Haywire (Sunday, January 29, 2012) (5)

Steven Soderbergh is a good and talented filmmaker. Above everything else, he's a great watcher of other, older movies. Maybe that's why I generally like his movies, or, at a minimum, find his work interesting, because I feel like he's a movie watcher just like I am.

His newest film, Haywire, is a really fun, small action film that plays very much like one of those sleek post-Bond action flicks, like John Boorman's Point Blank (with Lee Marvin). The story here is not too complicated (well, there are lots of moving parts to it, but it's not too hard to follow), the action scenes, fights and chases, look great, it does not spending too much time dwelling on character development and pathos (it's an action film, after all) and it all ties up well in the end.

Mallory (MMA star Gina Carano) is a super spy who works for some private firm that consults with the CIA. When a job goes pear-shaped she finds that people on her own team might be out to get her and she looks to find them before they can find her. She seems always a half-step ahead of them and is not afraid to put on heels and a black dress and kill people (like a girl James Bond). It's a very sleek movie, though nothing too deep or psychologically rigorous.

It's always a big risk to cast a non-actor in a major role, especially one like this which is not really autobiographical. I think Soderbergh rather enjoys making the audience feel uncomfortable with non-actors in major roles, a bit of a thumbing his nose at Hollywood tradition.

Carano does a very good job here, actually (much better than the last non-actor SS had in one of his movies, when anal porno superstar Sasha Grey was in The Girlfriend Experience in 2009), and comes off as an aw-shucks girl next door... but a badass one. She's totally sexy - and thick, which is doubly sexy - and plays well opposite the various males who want to lay her (Michael Fassbender, Channing Tatum, Ewan McGregor). I'm not sure she has a lot of other acting roles left in her career, but this is a great effort here.

I also appreciate that this is a pocket-sized action flick. It's a lot of fun and doesn't have the bombasity of a bigger-budget action movie, like a Mission: Impossible or a late-model Bond. It's got a great look, a great soundtrack (by David Holmes), and is a lot of fun.

Stars: 3 of 4

Hanna (2011) (Wednesday, January 4, 2012) (131)

Hanna is the story of the eponymous girl (Saoirse Ronan), raised by her father in the wilds of northern Finland to be a super spy and super killer. It seems her dad (Eric Bana) used to work for the CIA and left around the time she was born. When they decide her training is complete (she's about 16 or so), she is "released" into the world and recaptured by the CIA. She escapes and kills a bunch of people and then goes on a killing spree throughout Europe to Germany, where she discovers things about her conception and life that she was not expecting (though none of it is much of a surprise to us).

Hanna is a totally great looking movie. At times it looks polished like a big Hollywood sci-fi movie (actually McG's Charlie's Angels comes to mind... though that has a lot to do with the stylized camerawork and fight scenes) and at other times it feels like an indie Euro movie, like Tykwer's Run Lola Run or Assayas' Carlos (yes, I know they're different, but they both have that sorta crummy late-20th-century Euro look to them). Everything is art directed to within an inch of its life - and then some. It's right on the edge of being a bit too much, but it's a lot of fun. The final chase sequence takes places in an old amusement park under overcast skies and looks particularly great. On top of all of this is a very tone-appropriate score by the Chemical Brothers (no surprise, this film feels like what a Chemical Brothers song would look like). More great look and feel...

Sadly the content of the narrative is hackneyed and not thrilling. It's basically The Bourne Identity with a girl instead of a grown man. I guess geeks like stories about girls (because they can't have sex with them in life...?). To add to the silliness, there CIA back story, involving a Cate Blanchette with a painful Americun southern accent, is more over-the-top than the rest of the film, which is rather moody and dirty. The two styles create an interesting juxtaposition, but I don't think it totally helps for telling the story. Rather, it feels too obvious an intersection, clean and polished versus dirty and rough. I'm gonna fall asleep...

The whole film feels a bit too facile and ultimately less-than-gripping. It really does look great, but that's about all that's worth much in it. The rest you've seen a million times before.

Stars: 2.5 of 4

Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy (Saturday, December 10, 2011) (114)

I was totally expecting Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy to be a very typical mystery/spy movie with twists and double twists and lots of Cold War stuff with secret tapes and the Berlin Wall and all, but it's actually a whole lot more than that. Director Tomas Alfredson (who previously made the Swedish Let the Right One In) does a lot with a very well-written script (by Bridget O'Connor and Peter Straughan, adapted from a book by John le Carré) and probably brings more to the story from a directing point of view that most movies I've seen in a long time.

The story is about a double-agent in the MI6 agency who is working for the Russians spying on the British spies from within during the early 1970s. George Smiley (Gary Oldman) is relieved of his duties largely due to a botched job and then becomes obsessed with finding the leak, which nobody else seems to notice or care about. The title comes from the code names for three top-level spies in the agency, Tinker, Tailor and Soldier. Smiley conducts interviews with agents who have recently been in the field, in Budapest and Istanbul, and gets a young agent to help him get documents out of MI6 to examine so he can find the rat within. We see flashbacks to earlier days in the intelligence service, where Smiley is trying to put small details in order to try to solve the case.

Alfredson creates a world with a wonderful motif of frames and windows. Almost every shot has some sort of frame or window in it, or is in a room with no frames and no windows. The concept of deeper and deeper levels of security is constantly present, interestingly undermined because, of course, we know there's there's a double-agent in the midst. There is one amazing shot of a British spy watching a Russian agent in his hotel room through the window from across the street. This Rear Window homage is not only gorgeous, but also underlines how important the concept of perceiving oneself to be safe and the freedom to move within such a space really are in the spy game. Even the wonderfully stuffy wool suits the characters wear highlight these themes, as they all have waistcoats, adding yet another layer of material to their bodies and helping to frame each of their faces.

The film is a collection of old and young British actors from John Hurt, Colin Firth and Oldman, to younger up-and-comers like Tom Hardy, Mark Strong and Benedict Cumberbatch. All of them are really fantastic, though Oldman and Hardy stood out to me the most.

This is one of the best spy movies I can remember seeing in a long time and a really excellently made film. It's sometimes a bit confusing with the time lines and knowing if we're in the past or the present, but it does all turn out to make sense by the end. There are wonderful small details throughout that would make it a joy to see a second time, I'm sure.

Stars: 3.5 of 4