Flick Bits: Wanted/Hancock/Drillbit Taylor

Wanted

Geeky office dork (James McAvaoy) is recruited by a shadowy outfit to off a master assassin who killed his father. Cue brutal training montages as nerd is transformed from pathetic weakling to kick ass killer, then cue uber stylish action set pieces as killer hero and killer villain face-off. With a twist or two and Angelina Jolie thrown in of course to spice up the whole endeavour.

If Russian director Timur Bekmambetov flashed the merest glimpse of action dazzle in his Russian Fantasy flicks Night Watch and Day Watch (which took the courageously un-Hollywood like decision to wrap up a trilogy in 2 films), he stops playing peek-a-boo with his Hollywood debut Wanted, digging deep into his arsenal to unleash some serious cinematic pyrotechnics on jaded cine-goers. Not since John Woo's Hard Target (which incidentally, also marked the US debut of a foreign director), has a movie so blatantly coasted on sheer cinematic technique.

If Hard Target's close-ups of spinning arrows, slow-mo shots of a shattering wind shield followed by one of a spent cartridge spinning majestically into the air after being ejected from a pump action shotgun on top of the ubiquitious Woo-patented two handed gun ballets, is a clarion call by a debuting cine wunderkind, firmly established in his home turf but needing to make his presence felt on a foreign soil, one stating clearly "I know you're jaded seeing umpteen gun fights, chases and explosions, but have you seen it done like this?", then Wanted is Bekmambetov's calling card offering his sevices to up the style ante.

I's all gleefully ridiculous of course. Bullets that bend? One that boomerangs back on the shooter after a brain-splattering circular trajectory? Reversing film to show a bullet's backward journey from target back to gun chamber? Cars somersaulting off each other, running up the side of buses? There's enough eye-rolling moments in Wanted to rattle your optical nerves, but take it all as the rip-roaringly silly ride it is, and you'll have a blast.

Hancock

Hancock is a weird hybrid that never quite gels. Superhero Hancock (Will Smith) who's a derelict bum is given an image makeover by a well meaning publicist (Jason Bateman), not realising he shares a past with his gorgeous wife (Charlize Theron). Part superhero flick, part battle of the sexes rom-com, director Peter Berg can't seem to meld the two successfully. If anything, Hancock's most unique selling point would be the case it makes against mixed-race relations. A Black man and a White Woman can't get together without dire consequences for them both? If a Race Relations commentary on miscegenation in America today was the film-makers agenda all along, then this would be one of the ballsiest and gutsiest Summer Popcorn-er ever to grace screens. We should have more of them. Only with better packaging next time.

Drillbit Taylor

Owen Wilson's slacker charm and lazy drawl is hardly enough to salavage this tale of a pair of high school nerds hiring a bum who they think is a tough ex-army man as their bodyguard against a vicious bully. Wilson's still supremely watchable but the laughs are too sporadic to file this as a Wilson classic like Starsky & Hutch or You, Me & Dupree.

Flick Bits: Meenaxi/Ore Kadal/Anjathey

A dash of Indian cuisine in my otherwise largely Occidental fare in my movie consumption is a welcome diversion, yielding some undiscovered gems that tickle the palate. My last excursion to the Indian sub-continent for flicks was a mixed bag though:

MEENAXI: A TALE OF 3 CITIES (Hindi)

No one's happier than moi that running parallel to the Bollywood assembly line of Dream Manufacturing Machines is a non-mainstream film culture that tests, challenges and even pushes accepted norms in ideas and narrative. It's yielded gems like the Rajasthan infused noir and intrigue of Manorama:6 feet under and Eklavya, intriguing explorations of relationships via Life In A Metro and the quirky Honeymoon Travels PVT LTD. Hell even mainstream fare like Anurag Bhasu's Gangster have dared to tamper with the time honoured tropes of story telling involving the underworld of crime. M.F. Hussein's Meenaxi, however, is a regretably regressive example of art house posturing at its worst. With it's lush cinematography courtesy of Santosh Sivam and exquisite soundscapes weaved by maestro A.R.Rahman, it's a movie you soak in to indulge your senses rather than attempt to decipher or engage with, thanks to a narrative that makes not a of a lick of sense. It's a long, mastubatory ode to it's gorgeous heroine (a never more ravishing Tabu), who plays muse to a Hyderabadi writer (Raghuvir Yadav), prodding and challenging him to write a novel that excavates her personality. As the writer Nawab spins varying plots, one set in the Rajasthani city of Jaisalmer and one in Prague, his attempts are met with increasing derision, the muse mocking her mentor, causing his downward spiral into despair and depression. As the Nawab succumbs to his debilitating illness, he discovers the key lies in setting his character, Meenaxi free. In the muse attaining freedom, so does the story finally sprout wings and fly. If that little sum up has you going "Huh???", fear not, that would be the general reaction to anyone not belonging in the 0.000005% of the world's population who's tuned into Hussein's flights of fancy. Meandering on a road to nowhere, Meenaxi's a certified bore, having you go rapidly from " What's this about" to "Do I give a fuck". Avoid this misfire, and grab the luscious soundtrack instead.

Ore Kadal (Malayalam)

If Meenaxi is a textbook example on how to bollocks up an art movie, Ore Kadal shows you how to do it right. With the genre's typically langurous pace tied to a cohesive and densely structured narrative, it's a slow burning experience that ultimately rewards. Mammooty's self absorbed social scientist and intellectual and his relationship with Meera Jasmine's fragile housewife is a layered study in human interaction, where the man's disdain for emotional attachment and the woman's increasing need of one to maintain balance in her unravelling marriage proves to be the emotional and psychological undoing of both parties. Terrific stuff.

Anjathey (Tamil)

Given the suspense free zone where most Tamil movies comfortably reside, Anjathey turns out to be a rare beast indeed, starting out as an oft-told tale of bosom buddies turned arch foes before morphing into a solid police procedural that mines some serious sweaty palmed suspense from it's plot involving a ruthless gang who kidnap young girls for ransom. The movie doesn't skimp on the horrifying fate that befalls the victims or the emotional toll it takes on their distraught parents. Director Mysskin nails it by never forgetting the golden rule of suspense: it can only truly be achieved via characters who have been given time to grow, seep into and mold viewer's perceptions, attitudes and expectations of them. Engaging heroes and repellant villains, get this right and you don't stray too far off course. And Mysskin rarely puts a foot wrong. Bravo!

Tome: Gone Baby Gone

The bare skeleton of any good work of crime fiction is a case that requires solving.

What adds flesh and skin to this skeletal frame is the nature of the case, the myriad twists and turns it takes whikle snaking it's way to a jaw dropping finale.

But to give any tale of this genre some form, some unique musculature, that sets it apart as a specimen to be absorbed and admired, you need to layer it with atmosphere, taut, foreboding and menacing, inducing a sense of unease, a feeling of dread at what's about to unfold even as you tear through the pages to get there with all possible haste.

Dennis Lehane's fourth book featuring private investigators Patrick Kenzie and Angela Gennaro is a dark, violent look at the world of abducted children.

A world where "twenty three hundred children are reported missing every day, where "three hundred children disappear every year and never return"

A wold populated by sadistic paedophiles like Leon and Roberta Trett, who kidnap, handcuff, flog and sodomize children before killing them by slitting their throats.

In this world, mothers like Helene McReady, high school dropout, trailer park trash, recipient of three abortions, drug dealer and user, decides to have a child not because she's ready or capable enough to raise one, but to fill a void in an existence devoid of purpose, direction or meaning.

When Helene's 4 year old daughter, Amanda, goes missing, Kenzie and Gennaro are hired by Helene's brother Lionel and wife Beatrice and reluctantly accept the case.

Partnered with Poole and Broussard, 2 detectives from the CAC (Crimes Against Children) unit, Kenzie and Gennaro trawl the drug dens and dive bars of Boston in search of Amanda, an endeavour that proves increasingly complicated when Poole, Broussard and even Lionel may be harbouring hidden agendas of their own.

Even those familiar with Mystic River, Lehane's dark tale of misguided retribution and the shocking finale to his prison drama, Shutter Island, may well feel like showering after crawling through the subterranean underbelly of Lehane's Boston in this book.

Lehane's muscular prose is tender enough to masterfully evoke haunting melancholia as he describes the impact of a missing child on society:

" When a child disappears, the space she'd occupied is immediately filled with dozens of people. And those people-relatives, friends, police officers, reporters from both TV and print-create a lot of energy and noise, a sense of communal intensity, of fierce and shared dedication to a task.

But amid all that noise, nothing is louder than the silence of the missing child. It's a silence that's two and a half to three feet tall, and you feel it at your hip and hear it rising from the floorboards, shouting to you from corners and crevices and the emotionless face of a doll left on the floor by the bed"

Kenzie and Gennaro have a sexually charged chemistry that spark off the pages. Partners and lovers, they contemplate bringing a child into a world that is "cement cold and jaggedly sharp".

"The world was filled with monsters who'd once been babies, who'd started as zygotes in the womb,who emerged from woman in the only miracle the world has left, yet emerged angry or twisted or destined to be so"

It's this subtext, coupled with a colorful cast of supporting characters and a plot crackling with tension and whiplash twists, that make Gone Baby Gone a superlative effort in the genre.

Dark, moody and disturbingly current, Gone Baby Gone is a bitter brew, but if you're tired of diluted thrillers, a swig of this murky concoction is a must.

Tome: Gladiatrix

Russell Whitfield’s debut novel, Gladiatrix, is Chick Lit at its finest….if your idea of fine Chick Lit is a book teeming with finely toned, nubile females who are frequently nude and hack huge chunks of flesh out of one another, when they’re not enjoying carnal knowledge of the same.
Gladiatrix begins the way all good blood soaked medieval epics should; with a scene of brutal combat.
Spartan Lysandra strides alone, walking “through the darkness of the passageway towards the sun-filled amphitheatre”
“The roar of the crowd was a living thing as it assaulted her and she staggered beneath its violent intensity. Row upon row of the screaming mob surrounded her, the amphitheatre stuffed full, as if it were a massive god gorging upon base humanity. Her vision swam as she registered innumerable faces, twisted and distorted , their mouths wide open with howls of lust and anticipation. “
It’s in this charged atmosphere that Lysandra mets her opponent, a stocky Gaul, whom she dispatches with consummate ease in one of many thrilling scenes of gladiatorial combat Whitfield brings to life, with rapier sharp prose and a connoisseur’s eye for action.
In the 1st century AD, during the reign of the Emperor Domitian over the vast Roman Empire, the hunger and demand for gladiatorial combats was huge, and the Emperor’s own need for novelty in the arena had given rise to the Gladiatrix, female gladiators.It’s the sort of climate where Lucius Balbus, “supplier of novelty acts for the great and frequent games of the province- the only lanista (manager) who specialized in the training of women for gladiatorial combat”, thrives.
Into his ludus (gladiator school), comprised solely of female performers, Lysandra, sole survivor of a shipwreck is brought, to further hone her already formidable fighting skills.
But the melting pot of the ludus, where women of various tribes and races, each openly distrustful of the other are thrown together, soon bubble over with tension as Lysandra ‘s haughty and arrogant demeanor puts her on a collision course with Amazonian Sorina, Gladiatrix Prima of the ludus and the Nubian Nastasen, a powerful and sadistic trainer, who like most men who are intimidated by strong women, seeks to humiliate her sexually, as well as physically and psychologically.
Whitfield’s major achievement is in engendering empathy on the part of the reader for his heroine, given that Lysandra is an insufferable snob.
Of proud Spartan stock, and a temple priestess to boot, schooled and skilled in the brutal regiment of Spartan combat training, Lysandra’s derision for her fellow gladiatrices, of various Celtic, Germanic and Britannic tribes whom she lumps under the all purpose slur of “barbarians”, is matched only by her unwavering belief in her own lethal fighting prowess.
But her shattered pride at the realization that she is now someone’s chattel, to be honed and trained to provide entertainment for a baying mob, her gradual coming to terms with her plight coupled with some fairly monstrous obstacles put in her way by the scheming Sorina and the brutal Nastasen, slowly but surely endear her to the reader.
Beside, like the best heroes, Lysandra triumphs over her adversaries with faith, determination and fearsome martial skills.
Whitfield sets a crackling pace, zipping the plot along in between vividly described fight scenes, with sexual tension ( handsome trainer Catuvolcos wants to sheathe his “sword” in Lysandra’s Spartan “scabbard” but her self pleasuring sessions at night are stoked not by fantasies of the muscular Gaul, but of Eirianwen, the blonde and beautiful Gladiatrix Secunda ) and vicious rivalry ( Sorina’s growing hatred for Lysandra reaches fever pitch fury when Eirianwen, a member of her own tribe falls for the lanky Spartan).
There’s an interesting idea bubbling beneath the viscera of shattered bones, spilt guts, and dismembered limbs, that slaves though they may be, the women in the ludus still enjoy a far greater degree of freedom as trained fighters compared to their restrictive roles as daughters and wives, especially in the claustrophobically patriarchal Roman Society.
But such musings are hardly germane to the tone of the book which is first and foremost, an action epic that has you turning the pages so fast, you risk getting paper cuts on your fingers as the plot hurtles relentlessly towards the climactic showdown between Sorina and Lysandra .
And when it comes it’s a tour de force in armed combat description, the fight vividly unfolding in your imagination, as blades meet, strikes are countered and two skilled combatants pirouette in a dance of death.
It’s the sheer velocity of the narrative that help you overlook the linearity of a plot that holds little or no surprises, the broad strokes in which villains like Sorrina and Nastasen are sketched with nary a tinge of grey to give them depth and an ending which screams “sequel”. But given the thrill ride Whitfield takes you on, you’ll have no trouble signing on for “Gladiatrix 2”.
This book contains action aplenty, buckets of gore, copious amounts of female nudity and hefty helpings of Girl On Girl action ( both the vertical and horizontal variety).
What’s not to like?