Ahoy, squirts! Quint here with RoloTomasi on Hark's SEVEN SWORDS and the midnight madness of BANLIEUE 13! Following that, Claudius talks to us about a couple other films. Enjoy the reviews!
Hi Harry,
RoloTomasi here, falling tragically behind in my reviews. I've decided to sacrifice some sleep to try and at least get caught up to Sunday Afternoon. So without further ado, I'll hit my two major martial arts films:
BANLIEUE 13 is one of the 2 Midnight Madness films I'll be seeing, the 2nd one is SPL, that's next Friday. So let's be clear, I love martial arts driven action flicks, and I think the French do a damn good job with it. This is a martial arts buddy movie about a cop and a vigilante who team up to enter the title neighbourhood, a walled city within Paris that is run by the gangs. The police can't control these gangs, so they've surrendered the neighbourhood to chaos. Of course, that doesn't stop the government from Transporting Nukes through there. It proves to be a very costly shortcut once the truck is hijacked by Taha, the most powerful gang boss in B13. And that's where cop and vigilante come in as they have 24 hours to get into B13, find the bomb, and disarm it before 2 Million people (Half of whom the French government believes are worth saving) vanish in a puff of smoke.
The movie kicks ass in the first half where it introduces its characters, vigilante Leito (David Belle) and cop Damien (Cyril Raffaelli). Each one gets a great intro action sequence that sets up their abilities. Belle is an expert in Parkour, an urban extreme sport where participants have to get from point A to point B in a city as fast as possible by leaping from building to building, hopping fences, scaling skyscrapers, etc. So we get a sequence where Taha's goons chase Leito around B13, as Leito uses the buildings, fences, streets like his own personal jungle gym. It's an incredibly kinetic sequence. We also get a great sequence where Damien takes down a few dozen bad guys in an illegal casino with nothing but his fists, feet, elbows, knees, and lots of guns. OK, so that's actually a lot of tools, but Raffaelli looks great doing his one man wrecking crew bit here.
And then there's exposition...and then the two guys are put together. And 40 minutes into this 85 minute movie, the plot starts to move forward as the mismatched pair make their way into B13. And unfortunately it doesn't get better. The second half of the movie's a lot of negotiations at gunpoint, lots of talking, but not much action. There's a cool "Big Boss" fight towards the end, but the climax is a disappointment, although I like that the film has an interesting political card up its sleeve, as the end is less an ass-kicking than it is a commentary on French society. This felt true to the spirit of John Carpenter's ESCAPE FROM NEW YORK, a film this movie is obviously trying to emulate. That also had a strong satirical streak.
Unfortunately, I think the second half disappoints. Belle and Raffaelli are both exciting leads, but when they are both fighting I think the cross-cutting hurts their styles. Belle's parkour moves are chopped up by the rapid editing, and his running loses its kinetic, flowing thrill. Raffaelli's fluid fighting style also suffers from the rapid cutting that pervades the film's second half. Overall, a fun but flawed action film. In the Q&A, Raffaelli said that the movie hit theaters within five months of its first day of shooting. The speed shows up on the screen. Unfortunately, so does the sense that the filmmakers rushed to get it there. At least, at 85 minutes, it doesn't try to pad its length.
It's interesting that Belle's Parkour sequences reminded me of the Hong Tenement fight sequence in a film I reviewed on this site 4 years ago at the festival, Tsui Hark's TIME AND TIDE. Hark's back this year with SEVEN SWORDS, a Wuxia epic about a village terrorized when a Royal Edict declares that all martial arts practitioners are to be killed. The local governor has placed bounties on the heads of all men, women and children, and plenty of bloodthirsty mercenaries happy to kill for a little scratch. The villagers, through events I'm not even going to bother explaining, send two of their number, along with a former govenment executioner, to Mount Heaven, where they get some help from a legendary swordsmith in the form of 7 unique swords. The swordsmith even supplies them with four more men to wield these swords and protect the village.
At two and a half hours, the film outstays its welcome significantly. The fight sequences are mostly adequate at best, and they're often shot from up close and contain too many quick cuts, so we never get a good sense of what's happening in the fights, especially since we're supposed to be trying to keep track of seven heroes. And the main problem was the swordsmen. We really only get to know 4 of them at most - One's old, one's the local village boy, one's a lady, and one's Korean. The others are, well, there.
I tried to like it, but I was mostly bored. Better luck next time for Tsui, I hope?
I'm fading fast. But stay tuned. Still to Come: THANK YOU FOR SMOKING, HARSH TIMES, RIVER QUEEN.
Rolo Out.
And now for Claudius on a pretty unknown flick called MAROCK as well as a fairly known flick called REVOLVER. Enjoy!
Hello Harry (in absentia) and Quint,
Claudius here again from the TIFF! Two more reviews of movies for the fine folks that read your site, both of which defy expectations: Marock and Revolver.
Marock by Laïla Marrakchi
There once was a boy and a girl who met and in a mad rush fell in love. Furthermore, they hang around with a group of other hot rich kids who race around in cars, smoke hashish, and engage in promiscuous sex. Sounds like a standard formulaic teen movie, right?
Except that the movie takes place in 1997 Casablanca, the boy is Jewish and the girl Muslim.
Rita (played marvellously by Morjana Alaoui) is beautiful, rich and loves to party. Her piety is what we will charitably call easy-going. One night, she sees from afar Youri (again well played by Mathieu Boujenah) defending his honour with pugilistic furor in front of a nightclub. She immediately falls in hormonally charged teenage love and contrives to meet him.
Her group of friends warn her to be careful about the handsome young Jew, but she is undeterred and soon they are seeing each other. During this time, her suddenly (and suspiciously) pious brother returns from England and starts to cramp her style.
This movie could have been a self-righteous exercise in racial and religious tolerance but to Laïla Marrakchi’s credit this is not the case here. What we have instead, however, is a movie about love in the waning year of adolescence, which has certainly been done before. What is most interesting is that even with very different social and religious circumstances, how similarly things develop if this story took place in North America. This makes Marock worth seeing.
Revolver by Guy Ritchie
There once was an ex-con named Jake Green (perennial Guy Ritchie favourite Jason Statham) who upon release from prison spends 2 years becoming, and I quote from Mr. Green, “fucking rich” using a perfect method of cons developed by two of his cellmates, one an expert chess player, the other an experienced con-man. Mr Green then decides to take revenge on the man who is essentially responsible for sending the man to jail in the first place. Sounds like a typical Guy Ritchie movie, right?
Except that the movie tries to address, I believe, the psychology behind the con-artist and does so in a series of sometimes dizzying audible and visual cues.
I say “I believe” because I am not entirely sure about the point of this movie.
I quite enjoy Guy Ritchie’s movies (having studiously avoided Swept Away in any way, shape or form), and would therefore expect that I would enjoy Revolver based on the premise above.
This is sadly not quite the case.
Oh, don’t get me wrong. There is a good amount of the gun play and quirky situations we all know and love (some of it truly “beautiful” to watch). But there is much more going on here, and the way in which this is strung together makes the film quite confusing.
There are at least three sub-plots happening at once in this movie. The first plot revolves (pun intended) around a basic con story. The second involves Jake’s time learning about the con method. The third is about the tendency in human beings to not believe facts that are presented clearly at them if it contravenes what they believe to be true.
If this all seems confusing, that is because it is confusing. I think that Guy Ritchie showed a great deal of courage in trying to tackle this subject, but without serious re-work I cannot recommend this movie.
Hopefully everyone finds these reviews useful. Faithfully yours,
Claudius
