Friday Film Reviews: Big Game, Spooks: The Greater Good, The Age of Adaline and Top Five
It’s a genuine thrill when a film exceeds its promise with understated confidence and flair.
Top Five sounds like the worst kind of vanity project: an insider’s portrait of modern celebrity directed and written by Chris Rock, in which the stand-up comedian turned film star plays a stand-up comedian turned film star, who wants to be taken seriously.
Art and life walk hand in hand here and they are the best of friends because this occasionally filthy-minded comedy is smart, knowing and laugh-out-loud funny, concealing a heart of gold behind a blistering barrage of polished quips.
Admittedly, in his role as the ringmaster of this delightful circus, Rock allows too many showbusiness chums to flash their pearl whites – DMX, Whoopi Goldberg, Adam Sandler and Jerry Seinfeld cameo as themselves – but they don’t distract from the tender love story at the heart of this little gem.
Galvanised by the smouldering onscreen chemistry between the two leads, Top Five is snappily scripted by Rock, who generously distributes the best lines and in-jokes among his ensemble cast.
Dialogue has a natural rhythm that feels like we are eavesdropping on the characters mid-conversation, particularly in crowded scenes where Andre and his coterie argue about their top five favourite rappers.
A couple of smutty interludes, including an explosion of bodily fluids courtesy of Cedric The Entertainer, don’t detract from the underlying, irresistible sweetness.
4/5
88%
During a nine-year run on BBC One, Spooks thrilled viewers with the morally conflicted escapades of members of Section D of MI5, including one gruesome death sequence involving a deep fat fryer that sparked a deluge of complaints.
The show concluded in 2011 with the death of a pivotal character, effectively bringing down the curtain on the high-stakes spy game.
After four years in dramatic limbo, familiar faces return in this glossy big-screen mission penned by Jonathan Brackley and Sam Vincent, who co-wrote the majority of episodes of the final two series.
There’s a comforting air of familiarity about this Bourne Identity-style caper that serves as a reboot of the franchise and wedges the door ajar for further assignments, presuming lead actor Kit Harington can be wooed away from Game Of Thrones.
Director Bharat Nalluri, who was closely associated with the TV version, maintains a brisk pace and orchestrates a couple of nail-biting action sequences.
Spooks: The Greater Good references tragic events from the final episode of the TV series and reopens old wounds to cast doubt on the ulterior motives of some of the key players.
Fans will savour these gossamer thin ties to the past but Nalluri’s picture works well as a stand-alone feature for the uninitiated.
Peter Firth affects the same furrowed brow to suggest he is custodian of too many secrets, while Kit Harington expends energy in bruising fight sequences.
The plot twists and turns, and threatens to tie itself in knots, but thankfully unravels with a satisfying dose of treachery.
As Harry reminds his idealistic protégé, “You can do good or you can do well. Sooner or later, they make you choose.”
3/5
56%
The Age Of Adaline is a rose-tinted fairy story for every image-obsessed Hollywood actress.
Lee Toland Krieger’s swooning romance centres on a beautiful woman, who is “immune to the ravages of time” and retains her twenty-something radiance for almost eight decades without the intervention of a plastic surgeon or Botox jab.
She defies wrinkles, crow’s feet and the relentless pull of gravity to remain forever young while the world around her withers and rusts.
If the catalyst for this miracle – a car crash on snow-laden roads followed by a plunge into sub-zero water and a lightning bolt strike – could be replicated in a Californian hospital, you suspect that at least one starlet would volunteer as a guinea pig to test the outlandish theory.
However, with great beauty comes great responsibility and sadness.
The eponymous heroine of Krieger’s film cannot allow anyone to get close, who might reveal her secret.
The Age Of Adaline gently plucks heartstrings as the time-defying protagonist struggles to let Ellis into her unedifying existence.
Director Krieger employs a gushing voiceover to fill in the gaps in Adaline’s past.
This florid and unintentionally hilarious narration risks derailing the entire, sticky-sweet enterprise.
Thankfully, Blake Lively delivers a measured performance and she kindles simmering screen chemistry with Michiel Huisman.
Harrison Ford is terrific as the emotionally scarred patriarch, who fears he is losing his grip on sanity, grounding the film in tear-stained reality, while the rest of the script demands dizzying suspensions of disbelief.
3/5
53%
Writer-director Jalmari Helander reunites the cast of his 2010 hit Rare Exports: A Christmas Tale for this gung-ho action thriller, which pits an embattled President of the United States against a team of heavily armed terrorists in the forests of northern Finland.
The testosterone-fuelled spirit of Sylvester Stallone’s 1993 blockbuster Cliffhanger is alive and exceedingly well in Big Game, albeit on a more modest budget and threaded with mordant humour.
Refreshingly, the hero of this explosion-filled 90 minutes isn’t a muscle-bound fighting machine but a weedy 13-year-old boy on an awkward transition into manhood.
Helander’s script is peppered with cute one-liners like when the US officials learn that a homing beacon, which was supposed to pinpoint the statesman’s location, has malfunctioned.
“We lost our President like a set of car keys?” deadpans an advisor.
Big Game is a muscular romp that doesn’t take itself too seriously, including one spectacular set piece involving a household appliance tumbling down a mountainside.
Helander subverts the usual unabashed American patriotism and isn’t afraid to grant the bad guys their victories too.
Onni Tommila brings a loveable vulnerability to his pint-sized hunter.
He strikes up a winning screen partnership with Samuel L Jackson, who chews the snow-laden Scandinavian scenery with obvious relish as the leader of supposedly the most powerful nation on earth.
Supporting roles are played to the hilt including an obvious traitor in the presidential ranks with a hilarious weak spot.
Action scenes are delivered with sufficient bombast to warrant a release on the big screen before Big Game inevitably gains an ardent following on the home formats.
3/5
78%
Written and directed by Ivan Kavanagh, The Canal is a low-budget horror shot on location in Dublin.
David (Rupert Evans) is a film archivist, who spends hours staring at flickering images of the past.
His colleague Claire (Antonia Campbell-Hughes) passes him a reel of footage that shocks David to the core: his home was the site of a brutal murder in 1902.
David becomes convinced that a malevolent spirit festers within the four walls of his home and his rising fear fuels a deep-rooted suspicion that his wife Alice (Hannah Hoekstra) is cheating on him with her client Alex (Carl Shaaban).
So David follows Alice down to a canal near the house, where he witnesses Alice meeting with Alex. Soon after, the wife vanishes without trace and the finger of suspicion points at David for her murder.
79%
Jon Stewart, sardonic host of The Daily Show, makes an impressive directorial debut with this dramatisation of the real-life detainment and interrogation of an Iranian-Canadian journalist.
From his base in London, journalist Maziar Bahari (Gael Garcia Bernal) travels to Tehran to report first-hand on the violence during the presidential election.
Tensions are evident and protesters clash with the police, suffering brutality and intimidation as a consequence.
During his stint in the capital, Maziar gives a satirical interview to The Daily Show and he is subsequently arrested and detained.
During his 118 days in confinement, he is blindfolded and forcefully interrogated by a nameless man (Kim Bodnia) with a rosewater scent, who has been tasked with extracting a taped confession out of Maziar that all western journalists in Iran are spies.
76%
For her compelling third feature, French writer-director Celine Sciamma tackles another coming-of-age story, but this time her protagonist is considerably older and wrestling with issues of identity, sexuality and race in the neighbourhoods of Paris.
Sullen teenager Marieme (Karidja Toure) lives at home with her parents, who are at loggerheads, and her younger sister.
She yearns to escape and express herself, and that opportunity arises when a gang of three girls led by Lady (Assa Sylla) invite Marieme to join their ranks.
Slipping a kitchen knife into her pocket, Marieme finds the freedom she craves as part of the gang.
The girls clash with fierce rivals and slink through the local shopping centre, where they invite the attentions of cute boys without compromising their ability to behave exactly as they please.
94%
