Film Review - Bad Boys For Life (15)

We're not just black, we're cops too! We'll pull ourselves over later!

Quick history of me and the Bad Boys franchise... In 1995 I was introduced to 'loose-cannon' cops Mike Lowrey (Will Smith) and Marcus Burnett (Martin Lawrence), courtesy of director Michael 'blow-shit-up' Bay. Lowrey was the eternal playboy and Marcus the family man, and they both drove their captain nuts with their cavalier attitude to law enforcement. There was gung-ho action, expletive-strewn banter and a comedy element involving the guys exchanging identities in the name of protecting a witness. It was passably entertaining, though I didn't feel the urge to watch it ever again.

Then In 2003 with Bay once more at the helm came Bad Boys II. All I remember about that one is it was very, very long, with louder gung-ho action and expletive-strewn banter that was more abrasive, but with no plot that I can remotely recall (although I imagine there was something threading the car chases and explosions together). Oh yes - and it's one of PC Danny Butterman's favourite movies in Hot Fuzz, a film that parodies Bay-style action flicks while being massively better than any of them. But you seriously couldn't pay me to watch Bad Boys II again.

Which brings me to Bad Boys For Life - a film I actually enjoyed a slice more than you might expect from all that preamble. Just a slice, mind...

We find Mike and Marcus quite a bit older and marginally wiser than before. Lowrey is still pursuing his bachelor lifestyle, but receiving grief from his partner for not settling on a fellow-officer with whom he has both history and chemistry. Marcus has just become a grandfather and is considering the R-word (that's 'retirement'). But then a vicious escapee from a Mexican prison starts plotting multi-person revenge with the help of her grown son, one of said persons being Will Smith's Mike. Whatever he's done to annoy her, the Bad Boys' lives and partnership are about to be thrown into major crisis.

For a film I hadn't been particularly looking forward to, this sequel did a fair amount - at least early on - to win me over. The new directing partnership of Adil and Bilall (as they're credited) pulls back to some extent from the excess of Bay. There are the same blue-filtered Miami landscapes, glossy automobiles and high-octane action sequences certainly. But there's also less tastelessness and more room to breathe, rather than wall-to-wall crash-boom bikini-ogling bayhem. Smith and Lawrence have an irresistible chemistry that picks up from where they left off, even if much of their dialogue plays for easy laughs. (It gets quite a few, so I can't push that criticism too far.) And the story takes an unexpectedly bold turn early on that seizes the attention and provides distinct character journies for our heroes.

Sadly having done the hard work of grabbing hold, the film eases its grip later on. Half an hour shorter than the interminable Bad Boys II, its running time can still be felt, the jaunty repartee wearing a bit thin by the time a (long) final act commences. A bunch of younger characters are introduced, along with a villainous subplot and a major backstory involving one of our leads that's dumped on us late in the day. None of this is bad stuff in itself, it just needed to be woven together with a bit more finesse. That way the sentimentality (of which there's much), the full-on violence (ditto) and the blunt humour (tons of it) might have blended in a more sleek and effective way. Oh and there's a character-as-plot-device moment that grated on me in both its predictability and the disservice it did to a fine actor in a great role. Hate that!

(Not either of these fine actors, obvs.)

Ultimately there's enough good-natured, funny and exciting stuff to keep things bubbling till the end, even if that end should have come a good fifteen minutes sooner. The new crew prove likeable, knitting together nicely with the old guard and exhibiting a commendable sense of gender equality too. Of course the freshened-up dynamics (plus a significant late-in-the-day twist) ensure that this will not the Boys' final dust-up with Miami's criminal underworld - especially since box-office returns are proving impressive. And you know, I'm okay with that. Bad Boys For Life is an okay time at the movies. That said, I don't feel the urge to watch it ever again.

Gut Reaction: Quite a few laughs and a big gasp. Then a degree of weariness punctuated by further sporadic laughs and occasional thrills.

Memorable Moment: The 'big gasp' moment - see Gut Reaction.

Ed's Verdict: 6/10. Smith and Lawrence did well to return to this; they do a good buddy-act and BB3 has a decent share of good bits. If the screenplay was tighter, I might have mustered some proper enthusiasm.

Film Review - Richard Jewell (15)

I'm sorry the world has gone insane.

Seems like it's Based-on-fact January here at UK cinemas. What with Bombshell and Just Mercy we're getting an influx of sobering stories rooted in America's recent past, none of them quite so unusual as Clint Eastwood's Richard Jewell. Those other real-life tales have a sharp and obvious contemporary relevance, but this new entry in the Eastwood canon gets in a few digs of its own at unsavoury aspects of modern life - despite it's being a leap back in history. It's a story obviously close to the veteran director's heart and as such makes for one of his best recent films - and a noble attempt to right an egregious wrong.

The Richard Jewell of the title was a well-meaning but socially awkward individual, who in his capacity as security guard prevented a mass-slaughter at the 1996 Los Angeles Olympics. His recognition and reporting of a terrorist bomb limited the casualties and in the days following he was - understandably - hailed as a hero. But when he turned into the FBI's number one suspect for the crime, that spotlight turned scarily cold, particularly when the news was leaked to the press. Thus began a trial by media, while Richard and his mother fought against forces of law and order seemingly determined to convict him.

One thing that strikes hard watching this film is how much a part of history 1996 now feels. The world of the film is one where a female journalist will unambiguously use her sexuality to get a story that has no business in the public domain. Where print and television are still the prevailing news media (but capable of wreaking damage in a person's life without the aid of social media). Where a terrorist bombing on pre-9/11 American soil will be reasonably presumed to have been carried out by a socially marginalised white male. It's the last of these that helps snare Jewell - and with an honest screenplay from Billy Ray and an excellent central performance from Paul Walter Hauser, we see precisely how.

Jewell, as portrayed here, is a far-from-typical hero. With his po-faced determination to make a career in law enforcement, he comes across as a frustrating jobsworth and the natural butt of his work colleagues' jokes. The script does a great job of showing why the FBI become convinced he is the bomber, so closely does he fit their profile and so guilelessly does he incriminate himself. With his innate trust that anyone with a badge can be trusted, he's more likely to irritate at first, before finally engaging our sympathies. It's a funny-sad but ultimately fully human performace from Hauser (already so good as a hilariously bumbling crook in I, Tonya and as one of Emma Thompson's writing team in Late Night). We come to Richard's admirable qualities, but we're taken the long way round in a tour de force - if awards-neglected - performance.

Kathy Bates has been more smiled-upon by the Academy, having attained a Best Supporting nomination for her role as Richard's mother. It's earned too - she's instantly likeable as an unassuming home-bird and doting mom, proud of her son even before his heroic deed and thus heartbreakingly bewildered when fate turns against her boy. Equally good and a dramatic driving-force in the story is Sam 'Incapable-of-a-mediocre-performance' Rockwell, as Jewell's lawyer and, ultimately, his best friend Watson Bryant. Rockwell plays it as an irascible good-guy with a heart of gold, constantly (and comically) frustrated by his client's apparent inablity to follow instructions that will keep him from further trouble. A lovely, touching chemistry evolves between these three leads, one aided by Stan and Ollie's scene-stealing Nina Arianda as Bryant's PA/partner Nadya.

There are no out-and-out villains here, but there are characters who represent what clearly annoys director Eastwood about society. Jon Hamm is the stubbornly determined FBI agent trying to charge Richard; you see his motivations, but also his intransigence in the face of evidence that contradicts his initial hunch. (It's the same bloody-mindedness as in Just Mercy - minus the racial element, but potentially as destructive.) And Olivia Wilde's gung-ho reporter represents elements of the press that put the story ahead of privacy rights or indeed the truth. (One aspersion cast in her character's direction has, it should be said, stirred a deal of controversy.) There's anger bubbling here, and not just in the movie's leads.

Eastwood clearly knows he has a great story here and the great man lets it do the talking. His direction is clean and unfussy, though he does push the conventionality in moments conveying Jewell's experience of PTSD in the bombing's wake and the investigation's throes. If the pace is rather too slow in the latter stages, that ultimately doesn't detract from the power of this story. It's one of humanity and tragedy, where an ordinary man ends up in a media circus of others' making and where his good deed is grievously punished. Not perhaps as shattering as Just Mercy or as keen-edged as Bombshell, it has a power of its own nonetheless - and some tough lessons to be taken away.

Gut Reaction: A lot of cringing at poor Richard's misplaced trust, laughter courtesy of Rockwell and a few sniffles (thank you Kathy Bates).

Memorable Moment: Our hero-turned-victim finally gets angry with the Man.

Ed's Verdict: 7.5/10. Under-performing at the box-office through no fault of its own, Clint's movie deserves a big audience, as does Richard Jewell's story. A fine and well-told human drama of people who should have been treated a whole lot better.

Film Review - Just Mercy (12A)

You're the only one who cared enough to fight for me.

A recent post on my Facebook asked the question why Just Mercy has been snubbed during the 2020 awards season. I have no clear answer to that, just as I'm confounded by much of the politics surrounding awards nominations year on year. It's at least partly to do with which movies studios choose to push, that much I know. But every time the Globes and the BAFTAs and the Oscars come around there are quality films that escape attention, so that as the end credits roll, you sit wondering why. Add this film to that list.

Michael B. Jordan (Creed, Black Panther) plays Bryan Stevenson, real-life lawyer who for over thirty years has defended Death Row inmates in Alabama - backed up by the work of the Equal Justice Initiative that he himself founded and motivated by the disproportionate number of black men facing the death penalty. One of his early cases was the defence of Walter McMillian (played here by Jamie Foxx), a family man convicted of murdering a white teenage girl based on dubious testimony and in the face of substantial evidence to the contrary. It's a rough baptism for the Harvard-educated lawyer, one that pits him against political intransigence and Deep South racism, as he strives to achieve justice for both his client and for the man's family.

Just Mercy is - no doubt about it - a conventionally told story, the shape of which you'll find very familiar. There's the miscarriage of justice and the warrior-lawyer fighting to right it.There are long nights of trawling through witness statements and police reports, leading to charged courtroom showdowns. There's obfuscation, frustration and despair along with moments of uplift and hope. You've seen it all done before - but seldom have you seen it done so well and never with greater conviction. Add to that its firm roots in Stevenson's autobiographical account and pointing out the movie's adherence to tropes becomes utterly redundant.

The passion in this project runs deep. Jordan, who was instrumental in getting the film made, is a well of compassion as the single-minded lawyer and social activist he so clearly reveres. He's also quietly forceful and commanding in the court scenes - this is the antithesis of A Few Good Men's 'I want the truth' theatrics, but tellingly it's even more powerful. Foxx is the best he's been since 2012's Django Unchained, partly because he's given reason and scope to be so through a poignant screenplay co-written by director Destin Daniel Cretton, partly due to the authenticity he emanates as the proud but anguished death row inmate. Put these two leads together in a scene and you've got something profoundly and memorably intense.

The drama extends well outside the courtroom too. One story thread movingly explores Walter's camaraderie with his fellow inmates (Rob Morgan and Long Shot's O'Shea Jackson Jnr., both fleshing out Stevenson's struggle with the system). Another gives us glimpses into the expanding work of the lawyer's EJI organisation, represented chiefly though the tireless support of fellow-advocate Eva Ansley (Brie Larson). And there's a warm yet nuanced portrayal of the extended McMillian family, with Karan Kendrick heart-wrenching as his wife. This is a film that excels in its character detail - even when it comes to its potentially two-dimensional support roles. When you cast Tim Blake Nelson as the supposed eye-witness who framed McMillian, or Rafe Spall as the attorney blocking the man's retrial, you know the film is aiming at authenticity over cheap emotional beats.

I watched Just Mercy on the same afternoon as Bombshell - vastly different films in style, but both delivering real punch in a provocative 'state of the American nation' double-whammy. Cretton's movie, the less flashy, more traditionally structured of the two, has flown sadly under that awards radar. It's a genuine shame, because this is a story of immense power and moral weight, one that earns its transformative final moments much like Stevenson has fought for each legal and moral victory of his career. It carries a hefty message for sure, but one that connects, due to this being a fine film. It's one that I urge you to see right away.

Gut Reaction: I rate a movie's intensity based on how much time my hand grips my face. Just Mercy had my hand clamped to my jaw like the parasite from Alien.

Memorable Moment: One inmate's time runs out. (A sequence of understated yet breathtaking power.)

Ed's Verdict: 8/10. Evoking anger, compassion and hope, this is a cry for justice and humanity that comes right from the hearts of all involved, backed up by rock-solid film-making. Great stuff.

Film Review - Bombshell (15)

Someone has to speak up. Someone has to get mad.

Over a year before the Harvey Weinstein sexual harassment allegations hit America's headlines, the Fox News network was rocked by a similar and equivalently huge scandal. Roger Ailes, the so-called 'father of Fox News' was accused of decades' worth of sexual misconduct in the workplace. What made the story more potent was the irony - and yet near inevitability - of its coming to light in a bastion of right-wing, anti-feminist conservatism. This early battle in what would become #metoo was fought in the most unlikely setting and not by the card-carrying social justice warriors you'd expect. It's an intriguing story, and one that makes for an engrossingly topical film drama.

Charlize Theron plays Megyn Kelly, Fox News anchor whose testimony would become crucial in the Ailes case. As the crisis brews, she's already in a bind at Fox, having challenged Presidential nominee Donald J. Trump in interview on his misogynistic language, thus flying in the face of the network's pro-Trump stance. Meanwhile ex-Fox presenter Gretchen Carlson (Nicole Kidman) is biding her time before fighting back legally, having been released from the company on what she knows are spurious grounds. And at the other end of the professional conveyer belt is Kayla (Margot Robbie), an ambitious newsroom ingenue having a rude introduction to the rules of this male-driven environment. If these women could only find some way to work together and alter the status quo...

Bombshell is one of those essential 'films for our time' and I love its combative urgency, particularly its intercutting of real and recent news footage with the actors' performances. When a 'real-life' movie weaves in controversial moments of the man currently serving as US President, ones that chime alarmingly with its central theme of institutionalised sexism, you know it means business. The screenplay comes from The Big Short's co-writer Charles Randolph and has some of that script's wit, even if it doesn't achieve the razor-sharpness of a Vice or of anything by Aaron Sorkin. It's adequately feisty and satirical and directed with a brisk sense of purpose by Jay Roach - flashy at points, but not to the degree that the performances are ever undercut.

And what performances they are. Kidman, fresh from her Big Little Lies triumph, has steely composure as the screwed-over and determined Carlson. She makes great use of limited screen time to establish the movie's lawsuited framework. Taking centre-stage is Theron, proving - again - as Kelly what a commanding presence and master of fine detail she is. No cheap impersonation, her performance goes deep (along with her voice) as the complex career woman on the horns of a very human dilemma. Robbie is radically different - both from the others and from any character we've seen her play before - as Kayla a 'composite' of all the young woman on whom Ailes visited his unwelcome attentions. An instantly likeable and earnest spokeswoman for Fox News as a conservative platform, she's also painfully vulnerable - especially in one cringing scene of her boss's predatory interest.

The cast is fleshed out in style too, including by a John Lithgow as the plausibly monstrous Ailes. (He's particularly fleshy, in the most convincing fat prosthetic I've ever seen on screen - thankfully no impediment to a great performance.) Kate McKinnon plays it straighter than usual as a secret liberal-in-the-fold and Alison Janney is the fiercely pragmatic lawyer Susan Estrich. But perhaps my favourite supporting player is the quirkily dynamic score by Theodore Shapiro. Spiked with intoxicating female vocals it adds a distinctly feminine, as the anti-Ailes resistance gains momentum, rendering certain key scenes irresistible.

Only two years on from the genesis of #metoo and its Hollywood partner #timesup, Roach's film is one that didn't wait around to get made. The pressing nature of its subject is reflected in a pacy and compelling piece of storytelling that benefits much from its central trio. Liberals will question the degree of heroism with which controversial figures like Kelly are portrayed, but there's an undeniable dramatic satisfaction in seeing these pillars of the right-wing media establishment strike a blow for women's rights. Bombshell has legitimately been described as the first #metoo movie and thankfully it's a good one. With monumental events unfolding within US politics by the day and the liberal-conservative culture war becoming ever more entrenched, just don't expect it to be the last. There are further combustive revelations of this kind to be portrayed on screen.

Gut Reaction: Rapt attention, a lot of 'look who's playing who' and occasional queasiness at some truly repugnant behaviour.

Memorable Moment: Elevator music.

Ed's Verdict: 8/10. While the script isn't always on point, the Kidman/Theron/Robbie combo provide enough charge to make this explode off the screen. Bombshell lives up to its punning title in every sense.

Feature - Women and Hollywood 2020 (two years into #MeToo)

I had dreams, but I didn't have the sense that they would necessarily work out. They seemed very far-fetched. Greta Gerwig.

I'm writing this midway through January 2020 - a month in which disgraced Hollywood mogul Harney Weinstein attended court for the opening of his rape and sexual assault trial, and in which neither BAFTA nor the Adacemy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences included a women in the Best Director award category. I mention the first of those items as it was the Weinstein business and accompanying #metoo outrage that prompted my first Women and Hollywood feature back in 2017. The predatory behaviour exemplified by the case, I observed, was a nasty symptom of a wider problem - that of how women were systematically marginalised within the movie industry. Which brings me to the second of the above news stories. This pesky awards situation and what it suggests about the position of women in Hollywood 2020.

Look, I'm going to start off by saying it - no awards board is obligated to include anyone in a list based on that person's gender, race or any other aspect of their physical being. Ideally all awards voters make their choices based on merit alone, so that in the Best Director category it's genuinely significant achievements in direction, which get rewarded. This of course begs the question 'Is that what happened this year?' Let's take a look...

 

BAFTA and the Academy concur on all of their five selections in the directing field. Of those five I've seen all but one - Bong Joon Ho's Parasite. Each of the four I have viewed definitely sits at the high end of the creative scale and by numerous accounts Parasite is a remarkable piece of work also (I'll provide my own thoughts on that as soon as I can). The one female director whose name has been jostling consistently for consideration with those of the boys is Greta Gerwig. Lulu Wang's The Farewell and Alma Har'el's Honey Boy are also highly regarded pieces of direction, but sadly neither movie generated much awards buzz outside of Awkwafina's central performance in the former. Gerwig's Little Women adaptation, meanwhile, is a sublimely crafted film in which the director draws out great individual performances, never losing sight of the ensemble, while creatively restructuring the entire time-frame of the narrative and spinning out themes of youthful hope versus adult disenchantment in the lives of its characters. It's a terrific achievement all round.

 

So is the movie's omission from various nomination lists indicative of institutionalised sexism within awards bodies? In all honesty I might suspect that, but I can't state it as a concrete fact. Each of the other directors in consideration appears to be a worthy contender, so it's not like Gerwig has been elbowed out by objectively inferior work. That said, with all the bigging-up of Little Women along with its box-office success, you'd expect it to get some nods. There's a subtlety in its style that just possibly got lost on people drawn more to the more openly dazzling Joker or Once Upon a Time in... Hollywood. Maybe the sexism comes in at a level where this female-led period drama isn't perceived as sufficiently 'muscular' subject-wise to be nominated for a prestigious award. That's purely my supposition. Whatever the reason, however, it's a disappointment that Gerwig hasn't received more awards-love this season for her role as director in a beautifully crafted piece of work.

There's a substantially more important point to be made, however, than that regarding the response to a single movie. Struggles over representation of any kind aren't won and lost at awards ceremonies. Oscar/BAFTA/Globes season is just the back-slapping end-point of a long process - an indication of who's getting to head up the prestige projects in a colossal industry. This year's noms are a symptom (as with the Weinstein business), not the core problem itself. You want to see more women and more people of colour nominated for top awards? Then you need a more representative group of people producing and being hired to write screenplays and to direct. You need a broader range of faces on screen in key roles and a greater range of stories being told. And for that to become a self-perpetuating reality, two things are required. Firstly you need encouragement at grass-roots level for people from all corners of society to consider careers in film-making. (Admittedly the publicity generated by more Oscar-nominated women would aid in that.) Secondly - and this continues to prove elusive - you need a system where there's upward mobility in Hollywood and elsewhere for anyone, regardless of gender and race. 

The greatest thing that the #MeToo campaign has achieved on a Hollywood industry level is to spotlight how stuck everything had become - specifically the system's institutionalised white maleness dating back to the days of its creation. #MeToo has sped up a process which I believe was already in motion, one where a greater number of determined women within Hollywood were pushing for proper female representation in front of and behind the camera. This process has been responsible (so I argued in a feature at the end of 2018) for a vastly more interesting and varied portrayal of women onscreen than we'd seen a generation before. It's a trend that continued into 2019, a year that began for me with the all-female royal sparring of The Favourite and ended with that splendid adaptation of Little Women, with notable female-centric stories like Booksmart, Late Night and Hustlers along the way. More significent is the fact that the final three of these films were directed by women - Olivia Wilde, Nisha Ganatra and Lorene Scafaria - who are making a serious industry splash.

(Olivia Wilde - Camerasmart)

You see, whatever story this year's awards nominations are telling us, it's one I believe is nearly finished in the telling. A new narrative is being established and 2020 could be a propulsive new chapter. The next twelve months will see a slew of female-directed films on our screens. Some of these are intriguing smaller-scale projects like Eliza Hittman's challenging teen drama Never Rarely Sometimes Always and Natalie Erika James' supernatural horror The Relic. But a striking number of tentpole studio movies are also being helmed by women, including the greater part of this year's comic-book output. 

Patty Jenkins is returning with a sequel to her mightily successful 2018 Wonder Woman adaptation, while the character of Harley Quinn might actually have justice done to her this time around (we could all then forget about 2016's messy Suicide Squad) in Cathy Yan's Birds of Prey. That accounts for the DC Universe. Meanwhile over at Marvel Cate Shortland is taking the reins of the long-anticipated Black Widow standalone film and enticing new MCU property Eternals is in the hands of Chloe Zhao; in both cases the directors are making a leap from relatively small-scale productions to the studio big-time. Disney meanwhile has entrusted one of its more interesting live-action remakes - the colourful and martial-arts-heavy Mulan - to Niki Caro (The Zookeeper's Wife), while Reen Morano is taking time out from directing and actively shooting quality TV work like The Handmaid's Tale to direct mainstream thriller The Rhythm Section. And established TV directors Liesl Tommy and Melina Matsoukas are both delivering feature film debuts - in the form of Aretha Franklin biopic Respect and urban drama Queen and Slim.

(Melina Matsoukas - 2020 a big year for her?)

I could go on for some time, but even listing feels patronising - hey, look what you girls are doing now! The point is that even five years ago I couldn't have created such a list without scratching around in the outer reaches of independent film-making (not that there's anything wrong with those hives of low-budget creativity). These days women are vastly more likely to be found at the heart of the industry penning screeplays, overseeing action on set, even - albeit only occasionally - shouldering a camera. Slowly, inevitably, a revolution has been taking place and it's gaining serious momentum.

(Reed Morana shoulders her responsibility)

So there's considerably more good news here than bad. In the wake of the Weinstein scandel and the rise of #metoo the movie industry's serial harassers-of-women have much less cover under which to operate. Admittedly the male-dominated power structures that allowed for that harassment in the first place, while simultaneously shutting women out of key roles in film-making, are still in the early stages of being dismantled. The scarcity of female nominees at the awards end of the industry in 2020 is a clanging reminder of that, but it's far from the whole picture. Women in Hollywood are on the move and there's a day coming when their lack of representation will no longer be an issue - when that year's 'Little Women' will be shoulder-to-shoulder with other titles directed and produced by women and whether or not one particular film gets recognition simply won't matter so much. And if 2020 is the banner year it promises to be, that day may arrive sooner than we thought.

Film Review - 1917 (15)

Blake... Pick a man. Bring your kit. 

Sam Mendes' grandfather Alfred waited fifty years before sharing his stories from the Great War. As his film-maker grandson tells it, they weren't tales of heroism, but rather shocking ones of 'luck and chance and coincidence'. In the movie 1917 Mendes takes these vivid wartime recollections and shapes them, with the help of skilled screenwriting partner Krysty Wilson-Cairns, into an epic narrative - one that captures the random horrors of human conflict, together with spontaneous acts of bravery and self-sacrifice. Along the way he crafts one of the most remarkable film experiences I've covered since beginning this blog and one you absolutely have to see. Preferably on a very big screen.

 

In April 1917 on the Western Front lance corporals Blake and Schofield are given a formidable mission. With German troops having retreated from the front-line trenches, 1600 soldiers are primed to launch an assault next morning at dawn, Blake's brother among them. But the intelligence is outdated and the troops are about to charge into a trap. The two young NCOs have hours to make it across No Man's Land and through war-ravaged enemy territory to deliver an order - one that will stop the offensive and prevent a massacre. And we get to experience ever fraught footstep of the journey with them.

Mendes' decision - one central to the buzz surrounding this movie - was to shoot as if in one continuous take (arguably two due to a time-lapse in the later stages). It's more than a piece of gimmickry, however. With the camera weaving around the story's subjects in an smoothly choreographed dance, we experience the lads' ordeal in one uninterrupted flow. Sometimes the current of their adventure is painfully sluggish, at other times it moves in spate. (At one point that river metaphor becomes scarily literal.) Point is, we're there with them - a third participant in this grim moment-to-moment struggle through the shell-blasted fields of France. Each time our callow heroes climb up a rise or edge through the labyrinth of a booby-trapped trench, we feel their tension palpably.

1917 is a miracle of miles-long production design, the camera gliding - often at the soldiers' eye level - through a meticulously recreated vision of the Great War. It makes for an immersive adventure, one bolstered by Roger Deakins' awe-inspiring cinematography. The man who gained his long-overdue Oscar for Blade Runner 2049 has outdone himself, his lens capturing the Western Front's varied hellscapes - and they do change, like in some real-life Dantean odyssey. No Man's Land recalls the nightmare poetic imagery of Wilfred Owen and Siegfried Sassoon (staples of a UK schooling), while later scenes reflect the hallucinogenic response of an exhausted mind to a devastated French town. Yet as with war films from All's Quiet on the Western Front to The Thin Red Line the horror is cut with moments of aching beauty. Take all that and enhance it with a subtly poignant score by Thomas 'Shawshank Redemption' Newman (he might actually have out-Shawshanked himself here) and you have an experience that frequently overwhelms.

But it's not just the technical aspects that prove powerful. This is also an experience of enormous heart, due in no small measure to the two leads. As Blake and Schofield relatively fresh faces Dean-Charles Chapman (he's sat on the Iron Throne) and George MacKay (you might have seen him in Sunshine on Leith or Captain Fantastic or Pride) disappear into their roles, conveying all the camaraderie, conflict and desperation you'd imagine in such dire circumstances. One a reckless joker, the other reserved and cautious, they're unlikely army pals together thrust into unthinkable peril. A host of better-known faces - Colin Firth is only the first of those - punctuate their progress in brief but fully realised cameos. But it's the boys and their heroism-born-of-necessity that will eventually take hold of your emotions and squeeze.

There are good films and there are outstanding ones and then there are a few that attain greatness. 1917 - I think - is an example of that final kind, and not just because of its superbly achieved 'single-shot' effect. It carries you on a quest every moment of which you'll feel, through dangers that will startle and confound, to a conclusion that will resonate long after you've left the cinema. There's a reason Mendes' movie takes that year as its title. In Blake and Schofield's quest we see in microcosm all that made the Great War so uniquely terrible and cruel. Yet due to our heroes there's a powerful nobility too. It can't redeem the terrors surrounding them, but it does provide a flicker of light in all that wretched darkness.

Gut Reaction: Gaze locked on screen throughout, lots of leaning in like it was drawing me closer. Knuckle-gnawing tension - leaped clean out of my seat at least twice. Heart pounding all through the final act, then moved to your actual tears.

Memorable Moment: Which to choose? One that made me wince, jump or sob? I'm going for the one inside the truck. Thomas Newman's music spoke volumes. 

Ed's Verdict: 10/10. There, I've done it. No mucking about with 9s and 9.5s. You might nitpick implausibilities in the plot, but then war is fundamentally insane. 1917 - terrible beautiful genius from first to last. Go see it.

Film Review - The Gentlemen (18)

There's only one rule in the jungle: when the lion's hungry, he eats.

As sure as eggs in an Eastend pub are pickled, so Guy Ritchie is guaranteed to return - every few films - to the London-based crime drama. It made his name, after all, Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels and Snatch taking the 90s' Tarantino-inspired taste for pulp fiction and giving it a thoroughly Brit reworking. And he's never shaken his love of the sub-genre he helped shape, following up the serviceable live-action Aladdin he directed for Disney with this new Laaandan gangster epic. It's certainly as quotable and convoluted as his early efforts, but not of significantly greater depth.

In this latest underworld foray Matthew McConaughey is Mickey Pearson, an ex-pat American bad-boy plying his illegal trade in Blighty. Mickey, the owner of numerous cunningly concealed marijuana farms, is contemplating retirement from his empire. He appears to have the perfect buyer in suave cannabis 'Kingpin Mathew' (Jeremy Strong), but matters complicate fast when London Chinese gangster Dry Eye (Henry Golding) tries to muscle in. And then there's the unwelcome interest of seedy investigative journalist Fletcher (a whole new version of Hugh Grant) to contend with. As ever, life in Ritchie's criminal underworld is destined to get complex and messy.

In terms of pure craft this tall new tale has much to commend it. Admittedly it's like a fine-tuning of the knotty crime stories the director has told before - with its multi-stranded narrative, rogue's gallery of characters drawn from all social layers and arch use of voiceover. This time around the last of those is supplied by Grant in the film's often delicious framing scenes - a protracted piece of verbal fencing between creepy journo and McConaughey's right hand man Raymond (Charlie Hunnam). It's an artful device, allowing story threads to be drawn together wittily as the characters spar. (Hugh has endless fun with the kind of weaselly role he'd never have been granted - ha! - in his pretty-boy youth.)

The main narrative is pacy and funny, ducking and diving between stately homes and concrete housing estates, as Mickey attempts to put his affairs in order. It's populated with actors playing against type: Downton Abbey's Michelle Dockery as our antihero's East London girlfriend Rosalind, Golding as a genuinely nasty piece of crime-family work and Colin Farrell as - well - the drily humorous and totally Colin Farrell-esque gym owner 'Coach'. They're written with panache and steered towards a wildly careering and inevitably violent conclusion.

All of which brings me to the 'but', one that prevents me from concurring with the film's high audience rating on IMDb. For all its sharply-crafted tale telling and buckets of style, The Gentlemen ultimately feels hollow. Yes there's a perfecting of the style that Ritchie employed back in Lock, Stock..., but there's no sense of his writing having matured thematically. There are the nasty bad-guys we dislike and the cool ones we root for. There's the colourful banter, revelling in its own un-pc nature. There are casual atrocities played as gags. It all elicits laughter for sure, but carries little dramatic weight, a flaw only accentuated by the the film's obvious homage to classic British gangster flick The Long Good Friday. (Now that had serious dramatic weight.) Oh, and I can't lie - the accumulation of racial and homophobic humour in the dialogue becomes plain uncomfortable by the end. 

There's no doubt about it - this further jaunt around Guy Ritchie's knowingly artificial world of Brit-crime is entertaining. But contrast it with the elegaic tone of Once Upon a Time in... Hollywood, the latest from the man with whom his early career was most readily compared, and there's a sense of the London lad not having gone that far. The criminals here may be classier and the production more slick, but that's all that's changed. The Gentlemen exhibits talent at every point, but in the end it's throwaway.

Gut Reaction: Interest throughout and quite a lot of laughter - but it also left a bit of a bad taste in my mouth.

Memorable Moment: Colin Farrell's chip shop take-down.

Ed's Verdict: 6.5/10. It's cleverly written, tightly made and there's undeniable enjoyment in the watching. But at points it's unpleasant and in the end it's pretty empty.