nixsight

Slumdog Millionaire

I’ve had a bad run of luck with Danny Boyle films in recent years – though apparently I failed to write the “Sunshine” review I planned to do, it would have painted a similar picture to the one I wrote for “28 Days Later” – promising premises, beautiful direction, but ultimately a failure to pay-off scuppered both films for me.

“Slumdog Millionaire” doesn’t have the same pacing issues as those other two films, and in fact, by weaving it’s story around a quiz show – the Indian version of “Who Wants To Be A Millionaire?”, as if you didn’t know – it’s pacing is pretty assured by it’s adherence to the show’s.

With both of those previous movies, the Alex Garland scripts seemed to just sort of trail off into mediocrity between the second and third acts, and this doesn’t happen here, either – the script stays consistent throughout, and it’s difficult not to notice that Garland isn’t around for this movie, and draw conclusions from that.

You’ve already probably seen or heard everything you need to about the film, so I won’t reiterate the story… and most of what I’ve heard about it, from people who don’t write poster copy, is true – it is visually and stylistically beautiful, and the music is amazing. And ultimately, it’s a satisfying experience, with a few meaty moments in the protagonist’s lives paying off with vigour by the end.

What I’m a little perplexed by is the depth of feeling that seems to surround the movie, and one can only assume that it’s from people who for the most part, didn’t realise how terrible life is in other parts of the world. Though the response to it has mostly made it sound incredibly worthy and worthwhile, I was left feeling that I had just watched a fairly sweet movie, but one that only really used the location to enhance the romance/conflict at it’s core. The scenes of poverty and violence throughout, though admittedly horrible when they happen, are for the most part dressing for the story, rather than actually at the core of the movie.

Even the quiz show element of it, while initially looking like the forging of a pivotal theme about the contrast between poverty and riches ends up being a means to an end for the love story in the movie, and as such the film doesn’t really say anything about poverty, or mistreatment of the young, because that isn’t what the characters are really forged by here.

Dev Patel’s Jamal is well-played, but ultimately he’s a hero created out of a romantic sense of destiny and a quickness of wit, rather than through his travails – and the same goes for his brother. Their characters are set in their early years, and their behaviour stays consistent and not really changed by the shitstorms that they go through.

Actually, though the performances throughout are pretty good, the young adults here don’t have nearly as much to do as the children playing the roles when younger – that’s where the grunt work on establishing their characters is done, and those young actors have to take the credit for the best work here.

So a pretty great film to watch as a transitory pleasure, but I didn’t see the depth of feeling here that I’d thought I’d get – I was lead to believe that it might be as gritty as “City Of God”, or as transformative as a “Shawshank Redemption”, but ultimately it was just a really good romantic yarn set against a backdrop that we don’t often see in western cinema.

Australia

I always end up enjoying Baz Luhrmann films, despite always thinking I won’t. And “Australia”, while it had the always appealing draw of Hugh Jackman, also had the slightly worrying issue of length.

I can handle a long movie at the cinema like the best of them, but only if it holds together – “Watchmen” was an example of a movie that I’m hoping will pull together better on DVD, for example. But most of the reviews I had read of “Australia” seemed to think it didn’t.

They were right, as far as it goes, but when you’re within reach of your own sofa and beverage making facilities, it doesn’t bother you nearly so much, with this epic.

Visually, this is a beautiful movie, the actors do great work, and from scene to scene, Luhrmann’s direction is great. It’s in the extended piece where the film starts to fall apart.

The problem here is ambition over discipline… There are a lot of themes, and two or three main plot strands, that Luhrmann obviously felt very strongly about, but ultimately, it’s a juggling act, where the juggler isn’t as good with knives as he is with pins – erratic cutting ends up happening.

What you end up with is about three or four stories, all of which you want to see more of, but all of which come up wanting – the romance, the droving, the Japanese attack – the fatal business rivalry and the Australian Aboriginal stuff – all of them seem worthy of their own movie, and none of them gets one. Luhrmann’s reach exceeds his grasp, here, and it’s a shame, because what made it onto film was pretty impressive nonetheless.

Eagle Eye

Oddly, of the three movies we watched last week, this was the most truly satisfying – probably because of all of them, this was the one that I really expected nothing of.

As far as I can tell, this fast little action movie has been getting a bit of a critical drubbing, and it’s probably not surprising why. Shia LaBeouf is one of those actors who’s very visage just seems to beg antagonism – though so far we haven’t seen a performance from him that really seemed to merit it: He’s no Shakespearean genius of an actor, but then, neither are many other people, and he’s no Hayden Christensen, either.

It’s a high-concept action movie, too, which means it’s already setting itself up for people to hate it – and of course, no matter how outlandish the idea of the movie throughout, it will always end in a fairly basic showdown, which this does.

But there’s a nifty little science-light surveillance thriller, here, that doesn’t twist hard enough to shock you too much, but does have en0ugh going on plot-wise to keep one’s interest. And there are explosions and chases that aren’t lame, which is too damn rare in action movies at the moment.

Ultimately, it’s not the wide-open and beautifully recreated Australian vistas and battlescapes of Luhrmann’s effort, or the spunky, vibrant chewing-gum social commentary of Boyle’s hit, but it is a punchy and intriguing action movie, and that’s more than we were expecting.