Friday's Film Reviews & Trailers: Fast & Furious 7, The Water Diviner and While We’re Young
For once, it won’t the gleaming high-octane motors, scantily clad women or outlandish gravity-defying stunts that will have audiences burning rubber to their multiplexes to see this seventh instalment of The Fast And The Furious franchise.
Instead, audiences will want to see the final screen appearance of leading man Paul Walker, who tragically died halfway through production
Fast & Furious 7 is dedicated to Walker’s memory and his unfinished scenes have been respectfully completed using previously unseen footage from earlier films, or by digitally grafting his facial features onto the bodies of his brothers, Caleb and Cody, who act as stand-ins.
The digital trickery is impressive and while the joins aren’t completely seamless, we suspend our disbelief, which is already hovering in the troposphere anyway after the stunt team mocks the laws of physics.
It’s an understatement when one of the characters says: “I can’t believe we pulled that off!”
Fast & Furious 7 stitches together all of the previous films including a cameo for Lucas Black as Sean Boswell from the lacklustre third chapter Tokyo Drift.
Diesel, Walker and co continue to display superhuman strength and resilience, surviving spectacular crashes with barely a graze, while Statham plies his usual brand of muscular destruction.
A heartfelt, if protracted, coda between Diesel and Walker provides the former with an opportunity to publicly say farewell to his cinematic brother in arms.
3½
84%
In front of the camera, New Zealand-born actor Russell Crowe has enjoyed critical and commercial success.
Successive Oscar nominations as Best Actor for The Insider, Gladiator and A Beautiful Mind, including a win for Ridley Scott’s swords-and-sandals epic, solidified his status as a performer with emotional depth to complement his physical presence.
For his directorial debut, Crowe casts himself as a crusading father, who will stop at nothing to locate his three fallen sons, in this fictional historical drama based on the book of the same name, which has been adapted for the big screen by Andrew Anastasios and Andrew Knight.
The Water Diviner is a solid first effort including well-choreographed scenes of conflict and self-sacrifice during the Gallipoli Campaign in late 1915.
However, his film falls victim to heavy-handed sentiment when it comes to a central romance across the cultural divide that flourishes despite a total absence of on-screen chemistry with leading lady Olga Kurylenko.
Blessed with lustrous cinematography, The Water Diviner is a heartfelt tale of broken men and redemption.
Crowe doesn’t have to stretch himself as a father in crisis, but his character’s search for answers certainly tugs heartstrings including a devastating scene of his three boys scythed down by Turkish bullets.
The romantic subplot doesn’t work and its resolution is unintentionally hilarious but the rest of Crowe’s first foray in the director’s chair shows promise.
3/5
81%
Opening with a quote from Ibsen’s play The Master Builder, While We’re Young is an acutely observed but emotionally underpowered comedy drama about a 40-something couple, who become intoxicated by the vivacity and carefree abandon of the younger generation.
Writer-director Noah Baumbach, who was Oscar nominated for his screenplay The Squid And The Whale, is well versed in the gaping chasms that separate hip techno-savvy youngsters from their parents.
Here, he elegantly subverts stereotypes by contrasting the unedifying pastimes of his world-weary protagonists, who are slaves to their smart phones and on-demand entertainment services, with the whims of two twenty-something dreamers, who play board games, keep in shape at hip hop exercise classes and have re-appropriated vintage clutter as their own.
Like Baumbach’s earlier work, this occasionally spiky portrait of middle-aged malaise is peppered with polished one-liners and elicits strong performances from the ensemble cast.
At a trim 97 minutes, While We’re Young certainly doesn’t outstay its welcome.
Ben Stiller and Naomi Watts are an attractive pairing, verbally sparring with each other including a trippy shamanic vomiting ritual that culminates in an unfortunate kiss.
Adam Driver and Amanda Seyfried embrace their roles with fervour, imbuing their bright young things with warmth and likeability.
Baumbach’s film gradually runs out of steam and a protracted final sequence at an awards ceremony doesn’t provide either the closure or crescendo that we or the characters crave.
Life is full of disappointments and in some respects, While We’re Young is one of them.
3/5
83%
Filmed on the streets of Tallaght with the assistance of Headstrong, the National Centre for Youth Mental Health, I Used To Live Here dramatises the phenomenon of suicide clusters, which affects communities around the world.
Frank Berry’s film unfolds through the eyes of 13-year-old Amy Keane (Jordanne Jones), who is struggling to cope with the death of her mother and the unwelcome return of her father’s ex-girlfriend.
When the local community comes together to honour the memory of a suicide victim, Amy contemplates taking her own life so she might be remembered with similar affection.
N/A
Born in Kansas City, Robert Altman was one of the defining American filmmakers of his generation.
He was nominated for seven Oscars for his work behind the camera on M*A*S*H, Nashville, The Player, Short Cuts and Gosford Park, but never won a golden statuette until his Honorary Award in 2006.
Ron Mann’s affectionate documentary traces Altman’s rise through the ranks in his own words, with revealing behind-the-scenes footage and contributions from collaborators, friends and admirers including Paul Thomas Anderson, James Caan, Keith Carradine, Julianne Moore, Lily Tomlin, Robin Williams and Bruce Willis.
82%
The definitive version of Ridley Scott’s seminal sci-fi opus, adapted from Philip K Dick’s novel Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?, still looks majestic on the big screen, conjuring a breathtaking vision of a dystopian future enhanced by Vangelis’ sweeping score.
Harrison Ford plays replicant hunter Rick Deckard, whose pursuit of Roy Batty (Rutger Hauer) and his kin including Pris (Daryl Hannah) and Zhora (Joanna Cassidy) in 21st-century Los Angeles begs tantalising questions about Deckard’s own existence.
91% (Original version)
Based on the inspirational true story of chess genius Genesis Potini, The Dark Horse is a gritty New Zealand drama about one man, afflicted with severe bipolar disorder, who made a difference to countless lives.
Genesis (Cliff Curtis) has bounced back and forth between mental institutions but he is granted one final chance to integrate with society under the watchful eye of his estranged brother Ariki (Wayne Hapi), who is the leader of a gang.
Ariki’s teenage son Mana (James Rolleston) is about to be initiated into the gang, but seems ill-quipped to deal with the brutalities that he will face as part of this brotherhood.
Instead, Mana gravitates towards Genesis, who finds his calling as a mentor to a group of children who hope to compete at the national chess championships and prove that they are every bit as good at the game as youngsters from privileged backgrounds.
100%
Heinrich Himmler was a Catholic middle-class young man, who became a key figure in Hitler’s reign of terror, masterminding the Final Solution which led to the persecution and execution of millions of Jews, homosexuals, Communists and Romany people.
Vanessa Lapa’s documentary attempts to dissect the psyche of this leading member of the Nazi party, using hundreds of private letters, documents, diaries and photographs seized by soldiers of the US Army in 1945.
The film also explores Himmler’s relationships with his wife Margarete, daughter Gudrun and his mistress Hedwig.
63%
Set in the East London borough, Hackney’s Finest is a darkly comic crime thriller, which marks the debut feature of writer Thorin Seex and director Chris Bouchard.
Part-time drug dealer Sirus (Nathanael Wiseman), who works as a courier controller, becomes ensnared in an elaborate trap set by two police detectives. Asif (Rajan Sharma), an Afghan illegal immigrant trafficking heroin through London for his uncle, is also caught in the trap along with Welsh-Jamaican dealers.
These inept low-level criminals join forces to outwit the police and escape brutal punishment at the hands of a gang of hired Russian thugs.
N/A
Oscar winner Anthony Hopkins plays the title role in this thriller based on the true story of the kidnapping of a beer magnate in 1980s Amsterdam.
Cor Van Hout (Jim Sturgess) and Willem Holleeder (Sam Worthington) are two low-level criminals, who hope to turn their backs on the past.
Unfortunately, their bank refuses a loan so Cor, Willem and their associates conceive a daring plan to solve their money woes for life: they will kidnap Freddy Heineken (Hopkins), heir to the brewing empire and one of the wealthiest men in the Netherlands.
Against the odds, the criminals execute the daring scheme and abduct Heineken and his driver, holding them both for 21 days to secure a hefty ransom of 35 million Dutch guilder.
Having collected the largest ransom for a single person, Cor, Willem and co go on the run and they quickly learn that their respective cuts of the loot cannot assuage feelings of guilt.
