Hanna

Released:  April 8^th, 2011

Rated:  PG-13

Distributor:  Focus Features

Starring:  Saoirse Ronan, Eric Bana, Cate Blanchett, Tom Hollander

Directed by:  Joe Wright

Written by:  Seth Lochhead, David Farr

Personal Bias Alert:  big Saoirse Ronan fan, likes electronic music

7.8 of 10

            The fairy tale element runs strong in this one.  You wouldn’t expect that if you saw any of Hanna’s print advertisements, and even the trailer quickly abandons the idea after a mystical opening.  It’s much easier to sell action, people understand that quickly, than to try and explain Hanna’s arthouse blend of coming-of-age drama and science fiction thrills.

            The screenplay, which appeared twice on the Black List (an annual list of the best unproduced screenplays in Hollywood), is the kind of dense, ambitious piece that gets kicked around for years before finding the right combination of star and director to get a green light.  Saoirse Ronan signing on as the waif-like assassin got the ball rolling, and her recommendation of Joe Wright, who previously directed her to an Oscar nomination in Atonement, got the film a healthy enough budget to see out its off-kilter vision. 

Wright is well-known for his prominent visual style, and he throws everything he can at the fantastical story of a young girl fighting to escape the clutches of the CIA.  He plays with lighting simply for the awe factor (see the incredible escape scene early in the film), and employs his trademark tracking shots on several occasions.  Wright isn’t an action movie director by trade, and it shows in how unconventionally he presents these sequences.  All of them work and are made more engrossing by their originality, eschewing the hip, quick-cutting jerkiness of most modern action in favor of meticulously choreographed, long fights.

The other odd element of these action scenes, namely that a young girl continuously bests grown men in hand-to-hand combat, is an overt nod to its fairy tale aspirations, but a closer look reveals that the action itself is only a B-plot to a more traditional fable.  Hanna is primarily a tale about growing into the adult world, where you make bonds and encounter complications that leave you bewildered and overwhelmed.  Ronan as the titular character is perfectly cast, with a body not yet sprung into a woman’s but with a face that can encapsulate the pain and the joy of being alive.  Her performances have long exceed her years, and this may be the best of her childhood work.

All these elements make for a rather fascinating film, but not an even one.  At times, the fairy tale elements overpowers everything else, and anyone craving a solid explanation for what exactly is going on will likely be disappointed.  Hanna is a piece that’s content with indulgence.  Some have labeled this as pretention, but don’t mistake Hanna’s grasping reach for a film that lacks goals.

Anyone who has seen Hanna is likely wondering when I will get to the film’s score, because it’s a prominent, make-or-break component.  Done by the electronic dance duo The Chemical Brothers, it blends the film’s elements into kookily loud beats, driving the action forward and carrying much of the weight when it comes to keeping the fairy tale-feel front and center.  The most prominent song, The Devil is in the Details, is even hummed by a character throughout, and this inescapability is what makes it so divisive.  It’s a bold score, to say the least, and some people will just never be into electronic beats.  No matter your personal taste, what’s undeniable is how complimentary it is to the film’s ambitions.

Hanna is a film that puts itself out there, and because of that has attracted some strong sentiments.  However, its supporters haven’t coalesced into a singular fandom, and without a strong cult status, it’s likely to become forgotten.

Other Notes:

Ø  I didn’t even mention how awesome Erica Bana, Cate Blanchett, and Tom Hollander are.

Ø  Speaking of Hollander, he has quite a knack for playing characters that subtly unsettle you.

Ø  “Did she turn out as you hoped?”  “Better.”

Funny Games

Released:  March 11^th, 1998

Rated:  Unrated

Distributor:  Attitude Films

Starring:  Susanne Lothar, Ulrich Mühe, Arno Frisch, Frank Giering, Stefan Clapczynski

Directed by:  Michael Haneke

Written by:  Michael Haneke

Personal Bias Alert:  vaguely knew the plot going in, aware of Haneke’s reputation for difficult films

7.2 of 10

            A film comes along every year or so that questions the amount of violence in movies.  The money flow indicates that audiences may have too healthy an appetite for bloodlust, to the point that we could reasonably be seen as the grossly overweight humans from Wall-E covered in blood splatter.  The question of why, and the more fraught question of why we enjoy it, shouldn’t be ignored, no matter how uncomfortable they make you feel.  A single film probably can’t cover all the answers, but few make you look as long or as hard at your own answers as Michael Haneke’s Funny Games.

            Haneke chose a tried and true formula for making his audience uncomfortable:  make it over-the-top and make it real.  Our desensitization is to cartoon violence, the kind where someone can get bloodlessly pummeled but still stand back up for another round.  Funny Games makes each blow count, and the progressively pained, haggard appearance of the well-to-do family being tortured is startling.  The punch of any film that pushes the boundaries like this will inevitably soften over time as others push it further (in this case Lars von Trier and Gaspar Noé come to mind), but the looks on the parent’s faces, particularly on the wife played by Susanne Lothar, remains unnerving.  If Haneke was trying to make his audience uncomfortable, then he certainly succeeded, and the film has enough bite to keep people squirming for decades to come.

            The tortured family is straight out of idyllic 1950s America:  a mom, a dad, a son, and a dog.  An ill-fated trip to the family lake house is their undoing, as they come across a pair of young men who slip inside and force them to play a series of sadistic ‘games.’  They’re more interested in playing with the family that straight-up murdering them, hence the title, and the cold calculation of their moves makes for a tense thriller.  The complication is that one of the boys, Paul (Arno Frisch), periodically addresses the audience to shock us out of the pleasurably familiar genre flow.  These conspiratorial winks and nods are what force you to take a step back and wonder why the hell you’re enjoying yourself.  The family are clearly the victims, but you’re experiencing the film in the same way that the boys are experiencing it:  perched on a couch with the smugness of someone who chose to be present.  What does that say about our knee-jerk conclusions about the boys, ourselves, and our notions of evil? 

            There are other ways that Haneke toys with our experience, but not all work as well.  An overlong scene in the back half of the movie grinds the tension to a halt and doesn’t add much (perhaps, as Paul later remarks, it was just to get to a feature-length runtime).  The music choices, though, were the biggest drawback.  They are jarring in a completely unnecessary way, jerking you out of the flow of the film far too quickly.  There’s already plenty of reminders that we’re watching a movie, but most operate in a quiet, clean way that encourages contemplation, while the wrenching of the music engenders nothing but a feeling of nervous fear.

            Still, you get the sense that every tiny move Haneke made was purposeful, and most of them work towards his main point.  The boys, who are both in the awkward stage just before manhood, are the precise demographic that Hollywood targets for its most violent films.  And yet, the violence occurs almost exclusively off screen, with the boys’ games and their stagings so neatly laid out that you sense the crux of Haneke’s point lying somewhere behind that map.  The point you come up with will undoubtedly be different than my own, but what’s clear is that Haneke went into Funny Games with a purpose that was relentlessly executed.

Other Notes:

Ø  The true climax of the film is one last nod to the audience, a final reminder that we chose to sit through these events when we could’ve left at any time.

Ø  What is up with the cast dying?  Three of the main actors are now dead, aged 54, 51, and 38.

Ø  This original version is in German.  Haneke made a shot-for-shot remake in English in 2007, which I haven’t seen.

No Good Deed

Released:  September 12^th, 2014

Rated:  PG-13

Studio:  Screen Gems

Starring:  Idris Elba, Taraji P. Henson

Directed by:  Sam Miller

Written by:  Aimée Lagos

Personal Bias Alert:  likes Elba and Henson, gets alarmed when press screenings are cancelled

1.5 of 10

            It’s a good bet that a film that isn’t screened for critics will be bad.  If the screenings are scheduled, then abruptly cancelled?  Forget it; it’s sure to be terrible.  If the film’s been sitting in the can for a year for no good reason?  Don’t even bother going.  And yet No Good Deed, which checks off each of the above warnings, has gathered enough of an audience to come out of its opening weekend at #1, ending Guardians of the Galaxy’s month-long run.

            There is, in fact, two good reasons for the optimism surrounding this film.  Its leads, Idris Elba and Taraji P. Henson, are proven talents, each with a long list of credits to their names.  They’ve both been unable to string together enough quality work to become true superstars, but anyone who’s followed television or movies for the past 15 years will know their capabilities.  The prospect of the two of them sharing a film, bouncing their talents off of each other, is truly exciting, so I understand people taking a chance on this one.  Unfortunately, the material is so bad that even they get sucked down with it.

            Henson plays Terri, a stay-at-home mom but former District Attorney specializing in violence against women cases, who inexplicably lets a large, mysterious man into her house while she is home alone with her two young children.  Have you picked up on the character inconsistencies yet?  Terri’s supposed to be a very smart woman, intimately familiar with how bad situations go down, and yet she invites the man with a gash on his forehead, whom she found rummaging around in her flower pot, into her home.  That’s just one in a long line of incredibly stupid things these characters must do to allow this movie to exist.

            Obviously, Elba plays Colin, the flower rummager, whom we’ve already seen kill three people.  He’s also been implicated in six other murders, and has been dramatically labeled a malignant narcissist at his parole hearing.  Now, that’s not a recognized psychological disorder by the DSM, but I guess that parole board member reads Wikipedia instead of reputable sources.  Point is, the movie’s established Colin as a bad dude, and yet what follows is a long sequence in which the film tries to build tension with a will-he-won’t-he hurt her scenario (spoiler:  he does).  When the film finally gets done dragging its feet and unleashes crazy Colin on the family, we’ve already burned half of the film’s short 84 minute runtime.

            But hey, twenty minutes of Elba and Henson playing cat-and-mouse with each other could have been fun.  They’re definitely two actors I’m willing to watch sit in a room and verbally spar with each other, but this film isn’t even smart enough to let them do that.  Instead, we get a bunch of ominous music, imminent storm references, and lighting so dark it’s sometimes difficult to make out Elba and Henson’s faces.  It’s a classic case of not trusting your actors to tell the story, which in this case is silly, but without the sequence this film would be too short to be a feature.  I guess the filmmakers think that’s enough of a reason for it to exist?

            So we finally arrive at the point everyone knew was coming:  Colin showing his true colors.  Those colors are murderous, mind you, and still he inexplicably doesn’t immediately kill Terri.  Why?  No reason is ever given.  None whatsoever.  The only reason I can surmise is that there wouldn’t be a film if he did, because everything we’ve learned about his character tells me that he would have killed her many times over.  This inexplicable development does give the film a certain unpredictability, but since it’s never explained it just ends up being frustrating instead of entertaining.

            According to the established characters, this film should have been about twenty minutes long.  Colin should have showed up at the house, Terri should have refused to let him in, and Colin should have kicked the door down and killed her.  Everything else that happens, which is most of the film, makes zero sense.  No Good Deed is one of those films that simply shouldn’t exist, and yet inexplicably does.

            Can we all agree to give Elba and Henson a quality film to work on together?  I’d still like to see that.

            Other Notes:

Ø  Guess who else is dumb?  Terri’s friend.  Really, really dumb.

Ø  When I move, I always take boxes out of the moving van, stack them in the yard, and then move them into the house.

Ø  This film is really stab-happy.