SAFE - Review By Greg Klymkiw - Poorly directed and edited action scenes drag down the filmmaker's otherwise solid script. Bonus: The film has inspired new critical terminology (and acronym).

Safe (2012) dir. Boaz Yakin **1/2
Starring: Jason Statham, Catherine Chan, Chris Sarandon
Review By Greg Klymkiw

I'm getting so sick and tired of the stupid, lazy and annoying short attention spanned style that permeates contemporary action and suspense films that I have decided to create a whole new critical term (and suitable acronym) to describe it. I will henceforth now call this serious aesthetic affliction - CADD (Cinematic Attention Deficit Disorder). Movies afflicted with CADD are aimed at a generation of movie-goers who may or may not be morons, but to be charitable, I'd like to think they deserve better than a style that is ultimately a sure sign that a director is bereft of any real talent, voice and/or imagination. The symptoms are real. They can be spotted immediately. Learn to recognize them. They're simple to identify - ADHD-styled shooting and cutting wherein the camera never rests for more than a few seconds on (oft-times) a poorly composed shot which is blended with others of the same ilk and subsequently thrown willy-nilly into a furiously cut montage-like to fake rhythm and mask the fact that the director has no idea of how to convey a sense of geography, of space and place. This utilization of montage has nothing to do with conveying information regarding a narrative's dramatic/emotional beats nor bothers to provide juxtapositional imagery that presents - God forbid - a thought or idea.

CADD denies audiences who love genre films (as I do), the true power and beauty of an exquisitely choreographed dance, chase or fight. I feel a wee twinge of sadness that Jason Statham's new action extravaganza Safe is the straw that finally broke this camel's back. It's ultimately not a good picture, but nor is it anywhere near the most dreadful purveyors of CADD.

Safe has the distinction of a pretty decent 70s-style screenplay written by its CADD-challenged director Boaz Yakin and features several action set pieces that, on paper, are terrific, but in execution, are well below that watermark.

Statham is really a wonderful action hero actor. He's got a great mug, he's lean and mean and he sure can fight. In Safe he plays a washed-up NYC cop who turn-coated on the corruption within the department and now earns a living as a cage-match boxer. When he accidentally kills an opponent in the ring and in so doing, does not throw the fight as he was supposed to, the Russian mob brutally murders his wife and then informs him that they will inflict the worst possible punishment on him. They will not kill him. They will always have their eyes on him and whenever he displays any kindness to someone, or in turn is the recipient of said kindness, it is the purveyor of kindness who will be killed.

This is not a bad setup for a nasty revenge picture. Other than his wife, Statham's character has no surviving family and all his friends were the guys in the police force he ratted on - and yet, in several instances he has chance meetings with strangers who try to bestow kindness upon him and they're summarily dispatched. This forces him ever deeper into a lonely, mute existence.

At one point, Statham is about to throw himself in front of a train until he spots a tiny, clearly terrified Asian girl on the subway platform and he fuethermore discovers a whole mess of goons who appear to be looking for her.

This becomes his salvation - he becomes the protector of this child and like a one-man army he takes on the Russian Mob, the Asian Mob, a corrupt Mayor, the whole city bureaucracy and, most amusingly, the entire NYC police force. With twists, turns and double crosses aplenty, Safe is at least endowed with a decent script.

Alas, Yakin as a director is afflicted with CADD. The action and suspense occasionally has a visceral power, but from a directorial/editorial standpoint, these set-pieces are shot with tin eyes and cut with a cudgel. Sequences that should thrill become tiring, sometimes dull and often, unnecessarily convoluted.

In past decades, directors who didn't have the style to pull off bravura action utilized their craft and comfortably fell back on the tried and true approach of using mostly used long, wide or medium shots and only punching in for anything closer when there was a reason to do so. Most of the time, they'd let superb camera work hang back to capture first-rate stunt/action choreography and armed with solid coverage, the pictures would be edited in a spare fashion. Cuts moved the narrative and emotion forward - even in action scenes. Nowadays, more often than not, they simply pretend to do so - in all the worst ways.

I'm also not saying actions scenes can't utilize a myriad of shots with fast cuts, but this takes directors who are inherently blessed with the artistry to do so. They're few and far between. Sam Peckinpah had it. Martin Scorsese, Paul Greengrass, Steven Spielberg and John Woo have it. Even a handful of directors on previous Statham action pictures have it (Neveldine/Taylor, Luc Besson's stable of Gallic young turks and numerous Asian directors).

Yakin doesn't have it. He thwarts his own decent script with his CADD affliction. He's in good company, though. J.J. Abrams and Christopher Nolan are afflicted with this woeful tendency to ruin action scenes. Abrams was recently saved by his producer Spielberg and Nolan occasionally places his faith in solid second unit guys, but when both are left to their own devices the results are dire.

Safe is more watchable than most. It has a decent cast and a good story. The script has a nicely observed array of action archetypes and smatterings of terse, punchy tough-guy talk. Yakin would do well to abandon this CADD approach to directing and work on the craft exemplified by camera jockeys of days gone by. They might well have been hacks in their own way, but they delivered the goods.

"Safe" in in wide release from Alliance Films.

THE RAVEN - Review By Greg Klymkiw - Ho-hum procedural squanders Cusack in a role he was otherwise born to play.

The Raven (2012)
dir. James McTeigue
Starring: John Cusack, Luke Evans, Alice Eve, Brendan Gleeson, Kevin McNally, Sam Hazeldine

*

Review By Greg Klymkiw

The idea of the magnificent John Cusack playing the penniless, alcoholic, opium-addicted master of the macabre, Edgar Allan Poe, is immediately so tantalizing that one is primed for a great night at the movies. That the film invents a grisly series of murders in murky Baltimore to coincide with the great writer's last days and his involvement in solving the mystery, is also not without merit, but is, one would hope, a mere coat hanger for something far more complex and harrowing. However, the mere re-imagining of Poe in the shadow of the recent revisionist Guy Ritchie Sherlock Holmes films is, finally, not so appealing. Any good will inspired via imagined opportunity is squandered on a lame-duck whodunit that would best be suited to a TV crime procedural.

If the film had been blessed with something resembling a screenplay that wasn't derivative and predictable, the picture might have proven to be palatable at the very least. But, no! Borrowing liberally from the Saw movies and Se7en, a series of grisly killings based upon those that occur in Poe's stories rock the seaport city of Baltimore. Poe is briefly considered a suspect, but it doesn't take long before he's working in tandem with the police to solve the mystery and apprehend the killer.

Ho-hum.

Worst of all, a red herring planted early on is so obvious that it boneheadedly points in the direction of who and why. I can't imagine anyone either being surprised or caring by the time the movie plods to the silly revelation.

If the picture had no other choice than to lazily fall back derivatively on other sources, a more interesting, creepy and suspenseful route might have been to borrow from Hitchcock rather than the aforementioned contemporary titles. Revealing the killer early to both the audience and Poe, then constructing a Strangers on the Train and/or Shadow of a Doubt-styled thriller would have been infinitely more worthy of both Poe and Cusack.

To even pull that off, however, would have required a director instead of the woeful James McTeigue. He's of the fashionable poor-composition-blended-with-too-many-closeups-and-fast-cutting variety to build any genuine suspense and like his overwrought (and basically incompetent) V for Vendetta, he layers on the atmosphere and portent in a paint-by-numbers music video fashion.

The cast, save for the woeful Reese Witherspoon wanna-be Alice Eve as Poe's love interest, struggles valiantly, but to no avail. Cusack suffers least because he seems to be searching for the right movie to be in and occasionally hits a few good notes.

The fancy-schmancy production and costume design is all very efficient, but like far too many movies these days, nothing ever really looks like it's been lived in.

I doubt a franchise will exist in this material, though it might have potential to do so in the world of Netflix and sell-through homevideo. But for now, it's most likely going to be a case of "quoth the raven nevermore."

"The Raven" is currently in wide release from VVS Films.

THE EYE OF THE STORM - Review By Greg Klymkiw - The induction of major chunk blowing

The Eye of the Storm (2011) dir. Fred Schepisi
Starring: Geoffrey Rush, Charlotte Rampling, Judy Davis

*1/2

Review By Greg Klymkiw

I have no doubt that Nobel Prize winner Patrick White's novel - which this dreary movie is based on - is not without merit. If, however, Fred (The Chant of Jimmy Blacksmith) Schepisi has rendered a faithful adaptation of it, then it probably ISN'T worth reading. I haven't read it, have you?

What I know for sure is that THE MOVIE itself is most certainly worth avoiding.

For close to two hours we get to watch Charlotte Rampling on her death bed as a rich matriarch making her spoiled children - one of whom is the ubiquitous Geoffrey Rush as a foppish man of the stage - feel like shit.

If your idea of a good time is watching some hag-like harridan spewing vitriol and barking orders, then this is the movie for you.

Don't get me wrong. I'm a sucker for screen harridans. Mind you, I usually prefer them when they're slugging it out with each other in Robert Aldrich melodramas like Whatever Happened to Baby Jane - not dour British-Australian co-ventures we're supposed to take so seriously.

Frankly, the characters in this movie don't appear to resemble a recognizable human being - at least not in most people's world. This is a considerable failing on the part of the film since the duty of all great drama is to give an audience a way INTO the characters - no matter how distant they might be from the experience of many. This doesn't mean we have to like the characters, but we do have to UNDERSTAND them.

The movie would like us to think it's actually about the human condition, but is, in actuality, about the human condition as it relates to dying nasty rich matriarchs in Australia and their insufferable progeny who have expatriated themselves to be as far away from Mommy as possible. There is the stuff of great drama inherent in this, but Schepisi doesn't find it.

With Mom close to horking out her final globs of life, Geoffrey Rush and his pinched, prissy, pretentious sister played by the always welcome Judy Davis (who, in spite of the film, almost makes it worth suffering through) have made the trek from Blighty and Gay Paree respectively to ensure their inheritance will rightfully fall into their laps. We watch as this trio trudge through the turgid drama and seldom feel anything but contempt for all of them and wonder why it is we're being dragged through this sludge at all.

I will say, however, that Ms. Davis is genuinely terrific here. There's a mordant wit to her performance that suggests she's managed to find something in her character beyond what's on the page. Alas, Rampling (one of the finest actresses of all time) manages to hurl her invective professionally and there's certainly a technical proficiency to her descent into dementia, but she's as alone as her character. This might well be the point, but it doesn't make for the most engaging drama. Rush fops about competently, but to not much end.

These three characters feel like they're all in different movies. In a sense, that might also be the point, but it doesn't work as the picture unspools and it's only in retrospect does this occur to you.

One of the more sickening subplots involves Geoffrey Rush having his knob plunged and polished by one of Rampling's caregivers - a comely young thing who (for God knows whatever reason) is genuinely charmed by him and thinks she has a chance to marry into wealth. If the movie wasn't so earnest one could almost take a perverse pleasure in seeing a semi-nude Rush ploughing a fertile young wench.

We are also afforded endless flashbacks via Rampling's dementia. In one of them, she seduces the buff young stud sniffing around Judy Davis. I know this sounds appetizing, but I can assure you it is more than enough to induce major chunk blowing.

Whilst on the topic of ejecting globs of undigested, improperly masticated comestibles, Helen Morse's performance as the Holocaust survivor Lotte is so over-the-top that the character of this former Sally Bowles-like cabaret performer is completely bereft of anything resembling a human being. Perhaps this interpretation was the point, but Morse is theatrical to distraction. The notion of a performer who suffered and survived the indignities of horrendous anti-semitism, now reduced to the role of a housekeeper and recreating numbers from the glory days of pre-war adulation on the stage for her addled dying employer is rife with possibility. One needs to be moved by her desperation, not repulsed by it. She should be a character that commands our empathy. Instead, Morse comes off like a clod-hopping Lotte Lenya. Helen, the last time I checked, the title of this movie is NOT From Russia With Love. Alas, I feel I might be too harsh here. Where, pray tell, was the director?

Every year it seems we get more and more movies like this – dull chamber dramas full of rich, old people with Commonwealth accents who crap on each other (and by extension, us) for two fucking hours and we’re supposed to actually feel something for these miserable, privileged twits. I suppose they keep getting made because there’s always money available for such pictures. They’re relatively cheap to make, attract major actors, carry a veneer of respectability, are often based on acclaimed literary properties and can be directed for a song by filmmakers well past their prime.

And, of course, they get programmed into major international film festivals and dredge up something resembling an audience on television and homevideo.

Kind of like mindless blockbuster action pictures.

At least in those, there’s the possibility that something might actually happen.

The Eye of the Storm is an E-one Entertainment release.

THE VANISHING SPRING LIGHT: TALES OF WEST STREET - Review By Greg Klymkiw

The Vanishing Spring Light: Tales of West Street (2011) dir. Xun Yu "Fish" Starring: "Grandma" Jiang Su-Ha, Xiao Da Wan-Bi, Xiang Qian-Hong

****

Review By Greg Klymkiw

“How far we all come. How far we all come away from ourselves. So far, so much between, you can never go home again . . . it's good to go home, but you never really get all the way home again in your life . . . and once in a while, once in a long time, you remembered, and knew how far you were away, and it hit you hard enough, that little while it lasted, to break your heart.” - James Agee, A Death in the Family

Grandma Jiang is dying.

Wracked with pain after suffering a massive stroke, she lies in her bed, physically unable to assume her usual perch in front of the family home on her beloved West Street. This World Cultural Heritage Site in Dujiangyan (Southwest China) in the Sichuan Province near the site of an irrigation system that was a massive feat of ancient engineering, has housed generations upon generations of families who lived a simple, traditional life.

This is where Grandma Jiang lived for 50 of her 75 years.

In the time of her life, Grandma Jiang loved nothing more than passing endless days on the porch - smoking cigarettes, taking in the sights and sounds passing by this historic street that once served as the gateway to the Silk Road and sharing conversations with friends, neighbours and occasional visiting relatives. Her loyal daughter-in-law Xiao Da manages the mahjong parlour in the living room while her bumblingly good-natured son Xiang Qian drives cab, when not blind drunk, but often hung-over.

Though petty squabbles erupt amongst her daughters who live their own lives and almost grudgingly make efforts to visit and care for her, Grandma Jiang has, in the words of the Armenian-American writer William Saroyan, striven to "discover in all things, that which shines and is beyond corruption and encourage virtue in whatever heart it may have been driven into secrecy and sorrow by the shame and terror of the world".

But now, wrapped in blankets, looking like a living mummy (and still puffing on cigarettes), she is alone save for Xun Yu, the filmmaker who spent two years living with this family before taking an additional two years shooting the first of four documentaries about West Street and its gentrification (and by extension, the modernization of China).

"All I can hope for is a quick death," Grandma Joang tells Yu. "And after death? I guess I'm headed for the Afterlife. Where else can I go?"

In spite of the fact that it's about death, The Vanishing Spring Light: Tales of West Street is a celebration of life. Through the changing of the seasons, the increasing metamorphoses of West Street and the diminishing health of Grandma Jiang, Yu trains his eye upon the passage of existence. Simple, often beautifully composed shots in very long takes create a rhythm that is hypnotic and compelling.

This is a document in its purest and most poetic form. Yes, it is slow, but it is never boring. Yu allows his camera to capture all the pleasures, sorrows and intricacies of lives that are well, and in some cases, not-so-well lived. Through his caring and carefully placed lens we come to know and care for Grandma Jiang and those around her as if we were there ourselves.

This is one of the most staggering and profoundly moving documentaries I have seen in many years. In its own way, the film is as challenging as Pirjo Honkasalo's stunning exploration of the effects of the Chechen War The Three Rooms of Melancholia or Ulrich Seidl's almost unclassifiable, yet forceful Jesus, You Know or most profoundly, the late Frank Cole's masterwork of artful observation, A Life. Like those films, and even to an extent the works of Frederick Wiseman (though without his traditional lack or preparation), Yu lets life unfold as it most naturally does.

And just prior to her final death rattles, Grandma Jiang's eyes - forced by her position on the bed to look upwards, her gaze seeming to hug the infinite - she openly and alternately fears and welcomes death. She laments that she "didn't follow the teachings well", feeling now, more than ever. like "a would-be Buddhist". Though even as we hear her say this, we have clearly witnessed an individual who has lived life to its fullest and Yu's film shares this extraordinarily humanist event with us, as its subjects have shared their lives with him.

"I can only die the way I have lived," Grandma Jiang says before death.

And so it is, so it has been and so it will be for all of us.

Xan Yu's beautiful, elegiac and sometimes heart-breaking film is a testament to Grandma Jiang and all those who lived their lives as she did. As William Saroyan wrote: "In the time of your life, live — so that in that wondrous time, you shall not add to the misery and sorrow of the world, but shall smile to the infinite delight and mystery of it.”

"The Vanishing Spring Light: Tales of West Street" is currently in release via Kinosmith and in Toronto is playing at the Bloor Hot Docs Conema where the film's visionary Canadian producer and filmmaker Daniel Cross will be present for the screenings to discuss the making of the film. For showtimes and tickets, visit the website HERE.

PLEASE FEEL FREE TO ORDER ANYTHING FROM AMAZON BY USING THE LINKS ABOVE OR BELOW. CLICKING ON THEM AND THEN CLICKING THROUGH TO ANYTHING WILL ALLOW YOU TO ORDER AND IN SO DOING, SUPPORT THE ONGING MAINTENANCE OF THE FILM CORNER. BUY MOVIES HERE FOR SOMEONE YOU LOVE! OR HELL, BE SELFISH, AND BUY THEM JUST FOR YOURSELF

AMAZON.CA

AMAZON.COM

AMAZON.UK

KEYHOLE - Review By Greg Klymkiw - Guy Maddin's crazed new film is one of the Ten Best Films of 2011 and not to be missed. Guarantee: You will NEVER see anything like it!

Keyhole (2011) dir. Guy Maddin
Starring: Jason Patric, Isabella Rossellini, Louis Negin, Udo Kier

****

By Greg Klymkiw

Full disclosure: I produced Guy Maddin’s first three feature films. I lived with him as a roommate (I was Oscar Madison to his Felix Unger – Neil Simon’s The Odd Couple sprang miraculously to life on the top two floors of a ramshackle old house on Winnipeg’s McMillan Avenue), continue to love him as one of my dearest friends and consider his brilliant screenwriting partner George Toles to be nothing less than my surrogate big brother. Most importantly, I am one of Maddin’s biggest fans and refuse to believe I am not able to objectively review his work. Objectively, then, allow me to declare that I loved Keyhole.

What’s not to love?

Blending Warner Brothers gangster styling of the 30s, film noir of the 40s and 50s, Greek tragedy, Sirk-like melodrama and odd dapplings of Samuel Beckett’s Endgame and Jean-Paul Sartre’s No Exit, it is, like all Maddin’s work, best designed to experience as a dream on film. Like Terence Davies, Maddin is one of the few living filmmakers who understands the poetic properties of cinema, and this, frankly, is to be cherished as much as any perfectly wrought narrative.

This is not to say narrative does NOT exist in Maddin’s work. If you really must, dig deep and you will find it. That, however, wouldn’t be very much fun. One has a better time with Maddin’s pictures just letting them HAPPEN to you.

The elements concocted in Keyhole to allow for full experiential mind-fucking involve the insanely named gangster Ulysses Pick (Jason Patric as you’ve never seen him before – playing straight, yet feeling like he belongs to another cinematic era), who drags his kids (one dead, but miraculously sprung to life, the other seemingly alive, but not remembered by his Dad) into a haunted house surrounded by guns-a-blazing.

Populated with a variety of tough guys and babe-o-licious molls, Ulysses is faced with ghosts of both the living and the dead, including his wife Hyacinth (Isabella Rossellini – gorgeous as always and imbued with all the necessary qualities to render melodrama with joy and humanity), her frequently nude father (the brilliant Louis Negin – perhaps one of the world’s greatest living character actors, who frankly should be cast in every movie ever made), chained to his bed, uttering the richly ripe George Toles dialogue and Udo Kier (the greatest fucking actor in the world), whose appearance in this movie is so inspired I’ll let you discover for yourself the greatness of both the role and Udo himself.

Keyhole is, without a doubt, one of the most perversely funny movies I’ve seen in ages and includes Maddin’s trademark visual tapestry of the most alternately gorgeous and insanely inspired kind. For movie geeks, literary freaks and Greek tragedy-o-philes, the movie is blessed with added treats to gobble down voraciously.

Like all of Maddin’s work, it’s not all fun and games. Beneath the surface of its mad inspiration lurks a melancholy and thematic richness. For me, what’s so important and moving about the film is its literal and thematic exploration of a space. Strongly evoking that sense of how our lives are inextricably linked to so many places (or a place) and how they in turn are populated with things – inanimate objects that become more animate once we project our memories upon them – or how said places inspire reminiscence of said objects which, in turn, inspire further memories, Keyhole is as profound and sad as it’s a crazed laugh riot.

Of all the reviews about the movie that I bothered to read, I was shocked that NOBODY – NOT ONE FUCKING CRITIC – picked up on the overwhelming theme of PLACE and the SPIRIT of all those THINGS that live and breathe in our minds. It was the first thing to weigh heavily upon me when I first saw the movie. It has seldom been approached in the movies – and, for my money – NO MORE POIGNANTLY AND BRILLIANTLY than rendered by Maddin, Toles and their visionary young producer Jody Shapiro.

All the ghosts of the living and the dead (to paraphrase Joyce), the animate and inanimate, the real and the imagined, these are the things that haunt us to our graves, and perhaps beyond. And they all populate the strange, magical and haunting world of Keyhole – a world most of us, whether we want to acknowledge it or not, live in.

We are all ghosts and are, in turn, haunted by them.

"Keyhole" is receiving a perfunctory release with little fanfare from E-One Films Canada, but is, for Toronto movie-goers at least playing first-run in the sumptuous TIFF Bell Lightbox. Maddin will be present to introduce the film on it's opening night on April 13, 2012. In the U.S. the film is receiving a fine platform release via Monterey Media and in France an equally fine release via E.D. Distribution.

PLEASE FEEL FREE TO ORDER ANYTHING FROM AMAZON BY USING THE LINKS ABOVE OR BELOW. CLICKING ON THEM AND THEN CLICKING THROUGH TO ANYTHING WILL ALLOW YOU TO ORDER AND IN SO DOING, SUPPORT THE ONGING MAINTENANCE OF THE FILM CORNER. BUY MOVIES HERE FOR SOMEONE YOU LOVE! OR HELL, BE SELFISH, AND BUY THEM JUST FOR YOURSELF

AMAZON.CA

AMAZON.COM

AMAZON.UK

KILLER ELITE - Review by Greg Klymkiw - Lame Duck Action Rips Off Peckinpah Title

Killer Elite (2011) *
dir. Gary McKendry
Starring: Jason Statham, Clive Owen and Robert DeNiro

Review By Greg Klymkiw

Though this lame-duck action thriller is inspired by a not-so-manly-titled book called "The Feather Men", it has chosen to rip-off its title (sans the word "The") from a solid Sam Peckinpah action picture from the 70s starring James Caan and Robert Duvall. The Killer Elite is far from Peckinpah's best work, but I'd argue one frame of it beats this noisy, jack hammering and ultimately leaden, meandering macho-man movie.

What will keep Bloody Sam from rolling in his grave is that this is, at least, not a remake of his movie.

Apparently, Killer Elite is a true story.

That hardly makes up for how terrible it is.

Basically what you've got here are two old buddies - Jason Statham and Robert DeNiro - who work as soldier-for-hire assassins. After we get to see a dull, contrived opening action set-piece with them, Statham's character decides it's time to retire. DeNiro doesn't. He's kidnapped and used as ransom for Statham to take another job. His target is ultimately Clive Owen (sporting a really stupid looking moustache), a retired rogue British operative.

Cat and mouse mayhem ensues.

The idea of an action movie starring these three guys thrills me to bits.

Unfortunately they're wasted in an action movie directed by someone who clearly has no idea how to direct action. It's yet another contemporary genre picture with lots of bluster, but far too many closeups and bone headed herky-jerky camera moves and attention-span-challenged editing.

It has none of the style of Guy Ritchie, none of the panache of Neveldine/Taylor and not even the sheer craft of all the Luc Besson hacks.

And it is most certainly not Peckinpah.

McKendry directed an Academy Award nominated short I've never seen, but the shorts I have seen in that arena are usually nothing to write home about. He's also directed commercials. He might be good at that, but he's useless with action. Well, maybe not as incompetent as J.J. Abrams was with action in Mission Impossible III, but that's hardly a glowing recommendation.

I'd take Michael Bay over this guy - hands down.

The trio of stars acquit themselves with their usual professionalism, but it's such a waste seeing them in one of the more unremarkable action pictures made in recent years. Any of the picture's pretensions and/or aspirations to be a "serious" look at the private, illegal wars being fought the world over are just so much lip service. The movie is an excuse for one action set piece after another. There's nothing wrong with that when it's executed properly, but this is strictly by the numbers and worse, it's poorly directed and I reiterate, very noisy.

It also has the dubious distinction of including one of the most pointless car chases I've seen recently. For a car chase to be good, it needs to be well directed. That's a no brainer. For it to truly rise above the rest, it needs to be driven by character.

Seeing as the movie barely has anything resembling characters, it stands to reason that most of the motivating forces behind the action are those of the director - who's not good at executing it anyway.

Enjoy!

Killer Elite is available on DVD and Blu-Ray from e-one Entertainment.

HOLY ROLLERS - Review By Greg Klymkiw - Unique Hasidic Drug Dealing Crime Picture

Holy Rollers (2010) **
dir. Kevin Asch
Starring: Jesse Eisenberg, Justin Bartha, Danny A. Abeckaser, Ari Graynor, Mark Ivanir

Review By Greg Klymkiw

As I watched Holy Rollers unspool, I really wanted it to be a movie I would love (or at least like). Based on the 1998 real-life case of seemingly devout Hasidic Jews smuggling Ecstasy into America on behalf of Israeli drug lords, the picture had all the makings of being a gritty, low-budget Scorsese-like crime picture with the dichotomy of faith and crime driving it forward.

As the picture progresses, however, it ambles far too frequently and bears one of the more ubiquitous hallmarks of machine-tooled independent American movies. Holy Rollers seems to detest mainstream filmmaking so much, it forgets there are clear and simple cinematic storytelling techniques that it could have employed to tell a fascinating tale with the kind of crank to knock it right out of the park.

Alas, director Kevin Asch keeps everything so annoyingly muted that the slow burn at the beginning of the movie loses all effectiveness as the picture - especially given the subject matter - demands a steady mounting of tension and dollops of real suspense. This never happens and this is indeed the main problem with the film.

The movie begins well enough, establishing the character of protagonist Sam Gold (Jesse Eisenberg), the son of Mendel (Mark Ivanir), a garment merchant. Our young hero is being groomed to become a Rabbi and is potentially on the verge of being betrothed to an excellent match for a wife. Sam, however, thinks he is not going to land the young lady in question because he is not rich enough. In fact, he has such fine instincts for business, negotiation and haggling that he even criticizes his father for not making enough money in their store and being too easy with the prices.

When things are looking their bleakest for Sam (and they're not really that bad, he's just young and impulsive), in walks his slightly older pal from next door, Yosef (Justin Bartha), a ne'er do well always on the make. He convinces and recruits Sam to become a mule and smuggle Ecstasy into the U.S. from Amsterdam. The drug is undetectable and Hasidic mules in full Holy garb make for such unsuspecting drug smugglers that they get through customs completely undetected. When Sam meets Yosef's boss Jackie (Danny A. Abeckaser), an unlikely friendship/mentorship begins. As well, Jackie's moll, the sexy Rachel (Ari Graynor) seems to take a liking to Sam and he, is naturally attracted to her as well.

As Sam gets deeper into the business, the movie should really start moving. It doesn't. It keeps up the deliberate pace and is so bereft of suspense, that one even begins to question whether director Asch was on the right track in the film's first third - that maybe the solid slow burn was just a fluke. Ultimately, I don't think that's the case. Asch's visuals have a consistency to them and he elicits several terrific performances (especially from Eisenberg, young star of The Squid and the Whale).

One feels, finally, that director Asch is deliberately avoiding any trappings that could be construed as "mainstream".

This, of course, is a huge mistake on his part. All we're left with, finally, is a good story that's told in the dullest manner possible. It's not bad, but it's not particularly good either - a fate worse than being awful.

Holy Rollers is available on Blu-Ray and DVD via Video Services Corp. (VSC)

PLEASE FEEL FREE TO ORDER ANYTHING FROM AMAZON BY USING THE LINKS ABOVE OR BELOW. CLICKING ON THEM AND THEN CLICKING THROUGH TO ANYTHING WILL ALLOW YOU TO ORDER AND IN SO DOING, SUPPORT THE ONGING MAINTENANCE OF THE FILM CORNER. BUY MOVIES HERE FOR SOMEONE YOU LOVE! OR HELL, BE SELFISH, AND BUY THEM JUST FOR YOURSELF

AMAZON.CA

AMAZON.COM

AMAZON.UK