There is a line from Alexander Payne's 2004 masterpiece Sideways, in which Paul Giamatti's lonely and depressed Miles describes his lack of purpose in the world as feeling like "a smudge of excrement on a tissue, surging out to sea with a million tons of raw sewage," that has always stuck with me. It's a beautiful, poetic line he attributes to the work of Charles Bukowski, although I don't think it was, which perfectly encapsulates his feelings of emptiness. During my viewing of Black Knight, it occurred to me that this line also sums up the cinematic career of Martin Lawrence, black stereotype extraordinaire.
His belief-beggaringly successful TV career made graduated into movies in the late 1990's, and cinema was forced to endure his mixture of prat-falling and tough-guy gun-totin', to which he was convincing at neither. But perhaps I'm being unfair to Lawrence as, after all, Black Knight was written, financed, cast, produced and directed by a whole host of people. all of whom should hang their heads in shame. It is a generic time-travel, culture-clash story in which theme-park layabout Jamal (Lawrence) is transported back to Medieval England, where he faces a corrupt king (Kevin Conway) and his douchebag enforcer (Vincent Regan).
Never mind the complete disregard for anything resembling historical accuracy, offensively stereotypical black characters, the dirt-cheap production design, and the baffling sight of Tom Wilkinson (who, to quote my step-dad, must have been short of a few bob), it's the comedy void that we are thrown head first into that makes Black Knight a truly torturous experience. Clearly the writers think that a shout of "holler!" or the sight of a bunch of white people trying to dance is an acceptable substitute for comedy. An unforgivable experience.
Back in 1997, when the Batman franchise was given a thorough anal-raping and given cinema AIDS by director Joel Schumacher with the preposterous Batman & Robin, fans and audiences alike were left wondering if there was any hope left for one of the darkest and most complex 'superhero' characters in the comic-book world. Come 2005, up to this point, British director Christopher Nolan was still a relative maverick, having made indie breakthrough Following (1998), the mind-bending critical hit Memento (2000), and the solid re-make Insomnia (2002). Few realised that they were about to witness a re-defining of not only comic book adaptations, but blockbusters themselves.
We first meet Bruce Wayne (Christian Bale) in a Bhutanese prison, where he is approached by the mysterious Ducard (Liam Neeson) who offers him a chance to learn to fight with the League of Shadows, a generations-old group that punishes criminality with an iron fist. As he trains, we learn about Wayne's childhood, where after falling into a well and developing a phobia of bats, witnesses his parents' murder. Returning to a Gotham believing him dead and in a state of utter tutmoil, he turns to faithful butler Alfred (Michael Caine) and Wayne Enterprises' weapons developer Lucius Fox (Morgan Freeman) to turn him into a vigilante crime-fighter and a symbol of a stance against crime. He finds his childhood friend Rachel (Katie Holmes), the assistant district attorney, caught up in a scheme ran by Dr. Jonathan Crane (Cillian Murphy) to get mob boss Falcone's (Tom Wilkinson) thugs off with insanity pleas.
Tim Burton's once-definitive Batman (1989) made the mistake of having the film's villain The Joker engulf the majority of the film, keeping Michael Keaton's Batman almost in the background. Nolan knows that this is Batman's story, and wisely keeps the focus on Bale's anger-fuelled, guilt-ridden, and honourable leading character. In the hands of Nolan, Batman's origins are given the complexity it deserves, shifting back and forward in time to reveal more pieces to his jigsaw. This is no wise-cracking, tights-wearing Batman; when we meet him, he is giving a bunch of prison thugs a thorough beating, snapped legs and all. With the hugely talented Bale in the role, his character is given the weight it deserves - this is Nolan's world, and it is violent, real, and usually pissing down with rain.
As the norm since this film's release, Nolan has managed to gather a hugely-talented ensemble cast (and mainly British). While there is no obligatory main villain that may be a problem in anybody's else's hands, Nolan has instead given us a criminal ring for Batman to fight, from Wilkinson's ruthless crime boss, to Murphy's genuinely unsettling Scarecrow, who likes to fire his hallucinogenic poison in his victims' faces before donning his 'mask' (leading some some fine trippy moments). There is also Ra's Al-Ghul (Ken Watanabe), who plans to destroy Gotham along with Neeson's Ducard by infecting Gotham's water supply. With Gary Oldman's cop Jim Gordon, and Holmes' Rachel Dawes also in the mix, it may seem dangerously over-supplied with characters, but Nolan knows fully well how to handle such a large cast, tying their stories together with fine precision.
Having seen The Dark Knight (2008) and eagerly anticipating The Dark Knight Rises (2012), this admittedly pales in comparison, being that The Dark Knight was a phenomenal leap forward in big-budget film-making and an iconic film that will no doubt be remembered as one of the best of its decade. Also, the action scenes here are quickly-edited and shaky to the point where it is hard to tell what is happening, but Nolan would step up in confidence with the film's sequel and the proceeding Inception (2010). But as superhero origin stories go, this is probably second only to Superman (1978), and a welcome kick up the arse for one of the most enticing comic-book heroes in existence.
Every now and then in cinema, a performance comes along that seems so right and so fitting, that it is almost as if the actor was born to play the role. Robert DeNiro as Travis Bickle in Taxi Driver (1976), Max Schreck in Nosferatu (1922) or Ray Milland in The Lost Weekend (1945) are examples of career-defining performances, where you couldn't imagine any other actor filling the role. Okay, so Stephen Fry's performance here as the tragic poet, author and social rebel Oscar Wilde is hardly the greatest performance ever, but it seems that no other actor could capture the authenticity of his performance. Fry is a well-known author, intellectual and mostly comedic actor, with a deep-rooted love for literature and history. He is also homosexual with a history of depression and feelings of social misplacement, much like Wilde himself.
Brian Gilbert's film follows Wilde from his early marriage to Constance Wilde (Jennifer Ehle), which produced two children, until his sexual awakening with lifelong friend Robbie Ross (Michael Sheen). He describes his awakening as "being like a city under siege for years, and then the floodgates are opened". He has massive success with his only novel The Picture of Dorian Gray, and his social comedy The Importance of Being Earnest, when he meets his true love Lord Alfred 'Bosie' Douglas (Jude Law), a spoiled youth living under the tyrannical reign of his father, the Marquess of Queensbury (Tom Wilkinson). The Marquess' disapproval of the 'friendship' between his son and the well-known provocateur leads to a libel court case, which sees Wilde imprisoned for social indecency.
Unlike many biopics, Gilbert wisely chooses to stay away from detailing his work, and instead keeps the focus on the man himself. This allows the film to explore the mind of the subject, and a complex and vastly intelligent mind it is. The main focus though is of the social attitudes towards homosexuality (especially the relationship between an older and a younger man) and the prudishness towards the idea of following pleasure rather than duty. Wilde states in the court case that he is championing the ancients, the Greeks, and this now-taboo relationship was the focus of many a celebrated academic, namely Plato, who used it as a focal point of one of his key philosophy works. Society, it would seem, had gone back in time.
There are many great performances here from a hugely talented British cast (which also includes Vanessa Redgrave, Ioan Gruffudd and Zoe Wanamaker), namely from the always-excellent Sheen. He is now established as a great impressionist (his performances as Kenneth Williams and David Frost are near-perfection), but here he is stripped-down and gives his best performance as the dedicated Robbie Ross, a man who is in love with Wilde but remains loyal despite the love not being returned. But ultimately, this is Fry's film. Years of seeing him as quizmaster in panel show QI has made me forget what a talented performer he is. If ever there was an argument made of re-incarnation, then there is no finer example than here. Apart from an uncanny resemblance, he seems to embody the very soul of Wilde.
Over the past year or so, prior to The Green Hornet's release, we have seen Seth Rogen decrease in size. No longer is he the loveable chubby loser from Knocked Up (2007) - he went on to play slim-to-chubby loser in Funny People (2009) - he is now slim Seth Rogen, Action Star! Okay, I think I'm going a bit overboard. He isn't exactly Chris Hemsworth in Thor (2011), but fair play to him, at least he's trying. Having just read back what I've just typed, it perhaps may come across that I hate Seth Rogen. I really don't, I'm usually the only one that defends him. I loved Knocked Up and Superbad (2007), and Pineapple Express (2008)was very amusing, even if he was overshadowed by James Franco. It's just a bit irritating that, even though he's seemingly pushing for different roles and showing the dedication to the cause by slimming down, in The Green Hornet, underneath it all, he's still the same slow-witted, gravelly-voiced nerd that he always plays.
Britt Reid is a playboy millionaire's son who spends his time throwing wild parties and showing girls around his father's car collection. He is haunted by a childhood memory in which his father (now publisher of newspaper The Daily Sentinel) James (Tom Wilkinson), believing him to be causing fights at school, tore the head off his favourite superhero toy, and he now believes that his father is ashamed and despises him. When James is killed by an allergic reaction to a wasp sting, Britt finds himself alone and befriends family mechanic and coffee-maker Kato (Jay Chou), and upon agreeing that they both hated Britt's father, get drunk and go to cut the head off a recently erected statue of him. Whilst there, they witness a mugging in which the two beat the crap out of the thugs (mainly Kato). Excited and liberated, Britt convinces Kato that the two should be crime-fighters.
So far, so amusing. The main problem with the film begins when it introduces the main bad guy Benjamin Chudnovsky (Christoph Waltz). Nicolas Cage had earlier been attached to play Chudnovsky, attracted to the fact that Michel Gondry was directing. But he pulled out, stating that he didn't want to play a one-dimensional bad-guy. And he was right. With every fully-fleshed superhero comes the need for an enticing bad guy. But he is a bland thug, slowly taking control of the city and the crystal-meth trade, without quoting a memorable line, having a memorable scene, or having a particular goal. It's a tragic waste of the talents of Waltz, who mesmerised everybody with his portrayal of The Jew Hunter in Inglourious Basterds (2009).
Where it triumphs, however, is when Britt and Kato are together. Chou and Rogen have plenty of chemistry, and Chou shows he has plenty of comedy chops. Rogen, although playing a very similar character to the one's he's played before, still raises a smile as the clueless, child-like and naive Britt, stumbling through his crime-fighting while Kato does all the work. Only when the thinly-drawn Lenore Case (Cameron Diaz) arrives on the scene as a budding criminology graduate, the two takes an interest in her and are then ultimately pitted against each other. Apart from the obvious physical aspects, it's not really apparent why the two would take such an interest.
It's a very post-modern take on the superhero myth that seems to increasingly popular these days. Only it's been done a hell of a lot better in previous films. Watchmen (2009), based on a unbelievably good graphic novel by Alan Moore, was intelligent, exciting, multi-layered, and had fully realised characters. And last year's Kick-Ass (2010) was much funnier in the comedy department, and explored the vigilante angle much better. Plus it had Hit-Girl, which every film misses. The Green Hornet's only goal seems to be to entertain and amuse, which it quite often fails to do.
A worthy attempt, but with the high standards set by other more successful films, The Green Hornet gets somewhat lost in the pile. I don't know if a sequel is planned, or if the film made enough money for it to be greenlit, but if so I will be interested to watch where they go with it, and hope the most important aspect of the film is developed better - the story!
His belief-beggaringly successful TV career made graduated into movies in the late 1990's, and cinema was forced to endure his mixture of prat-falling and tough-guy gun-totin', to which he was convincing at neither. But perhaps I'm being unfair to Lawrence as, after all, Black Knight was written, financed, cast, produced and directed by a whole host of people. all of whom should hang their heads in shame. It is a generic time-travel, culture-clash story in which theme-park layabout Jamal (Lawrence) is transported back to Medieval England, where he faces a corrupt king (Kevin Conway) and his douchebag enforcer (Vincent Regan).
