The Killer

In honour of John Woo's 66th birthday, a re-post of my review of his seminal HK action movie 'The Killer'.

Ostensibly, the ingredients of John Woo’s seminal “heroic bloodshed” opus ‘The Killer’ make it sound like a cinematic cocktail (or, more appropriately, a cinematic Molotov cocktail):

Take one existentially iconic hitman a la Jean-Pierre Melville, a dash of Sirkian melodrama (preferably the ‘Magnificent Obsession’ vintage), a double measure of visual imagery from early Scorsese, and a liberal helping of Peckinpahesque slo-mo. Add white doves. Blend.

Which would constitute a pretty accurate and unprecedentedly short (65 word) review, the only addition to which would be a handful of kick-ass screen shots, were it not for the fact that Woo transcends every borrowing, every homage, every lovingly crafted frame of reference and creates something that is stylistically and emotionally his own.

Or, to put it another way, Woo does what very few other directors have ever done with such a degree of success (I can think only of Tarantino offhand): he synthesises his influences so completely that while the end product is beholden on virtually every level – narratively, aesthetically, everything else that ends in “–ly” – to a plethora of other, earlier works, it nonetheless pulls together these diverse strands in a manner that either goes beyond or in a completely different direction to those selfsame influences.

In ‘Le Samourai’, Melville doesn’t have Alain Delon cauterize an exit wound by tamping gunpowder over it and applying a lighted cigarette. In ‘The Wild Bunch’, Peckinpah doesn’t stage the bunch’s climactic shoot-out with Mapache’s army against a backdrop of religious imagery, flickering candles and white doves. And, yes, Melville and Peckinpah don’t make these aesthetic choices for a reason. But Woo does. And that’s kind of the point in and of itself.

The simplest (and least critically valid) summation is that Woo doesn’t certain things – particularly with regard to his use of slow motion, freeze frames and dissolves – because they fucking look cool as fuck. Which they do. And if you can shoot an action scene that’s as balletic, iconic, dynamic and hyper-kinetic as a John Woo action scene, then screw it, you’ve earned the right to do that kind of thing for its own sake and to hell with anything deeper like thematic content, characterisation and moral imperatives.

Woo, however, does things not just because they fucking look cool as fuck but because they contribute to the thematic content of his work, because they define and develop the characterisation, and because he is concerned with the moral imperatives of honour, guilt and redemption. Then, and only then, does the fact that they fucking look cool as fuck come into play.

Let’s revisit that phrase “moral imperative”. Sometimes it’s the directors whose work appears most violent, or attracts the most controversy, who prove themselves as having the more demonstrable morality: it’s true of Sam Peckinpah, true of Michael Haneke, true of John Woo. Haneke’s approach is one of cool, detached cerebralism; his aesthetic rigidly formalist. Woo, like Peckinpah, is a more emotionally involved filmmaker. He is acutely conscious of the way men interact and the codes that bind or divide them. He understands the mindset of the outcast, the criminal, the (conventionally speaking) bad guy. He sees the wounded and compromised humanity in them. Sometimes it’s a defeated sense of humanity; sometimes it’s retrievable.

‘The Killer’ is about a thoughtful and ultra-professional hitman, Ah Jong (Chow Yun Fat) who accidentally blinds nightclub singer Jenny (Sally Yeh) during a hit that turns into a fully-fledged gun battle. During the aftermath, rather than go to ground, he undertakes the proverbial one last job in order to raise money for the cornea transplant that could restore Jenny’s sight, despite the fact that maverick cop Inspector Ying (Danny Lee) is on his trail and unaware that his former paymasters are about to double cross him.

It sounds generic, clichéd and predictable. In Woo’s hands, it’s a dementedly excessive but savagely beautiful and often ludicrously funny work of art.

BOND-A-THON: The World is Not Enough

Really, there was no reason for ‘The World is Not Enough’ not to have been awesome: a reasonably timely plot about oil pipelines and terrorism, a couple of tip-top set pieces, the return of Robbie Coltrane as Russian mobster Valentin Zukovsky from ‘GoldenEye’ (providing some much required comic relief after the po-faced shenanigans of ‘Tomorrow Never Dies’), a gorgeous and talented actress (Sophie Marceau) raising the Bond girl stakes, and Robert Carlyle on villain duties. And if was ever an indicator that Bond might not prevail, it was in putting him up against fucking Begbie!

And yet ‘TWiNE’ isn’t awesome. ‘TWiNE’ in fact describes a plunging arc from promising to tedious to several increasingly stygian levels of awful, culminating in a pun that you can see coming from the moment the actual Bond girl, Dr Christmas Jones (Denise Richards) is introduced. You see, the filmmakers were jerking your chain with Sophie Marceau and it’s Denise Richards in a tank top, a pair of shorts and a petulant expression – kind of like an extremely poor man’s Lara Croft – who gets to run around with 007 and save the world. Dr Christmas Jones is a nuclear physicist, by the way. Played by Denise Richards. Forgive me if I’m labouring the point, but they fucking cast Denise Richards as a nuclear fucking physicist called Dr Christmas fucking Jones.

Oh, yeah. And they gave Michael Apted the directing gig. Apart from ‘Coal Miner’s Daughter’, ‘Gorillas in the Mist’ and some good character-based TV work, much of Apted’s output has been curiously pedestrian and there is nothing on his CV to mark him out as an action director.

Anyone watching the film for the first time, however, would think from the opening sequence that they were in for a treat. At nearly quarter of an hour, it’s the longest pre-credits sequence in the franchise and rather than being its own for-the-sake-of-it mini-movie it sets the stage for the story proper. In its depiction of an incendiary device triggered inside the MI6 headquarters, it establishes a theme of attack from within that recurs through the film. And it culminates in a speedboat chase along the Thames. Which, as it progresses, treads a thin line between cool and stupid, but that was always the appeal of the Bondian pre-credits sequence. ‘TWiNE’ strikes the right balance and, as Garbage’s theme song – not as memorable as Tina Turner’s ‘GoldenEye’ but a vast improvement on Sheryl Crow’s ‘Tomorrow Never Dies’ – kicks in, there’s no doubt that you’ve just sat through a kick-ass, supremely entertaining opener.

Enjoy it, cherish it, feel good about it. Because – apart from a bit of business where helicopters with massive chainsaw blades slung underneath them cut through the buildings and gangways of a harbour – it’s the only solid action scene Apted delivers. And it’s the first and last time ‘TWiNE’ is entertaining.

The bizarre thing is, the film desperately wants to be entertaining. The script kicks out what must be per capita the most puns in any Bond movie. Quizzed by nuclear physicist Jones on the nature of his relationship with another woman: “We’re strictly plutonic.” Asked by a voluptuous accountant if he’d like to check her figures: “I’m sure they’re perfectly rounded.” On a Q branch prototype that disguises a flamethrower as a set of bagpipes: “I suppose we all have to pay the piper some time” (Q goes a pun too far by replying “oh, pipe down, 007”). Whilst sliding on a pair of sunglasses while some upgraded gadgets are being demonstrated: “New specs, Q?” Things hit rock bottom when Bond offs a crooked head of security and takes his place on what turns out to be a mission to appropriate a warhead. “Where’s the other guy?” someone challenges him. Bond’s reply: “He was buried with work.” As a one-liner, it’s neither elegant or funny. It’s not apposite, since the dead guy isn’t shown being interred. And Brosnan’s delivery is horribly forced. In its own small way, it’s incredibly emblematic of ‘The Word is Not Enough’.

The plot, which doesn’t so much unravel as twist itself into a series of ugly knots, doesn’t help matters. SPOILER ALERT. Bond recovers a large quantity of cash being laundered by Swiss banker Lachaise (Patrick Malahide); the moolah is returned to rightful owner, industrialist Robert King (David Calder) – a pal of M (Judi Dench). It’s booby-trapped, however, and the resulting explosion kills King. Bond pursues the assassin and is injured. At King’s funeral, Bond meets King’s daughter Elektra (Marceau), who vows to continue his work in building an oil pipeline across Azerbaijan. Bond looks into Elektra’s background and discovers she was the victim of a kidnapping plot by international terrorist Renard (Carlyle) but escaped his clutches. M, it turns out, had advised King to withhold paying the ransom while she investigated. Bond realises that, converted from American dollars to pounds sterling, the laundered money he recovered (i.e. the booby-trap he inadvertently delivered) corresponds to the ransom amount. He takes it as a message and concludes that Renard was behind the attack on King. M despatches him to act as personal bodyguard to Elektra. By circuitous means, Bond realises that she was the instrument of her own father’s death and has faked various attacks against herself and her company, including an aerial attack by paragliders and the destruction of a length of her own pipeline. Bond suspects Stockholm Syndrome and fears that she’s in league with Renard. He’s proved correct, except that it’s Elektra who’s controlling Renard, not vice versa. A bullet lodged in his brain, the wound inoperable and the shell slowly moving through the medulla oblongata, Renard is essentially a dead man, and happily throwing away the last slivers of his life in carrying out Elektra’s plan: to destroy Istanbul (the point at which the three pipelines in competition to Elektra’s converge) and thus facilitate Elektra’s supremacy as supplier of oil to the west. The means of Istanbul’s removal from the map: plutonium from a stolen warhead introduced into the reactor of a hijacked nuclear submarine. As a sort of bonus, Elektra also plans M’s death as vengeance for not rescuing her from Renard (which seems something of a redundant point given that she’s turned him into her own personal Euro-psycho-puppet).

I’ve described the insane what-the-fuckery of the plot in such detail in order to make my point. Which is this. Imagine you’re Elektra. Let the whole M thing go – why, after all, start fucking around with MI6 when you’re pulling a whole bunch of seriously illegal shit that you’d rather not bring to attention of an intelligence agency – and your motivation is basically: I want to get rid of the rival pipelines. As I see it, your options are: (a) buy out the competition; (b) pay some mercenaries to blow up the other pipelines just as yours is reaching completion; or (c) – the, ahem, logical choice according to writers Neal Purvis, Robert Wade and Bruce Feirstein – seduce a psychotic terrorist who might drop dead at any moment to help you steal a plutonium warhead, acquire a submarine with nuclear reactor capacity, set your operation back several months by blowing up a length of your own pipeline, risk death by a stray bullet while some hired guns pretend to kill you, work out your issues with daddy by blowing the poor sod to kingdom come and keep the whole nefarious plot on course while MI6’s finest are all over you.

Am I the only person who sees options (a) and (b) as doable but expensive, while option (c) is basically stupid, riddled with the potential for failure, and financially ruinous. I mean, seriously, how the fuck much does it cost to bankroll the theft of a warhead and a nuclear motherfucking submarine? (SPOILERS END.)

Granted, suspension of disbelief goes hand in hand with the Bond aesthetic. Hey, I’m a guy who’s down with a fully kitted-out secret base in a volcano, for Pete’s sake! But the plot of ‘The World is Not Enough’ (and the illogic behind it) goes beyond suspension of disbelief. In a world of corporationism, where hostile takeovers are entirely legal, where financial chicanery, bribes and corruption are an accepted part of the way business is done, the idea that you’d have to destroy Istanbul in order to get an unfair advantage over the competition is not only ludicrous, but a concept that would have your average CEO – a cohort of bought-and-paid-for politicians in his pocket and the dirtiest lawyers in the business on speed-dial – pissing his pants at the waste of time and effort in achieving a fairly simple outcome.

I’ve struggled with ‘TWiNE’ writing this review: excepting the speedboat chase, I can find little or no reason not to rank it firmly alongside previous franchise low points ‘The Man with the Golden Gun’, ‘Moonraker’ and ‘A View to a Kill’. Actually, being fair, I can find two reasons: (i) it’s the final Bond movie to give us the marvellously wintry interplay between Bond and Q (at least as played by Desmond Llewellyn; the character returns in ‘Skyfall’ in the person of Ben Wishaw); and (ii) I know that’s it’s followed by ‘Die Another Day’ and the sins of ‘The World is Not Enough’ suddenly take on a forgivable hue in the knowledge of what’s to come.

Dinah Sheridan

Happy 92nd birthday to Dinah Sheridan, a classic English rose and star of the evergreen 'Genevieve'.

They say the eyes are the windows to the soul, and the portrait above proves the saying right in scintillating style.

Jennifer Tilly

Happy 54th to Jennifer Tilly.

In addition to her acting work, she's an accomplished poker player. Hardly surprising. Lay down a pair like that, and anyone would fold!

The filth of things to come ...

It's probably not escaped your attention, dear readers, that there's been bugger all happening on The Agitation of the Mind so far this month beyond the Bond-a-thon and some cheesecake shots. Oh yeah, and Paul Giamatti movie just so I can maintain a pretense of respectability.

And I need to ask your forbearance because there's not going to be much else going on during September bar more of the same.

But there is a reason. I'm currently immersing myself into the kind of movies my parents never late me stay up and watch when I was a kid and my wife despairs of me staying up and watching now I'm an adult. With October just around the corner, it'll soon be time for 13 For Halloween and I'm just finalizing the running order for what has become one of my favourite annual extravaganzas on the blog. We'll be kicking off with one of Argento's finest, but beyond that my lips are sealed.

Then we'll be plunging straight into the sea of cinematic sleaze that is the Winter of Discontent, a fetid film-fest of rapacity, repulsiveness and reprehensibility. It'll take up the whole of November and December, ushering in the chills of winter and giving the season of goodwill a right royal seeing to. Again, candidates for inclusion are still being sieved through and settled on, but a handful of reviews have already been written. Here's a sneak peek at some of the depraved delicacies that await you as the nights draw in and the darkness descends:

BOND-A-THON: Tomorrow Never Dies

Not that producers Barbara Broccoli and Michael G. Wilson weren’t under enough pressure as it was to recreate the success of ‘GoldenEye’ at the box office, but when MGM head honcho Kirk Kerkorian decided that he wanted the next Bond movie to open coterminous with their public stock flotation, the race was on to get ‘Tomorrow Never Dies’ into production. Bruce Feirstein, who had contributed to the ‘GoldenEye’ script wrote a screenplay inspired by his background in journalism. With Martin Campbell passing on directing two Bond films back-to-back, Roger Spottiswoode was offered the gig. Spottiswoode brought in any number of other writers to work on it. With the script still not finalized as shooting began, Feirstein (to whom sole writing credit was finally given) was brought back on board for a final rewrite.

I can only assume that this too-many-cooks approach accounts for a couple of dreadfully contrived scenes, borrowings from previous Bond movies and the regressive portrayal of the villain as a power-crazed egomaniac who thrives on monologues. Media baron Elliott Carver delivers at least three monologues during the less-than-two-hour duration (‘TND’ is the shortest Bond movie in three decades), a tendency to verbiage that recalls Blofeld. But the differences are crucial: Blofeld’s nefarious schemes are aimed at world domination – Carver is out to sell more newspapers and get some exclusive broadcasting rights; Blofeld was variously played by Anthony Dawson, Donald Pleasance, Telly Savalas and Charles Gray, all of whom provided a sinister, threatening or otherwise dangerous characterization; Carver is played by Jonathan Pryce who, quite frankly, doesn’t.

Pryce was always at his best playing Everyman – much put-upon individuals striving to cope with the vagaries and machinations of a life that’s spinning out of control around them. Think of his turns as Sam Lowry in ‘Brazil’ or James Lingk in ‘Glengarry Glen Ross’. His attempt at a super-villain is just that: an attempt. And, I’m sorry to say of an actor much of whose filmography I like, a fairly pitiful one at that. Secondary villain Dr Kaufman (Vincent Schiavelli) isn’t much better, delivering swathes of crass dialogue in a Cherman akzent zat iss so bad you vud zink he wass audishunink for an epizode ov ‘Hogan’s Heroes’, ja. Tertiary villain Stamper (Gotz Otto) is all muscle and sneering countenance and gets to say things like “I owe you an unpleasant death, Mr Bond,” again reminding us that other actors did this kind of thing much better way back when.

One final thought on the disappointing villainy issue before we move on: Anthony Hopkins was offered the role of Carver, but passed. Imagine: Hopkins, post-Lecter, in full on scenery-chewing mode as a Bond villain. That would have been fun to watch.

Because, by and large, ‘Tomorrow Never Dies’ is low on fun. For a franchise built on wholly unrealistic narratives, newspaper-baron-starts-shooting-war-in-order-to-report-it arguably represents the most ludicrous story ever to come out of an Eon Productions script conference. I mean, come on, Carver, at least do it properly and hold the world to ransom! And yet every frame of the film strives for a serious tone, Roger Elswit shooting everything in a dull and muted palette. The man’s a master, no doubt – he’s Paul Thomas Anderson’s go-to guy, fer Chrissake – but he’s not a good fit for a Bond movie, where the aesthetic needs to be bigger, bolder and more sweeping than your average actioner.

It’s ironic, too, that such a determinedly po-faced work boasts some really stupid moments, such as the over-egged scene between Bond and Kaufman when the latter, briefly, has Bond at a disadvantage (the script’s contrivance to restore things to Bond’s favour, is risible) or Bond driving his car by remote control from the back seat at irresponsible speeds through a multi-storey car park. And on the subject of automotive action, between ‘GoldenEye’ and this film, it’s pretty fucking sad to see 007 only driving his Aston Martin during routine work and having to rely on a BMW for the chases and the gadgets. Keep it British, Q old chap.

In terms of Bond girls, ‘TND’ showcases the series at its best and worst. Michelle Yeoh as martial arts operative Wai Lin is a kick-ass action heroine in her own right, easily Bond’s equal, and not at all impressed by his louche, sardonic attitude. On the other hand, Teri Hatcher is wasted in a thankless role which adheres to the casual misogyny of Bond of the ’70s, ie. glamour girl who dallies with Bond, imparts some useful information and promptly gets killed off.

Other things annoy: much is made, early on, of Bond’s facility with languages – mainly to facilitate a gag about Bond being a “cunning linguist” – yet there are two teeth-grating moments that demonstrate the opposite. One has Bond at a car rental agency in Hamburg and all Brosnan has to do is deliver the line “mein bureau hat ein auto reserviert”; he stumbles over it so badly I’m amazed nobody thought to redub in post-production. The second sees Bond faced with Chinese characters on a keyboard, whereupon he gives up and lets Wai Lin do the typing. Oh Bond of “I took a first in oriental languages at Cambridge” in ‘You Only Live Twice’, where are ye?

Action-wise, we get a solid pre-credits sequence that, while only tenuously connected to the actual narrative, nonetheless establishes a conflict between M (Judi Dench) and death-or-glory naval chief Admiral Roebuck (Geoffrey Palmer) that informs Bond’s extremely time-bound mission later on, introduces a satellite tracking thingy-ma-jig that falls into Carver’s hand, and delivers a lot of shooting and explosions. Which is always a good thing in a Bond movie. Elsewhere, there’s a full-throttle motorbike/helicopter chase through the streets (and buildings) of Bangkok. It’s the film’s only real high point.

Other set pieces are less effective. An attack on a British naval vessel suffers in comparison with similar scenes in ‘The Spy Who Loved Me’ and ‘For Your Eyes Only’. The climactic confrontation between Bond and Carver occurs on a stealth ship, the design and narrative purpose of which recall Stromberg’s floating submarine base; however, ‘TND’ delivers a smaller and much less exciting payoff. I remember that a review in Empire magazine referred to it being less a high octane thriller than “medium octane”, and that line sums up ‘Tomorrow Never Dies’ perfectly. And the curious thing is why. At nearly double the budget of ‘GoldenEye’ (which you’d swear was the more expensive production based on what’s up there on the screen), ‘TND’ doesn’t give you much bang for its hundred and ten million bucks.

Evan Rachel Wood

 

Happy 25th to Evan Rachel Wood ... which reminds me, it's long past due for a review of the gleefully politically incorrect 'Pretty Persuasion' here on The Agitation of the Mind.

Carice van Houten

Happy 36th birthday to Carice van Houten, whose unforgettable performance in 'Black Book' earned her a 'something for the weekend' gallery on Agitation of the Mind a couple of years ago.

Barney's Version

Famous quote from Anton Chekhov: “If in the first act you have hung a pistol on the wall, then in the following one it should be fired.” In ‘Barney’s Version’, Richard J. Lewis’s accomplished adaptation of Mordecai Richler’s novel, the titular protagonist (Paul Giamatti) is given a pistol as a wedding present from his ex-cop father Izzy (Dustin Hoffman). It gets fired somewhere before the halfway mark, but the outcome is shrouded in an enigma that permeates the remainder of the film.

Lewis introduces us to Barney Panofsky (there’s an unforced joke – more an occasional joke than a running joke – where various characters pronounce it “porn-ofsky”) in late middle age: the successful chairman of a TV production company, he drinks and smokes too much, snaps at his employees, makes nuisance phone calls to his ex-wife and indulges in petty acts against her new husband, such as subscribing him to a gay porn magazine (delivery address: the guy’s office) and signing him up to an Al-Qaeda website.

It’s clear, then, that we’re in anti-hero territory from the off, and when Barney’s life is laid out in a muck-raking book by Detective O’Hearne (an almost unrecognizable Mark Addy) – the now retired cop who failed to pin a murder charge on him thirty years before – the question of whether Barney is actually guilty hangs heavily over the first act. Angrily perusing the book, Barney’s memories return him to Rome in the 1970s where he’s palling around with an artistic crowd and encouraging wannabe writer buddy Boogie (Scott Speedman) to finish his long-gestating novel.

Back in the present, however, Barney develops a degenerative disorder which afflicts his memory. As the flashbacks unfold through two continents and three marriages – to the free-spirited but mentally unstable Clara Charnofsky (Rachelle Lefevre), the hyperkinetic Jewish American princess referred to only as The Second Mrs P (Minnie Driver) and the eventual love of his life Miriam Grant (Rosamund Pike) – Lewis plies us with the cinematic equivalent of the unreliable narrator, right down a split second lacuna that full stops a sequence involving Barney, Boogie, a lake house, copious quantities of alcohol and that aforementioned hand gun.

Anchored by a typically lugubrious Giamatti performance – after ‘American Splendour’, he was always going to be indie cinema’s go-to guy for this kind of role – ‘Barney’s Version’ boasts a whole bunch of hella good actors turning in excellent work. Pike is as good as she’s ever been, providing the emotional heart of the movie. Driver is hilarious and steals every scene she’s in. I’ve seen Lefevre in little else beyond the ‘Twilight’ franchise and her work her puts that dreck firmly in its place. Speedman is better than the ‘Underworld’ flicks might have suggested. Hoffman is the best he’s been since ‘Perfume: Story of a Murderer’, obviously having a great time with his character and the movie benefiting immeasurably.

Lewis’s directorial style is unobstrusive; he trusts to Michael Konyves’s script and the talents of his cast to hold the viewer’s interest, and again the movie benefits. Not, one suspects, that he lacked for advice or mentorship on set: look out for cameos from directors Atom Egoyan, David Cronenberg and Ted Kotcheff, better company than the hacks Barney employs to make his daytime soap opera. Barney’s company is called Totally Useless Productions, by the way; the exact opposite can be said of this film.

BOND-A-THON: GoldenEye

‘GoldenEye’ was released in 1995, six years after ‘Licence to Kill’ – the longest hiatus in the Bond franchise, and the first real gap since the three years between ‘The Man with the Golden Gun’ and ‘The Spy Who Loved Me’. The Dalton films had done well enough at the box office, with ‘The Living Daylights’ earning over $191million from a $40million budget and even the much-maligned ‘Licence to Kill’ – which was considered, comparatively, an underperformer – netting $156million against a lower budget of $35million, so what went wrong?

A load of legal wrangling, that’s what. The Bond films were made by Eon Productions, under the auspice of parent company Danjaq, with financing and distribution from MGM/United Artists. In 1989 Australian corporation Qintex acquired MGM/UA, intending to merge it with Pathe. Qintex licenced Pathe to broadcast the Bond movies worldwide on television, incurring the wrath of Danjaq who had not granted permission for this. Danjaq instigated legal proceedings and production on the next 007 film was thus delayed.

Dalton had signed on for three movies. His third outing was intended to commence filming in 1990 for a 1991 release. 1990 came and went. So did 1991. Ditto a couple more years, and in 1994 Dalton resigned from the role. Almost a decade earlier, contractual obligations to ‘Remington Steele’ meant Pierce Brosnan had lost out in replacing Roger Moore. With no such obstacles in place this time round, the producers promptly cast him.

Albert R. Broccoli acted as consulting producer only on ‘GoldenEye’ – he died a year after its release – and effectively handed the reins to his daughter Barbara Broccoli and long-term Bond alumnus Michael G. Wilson. Writer Richard Maibaum – who had contributed to every Bond film apart from ‘You Only Live Twice’, ‘Live and Let Die’ and ‘Moonraker’ – died in 1991; the original draft of ‘GoldenEye’ was by Michael France, with a rewrite by Jeffrey Caine and some script polishing courtesy of Kevin Wade and Bruce Feirstein. The second film in the series, after its immediate predecessor, not to have an original Ian Fleming title, it was nonetheless named after Fleming’s house in Jamaica.

Having approached and been, albeit very politely, turned down by John Woo, the producers offered directorial duties to Martin Campbell who had made a name for himself on the small screen with ‘Reilly, Ace of Spies’ and ‘Edge of Darkness’. After five straight films directed by John Glen, the emphasis was on new blood. Along with Brosnan as the new Bond, ‘GoldenEye’ gives us a new M (Dame Judi Dench, turning in arguably the best performance on offer and redefining the character into the bargain) and a new Moneypenny (Samantha Bond).

The plot, however, is old hat. In an exercise in recycling, we have a renegade Russian general who forms a trio of villainy with a femme fatale and an egomaniac with pretentions to class (shades of ‘Octopussy’) – one of whom has their own personal train (further shades of ‘Octopussy’) – and steal military hardware by means of seducing/impersonating an officer (‘Thunderball’) in order to effect the control of a satellite (‘Diamonds Are Forever’) which they intend to control from their fully kitted-out secret base hidden in a crater (‘You Only Live Twice’) for the purpose of triggering an electromagnetic pulse (‘A View to a Kill’) over London and thereby causing global economic meltdown.

L to the M to the F to the A to the O. Seriously. Trigger the fucker over New York or – more realistically – Tokyo and you’d achieve that. But London? I doubt it’d affect the Dow Jones by more than half a point.

For a film that tries desperately to be of the moment (an inspired title sequence, perhaps the best in the whole franchise, depicts the fall of the old Soviet regime) it seems peculiarly regressive. The Red Menace gets such a bashing you’d think it was still the 80s and Roger Moore was giving it all for Queen and country. The script’s attempts at addressing a more politically correct audience – an aspect of the film that received much comment in the press back in 1995 – consists of Moneypenny giving Bond a mild telling off and M giving him an outright bollocking. Oh, and femme fatale Xenia Onatopp (Famke Janssen) is Bond’s match as a sexual predator.

But apart from that, Bond himself remains the smug cocksman of the Moore years. And even when Brosnan tries for a harder edge to the character, what emerges is still something of a backwards step from Dalton’s Bond.

Ah yes, Pierce Brosnan. Here we come to a major problem with ‘GoldenEye’ – and a major problem with the three films that follow it. In the pantheon of actors who have essayed the role, if we characterise Sean Connery as the definitive Bond, George Lazenby as the awkward Bond, Roger Moore as the suave/smarmy Bond and Timothy Dalton as Bond played straight, then in Pierce Brosnan we have the pouty Bond. There are many attributes I want to see in Bond, no matter who’s playing him: I want to see ruthlessness, tenacity, style, nicely tailored suits, fine wines and vodka martinis; I want to see hardware, fast cars and an effortless way with the ladies. I do not – repeat not – want to see pouting. Pouting is for effeminate sparkly vampires, not for hard-living secret agents with a licence to kill.

To be fair, there is much to be said in favour of ‘GoldenEye’. The title sequence is an absolute belter, a ten-minute movie in miniature that offers suspense, action and a freakin’ great payoff with motorbike chasing plane as both hurtle towards a sheer drop. Then that unexpectedly inventive title sequence kicks in while Tina Turner belts out the theme song. Written by Bono and The Edge, and with Turner channeling her inner Shirley Bassey, the theme song is the best in a couple of decades. The good work continues in the first half, with some actual espionage (it’s always good when the filmmakers remember that Bond is a spy), a winning heroine in the form of Natalya Simonova (Izabella Scorupco) and a brilliantly noirish scene in what can only be described as a graveyard of statues. The cool stuff culminates with the film’s most outlandish and boyishly entertaining sequence, about which I have only three words to say: tank chase, baby!

On the minus side, the immediate post-credits scene with Bond and Onatopp chasing each other around some hairpin bends is several minutes of pointlessness and the music that accompanies it is awful. Eric Serra’s original score is a whole lot of nothing much. The casting of Joe Don Baker as Bond’s CIA contact Jack Wade rankles. I don’t have any issue with his performance (Wade initially dissing 007 as “stiff-assed Brit” is priceless, ditto his subsequent tendency to address Bond as “Jimbo” or “Jimmy”), it’s just another instance of the producers casting someone in diametric opposition to the character type they played in a previous Bond film. As Charles Grey appeared first as ally (‘You Only Live Twice’) and then as villain (Blofeld in ‘Diamonds Are Forever’), Baker had earlier appeared as villain in ‘The Living Daylights’ and now shows up as one of the good guys.

Regarding Sean Bean as the treacherous former Double-O agent Alec Trevelyan, the decision to portray him as the opposite side of the same coin to Bond underlines the whole Brosnan problem. I can quite easily imagine Bean, particularly at the mid-90s stage of his career when he was winning a legion of fans as Sharpe in the TV adaptations of Bernard Cornwell’s novels, as Bond. The physicality and the rough charm are there; that steely glint in the eye promises ruthlessness. Sean Bean looks like he could kill a man and casually order a vodka martini. Pierce Brosnan looks like he belongs in a shampoo commercial.

Gunfight at the O.K.Corral

On 26 October 1881, Wyatt Earp, his brothers Virgil and Morgan, and John “Doc” Holliday faced off against the Clanton and McLaury brothers. The gunfight occurred in a cramped lot six doors down from the O.K. corral. Based on the weaponry utilised and the number of shots fired, historians estimate the whole thing lasted no longer than thirty seconds. There was, all things considered, nothing particularly dramatic about it beyond the obvious dynamic of one bunch of guys trying to kill another bunch of guys. Stripped of hagiography, the gunfight at the O.K. corral – or, to be more realistic about it, the gunfight somewhere near the O.K. corral – boiled down to this: two antagonistic parties pulled iron, blasted away till they were out of ammo and those who were still standing at the end of it lived and those who weren’t didn’t.

But to quote a line from ‘The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance’, “when the truth becomes the legend, print the legend”.

John Sturges’s ‘Gunfight at the O.K. Corral’ is the cinematic equivalent of the newspaperman printing the legend. From the time of the shoot-out (3pm in actuality, “at sun-up” in Sturges-ville) to the number of combatants (Johnny Ringo? dude wasn’t there) to the six minute gun battle that spills out from the corral and across half of Tombstone, Sturges’s film makes absolutely no pretence to realism. It also takes its sweet time getting to the gunfight.

Leon Uris’s script focuses on the relationship between Wyatt Earp (Burt Lancaster) and Doc Holliday (Kirk Douglas). Indeed, he and Sturges are so eager to spend time with the Old West’s most famous double act, that they’re pretty much rammed together during the opening sequence. Although the crossing of their paths from Dodge City to Tombstone calls for some degree of contrivance, this was probably a wise decision since Lancaster’s staunch, square-jawed lawman is a one-note character whose moral rectitude isn’t all that interesting. The alcoholic, tuberculosis-ridden Holliday is far more memorable, and Douglas has great fun playing him as a smooth bastard. Holliday is a man of fancy clothes, fine speech and a fast deck; he’s also an unblinking killer, whether using gun or knife, and – for all his faux courtly manners – not always the gentleman to long-suffering consort Kate Fisher (Jo Van Fleet). Their tempestuous relationship is contrasted against Earp’s ill-fated romance with lady gambler Laura Denbow (Rhonda Fleming).

Compared to these interrelationships, which spin around the core nucleus of the Earp/Holliday relationship, there’s not much room for other character dynamics. Virgil (John Hudson), Morgan (DeForrest Kelley) and James Earp (Martin Milner) barely get a look-in, nor do the Clantons or McLaurys fare much better in terms of screen time. Lyle Bettger’s curiously reserved performance as Ike Clanton leaves the film lacking a central villain, however John Ireland’s sneeringly nasty Johnny Ringo goes some way towards filling the gap. A youthful Dennis Hopper as the youngest of the Clanton clan also makes an impression.

Arguably the biggest strike against ‘Gunfight at the O.K. Corral’ is Dmitri Tiomkin’s horrible score, one of the few misfires in a career stippled with classic soundtracks, which recycles throughout the film an appalling ballad sung by Frankie Laine. Charles Lang’s dustily evocative cinematography certainly deserved a better aural accompaniment.

What remains, though, as the pace picks up in the second half, is what – essentially – audiences of the day wanted from a western; what, arguably, is an inimical to that genre as a black-gloved killer and a bottle of J&;B to the giallo: iconic images of tough guys striding purposefully towards their fate, hand on the gun. And a crowd-pleasing shoot-out when they draw.

Ted

There’s a joke more renowned among comedians than audiences – it was the subject of a documentary directed by Paul Provenza; my review here – which, in its most basic iteration, goes something like this: A man walks into a talent agent’s office and says, “Hey, I’ve got this amazing act.” The talent agent says, “Yeah? Let’s hear it.” The man says, “Me and my wife come on stage, I’m wearing a tux, she’s wearing an elegant ball gown, and we defecate and urinate all over the stage, wallow in our own filth and violate each other. Then we take a bow.” The talent agent is shocked and says, “What the hell do you call an act like that?” The man says, “The aristocrats.”

There are many different tellings of the joke, with the middle section – i.e. the description of the act itself – presenting something of a blank canvas for the teller to embark upon ever more scatological flights of the imaginative. The punchline is always “the aristocrats”, or “the sophisticates” or suchlike. The joke is in the juxtaposition of crass vulgarity and the revelation of the supposedly elite and cultured social group engaging in said behaviour.

Seth McFarlane’s ‘Ted’ is a 105-minute reimagining of the “aristocrats” joke, but with a plush teddy bear instead of the nobility. It’s a joke, moreover, whose telling is its own punchline. Here’s the set-up: in the mid-80s, a friendless eight-year-old boy gets a teddy bear for Christmas and wishes it could be real and his friend forever. A shooting star auguries a miracle. Ted (voiced by McFarlane) comes to life. The kid’s parents, initially horrified, are quickly won over. Ted enjoys minor celebrity. Eventually, though – as Patrick Stewart, whose measured tones narrate this prologue, explains – “no matter how big a splash you make in this world whether you're Corey Feldman, Frankie Muniz, Justin Bieber or a talking teddy bear, eventually, nobody gives a shit”.

Fast-forward twenty-seven years and John Bennett (Mark Wahlberg) is thirty-five, a stoner, his best friend is still his teddy bear and the only aspect of his life in which he’s demonstrably got lucky is his girlfriend of four years, the gorgeous Lori (Mila Kunis).

Ted has grown up (if that’s the right phrase) with him: Ted now drinks beer, smokes pot, parties with hookers, and spouts the kind of profanity that would make a truck driver blush. This is the one joke that McFarlane sustains, sometimes quite magnificently, for an hour and three quarters.

Narratively, we have three strands: the potential implosion of John and Lori’s relationship due to Ted’s bad influence, with Lori’s lecherous boss Rex (Joel McHale) waiting in the wings to assume suitor duties; Ted’s attempts to strike out on his own, white trash girlfriend Tammi-Lynn (Jessica Borth) in tow; and creepy stalker Donny (Giovanni Ribisi)’s obsession with acquiring Ted for his corpulent and equally creepy offspring Robert (Aedin Mincks). This latter shifts the tone from cheerfully low-brow to something darker in the last third. Imagine the scenes in ‘Toy Story’ involving Sid re-edited as a post-Eli Roth horror movie.

The overall aesthetic, though, is reminiscent of McFarlane’s small screen magnum opus ‘Family Guy’: cutaway gags, bonkers celebrity cameos, and the kind of dialogue that’s not just unreconstructed but positively backwards-looking. From Ted urging a child in a hide ‘n’ seek game “no peeking or you’ll get kiddie-cancer” to his exchange with Norah Jones …

Ted: Wow, look at you – half American and half Muslim and you’ve sold 37 million records.
Jones: Actually I’m half Indian, but thanks.
Ted: Thanks for 9/11.

… you’ll spend an equal amount of time laughing, stifling your laughter and gathering your jaw from the popcorn-strewn section of the floor right in front of seat, dumbfounded that they actually went there. If McFarlane’s cultural touchstones in ‘Family Guy’ are the ‘Star Wars’ trilogy and James Woods, the corollary in ‘Ted’ is ‘Flash Gordon’ (cue the high point of the film: an extended sequence where John and Ted get royally fucked up with Sam Jones as a party at Ted’s shitty apartment turns into a farrago of alcohol, cheesy 90s music and proscribed substances) and Tom Skerritt. The payoff to the running joke with various characters claiming acquaintanceship with Skerritt is as tasteless as you’d expect from McFarlane.

In the wake of the Judd Apatow blueprint for success circa ‘Knocked Up’ and ‘Superbad’, Hollywood went into overdrive with low-brow comedies, many of them terminally unfunny and desperate in their scatological barrel-scraping. ‘Ted’ is as potty-mouthed and shot through with nerd-boy humour as any of its contemporaries, but it’s a damn sight funnier.

Sean Connery

Happy 82nd birthday to Sean Connery, and with 'Dr No' celebrating its 50th anniversary this year, what better still to illustrate this post than the iconic moment that introduced several generations of moviegoers to Bond ... James Bond? Seriously, has anyone else ever made smoking, roulette tables, bow ties or dinner jackets look this cool?

BOND-A-THON: Licence to Kill

‘Licence to Kill’ presents us with a plethora of firsts and lasts. It’s the first Bond film not to take its title from a work by Ian Fleming (although the script incorporates elements from the novel ‘Live and Let Die’ and the short story ‘The Hildebrand Rarity’), and the first to gain a 15 certificate. It’s the first Bond movie where a previous actor reprises the role of Felix Leiter – David Hedison, who essayed the role in ‘Live and Let Die’. It’s Michael G. Wilson’s first as co-producer, a role he took on after Albert R. Broccoli took ill during filming.

It’s the last to feature Timothy Dalton as Bond, Caroline Bliss as Moneypenny and Robert Brown as M, the last to feature a credits sequence designed by Maurice Binder, the last to be directed by John Glen and the last to be produced by Broccoli. Richard Maibaum co-scripts for the last time, and editor John Grover and cinematographer Alec Mills similarly bow out from the franchise.

‘Licence to Kill’ feels like it ought to be an autumnal, elegiac work. Instead, it’s full throttle action thriller, with a viciousness not seen since the early days of Connery and a hard-edged depiction of 007. When those who dislike the Dalton films complain that they don’t feel like Bond movies, it’s ‘Licence to Kill’ they point to specifically. There’s no uber-villain, merely a Colombian drug lord. There’s no world-threatening scheme, just a clever means of transporting cocaine. There’s no briefing from M – Bond goes renegade for personal reasons. Gadgets are kept to an absolute minimum, although – ironically – Q (Desmond Llewellyn) gets his most expansive role. Likewise, the Bond girls are (in different ways) survivors rather than wallflowers. And the pre-credits sequence acts as a prologue to the film proper rather than being a show reel for the stunts team.

Let’s start with this sequence. Bond and Leiter are en route to the latter’s wedding, Bond on best man duties, when the Coast Guard inform Leiter that a drug baron he’s been investigating, Sanchez (Robert Davi), is on American soil and therefore arrestable. Sanchez has made a risky incursion in order to wipe out a rival who’s stolen his girl, the sultry Lupe Lamora (Talisa Soto). Leiter, seemingly forgetting the impending nuptials, goes tearing off in hot pursuit, inviting Bond along in an observational capacity only. Predictably, Bond doesn’t do observation and when it seems like Sanchez is about to fly out of US airspace, Bond engages in a dangerous in a dangerous stunt with a helicopter to put paid to Sanchez’s plans. This done, the pair of them parachute out and Leiter gets to the church on time, if rather dramatically. Roll opening credits. 

The curtain-raiser over and done with, Act One delivers some nasty business: Sanchez pulls off an escape, his goons kill Leiter’s bride-of-a-few-hours and dump Leiter himself in a shark pit. Bond, on his way to the airport and in something of a maudlin mood after a chance remark at the reception puts him in mind of the late Teresa Bond, nee di Vicenzo, hears of the escape and heads back to Leiter’s home on an instinct. Here he finds Leiter in a body bag, severely lacerated and barely alive. Bond’s mood changes from maudlin to righteously pissed off and he goes out for revenge.

Working his way through Sanchez’s chain of associates, from corrupt DEA official Ed Kilifer (Everett McGill) to marine research head honcho Milton Krest (Anthony Zerbe), Bond’s blunt tactics attract the attention of Leiter’s CIA colleagues who haul him in for a little chat. M is in on the act and gives 007 a royal bollocking for neglecting an assignment. After a terse exchange, Bond effectively resigns, gives the CIA goons the slip and goes renegade, his licence to kill revoked. (The film originally went into production as ‘Licence Revoked’, but the title was changed after doubts that audiences wouldn’t know what “revoked” meant. This is more than a little bit sad.)

En route to his final confrontation with Sanchez and the drug lord’s borderline psychotic protégé Dario (Benicio del Toro in only his second film role), Bond enlists the help of Leiter’s contact, pilot Pam Bouvier (Carey Lowell), introduced in a splendid scene in a dockside bar where she deters an aggressor by ramming the business end of a double-barrelled shotgun in his groin, holds her own in a barroom brawl and blows a hole in the wall to facilitate a quick exit. Pam is tough, resourceful, saves Bond’s ass at one point and also looks glamorous as all hell. And kudos to Wilson and Maibaum for a script that doesn’t compel her to do something stupid or have to get rescued in the final reel. Lowell is definitely one of my all time favourite Bond girls and her contribution to the canon still remains undervalued.

Lupe Lamora, on the other hand, is cut from the same cloth as Domino in ‘Thunderball’ or Andrea Anders in ‘The Man with the Golden Gun’: the kept woman of a dangerous antagonist who sees Bond as her way out of an otherwise insoluble situation.

Davi plays Sanchez for what he is, a ruthless businessman whose business just happens to be narcotics; it’s a performance as far removed from the cartoon villainy of most Bond villains as it’s possible to get. Del Toro, however, doesn’t get to do much more than sneer and strike macho poses – there’s certainly little hint of what he would go on to – but the suggestion of a homoerotic subtext between Sanchez and Dario is something of a throwback to the casual homophobia of ‘Diamonds Are Forever’ and the one unfortunate element in a film that otherwise ranks very high in my personal 007 league table.

The action sequences are impressive, particularly Sanchez’s rescue from an armed convoy, staged to great effect along the Seven Mile Bridge in the Florida Keys. Things do get a little over the top towards the end, though, with Kenworth tanker trucks popping wheelies or tilting to drive on one set of wheels to dodge a missile.

But on the whole, ‘Licence to Kill’ works very well as a darker, edgier approach to Bond, shorn of corny one-liners and the first entry in the franchise for fucking ages not to end with some personality-challenged bit of eye-candy gasping “oh, James”. This alone earns it kudos.

Brave

Has the Pixar bubble burst?

Two years ago, I came out of ‘Toy Story 3’ with mixed feelings – so mixed that I elected not to post a review on these pages. I found much of it inventive, delightful and entertaining; some of it utterly lachrymose in a Spielbergian emotional pornography kind of way; and an extended sequence in the third act just plain mean-spirited. A year ago, I came out of ‘Cars 2’ thinking that whichever bright spark had decided that Mater was protagonist material needed his arse kicking all the way to Radiator Springs and back again. 

Now we have ‘Brave’. And before we can discuss a single frame of film, there’s an elephant in the room as big as the bear that appears in the castle in a crucial scene. (And can I just say … bears in Scotland? Maybe prior to 900 AD, however the historical period the film takes as its point of reference seems to be concurrent with the Dunkeld monarchy of 1058 to 1290.) ‘Brave’ was originally announced as Pixar’s first pro-feminist production, boasting not only a heroine (all Pixar’s previous protagonists, right down to a gender-specific robot, having been male) but a female director, Brenda Chapman. Back then the project was called ‘The Bear and the Bow’, a more appropriate title than ‘Brave’ since the overriding theme is family, loyalty and age difference rather than any rites-of-passage requirement necessitating proof of valour.

Then Chapman was given the push – Pixar’s PR trotted out the hoary old “creative differences” line – and replaced by Mark Andrews (although Chapman retains a secondary “directed by” credit) and the project was retitled ‘Brave’, presumably for no other reason than to evoke ‘Braveheart’, another bit of Hollywood McScotland-ism. Chapman’s original concept of the project was an examination of the mother-daughter dynamic inspired by her relationship with her own daughter. Andrews and his co-writers (or should that be re-writers?) turn in something considerably more simplistic and infinitely less satisfying emotionally.

Essentially, ‘Brave’ – and I’m still fucked if I know who or what the title refers to – gives us a theme-park version of the Highlands in which Princess Merida (voiced by Kelly Macdonald), daughter of unreconstructed warrior king Fergus (Billy Connolly) and diplomat queen Elinor (Emma Thompson, trying for a Scottish accent in her early scenes then giving up entirely), rails against being offered as bride to whichever son of clan chiefs proves himself at the highland games. She visits a witch (Julie Walters, doing an inspired “old crone” routine) and asks for a spell which will change her mother. Meaning change her mother’s mind re: the marriage arrangements. Instead, Elinor is changed into … well, check out the original title. 

Thus far: a princess, a wicked (ish) witch, a curse, enchanted woods and fairies (in the shape of will-o’-the-wisps). Disney acquired Pixar in 2006; six years down the line, the assimilation begins.

To be fair, ‘Brave’ isn’t necessarily bad. There are some truly inspired scenes: everything involving the witch’s hut is terrific, most notably a genius gag that turns a cauldron into an answering machine. There’s also a low-brow but funny-as-fuck moment where a band of arms-bearing clansmen, finding themselves on the roof of a castle and locked out, abseil to the ground by means of tied-together kilts and file sheepishly past the camera, arses prominent. This ties with a ‘Mission Impossible’ style retrievable of a cell-door key from a serving woman’s pneumatic bosom as the least PG moment in a PG-rated kid’s movie.

The animation is gorgeous, no questions asked. Historical inconsistencies notwithstanding, ‘Brave’ captures the grandeur of the highlands so sweepingly that, on exiting the cinema, I immediately wanted to get in my car and drive north. The choppy surfaces of lochs, the vibrant colour of the heather, the spray of waterfalls – all of captured in a standard of CGI that, at its best, verges of photo-realism. Judged solely on visual aesthetics, one could easily pronounce ‘Brave’ a masterpiece and leave it at that. Indeed, the beauty of its imagery is enough to justify a DVD purchase and multiple viewings.

And yet … and yet …

I’ve been spoiled. I’ve got used to floating out of the cinema after a Pixar film, not walking out. Finding myself in the pub afterwards trawling my vocabulary for superlatives, not making do with “yeah, it was okay”. Itching to get home and start writing a review, not reluctantly putting finger to keyboard and wishing I could be more enthusiastic. Or, to put it another way, there have been other Pixar films that have been more emotionally compelling, other Pixar films that have been funnier, other Pixar films that have provided better entertainment, other Pixar films that have delivered better narratives.

For two decades, Pixar have successively raised the bar in every artistic aspect. Perhaps now they are falling victims to their own success: they are producing films that are merely good, rather than groundbreaking masterpieces. And maybe this is because, despite their technological advances, Pixar remain regressive in one crucial respect. It’s still a boy’s club.

Sort it, fellas.

Tony Scott

Absolutely gutted and saddened by the news of Tony Scott's death. My thoughts are with his family. 

(i.m. Tony Scott, 21 June 1944 - 19 August 2012)

Maria de Medeiros

Happy 47th to the elegant and beguiling Maria de Medeiros.

A Lonely Place to Die

Julian Gilbey was behind 2007’s ‘Rise of the Footsoldier’ – a film so mired in trite hooliganism clichés and dodgy Lahdan accents that it made ‘Green Street’ look like ‘La Regle du Jour’ – and thus I approached his latest outing, ‘A Lonely Place to Die’ with some trepidation. Without leading lady Melissa George and the harsh beauty of the Scottish highlands, I might easily have given it a miss.

The five minute pre-credits sequence – all swirling camerawork and vertiginous tension on a mountainside – implied that here was a much better film entirely. Certainly a film that was obviously putting every penny of its £4million budget right up there onscreen. The sequence introduces us to mountaineers Alison (Melissa George), Ed (Ed Speelers) and Rob (Alec Newman); Alison and Rob seem to be the methodical professionals, while Ed’s lackadaisical attitude exacerbates an accident that almost gets him killed. This earns him a bollocking from Alison, who tells him he needs to raise his game.

Decent opener, characters established reasonably well. The next 10 or 15 minutes, which fleshes out the group to include romantically involved couple Alex (Gary Sweeney) and Jenny (Kate Magowan), is less impressive, all filmscript 101 bickering dialogue and dodgy accents. (Melissa George is a big fave here at The Agitation of the Mind, but her inexplicable stab at a Cock-er-nee accent – which she makes no attempt to reprise elsewhere in the movie – is hideous.)

When the group head out to tackle the next peak, though, things hot up. The discovery, in the foothills, of a young Serbian girl buried alive in the wilderness, a single plastic bottle of water and an air tube her only means of survival, throws our heroes into turmoil. With the girl clearly unable to hike all the way back to the cottage they’re staying at – a cottage, moreover, without a phone (mobiles? ‘A Lonely Place to Die’ gives us probably the most realistic “no signal” moment in a modern film: the characters basically go “nah, we’re in the highlands” and don’t even bother to check) – the group split in two. Alison and Rob tackle a vertical cliff face from which it’s only a few miles to the nearest town, while the others continue along the originally planned course with the girl. The plan is to have them picked up by a search and rescue team.

The plan goes awry very quickly, with the mountaineers caught between two armed, dangerous and not-particularly-bothered-about-bystanders groups: the kidnappers who are demanding a large payoff for the girl’s return, and the private security outfit hired by the girl’s father to get her back with extreme prejudice.

From here until about the one hour mark, ‘A Lonely Place to Die’ establishes itself as a bloody good thriller: tense, pacy, light on exposition (Gilbey, who co-wrote the script, mainly trusts to his audience to work out the character interrelationships) and heavy on suspense. He also monkeys with audience expectations to notable effect, particularly a nastily claustrophobic moment that could be a flashforward, a dream or a visual metaphor to a character’s state of mind.

Hokeyness is never far away, though. Kidnappers and security team alike vacillate wildly between being crack marksmen and missing every fucking target they shoot at according to the script’s dictates of whether they’re drawing a bead on a secondary character or the final girl. (Sorry if that was a spoiler, but it’s kind of obvious: name above the title; only cast member you’ve ever heard of.)

Still, while the action remains in the forests and on the cliff faces, ‘A Lonely Place to Die’ scores highly and Ali Asad’s cinematography is spot on. It’s when Gilbey moves the action into a small town hosting some kind of bizarre street party, throwing together all the principles in a mishmash of double-crossing and orgiastic gunplay, that things go tits up in quite spectacular fashion.

The last thirty minutes are basically a horrible conflation of ‘The Wicker Man’, ‘Assault on Precinct 13’ and ‘Ransom’, with the machinations surrounding the ransom demand devolving into such lunacy than you’d be forgiven for expecting the imminent appearance of the Dude Lebowski and some German nihilists with a marmot on a leash. That at least would have given the movie a memorable bonkers ending, not the tired and generic one it eventually huffs its way towards.