The Raid: Redemption

This ultra-violent Indonesian martial arts fight fest will definitely awaken your senses and have you swinging your arms and kicking your legs as you leave the theatre.  Part Ong-Bak (2003) part Elite Squad (2007) and part Attack the Block (2011), it depicts a gritty urban war between machete wielding slum gangs and a special forces SWAT team inside a rundown housing block apartment building controlled by a local war lord.

The movie is basically a showcase for a new Indo-Malay action hero, Iko Uwais, whose fighting style is called Silat, a traditional form of martial arts practiced in Southeast Asia, which consists of using any object at your disposal as a weapon. It also has a lot of kicking and punching while throwing and pushing your opponent’s body into things. After the bullets run out and the knives are eliminated it’s down to hand to hand combat and anything else that can be found at arm’s length; tables, chairs, glass, you name it. 

This movie combines the police action/suspense genre like the Hong Kong thriller Infernal Affairs (2004) on which The Departed (2006) was based, with a unique martial arts style of street fighting in a claustrophobic environment. The story is about a team of 20 well equipped Special Forces police sent into a tower block in downtown Jakarta which is occupied by a powerful crime lord who controls the entire building with his crime gang of hundreds all living in the complex. Their mission is to take the building, floor by floor and capture the gang leader while fighting off his henchmen.

This is the perfect set up for a visceral non-stop action fighting movie and the fighting gets brutally bloody and ugly. Combining a documentary style of filming with the suspenseful story of an out numbered group of rookies trying to survive against a gang of sadistic criminals inside a darkened maze of hallways, apartments, doors and windows from which the enemy can attack, is so compelling that the audience I saw it with were cheering and clapping whenever a bad guy was dispatched in a particularly violent manner.

The bad guys are very scary characters and you definitely feel like cheering for the good guy who finds himself caught in the middle of this hellish situation. This movie really knows how to ramp up the suspense with character development and tense quite moments, and has raised the bar for the action/suspense martial arts genre, but beware this film is definitely not for the squeamish.

Sequels are already in the works and a Hollywood version is also being developed.

JP

Quest for Fire

This 30 year old film stands alone by far as the best film ever made about prehistoric man. Set 80,000 years in the past, the movie has recently become more relevant with the newly discovered landmark evidence of interbreeding between Neanderthals and Homo sapiens, which actually occurred during this time period, much earlier than previously believed. We now know that all Europeans and Asians carry between 1 and 4 percent Neanderthal DNA in our genome.

Compelling and well researched, no one has even attempted a film of this kind since. This is one of my all-time favorite films because not only is it the most realistic and accurate movie of its kind, but it follows the classic hero’s journey story line. I would consider this film to be essential viewing for anyone interested in prehistory and anthropology as I’ve never found another film that portrays the dawn of man so authentically.

The uncompromisingly original French director Jean-Jacques Annaud, who is also responsible for such unique films as The Name of the Rose (1986), The Bear (1988), The Lover (1992), Seven Years in Tibet (1997), Enemy at the Gates (2001) and Two Brothers (2004), has created such a diverse body of work, mostly historical in nature, that he is a truly international film maker who can work with many languages, cultures and historical settings and still make his stories universally appealing.

Quest for Fire (1982) is based on the 1911 Belgian novel of the same name by J.H. Rosny-Aîné and follows the journey of three cave men chosen from a tribe of Neanderthals that have been attacked by another more aggressive but less skilled Homo erectus tribe for the fire they possess. Without this essential element, the control of which gave us the power to dominate our world, the tribe cannot survive and since they have not yet discovered how to create fire, it has to be stolen from other tribes and kept alive. 

The tribal elder, one of the few remaining survivors of the wounded and fire-less Neanderthal band, chooses three of their best and most skilled warriors to begin the journey to find the life-giving flame and bring it back alive. The film then follows these three men on their fateful lifesaving adventure across vast distances and landscapes and unimaginable dangers and mysteries as they encounter stampeding mammoth herds, hostile tribes, saber-tooth tigers and cave bears while searching for the well-guarded sacred fire that will save their tribe from extinction.

Filmed on actual locations around the world including Ontario, Alberta and British Columbia Canada, Scotland, Iceland and Kenya, Quest for Fire is considered so accurate that it has been recommended in many schools for students of history and anthropology. Such well known and authoritative experts as Desmond Morris, author of The Naked Ape and Anthony Burgess, author of A Clockwork Orange were consultants on the film to give the movie a genuine feel.  Desmond Morris who is an expert in human behavior was consulted for the physical gestural and body language that would have been used by early man, and Anthony Burgess who is an expert in early linguistics was consulted for the primitive language that would have been used at this early stage in human development.

Using only their skill and ingenuity while working together in cooperation as a team, our Neanderthal heroes manage to not only steal back the fire that was lost but also discover and learn new skills that will ensure the survival of their kind. This movie goes far beyond what you would expect and really gives us a fascinating insight into our early culture, way of life and contact between differing groups of pre-modern humans.

The hero’s journey is described by Joseph Campbell in his book The Hero with a Thousand Faces as an ancient formula that is found in stories of all cultures from around the world and is the inspiration for many storytellers throughout time including George Lucas who was inspired by it to create his Star Wars saga.  

JP

John Carter

Following Pixar director Brad Bird’s live action debut last year of MI: 4 Ghost Protocol (2011), Andrew Stanton, the animation studio’s director of Finding Nemo (2003) and WALL-E (2008) is now the second Pixar alumnus to also make his live action debut with Disney’s John Carter of Mars. 

John Carter has many pulpy elements that today’s audiences will be familiar with from other popular Sci-fi/fantasy series like the Star Wars saga, Dune, Conan the Barbarian, Stargate, Flash Gordon and Avatar, but that is only because those films were all at least partly inspired by this classic hundred year old Martian adventure series by Edgar Rice Burroughs.  

John Carter’s story has a lot in common with and was heavily influenced by the books of Edwin L. Arnold who wrote the adventures of Lieutenant Gulliver Jones in Gulliver of Mars in 1905, just seven years before Burroughs first published his Martian tales. Unfortunately much of the novelty that the adventures of John Carter once provided is lost by now, although there is still much to like about this movie, which is based on the first of Burroughs’ Mars adventure tales, A Princess of Mars, written back in 1912. 

Burroughs is best known for creating the popular jungle adventures Tarzan of the Apes; arguably the most well-known character in fiction and one of my favorites. Like his Tarzan character who became lord of the apes, John Carter is another fish-out-of-water story of an earth man and Civil War soldier from the 1800s, who suddenly finds himself dropped into the middle of an another war but this time on an alien planet called Barsoom (also known as Mars to us earthlings). Reluctantly he is forced to choose sides in a power struggle between warring Barsoomian factions as his superior strength, due to the red planet’s weaker gravity pull, gives him an advantage over the Martians.

Barsoom has other advanced technologies not found on earth and John Carter soon finds himself persuaded to help a beautiful warrior princess who has been forced into an arranged marriage to the evil leader of her people’s enemies. The princess of Mars is a tattoo covered, strong muscular and spirited Xena type woman who’s pretty good in a fight and holds her own with John Carter. She also enjoys inventing and tinkering with new Martian technologies which is a mix of Steampunk gadgets and Martian bio energy.

Staying very faithful to the source material the movie feels like a throwback to the pulp serial age of Flash Gordon but upgraded and treated with the most stunning visual effects today’s digital technology can achieve. Clearly a lot of care and meticulous detail was lavished on this film to do justice and pay homage to the great American fantasy author Edgar Rice Burroughs.

This is the sort of movie George Lucas would have made if he had bought the movie rights to Flash Gordon in the early 1970s, which he actually tried to do, but because he was unable to secure those movie rights he decided to create his own space opera serial and we ended up, thankfully, with Star Wars (1977) instead.

There are many strange and fun concepts and visually striking images thrown at us in this very rapidly paced film but what holds it all together and makes us care is the attraction between the Princess of Mars, played by Lynn Collins, and John Carter, played by Taylor Kitsch who have a good chemistry. 

This movie is probably going to appeal more to the Sci-fi fantasy geek crowd of which I count myself as one and maybe younger kids who are into fantasy role playing games and the Clone Wars animated series. It may also appeal to older sci-fi fans that grew up with these early pulpy fantasy stories and comics.

JP

Fantastic Mr. Fox

George Clooney and Meryl Streep were big contenders at the awards shows this year for separate movies but they did once work together on quite an unusual and unique film. Fantastic Mr. Fox (2009) is a delightful old school stop-motion puppet animated film based on the children’s book of the same name by well-known English author Roald Dahl, whose other works include Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, and James and the Giant Peach, which were also made into films. 

Fantastic Mr. Fox is a perfect blending of Roald Dahl’s storytelling and director Wes Anderson’s unique sensibility as a playful semi comic film maker who deals with serious family topics in such wonderful whimsical films as The Darjeeling Limited (2007), The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou (2004), and The Royal Tenenbaums (2001). His films have attracted a cult following for his unusual understated comic style and this, his first animated film, fits right in with that style and is considered one of his best.

The set design and character animation is richly textured and alive with eye catching, lavish detail and has a hand crafted organic quality that immerses you in its warm scenic world of English countryside farmlands, and a varied array of furry creatures like foxes, badgers, rabbits, moles, weasels, rats etc., living underground in a cozy domestic English lifestyle. 

Fantastic Mr. Fox is about a middle aged family man fox going through a midlife crisis and living with his wife and son in the English country side as he struggles between his animal instincts to rob chickens and food from nasty neighboring farmers and his duties as a husband and father. His thieving exploits results in a full scale war with the farmers who want revenge, putting his entire community in danger. There are themes running through the film of father-son/husband wife relationships, recognition of our natural talents, mentoring/bullying, family survival, and being true to our nature. 

The story feels like a moral animal fable by Aesop with its charismatic, over confident Mr. Fox, voiced by George Clooney, stumbling into one mess after another as he tries to regain his status as a community champion and relive the glory days of his youth.

Theme wise Fantastic Mr. Fox has a lot in common with Pixar’s The Incredibles (2004) which also dealt with the midlife crisis of a middle aged husband trying to regain the superhero status of his youth as he struggles with family responsibilities.

The film is also about the positive spirit of a community of individuals coming together and using their unique abilities to survive a common crisis, much like the current debt crisis and austerity measures we are enduring in our own lives today. Fantastic Mr. Fox feels more relevant today than when it first came out in 2009.

The rest of the cast include Meryl Streep as Mrs. Fox, Bill Murray as Badger his lawyer, Owen Wilson as a  whack bat coach, Willem Defoe as a security guard rat and Brian Cox as a small town reporter. 

Watch for Wes Anderson’s new film called Moonrise Kingdom coming May 25^th 2012.

JP