Tom Leins Strikes Back!
Words by Tom Leins
The queasy post-modern penchant for exhuming naff 80s relics in the name of retro-cool thrills gets more preposterous each year, so a movie about a washed-up 80s wrestler (starring washed-up 80s actor Mickey Rourke) could easily drown under a tidal wave of misjudged nostalgia, right? Wrong. With The Wrestler (Optimum) former art-house boy-wonder Darren Aronofsky has concocted a mesmerising contemporary fable about an “old, broken-down piece of meat” searching for redemption, but unable to let go of the past. It’s akin to watching an elderly Hulk Hogan starring in Requiem For A Dream, injecting steroids not smack, into his blistered sores! The attention-to-detail is top notch throughout, and the unhinged hardcore grudge match that precipitates Randy’s inevitable decline is a truly shocking sequence, and arguably the grisliest hardcore encounter since ‘One Night In Chyna’! (Google it at your peril boys ‘n’ girls) The Wrestler is a raw, strangely beautiful movie that transcends its marginal subject matter with spectacular results. Mickey Rourke is astonishing as Randy ‘The Ram’ Robinson, and this emotionally bruising masterpiece has surely saved both his and Darren Aronofsky’s waning careers. Heavily recommended.
A distinctly chillier proposition is Far North (Soda Pictures), a taut psychological thriller shot on location in Svalbard, Norway - the northernmost settlement in the world. Saiva (Michelle Yeoh) and Anja (Michelle Krusiec) live a nomadic existence, venturing further and further into the blistering, post-apocalyptic Arctic wastelands to escape from the vicious soldiers who have trampled society into the ground. When they discover dishevelled vagabond Loki (Sean Bean), stranded in the snow they nurse him back to health, and allow him to join them on their journey. However, Loki’s presence injects a palpable erotic charge into the women’s lives, triggering a turn of events that risks tearing them apart… The haunting landscapes add to the creeping unease, and as the slow-burning mood-piece trudges towards its disturbing conclusion you are in no doubt that you have just witnessed a singular talent at work. Inevitably, Far North will prove too subdued for the popcorn-munching masses, but its bleak, intrepid vision of society on the brink is a rare spectacle to behold.
You want mindless violence? You got it… The Machine Girl (Cine Asia) is a blood-spurting, bullet-pumping, taboo-trampling maelstrom of a movie starring Minase Yashiro as Ami, a cute Japanese schoolgirl who turns into a hardcore killing machine when her brother is tortured and killed by Yakuza thugs. Written and directed by Noburo Iguchi, The Machine Girl is a hyper-stylised post-Tarantino assault on the senses, simultaneously hip, cartoonish and obscene. Whilst the relentless, tongue-in-cheek violence will prove too ridiculous for some tastes, there is definitely a bizarre imagination at work here, and director Iguchi possesses a downright demented sense of humour. What it lacks in guile it makes up for in hyper-kinetic carnage, and bloodthirsty fans will relish the havoc caused by Ami’s strap-on machine gun arm! The dubious CGI tarnishes the movie’s gore-streaked charms somewhat, but when the dust settles the mind-boggling platter of exploitation drippings speaks for itself. Enter the cinematic splatterzone if you dare…
Closer to home is Ten Dead Men (BritFilmsTV), a knuckleheaded revenge thriller that revels in its own brutality. Tortured, shot and left for dead, pill-popping hitman Ryan tracks down and kills the ten criminals responsible for the murder of his girlfriend. Shot on a shoestring budget, Ten Dead Men feels like the blueprint for a better movie, and the indiscriminate violence only partially conceals the movie’s budgetary deficits. Still, what it lacks in Hollywood pyrotechnics it makes up for in grim-faced determination, and the more extensive fight sequences boast a bone-crunching charge sorely lacking in other areas of the film. Ultimately, too many amateurs spoil the broth, and the tell-tale low budget undermines the film’s brutal charge. Give these guys a budget and they’d be truly dangerous; in the mean time Ten Dead Men is nothing more than a bizarre glimpse at the underbelly of British cinema…
All DVDs are released on or before June 1st.
Posted Thu, May 28, 2009