Friday's film reviews

Tense revenge thriller 'Blue Ruin', love in a crumbling empire in 'Pompeii 3D'; an orphan boy discovers his warrior spirit in the animated adventure 'Tarzan 3D'; Paul Walker delivers one of his final screen performances in Luc Besson’s ‘Brick Mansions’, and a group of students orchestrates a daring heist in ‘Plastic’.

Friday's film reviews

Blue Ruin

Spur-of-the-moment actions speak louder than carefully chosen words in Jeremy Saulnier’s impeccably crafted second feature.

Indeed, when the bedraggled hero of ‘Blue Ruin’ is finally put on the spot and forced to justify his actions, he apologises for his poor articulation and squirms, marinating in the sweat of his mounting discomfort.

From its striking opening shot of a man languishing in a bath, Saulnier’s revenge thriller establishes a deceptively slow and steady pace that belies the nerve-shredding tension beneath the surface.

Once the first drop of blood is spilt – and it’s a stomach-churning spray of glossy claret – we’re completely in the writer-director’s vice-like grip, unable to take our eyes from the screen as his tense game of cat and mouse reaches its shocking yet emotionally satisfying denouement.

The lean 90-minute running time is perfectly judged – any longer and our nails would be gnawed down to the cuticle.

Anchored by a tour-de-force central performance by Macon Blair, whose mournful stare instantly curries our sympathy, ‘Blue Ruin’ breathes new life into a well-worn genre.

Flashes of macabre humour, reminiscent of the early Coen brothers, allow us to pause for sharp intakes of breath between meticulously staged set pieces including an altercation in a diner toilet and a night-time stand-off with two merciless members of the Cleland clan.

Saulnier makes every cent of his $1m budget count, including some horribly convincing make-up effects as Dwight incurs life-threatening wounds that could derail his twisted crusade.

Our wincing is nothing compared to his screams of on-screen anguish.

Star Rating: 4/5

Rotten Tomatoes.com Rating: 95%

Pompeii 3D

British director Paul WS Anderson (‘Resident Evil’) embraces the hoary clichés of the disaster movie with this unintentionally amusing swords and sandals epic set in the shadow of a grumbling Mount Vesuvius.

Not since the summer of 1997, when ‘Dante’s Peak’ and ‘Volcano’ went head-to-head at the box office, has the fiery wrath of Mother Nature been unleashed with such pyrotechnic-laden fury.

Anderson certainly understands the mechanics of an outrageous action sequence and he engineers some humdingers as fiery rocks rain down on Pompeii’s stricken inhabitants.

A prolonged climax expertly cuts together aerial shots of devastation with close-ups of the scantily clad cast falling victim to magma and a tsunami, systematically cutting off the various escape routes until the only option left is to run.

As the city tumbles to its corrupt foundations, the three scriptwriters insist on finding reasons for the two-dimensional characters to delay their exodus.

Fittingly, Pompeii is built on the shaky foundations of a ramshackle script that doesn’t flesh out any of the characters in any sufficient detail to make us care about their fates.

Harington sports a sweat-glistened six-pack that will make gym bunnies weep with envy but he is unable to deliver any of his clunky lines with conviction.

Emily Browning simpers while Kiefer Sutherland merrily chews scenery, wolfishly telling Cassia, “Beauty like yours has no place in a holiday resort like this.”

Action scenes are both thrilling and hilariously preposterous and the romantic subplot twixt Milo and Cassia falls woefully short of the sweeping tragedy of Titanic to which Anderson evidently aspires.

Star Rating: 2/5

Rotten Tomatoes.com Rating: 26%

Tarzan 3D

Since his debut on the pages of a 1912 magazine, Edgar Rice Burroughs’s fictional ape man has swung into the affections of successive generations thanks to re-imaginings on the small and big screens.

Now it falls to German filmmaker Reinhard Klooss to put a distinctly modern spin on Burroughs’s source text.

Don’t be misled by the colourful visuals of this computer-animated adventure and early scenes of comical monkey business. This adaptation isn’t a cutesy caper aimed predominantly at children.

Tragedy stalks every frame and a couple of sequences, which result in the demise of pivotal characters, could be too scary for the very young.

Tarzan is a slick yet unsatisfying reworking that struggles to marry the legend with a perplexing subtext about mankind’s unsustainable depletion of the earth’s resources

Kellan Lutz beats his chest on cue to deliver his hero’s iconic cry and stilted dialogue including, “Me Tarzan, you Jane”.

Spencer Locke essays a spunky heroine but she’s poorly served by the flimsy script while Trevor St John’s pantomime villain encourages the audience to hiss and boo his every underhand move.

The introduction of the mysterious meteorite to the jungle is an unwelcome distraction that draws parallels with the extra-terrestrial mumbo jumbo in the fourth Indiana Jones film.

Star Rating:

Rotten Tomatoes.com Rating: 25%

Plastic

In Julian Gilbey’s implausible caper, five enterprising students pay their way through university with an array of simple credit card scams.

The ease with which the money-grabbing protagonists steal from unsuspecting targets is highly plausible but when the same students contemplate a £20m pound jewellery theft across the Atlantic, the film struggles to retain credibility or our interest.

If grand larceny was really this simple – silly disguises, fake accents and outrageous good fortune – we’d all be millionaires.

Purportedly based on a true story, which might be the film’s biggest con, ‘Plastic’ scrimps and saves on characterisation, starving Sam and his associates of any positive qualities that might convince us to root for them.

The big hustle – to pull the wool over the eyes of diamond salesman Steve Dawson (Graham McTavish) – descends into farce at frightening speed so by the time Sam is sticking a false moustache to his quivering top lip, our eye-rolling has become habitual.

A romantic subplot between Sam and Frankie is insipid, culminating in a tasteful sex scene replete with pounding musical soundtrack.

Gilbey’s script sketches the would-be thieves in broad strokes and lacks a sense of urgency, even when bad guys are holding guns to the students’ heads.

Part of us secretly wishes they would pull the triggers.

Star Rating: 2/5

Rotten Tomatoes.com Rating: 10%

Brick Mansions

It’s never a good sign when the lasting memory of a film is a glaring continuity error.

During a quieter moment of Camille Delamarre’s dystopian action thriller, an old man (Frank Fontaine) surveys a newspaper article with the strapline, “Stangest thing I’ve ever seen”.

Evidently something got lost in translation between the 2004 French action thriller ‘District 13’ and this frenetic English-language remake, which was the last project that actor Paul Walker completed before his death in November 2013.

It’s a fitting swansong for the handsome star of ‘The Fast & The Furious’ series, crammed full of outrageous action sequences and high-octane cars that became his on-screen trademark.

Breathless camerawork and slick editing well and truly smack our gobs as David Belle floats through the air, seemingly oblivious to potentially fatal drops to the ground several storeys below.

His tour-de-force exhibition of martial arts and acrobatics is stunning.

The same cannot be said for Luc Besson and Bibi Naceri’s disjointed script, which resets the action to 2018 Detroit.

Like its Gallic counterpart, ‘Brick Mansions’ opens with a dazzling display of Belle’s gravity-defying gymnastics, which overshadows every other stunt sequence.

Walker is no physical match for his muscular co-star but he holds his own in the myriad car chases, gun fights and bruising fisticuffs.

The script is peppered with excruciating one-liners – “Sometimes you don’t gotta be a rocket scientist, you just gotta have a rocket!” – which inspire snorts of derision.

But for every clunky gem of perfunctory dialogue, director Delamarre counters with thrillingly choreographed sequences of kicking, punching and tumbling that keep our adrenaline pumping.

Star Rating:

Rotten Tomatoes.com Rating: 29%

Bad Neighbours

As a long-running Antipodean soap opera repeatedly reminds us, “Everybody needs good neighbours, with a little understanding.”

The married 30-somethings at the centre of Nicholas Stoller’s potty-mouthed comedy wish they were so fortunate.

They wake one morning to discover the new neighbours are booze-guzzling fraternity boys, who throw raucous parties for their fellow students and hold barbecues on the front lawn.

Relations between the two households deteriorate in the blink of a bloodshot eye, lighting the fuse on a battle of wits and mean-spirited pranks that provides ‘Bad Neighbours’ with its flimsy premise.

Seth Rogen might have top billing on the film’s posters but it’s Zac Efron’s naked torso which scene-steals to the point of absurdity, reaching a delirious crescendo with some gratuitous topless modelling by the ‘High School Musical’ heartthrob during a touchy-feely coda.

‘Bad Neighbours’ goes some way to besmirching Efron’s screen image as the wholesome, squeaky clean boy next door.

However, scriptwriters Andrew Jay Cohen and Brendan O’Brien provide the actor with a get-out clause so his character ultimately remains likeable.

Rogen has played a pot-smoking dude before and he gamely sheds his clothes for toe-curling scenes with Rose Byrne.

Scenes inside the frat house, where Pete inspires devotion from pledges with a heartfelt speech (“We are the family you get to choose – and we don’t get divorced!”) are surprisingly tame despite the 15 certificate.

Star Rating:

Rotten Tomatoes.com Rating: 95%

In selected cinemas…

Patema Inverted

Yasuhiro Yoshiura directs this colourful Japanese animated fantasy, which literally turns the world upside down for the titular heroine.

Patema (voiced by Fujii Yukiyo) is a beautiful princess, who lives with her people in a subterranean kingdom.

One day, Patema tentatively strays into this wilderness, hoping to banish her fears of the unknown. She meets a boy called Age (Nobuhiko Okamoto), who appears to be standing on the ceiling.

From Patema’s perspective, Age and his people are the wrong way up and she must tread carefully for fear of falling into the sky.

For Age, it is Patema who is inverted and these two characters forge a strong bond as they search for a way to bring together their two worlds.

Rotten Tomatoes.com Rating: 100%

A Thousand Times Good Night

Oscar winner Juliette Binoche headlines Erik Poppe’s contemplative drama about the deep emotional wounds inflicted by conflict.

War photographer Rebecca (Binoche) has travelled the globe, capturing haunting images of suffering, devastation and courage behind enemy lines.

During an assignment in Kabul, she attempts to take a haunting image of a female suicide bomber but Rebecca ventures too close to her subject and is badly injured in the blast.

Rushed home to recuperate, Rebecca is met by her husband Marcus (Nikolaj Coster-Waldau) and daughter Steph (Lauryn Canny), who are terrified of losing her.

So they give Rebecca an ultimatum: her photography or them.

Rotten Tomatoes.com Rating: 56%

more courts articles

Man (25) in court charged with murdering his father and attempted murder of mother Man (25) in court charged with murdering his father and attempted murder of mother
Man appears in court charged with false imprisonment of woman in van Man appears in court charged with false imprisonment of woman in van
Man in court over alleged false imprisonment of woman Man in court over alleged false imprisonment of woman

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