Tom Leins DVD Reviews - Crime and Punishment in Weird America
Words by Tom Leins
If rumours are to be believed, Gran Torino (Warner Home Video) is going to be the last time that Clint Eastwood ever appears in front of a movie camera. If this is true, then Clint picked one hell of a role to go out with! Walt Kowalski is an embittered Korean War veteran still nursing a grievance over the log-forgotten conflict that defined him as a man. When a Laotian family move in next door to him, Walt’s racial prejudices come to the fore once more, and he turns his back on their cheerful attempts at friendship. When their teenage son is pressurised into trying to steal Walt’s prized Gran Torino by his gang-banger cousins, Walt creaks into action, and unleashes a can of whup-ass on the delinquents. In the ensuing weeks he finds himself increasingly drawn to his next door neighbours, and his hostile attitude thaws dramatically. However, when the gang-bangers start to make their presence felt once more, gun-toting Walt finds himself pressed back into active service… Despite its gritty, engaging subject matter, Gran Torino veers awkwardly between wry, deadpan comedy and provocative urban drama. Nevertheless, Walt Kowalski is arguably one of Eastwood’s finest characters in years, and this deliriously strange movie is a bizarre treat!
If Clint Eastwood’s grizzled visage puts you in the mood for a dose of good, old fashioned revenge, look no further than The Punisher: War Zone (Sony). After five fraught years of development hell, Marvel’s brutal anti-hero is back on the big-screen – with a vengeance! A grim-faced Ray Stevenson looks positively demented as tormented vigilante Frank Castle, and his battle against the hideously disfigured mobster Jigsaw (Dominic West) is breathtakingly violent and bleakly compelling. Director Lexi Alexander savaged her own reputation with the woefully misjudged hooligan drama Green Street a few years ago, so it is a pleasant surprise to see her get to grips with a hardboiled comic book caper like this. It may not be the classic Punisher movie that comic fans are waiting for, but War Zone is refreshingly combative after the sluggish 2004 movie starring Thomas Jane. All in all, a gratuitous B-movie blood-bath that exceeds expectations.
Push (Icon) is a mind-boggling dystopian thriller about a future society dominated by psychic espionage. A sinister government agency known as The Division are rounding up Psychics for their own malevolent purposes, and a pair of innocents end up caught in the crossfire. “Mover” Nick (Chris Evans) is trying to keep a low profile in Hong Kong, living in a squalid apartment struggling to pull off low-rent scams to make end’s meet. His marginal existence is thrown into turmoil when he is approached by Cassie (Dakota Fanning), a precocious 13-year-old “Watcher” who embroils him in a labyrinthine moral quest to overthrow The Division. What follows is visually scintillating but curiously un-involving, and no amount of synapse-scorching special effects sequences can persuade you otherwise. It may be as slick and stylish as Paul McGuigan’s previous movies, but Push is an unfortunately jarring viewing experience. Despite the abundance of cool ideas bubbling away under the surface, Push is convoluted rather than engrossing, and only sporadically intriguing…
Fifteen years after directing her debut feature - the deeply disturbing Boxing Helena - Jennifer Chambers Lynch is back with Surveillance (E1 Entertainment), a twisted serial killer thriller that plays its cards close to its chest. As David Lynch’s daughter, Jennifer is destined to suffer endless comparisons to her father, and Surveillance duly plunges headfirst into Lynch’s trademark ‘Weird America’. The plot sees a pair of FBI agents dispatched to an outpost in the Santa Fe desert to investigate a series of grisly murders, and the tension between the laconic Feds and twitchy small-town cops fuels the film’s narcoleptic narrative. Despite an assortment of gleefully weird set-pieces, the movie feels slightly contrived, and the deliberately slow pace will prove too lackadaisical for some viewers. Although Lynch’s movie is casually disturbing, it lacks the corrosive genius of her father’s best work. Approach with caution.
If you would prefer to get up close and personal with David Lynch himself, look no further than Lynch: One (Scanbox), a dreamy, impressionistic examination of Lynch’s unique craft. The film charts the experimental genesis of his unwieldy Inland Empire project, and it turns out that the method behind his madness is even weirder than expected! Lynch is droll and amusing throughout, and his enthusiasm for ‘strangeness’ is truly bewildering. A traditional biography was always going to be out of the question, and unfortunately this bizarre, meandering approach will test the patience of all but the most devoted fans. Although the deliberately off-kilter visual palette carries a hypnotic charge, the relentless kookiness is slightly draining. Still, if you have cultivated a taste for Lynch’s more esoteric movies then you will find plenty to enjoy here. Also released this week is Dumbland (Scanbox), a compendium of cartoon skits that premiered on Lynch’s own website. Written, directed and animated by Lynch himself, these ragged, disorientating brainwaves are crudely animated and barely coherent. Anyone hoping for the sophistication of a movie like Mulholland Drive will be sorely disappointed by this puerile gibberish. Dreadful stuff.
Posted Wed, July 08, 2009