2024, David Mackenzie (Hell or High Water) -- download
Generic thriller and exactly what I wanted, what I needed. And by the director of Hell or High Water!
The elevator pitch is this: a fixer works to assist whistle blowers in their actions against the corporations they wish to unmask. He works in the shadows communicating primarily by "Tri-State Relay Service", a network that allows the deaf, or other such disabled, to communicate to non-disabled by way of operators and TDDs (telecommunication device for the deaf) -- basically he types, the operators speak, and vice versa. The network itself is completely protected, legally, as they keep no records of any calls whatsoever.
Sarah Grant (Lily James, Cinderella) was a researcher working for a bio-firm that made a genetically modified wheat strain which had horrible long term side effects, and the company covered it up. She really didn't want to whistle-blow, she just wanted out, but the company ruined her life anyway. She tried going to a law firm known for dealing with such matters, but they admit they cannot do anything, and put her on to Ash (Riz Ahmed, Rogue One: A Star Wars Story), the fixer. His job will be to facilitate the return of the evidence, but require a payment from the corporation as payment for his services and as a statement of their agreement.
We meet Ash, a rightfully paranoid loner with secure lock-ups for his work and a solitary life, but for his AA meetings. The job should be easy enough, but Sarah has noticed the surveillance team watching her apartment, which Ash confirms pretty quickly. As the hand-over becomes more and more complicated by the duplicitous surveillance team led by Dawson (Sam Worthington, Avatar), Ash breaks his own rules by getting to know Sarah better. He's been living a lonely life for so long, when she attempts to get past his rules & barriers with her vulnerability, he gives in.
The fun in the movie is the spy-craft and pacing. This was an excellently paced movie with only a few players, giving us ample time to flip back & forth between the complicated actions and the emotional weight behind it all. Ash is a careful creature of enforced habits and once he starts breaking down his own barriers, I could not help but wonder if he was being played.
Beyond lie spoilers! Read with caution thrown to the wind!
He was being played, but not exactly how I was thinking it was. I had thought Sarah an independent player, perhaps an actual whistle-blower who was manipulated into working with Ash to unmask his operations. But no, she was actually the leader of a counter-fixer-team hired by a previously completed job's corporate overlords. They seek to dismantle Ash's operations and recover their evidence of malfeasance. It takes great effort from Ash to recover from this and turn the tables on them, and return to his lonely but needed work.
This movie looked good, felt good, colour scheme and lighting with the grim colourations and set design chosen often for spy-thrillers. It was tightly paced and characterization was minimal and only the essential used.
I was so into this film, but at one point I said to Adj "If Sarah turns out to be a plant to try and flush Ash out, I'm going to be so pissed". And I was so pissed. Not because it was a bad turn for the story, mind, just I kind of dug the chemistry and tension that was building between the two. But since we both had to ask whether Sarah was a plant, it's evident the filmmakers wanted us to think this way, to call into question Sarah's veracity. It's pretty savvy.
ReplyDeleteAnd yeah, I did not expect her to be the leader of the whole Merc operation.
In hindsight though, when it was all over, "Sarah" made less, and less sense. Like, Ash is so methodical in his research that "Sarah" as a construct seems an impossibility at least in fooling Ash. Like when he looks her up on that corporation's web page and she's still listed as a researcher there or whatever, even though she's been fired some time before.. that should have been a red flag right there. (Do big firms like that drill down that far into their employees on their webpages and also not maintain them?). But the firm that Sarah's supposedly trying to take down, are they real, or manufactured as well? And if it's manufactured wouldn't Ash be able to verify its existence based on its stock market ticker. And the 200 page document, is Ash so sloppy as to not scrutinize that for veracity? I can't believe the Mercs would be able to produce an infallible document of that size from scratch.
And Sarah's social media profile that Ash seems to obsess over, how did they reasonably manufacture that one? Do any social media tools let you back date your posts?
I dunno, given Ash's skills it seems highly improbable that "Sarah" could actually fool him unless she really was a researcher employed at the real firm they're saying she was employed at and she used her real name and social security number.
As much as I enjoyed the film in the moment, I have too many questions about "Sarah" to be satisfied with the movie. It's too bad too, I think it would have really worked nicely had Sarah just been who she said she was and the film had to wrestle with whether these characters could be together when all was said and done.
One detail I did notice throughout was the wardrobe Sarah had which was a lot of low-cut or drapey tops that really emphasized her boobage. It seemed weird given the intense situation she was in that she was dressing so...alluringly, especially as she knew she was being watched by the Mercs. But in the reveal that she's trying to bait Ash, it all makes more sense. So I give the film big credit on that one.