KWIF = "Kent's Week In Film", so...stuff he watched in a week, or so. Just not this week.
This Some Week:
Wonka (2023, d. Paul King - Crave/Max)
Extraction 2 (2023, d. Sam Hargrave - Netflix)
Die Hard with a Vengeance (1996, d. John McTiernan - DVD)
The Hunt for Red October (1990, d. John McTiernan - DVD)
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Seriously, who asked for Wonka to happen?
We, Toast and Kent, know this answer: The Purple Suits.
Wonka is a result of Hollywood's IP-driven landscape, where origin stories for popular characters are seen as a necessary vehicle to both perpetuate a property and potentially reboot it while providing the opportunity to recast a role or three or ten.
It's happening all the time (a trailer for Transfomers One, which tells the origin of Optimus Prime and Megatron has just dropped the day that I write this) and I don't know if audiences are as cynical about it as the more cinephilic are (as I am) but they just seem so tired.
But, lazy film idea doesn't have to mean lazy film. And Paul King, poached from a plum Paddington gig proves the point with Wonka. I had a surprisingly good time. All it takes is putting the right people in place.
My review for Paul King's Paddington 2 lives over in Letterboxd, as it was a film from The Dark Year of the blog (what, you didn't read all 7600 words Toasty and I just spilled about our 2000th post?) but I, like many, had my pants utterly charmed by that movie. I have not revisited Paddington 2, despite the pants-charming, and my stab at watching the first Paddington was interrupted and I never returned to it, but King's thumbprint is clearly very prominent on the two films. I only just learned that King's TV work includes some directing of Garth Marenghi's Darkplace and The Mighty Boosh, two very arch and weird series that I wished I had spent more time with in my younger years, because I don't have the time now. Both Darkplace and Boosh are the product of their creators, and not necessarily a result of King's guiding force, but that's not to say that King didn't bring anything to the table, and also not to say that things didn't rub off on King.
Much of the same magic of Paddington is found here. There's a timelessness to the storytelling, not that it's set in a specific time period, but that there's a lack of era-specificity that unmoors it from our specific reality. Thought there's a wide-eyed naivete to the characters of the world, it also contains a message about class structures and capitalism-gone-wrong, and even about police and how they really only protect property and the wealthy. Well, it's in the subtext, anyway.
I don't love the Gene Wilder Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, but I've seen it enough in my life, and I like it okay (the Johnny Depp one I haven't seen, but from what I recall of the trailers he was playing Wonka by way of Michael Jackson), so I'm not necessarily hung up on any specific interpretation of the character or needing anything specific out of this film.
Timothee Chalamet, I have to say, I was wary about. I hadn't hopped aboard the Chalatrain up until this year, but between Dune Pt. 2 and Wonka, I am sold on his star power. Can he believably be a cult leader/warrior/politician as a wistful, fanciful chocolateer? Yes, indeed he can. He brings an unending hopefulness to Willy here that echoes Paddington without the bumbling. Willy is hyper-competent and utterly creative, but he's not without his flaws which see him set back more than a time or two. Especially when three rival chocolateers, in secret collusion with one another, seek to drive Willy out of their very locked-down marketplace.
It's not a full-on musical, but there are musical numbers. It's Mary Poppins-esque. It's a film meant for everyone, frowning only on the selfish and greedy. That bite of darkness that Wilder had in his performance is not at all present here, and while some bemoan its absence, it's a more uplifting film without it.
I don't know why Paddington, just as much an IP-driven movie as this one, was given such leniency but Wonka so severely scrutinized (I could guess at length but I have other films to write about), but under King's guidance the flavours are not as far apart as one would suspect. It was a surprising smash success, given the scrutiny, and I suspect a sequel, but not likely another direct Dahl adaptation.
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Tyler Rake, Rakestraction himself, is back!!
He got shot a whole heap back at the end of Extraction 1: In Which Tyler Rake Does A Rakestraction, but he's not dead, just severely wounded. He fell into a very gross looking river, and likely got sepsis. Good thing he's got gobs of money and Chris Hemsworth's good looks otherwise he wouldn't have made it. But he did make it, but he's become a sad, wounded puppy, retires to his Austrian(?) cabin and sulks about his dead son some more.
I shouldn't be pithy about the dead son bit... Hemsworth brings a genuine emotional center to Tyler Rake as a traumatized man but it's got nothing to do with his physical wounds.
Rakestraction is approached by fellow handsome man, and Hemsworth's good pal from the Thor movies, Idris Elba to do him a job. Rake's handler and business partner in Rakestractions Inc., Nik (Golshifteh Farahani), is not happy that Rake has accepted the job, but she will be by his side wherever he goes. Rake does his Rocky 4 training montage and gets back into fighting shape. No long-term side-effects for him!
Farahani does an awesome job at playing a badass mercenary as well as Rake's best friend. She straddles the line very well of never telling the audience exactly how she feels about rake, whether it's a deep platonic love or something more that she knows he's unable to reciprocate. A romantic side-plot is not part of this action-heavy (action-only?) series, but Rake's personal life is really drawn out when his ex-wife, Olga Kurylenko, makes herself known. It's her sister and her kids that need extracting from a very, very bad situation.
Rakestractions Inc. gets everyone out in loud, violent, pulse pounding, anxiety-inducing long-take sequences, first through a prison riot, then a car chase, then on a train. But then, when seemingly resting comfortably in Vienna, only for the very bad people to come hunt them down. It gets really messy.
If I were to hazard a guess, I would say I liked Rakestraction 2 more than Rakestraction 1, but, if I'm being honest, both of these films kinda left my brain the moment they were done. They are thoroughly engaging in the moment, but they're so light on character and plot that they don't have a stickiness to them. Hemsworth is a very likeable and attractive presence to follow around and his physicality (and physique) are very impressive to see in action... and these are action-centric showcases, spinning out of the John Wick mold. Unlike Wick, which was a series that built a world around its killing-machine-of-a-central-character-who they-barely-explored-over-four-films, Rakestraction drops its character into a setting, has him fight his way out, and gives a bit of space for the character to breathe in the middle, drop some character nuggets, then continue fighting. It works, but it's not enough to really sell us on Tyler Rake as our next John McClane or whatnot.
But boy, those action sequences are amazingly well orchestrated and look intense. I wish they would just do a G.I. Joe movie in this vein, a tactical force of specialized individuals dropped into a situation fighting their way out, showing off their stuff. But I digress.
The only thing I don't like about the Rakestraction films is the unacknowledged collateral damage. Because you know there are people everyone just taking bullets or having their cars flipped unexpectedly (does anyone ever have their car flipped expectedly?). I just can't help but think about what might be going on just out of frame and in the world outside that the extraction is just plowing through.
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But it remains and incredible action movie and the only worthy sequel to Die Hard (I rewatched Die Hard 2 recently, and while it's enjoyable enough as an action movie, Willis' performance could have been any character...this feels like John McClane). What works so well is, well, everything. The premise, the casting, the directing, the action, the twists... they all collude so perfectly...right up until the end.
The final moments of DHw/aV are kind of unmemorable. There's a Canada/US border town and a helicopter, and you would be excused for mistaking it for the much better sequence in The Long Kiss Goodnight. There's a quick action beat, some gunfire, then it's over. It's so abrupt. It's not unsatisfying, but it's not totally fulfilling either.
Samuel L. Jackson is the perfect pairing with Willis, in that golden age of the 90's when, well, Sam Jackson was the perfect pairing for anyone (see also The Long Kiss Goodnight). That man knows how to deliver every time, all of the time. The racial tension is far from ignored, which is surprising for the 90's era of supposed "post-racial harmony" that was sold so hard to sweep uncomfortable conversations under the rug, never to be seen from again...until someone moves the rug. I like the addressing of it head on and the two men finding that they're both just men. Jeremy Irons is not Alan Rickman, and he doesn't get to be as tricksy and weasely, but I like the facade he puts on. Is it strange that he delivers a better performance over the phone than in person?
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I honestly can't recall if I've ever seen The Hunt For Red October before. I think I have, but I may be mistaking my recollections for Crimson Tide. All submarine movies look the same to me.
Based off the Tom Clancy novel, this is a very 1990 movie but set as a period piece in 1984, really only because Russia got decommunismed (for a time anyway) in the time between the book and the movie. The film posits that an experimental Russian sub, with the ability to move unseen by radar/sonar in the water, and armed to the gills and able to decimate the Atlantic coastline with nuclear warheads has been stolen by a celebrated Russian naval captain, played by Sean Connery.
Jack Ryan, played here by Alec Baldwin, is not the action hero he will be known as, but instead an competent analyst for the CIA. He suspects that Connery's captain is trying to defect. Elsewhere there's another American sub led by Scott Glen, where their sonar operator Courtney B. Vance is obsessed with an errant signal they picked up then lost. Meanwhile, on the Red October, Connery has a small subset of the crew loyal to him and his plan to defect, but the rest of the crew aren't entirely aware.
The genius of the film is in planting the seed that Connery's captain, having suffered a devastating personal loss, may be suicidal and intent on taking the world down with him.
For a film that largely takes place around consoles or tables, it's absolutely gripping. Set as a period piece, it still holds up as a period piece, and McTiernan's direction, with some ace editing, has the feel of an action movie even though there's very little actual action. It's pacing, and timing, a similar magic trick pulled off by Oppenheimer.
There's a genius trick on McTiernan and co.'s part, where it starts off with the Russian crew speaking Russian, but after a little time with them, McT does a pull in-pull out of the camera in between a beat of Connery talking and it switches from subtitles and phonetic Russian to English. Even Connery's accent can be explained away as being different from the crew as he's said to be Lithuanian. That facade only comes apart in the final moments of the film when Connery has to speak with the Americans and still just speaks like Connery, but at that point in the film, who really cares.
I can take a CG bear more seriously than I can take Timothee Chalamet.
ReplyDeleteWas pleasantly surprised by how enjoyable DHWaV was. Been ages since I've seen it.
HfRO and Clear and Present Danger are my fav Jack Ryan movies.
I've been in a car that unexpectedly flipped over, it wasn't a fun experience :)
I have the Chalamachine movie in the hopper (downloaded) but haven't watched it yet.
ReplyDeleteRakestractions Inc. needs to be an Amazon action-comedy series where a C-grade employee of the company keeps on getting mistaken for Rake, and doesn't argue, while barely getting out of the ensuing situations his barely-competent ass can handle.