous criminal organisations. His latest job is to audit the books of expanding corporation Living Robotics, whose low-level employee Dana (Anna Kendrick) has found numerous discrepancies when conducting her own audit. Christian ignores Dana's months of work and finds the missing money overnight, turning the office windows into a huge equation (seemingly the go-to quirk for movie geniuses). The company's CEO Lamar Blackburn (John Lithgow) decides it's case closed when the chief financial offers turns up dead the next day, apparently of a deliberate insulin overdose.

There's also much more going on away from the central character. Ray King (J.K. Simmons), a director at the Treasury Department, knows of Christian's alias as the 'Accountant', and has pictures to prove his association with some incredibly powerful and scary men. He blackmails data analyst Marybeth (Cynthia Addai-Robinson) into assisting him after exposing her petty criminal past, with only the photos and a few known alias to work from. An unnervingly charming hitman named Brax, whose motivations and true intentions are kept hazy at best, keeps popping up every now and then, and he is played marvellously by Jon Bernthal. There's also Christian's backstory to get through - the discovery of his 'disability', his strict military father who wants to toughen his son up so he can function in the real world, and his combat training. It's a hell of a lot to cram into 2 hours and 8 minutes, and this would be frustrating were in not for the distraction of the movie's willingness to take its character into such increasingly preposterous situations.

To put you in the picture, Christian Wolff is the combination of two of Affleck's buddy Matt Damon's most iconic characters: Jason Bourne and Will Hunting - although Bourne was never so eager to shoot people in the face. It could certainly be argued that this is Affleck's fourth outing as a superhero (after Daredevil, Superman and Batman), and at times he may as well be donning the cowl as he effortlessly punches and blasts his way through hoards of bad guys. After all, it's been theorised that Bruce Wayne suffers from a form of autism. The action is incredible at times; a mixture of The Raid's Pencak silat and John Wick's hyper-stylised gun porn. Yet, 'entertaining' is all that The Accountant aspires to be, and any suggestions of a more studios portrayal of autism raised during the quieter and more humorous first half gives way to generic audience-pleasing. It survives on its tantalising and original premise and the strength of its lead's subtle performance, and I would certainly watch a follow-up.


Directed by: Gavin O'Connor
Starring: Ben Affleck, Anna Kendrick, J.K. Simmons, Jon Bernthal, Jeffrey Tambor, Cynthia Addai-Robinson, John Lithgow, Jean Smart
Country: USA

Rating: ***

Tom Gillespie

Review #959: 'Sicario' (2015)

Denis Villeneuve's previous films, 2010's Incendies and 2013's double-whammy of Prisoners and Enemy, delved into the darkness of the human psyche at its most primal level. Sicario, penned by actor-turned-writer Andrew Sheridan, continues the trend. While its setting demands something all the more high-octane to what we are used to from the Canadian director, Villeneuve makes sure to keep his primary focus on his lead trio, all who are suffering psychologically in some way from the extreme violence they witness on a regular basis. But Sicario delivers on the set-pieces too, sculpting a steady stream of intense set-pieces handled delicately and with a refreshing coherence.

During a SWAT raid of a house believed to be hiding wanted kidnappers, strong-willed agent Kate Macer (Emily Blunt) and her idealistic partner Reggie (Black Mirror's Daniel Kaluuya) make a gruesome discovery. Although the raid is a success, it doesn't come without casualties, and soon enough Kate and Reggie find themselves sitting outside an office where high-ranking officers from a variety of agencies are in deep discussion. Flip-flop wearing CIA agent Matt Graver (Josh Brolin) wants Kate along with him as he and his team head out to Juarez, Mexico, to find the men truly responsible for the carnage and bring down cartel boss Manuel Diaz (Bernardo P. Saracino), with the hope that it will lead to an illusive drug lord.

Just why Kate has been asked to tag along for the ride isn't made clear until near the very end, but Kate's stubbornness and natural curiosity means that she is determined to see it out, regardless of the questionable methods employed by Matt and another mysterious figure, the shadowy Alejandro (Benicio Del Toro). Sicario asks questions of whether bending the rules or using brutality can be justified when faced with an enemy willing to do anything to live another day. When the team first roll into the war-zone of Suarez, mutilated corpses dangle from a bridge to serve as a warning to anyone entering. How can you truly stay within the law when faced with an opponent so devoid of humanity? The psychological weight of these questions press down on Kate as the film progresses.

The film often paces briskly from one set-piece to another, without forgetting to amp up the tension beforehand. A stand-out scene takes place on the Bridge of the Americas as the team are transporting one of Diaz's top men back to the United States. Caught in a traffic jam, they immediately sense danger as vehicles stocked with tattooed men slowly pull up nearby. It's a nerve-jangling moment, one of many in the film, and the action is dealt with clinically, not allowing any of the characters to be forgotten or blurred within the frenzy. Towering above everybody else is Del Toro as the mysterious Alejandro, a man Kate cannot truly unravel. His background and ultimate purpose is left in the dark for the most part of the film, but it soon becomes clear that this is in fact his story. This is dark, visceral stuff, bolstered by an outstanding cast and an intriguing tale to tell.


Directed by: Denis Villeneuve
Starring: Emily Blunt, Josh Brolin, Benicio Del Toro, Daniel Kaluuya, Victor Garber, Jon Bernthal
Country: USA

Rating: ****

Tom Gillespie

Review #844: 'Fury' (2014)

It's highly likely that David Ayer's Fury will conjure memories of Saving Private Ryan (1998). It will also bring to mind The Wild Geese (1978), The Dirty Dozen (1967), and just about every World War II movie ever made. It's also hard to shake off the idea that Brad Pitt is not playing Aldo Raine, his drawling, neck-scarred leader of a band of Nazi hunters in Quentin Tarantino's excellent Inglourious Basterds (2009). Although Fury is certainly not lacking in spectacle and decent performances, it just doesn't come up with any ideas of its own, stumbling along a wafer-thin narrative and getting lost on its way to try and figure out what type of film it wants to be.

We are in the climatic days of the war, with the U.S. deep into Germany territory, and the crew of 'Fury', an M4A3E8 Sherman tank, long battle-worn. Don 'Wardaddy' Collier (Pitt) is a hard man (we first meet him knocking a German soldier from his horse and stabbing him to death), but he struggles dealing with the horrors he has witnessed. With a crew member dead in their latest fight, rookie Norman (Logan Lerman), a kid who has never fired a gun or experienced combat, is plucked from his typing duties and thrown into Fury. The crew, consisting of bible-bashing gunner, er, Bible (Shia LaBeouf), token Hispanic driver Gordo Garcia (Michael Pena), and scumbag mechanic Coon-Ass (Jon Bernthal), don't take too kindly to the new arrival.

Perhaps the most frustrating thing about Fury is that it hints at potential brilliance. The underlying theme seems to be that war turns men into animals, and in one stand-out scene in which Wardaddy takes Norman into the home of two German women so he can lose his virginity, only to be interrupted by his crew and a drunken, vulgar Coon-Ass, manages to create an atmosphere of tension and discomfort. The battle scenes look very impressive too. Bullets fly across the screen like lasers, and one set-piece involving a squad of Sherman facing a superior German Tiger tank is exciting, but the film is often too eager to revel in gore and flying body parts.

Fury spends so much time giving us blood, guts and loud noises that it forgets to give us any resemblance of a plot to hang onto. It also gets so lost in trying to hammer home how damaged these men have become than it doesn't allow us to get to know the characters on any deeper level than their primary personality trait, ticking off a check-list of war movie cliches on its way. It all builds up to a ridiculous climax that pitches Fury against a 300-strong company of SS panzergrenadiers, who all proceed to jog gleefully into a hail of machine-gun fire like many a faceless video game baddie. It manages to insult both the German army and the audience's intelligence. We are given little to make us sympathise with the Americans apart from the fact that they aren't Nazi's, so come the emotions at the end, it's difficult to care at all.


Directed by: David Ayer
Starring: Brad Pitt, Logan Lerman, Shia LaBeouf, Michael Peña, Jon Bernthal
Country: USA/China/UK

Rating: **

Tom Gillespie

Review #704: 'The Wolf of Wall Street' (2013)

Boasting the fifth collaboration between lauded director Martin Scorsese and can-do-no-wrong A-lister Leonardo DiCaprio, The Wolf of Wall Street signals the moment the two finally took the step over the brink. Their previous films together - Gangs of New York (2002), The Aviator (2004), The Departed (2006) and Shutter Island (2010) - were all solid, if hardly groundbreaking works. With The Wolf of Wall Street, Scorsese seems to have let go of his reservations and embraced the daring, X-rated innovations of his 70's and early 80's work, and DiCaprio deserves to look smug after giving his finest performance to date. From the opening shot of DiCaprio snorting cocaine from between a prostitute's open legs, this is 3 hours of utter depravity. And it's hilarious.

Shortly after being taught the ways of excess and cocaine by his Wall Street boss Mark Hanna (Matthew McConaughey), young stockbroker Jordan Belfort (DiCaprio) finds himself out of work following Black Monday. When he takes a boiler room job at a stockbroker's dealing in penny stocks, he learns that commission for these stocks are 50%. Soon enough he is making money hand over fist, setting up his own company, Stratton Oakmont, along with his dentally-challenged follower Donnie Azoff (Jonah Hill). He recruits some of Donnie's marijuana-dealing friends and teaches them a script designed to sell, but ultimately the operation is a pump and dump scam. He is labelled The Wolf of Wall Street in a negative magazine article, yet this propels him to cult fame, and soon has flocks of eager young Gordon Gekko's begging for a piece of the pie.

At one minute shy of 3 hours, the film could certainly do with a trim. Yet Scorsese and DiCaprio's obvious fascination with this anti-hero means that we are treated to experiencing every juvenile and ridiculous second of Belfort's rise to Wall Street superstardom. We get flights with on-board orgies and drug taking, Jonah Hill masturbating in the middle of a crowded party at the sight of Belfort's future wife Naomi (the stunning Margot Robbie), dwarf-tossing, and Belfort taking helicopter lessons whilst drugged off his face. This is certainly dangerous territory - the film could easily slip into a celebration of frat-house antics, which is kind of does, but Scorsese keep the insanity levels at such a height that it's hard not to just laugh and shake your head.

A lot of it is down to the performances of DiCaprio and Hill, the latter of whom is proving to be a damn fine actor beneath that Jew-fro and obnoxious mannerisms. The film's highlight focuses on a botched scheme to smuggle $2 million dollars via Brad (Jon Bernthal) to reptilian French banker Jean (Jean Dujardin). Having learned that FBI agent Denham (Kyle Chandler) has his phones tapped, Belfort must get home to warn Donnie to get off the phone. The only problem is, they've taken a large quantity of Qualuudes. Thinking that years of indulgence have caused a tolerance to build up, the expired best before date have simply lead to a delayed reaction. Belfort suffers from what he describes as 'the cerebral palsy stage', flailing around on the floor without control of his limbs or his speech. His long journey home is the most laugh-out-loud example of drug-fuelled ineptitude since the ether scene in Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas (1998).

Of course, the film's morals are questionable, and Scorsese has suffered the same narrow-minded criticism he did from his 'glamorisation' of the mob in Goodfellas (1990). Yet I like to think that Scorsese trusts and respects his audience enough to allow them to think for themselves, to get a laugh from the on-screen antics whilst understanding that this is not the behaviour of a sane or ethical individual. Refreshingly, the movie stays away from any moral preaching or underlying messages, and simply tells a story because it's entertaining. Although it doesn't quite justify it's 3 hour running time, this is the most fun I've had watching a comedy for a long time, and proves that there's plenty of life in Scorsese yet.


Directed by: Martin Scorsese
Starring: Leonardo DiCaprio, Jonah Hill, Margot Robbie, Kyle Chandler, Rob Reiner, Jon Bernthal, Matthew McConaughey, Jean Dujardin, Joanna Lumley
Country: USA

Rating: ****

Tom Gillespie