Death Sentence Retrospective

James Wan’s follow up to his breakout, Saw, comfortably wears the generic trappings of the neo-fascist revenge fantasy, à la Death Wish (of which Death Sentence incidentally shares a title with its literary sequel). You know the score, Kevin Bacon’s Nick Hume has a snazzy job and he lives in a big house with his great family (we know they’re great because we see home video footage of them) until one day his son is killed with a machete. Why do bad thinks happen to great people? A bit of crying on the floor/in the shower/back on the floor later and Bacon is ready to shoot some street punks with guns. It’s not a great film.

But - and it’s a big, Nicki Minaj-esque, surgically enhanced ‘but’ - it has one of the greatest action set-pieces of the last decade. A mid-film foot chase through back alleys leads into a bravura one shot tracking sequence through a multi-story car park that culminates with a crunchy, money shot death. It’s such a dynamic, meticulous, thrilling sequence that it goes to show just how well Wan ‘gets’ the nuts and bolts mechanics of a thriller. Like Michael Mann or the crème of the Korean thriller scene the action is the drama and vice versa. Admittedly, it’s an incredibly showy sequence but boy does it pay off, casting the rest of the film in a blindingly favourable light.       

Amorous gushing aside, Bacon over-eggs and hams up his performance to the point of a convoluted food analogy. But back on track, Bacon does remind us that, when not gagging on the corporate paycheque pimping mobile providers, he really can hold the screen. When our man’s tooled up, shaven headed and shotgunning legs off with the best of them, you’re there with him.   

There is an air of Wan getting a bit big for his boots post the blow-up reception of Saw, lavishing the opening credits with the self-aggrandising ‘a James Wan film’ associated with the name-as-brad recognition of the Spielberg’s or the Nolan’s (you’ve made one film, James…). Also peppering the film with intertextual Saw references seems, well, masturbatory.         

By the end, Death Sentence does start to have notions above its station. The arch theme of nihilistic violence begets violence is heavy-handedly shoved in our face. Yeah, we’ve all seen The Last House on the Left, bet that was super fresh back in ’72 (or when Nietzsche penned that in the 19^th Century for the book learned ones of you). But then it farts away any pathos with something of a cheap, redemptive ending. Like I said it’s not a great film but in all sincerity, for that scene alone, it’s worth the price of admission*.

*My price of admission was 80p     

Deus Ex Garland - Ex Machina Review

There is a moment in Ex Machina where Oscar Isaac’s Nathan sidles into an impromptu choreographed dance routine with another bit player of the piece. It's a hilarious, captivating and joyfully anachronistic scene that’s emblematic of Alex Garland’s directorial debut. It’s so self-assured you’d have no problem believing it’s the work of a time-tested auteur kicking back and showing the kids how it’s done. It's also showcases Garland’s pallete for artifice, for faking and manipulation (and all this to Get Down Saturday Night no less).  

"I though the blue pill would be smaller"

Conceptually, from the outset at least, we’re covering well-trodden ground. The android with consciousness is nothing new, from Blade Runner to A.I. to Her more recently, providing reflective discussion on the fabric of humanity, but Garland finds ways to make it as fresh as if you were looking at it with virgin eyes. The film opens with Domhnall Gleeson’s programmer, Caleb, winning a competition to spend a week with the reclusive Nathan (Isaac), pioneering CEO of the search engine Caleb works for. Nathan is no fey, Mark Zuckerberg-like wunderkind; he’s a full-blooded, full-bearded Colonel Kurtz of the technological world. A recluse in his ambiguously Nordic mountain-bound home, Nathan is building something, something he says will be the greatest achievement in the history of man (or is it the history of Gods…), a conscious A.I. Where Blade Runner presented the search for the machine in the human, Garland flips this dynamic on its head. Instead, Caleb is tasked with finding the human in the machine. The machine, Ava is her name, is the film's thesis embodied in a luminous and supple shell; the literal objectification of women, a man-manufactured prize in a glass showcase. Alicia Vikander has been great in the frocks of A Royal Affair and Anna Karenina but here is revealing and magnetic in the role of Ava delivering a testament to what it is to be human; the good, the bad, the dark truths. On many levels it is an unencumbered admission of man’s weakness and susceptibility to emotional and sexual manipulation.   

New extents of putting on her face

What’s most startling about Ex Machina is how Garland, ostensibly a screenwriter and novelist, flourishes in the director’s chair; it’s a composed and disciplined film. He displays a visual sensibility and conciseness of vision, on his first turn no less, to match any time-appointed auteur working today. The film looks incredible, sparing and aptly clinical thanks to Rob Hardy (the reason Blitz is the best looking Statham film) and sets the stage for the ever-shifting and escalating interplay between the three leads. As stated, it’s not much of a surprise that Garland’s script is razor sharp; dark, cerebral, acerbic but still human. It’s very much a three-man/machine piece with Isaac and Gleeson only further cementing themselves as two of the finest working today (boding very well for their joint future in the Star Wars behemoth) but most of all it’s proper Sci-Fi. Like Garland’s previous work on Sunshine and Jonathan Glazer’s Under the Skin last year, it’s a film about ideas, ideas of theology, morality, technology and humanity. In one fell swoop Garland has marked himself out as one of the most utterly exciting filmmakers working today and even among his pitch-perfect cast he really is the star of the show.