_Sicario_ and the films of Denis Villeneuve
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All on Sat Mar 5 21:15:49 2016
Emily Blunt, who plays the protagonist in _Sicario_, gets an
appropriate introduction. She and her fellow heavily armed
law enforcement officers buckle-up in an armored vehicle that
looks a better fit for Iraq than Arizona. The truck rams through
a dry wall, surprising and overpowering the Mexcian drug cartel
operatives inside. Our heroine, and the actress playing her,
are indeed blunt instruments. The English actress has trained
herself into a convincing action heroine (see the "full metal
bitch" in _Edge of Tomorrow_). I hope she succeeds, if only
to displace the callow Scarlett Johansson.
As the film progresses, she is increasingly a bewildered
spectator. She is the token local representative in a hushed-up
Mexican-border drug war that has brought in CIA advisors,
special forces, and all the lack of accountability associated
with both. Unable to exercise her muscles or her charm, Blunt
is increasingly out of her depth. Towards the end the film
does a switch-and-bait, suddenly turning to the solitary
avenger Benicio Del Toro as the audience's empowered surrogate.
How many root for him to pull a Jack Bauer, single-handedly
storming the hideout of the Mexican drug kingpin, executing the
latter's wife and children before killing him? I did. That's one
problem with the film.
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It has been a long time since I saw Denis Villeneuve's
_Maelstrom_, in my view still the director's best film.
Marie-Josee Croze plays a privileged, spoiled young woman
who has an abortion and then a hit-and-run on a fish monger.
She is physically and spiritually rescued by the dead
man's son, who forgives her. (A dead fish narrates the
story too, giving it a touch of Kafka.) One wishes _Sicario_,
which Villeneuve did not write, has more of the forgiving
flavor. But above all one wishes it has Marie-Josee Croze,
who has cornered the market on playing really interesting,
morally ambiguous female characters.
Even when she plays a straight woman's role, like her cameo
as a religious wife who survives her husband's death by
traffic accident, she elevates the film immeasurably.
_Calvary_ is a terrific film about a down-to-earth priest
willingly paying for the sins of his church. It depicts the
best and worst of Catholicism, in its even-handed, tragic-comedic
way. Brendon Gleeson is terrific as the priest, and Kelly
Reilly is wonderful as his daughter (prior to his being
ordained), even if she has the worst haircut of any Londoner
I know. Director John Michael McDonagh is the real star of
_Calvary_ though, creating a funny, heart-felt film without
a drop of false sentimentality or lurid overkill. Villeneuve
could use less lurid overkill. Amy Nicholson's reviews
accuses _Sicario_ of being more in love with corpses than
living people.
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The best written character in _Sicario_ is Josh Brolin's
"Matt." He wears flip-flops, banters with special forces
in his jokey drawl, but is a deadly bureaucratic infighter.
He exemplifies every upper-management ladder-climber who
acts like he is above the law, is oblivious to anything
other than results that will land him a promotion. Worse,
he thinks everyone is exactly like him. We all know
management-type like that.
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Josh Brolin is in Spike Lee's remake of _Oldboy_. That
reminds me that Villeneuve's _Incendies_ could be called
_Oldgirl_, for its lurid incest/imprisonment story. Was
Villeneuve trying to make himself an honorary Korean
filmmaker? (I haven't seen his _Prisoners_. I heard it
has more than its share of imprisonment and torture. I
wonder if the torture quotient isn't the reason Korean
films are so popular in the art-house/film-festival circuit
in this Decade and a Half of Humiliation.) The
plot makes no sense at all. Why would a mother send her
two children to the Middle East, where they could easily
get killed, to solve her life story, when she could have
simply told them the truth (posthumously or otherwise)?
_Incendies_ is the last film Villeneuve wrote. His writing
has gone downhill fast after _Maelstrom_.
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I haven't seen _August 32th on Earth_ or _Polytechnique_.
By far the worst film of Villeneuve's I've seen is _Enemy_.
Technically it is quite accomplished, like his other films;
it has a definite point of view and lighting/color scheme
to match. It is just that the point of view is so toxic.
The "enemy" here is clearly not Jake Gyllenhaal's
doppelgangers, but Women. The film begins (and probably
ends) in a sex-club for men. Big ugly spiders repeatedly
show up, as metaphors for women and their sexual appetites.
The two Gyllenhaal girl friend/wife are implied to be
interchangeable. Melanie Laurent, phenomenally expressive
and warm, is badly misused and miscast as a cold fish/bitch,
while Sarah Gadon, who stars in several Cronenberg films,
plays another blond cold bitch, pregnant into the bargain,
just to make her more oppressive to the male protagonists.
Villeneuve did not write the film; the screenplay is adapted
from José Saramago, a Nobel Prize winner. (Why hasn't Tom
Stoppard won the prize when misogynist pigs who write such
screamingly obvious "puzzles" can win theirs?) Cronenberg
is probably a model for _Enemy_. Villeneuve is set to
direct the _Blade Runner_ reboot. Let's hope it has more
Ridley Scott and less Cronenberg. (I vote for a lot more
John Michael McDonagh.)
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