Friday Review: ScreenReview: FILM RELEASES: Steve Rose on stunning tale of
warring Chinese states, plus the rest of the week’s films
The Guardian – United Kingdom
Sep 24, 2004
STEVE ROSE
Hero
4/5
Dir: Zhang Yimou
With: Jet Li, Tony Leung Chiu Wai, Maggie Cheung, Zhang Ziyi, Chen
Daoming
99 mins, cert 12A
This Chinese epic may owe its existence to Crouching Tiger, Hidden
Dragon (which was essentially an American-Chinese epic), but it
betters that film on most counts. In contrast to Hollywood’s recent,
sprawling attempts at majestic action movies, everything seems to be
in tune with everything else here, all governed by a rigid formal
structure. Set during the “warring states” period before the entity of
China had been created, the action is framed around a meeting between
the Qin emperor (Chen Daoming) and an assassin named Nameless (Jet
Li). We see in flashback how Nameless eliminated the emperor’s most
feared enemies, Broken Sword, Sky and Flying Snow. But the King doubts
him, and offers a different explanation of events. And so they trade
stories like a chess game, writing China’s history in the process.
Each segment is colour-coded, so the dominant colour is red in the
first story, blue in the next and so on – a clever device that
preserves simplicity and allows the art department to pull out all the
stops. Hero really is one of the best-looking films ever made – a
combination of stunning landscapes, graceful duels and rigorous
compositions, all topped off with the cream of Chinese acting
talent. If there’s one flaw, it’s that the formal stateliness stifles
any sympathy we might have for these characters, who spend a fair
amount of time dying tragically. More intriguing is the overt theme of
Chinese unification, by no means a redundant topic. Where director
Zhang was once banned from making films in China, now he’s firmly at
the centre of the establishment, and essentially delivers an argument
in favour of tyranny. But there are sly hints of subversion. The
heroism of the title is open to ambiguity, and at one point the film’s
recurring motif, the pro-unification phrase “all under heaven”, is
literally written in the sand.
Red Lights
4/5
Dir: Cedric Kahn
With: Jean-Pierre Darroussin, Carole Bouquet, Vincent Deniard,
Charline Paul
105 mins, cert 15
After the excellent Roberto Succo, here’s another smooth,
sophisticated, real-world thriller from Cedric Kahn. Again the
transgression of the criminal is a theme, but this time it’s conflated
with the rules of the road, which proves to be an extremely rich
combination. And there’s something rather brilliant about a movie in
which the supposed hero gets increasingly plastered.
We’ve lost track of how much Antoine (Jean-Pierre Darroussin) has had
to drink before he and his wife (Carole Bouquet) have even left
Paris. Their car is one of the millions heading south for the summer
holidays, but Antoine doesn’t want to be one of the herd. His decision
to take a “short cut”, followed by a few bar stops, prompts his wife
to abandon him. Antoine then picks up a surly hitcher, whom he pretty
much knows to be the escaped fugitive mentioned on the radio. Antoine
sees his passenger as a soulmate, a fellow rebel. “You don’t give a
shit about their laws!” he proclaims. The fugitive, by contrast is
keen for Antoine to do exactly that. The story runs out of gas a
little when it leaves the road, but on the whole its marvellously
gripping, with a good few surprises up its sleeve.
Cellular
3/5
Dir: David R. Ellis
With: Kim Basinger, Chris Evans, William H Macy, Eric Christian Olsen,
Jessica Bie
l94 mins, cert 15
Most recent thrillers would have fallen apart completely had someone
possessed a mobile phone. This is the solution: a high-concept,
breakneck dash through the many features of the new Nokia 6600. The
hero, whose real name is unfortunately Chris Evans, receives a random
call from the hysterical Kim Basinger, who has been kidnapped. From
then on, it’s up to Evans and his Nokia to save the day. There are
some genuinely funny moments, but the writers are eventually defeated
by their hi-tech remit, and resort to an off-the-shelf shoot-out
ending.
Save the Green Planet!
3/5
Dir: Jeong Jun-hwan
With: Shin Ha-kyun, Baek Yun-shik, Hwang Jeong-min, Lee Jae-yong
118 mins, cert 18
A bizarre Korean sci-fi movie that’s so inventively demented, it’s
hard to dislike. It’s the unpredictable story of a loner named Lee
(Shin Ha-kyun), who attempts to save the earth by kidnapping a
pharmaceuticals executive whom he believes to be an alien. So,
naturally, he shaves off his prisoner’s hair, applies antihistamine
cream to his feet, then tortures him with electricity. Even David Icke
would blanch at Lee’s apocalyptic conspiracy theory, but we’re
successfully kept guessing about his sanity until the very
end. Technically accomplished, manically acted and extremely violent,
it’s constantly on the verge of collapsing into complete nonsense, but
never actually does.
Vodka Lemon
3/5
Dir: Hiner Saleem
With: Romen Avinian, Lala Sarkissian, Ivan Franek, Armen Marutyan
84 mins, cert PG
Another dry, droll, almost dialogue-free drama from an obscure corner
of Europe, to file alongside the work of Georgia’s Otar Iosseliani and
Finland’s Aki Kaurismaki. This is set in rural Armenia, which appears
to be a desolate post-Soviet country where the only commodity is vodka
and the national pastime is sitting outside on chairs, despite the
freezing temperature. It’s a bright, empty, snowbound landscape in
which any man-made object looks surreal – a hospital bed, a piano,
even the graveyard where two widowed survivors form a tentative,
courteous romance. Nothing new, you might say, but this establishes
its own distinctive rhythm, and puts its country on the map.
She Hate Me
2/5
Dir: Spike Lee
With: Anthony Mackie, Kerry Washington, Ellen Barkin, Monica Bellucci,
Jim Brown
138 mins, cert 15
Spike Lee seems to have a backlog of issues he’s steamed up about. So
here he attempts tackle them all at once: the corruption of corporate
America; the persecution of marginalised peoples; the tyranny of the
heterosexual nuclear family; black homophobia; even the fate of the
security guard who exposed the Watergate scandal. The result is one of
the oddest films he’s ever made. The hero (Mackie) is a sacked
corporate whistleblower who finds a lucrative new line of work
impregnating lesbians, including his ex-girlfriend, her girlfriend,
and the daughter of a mafia crime boss. With a star-filled cast,
animated interludes, and a hugely improbably storyline, there’s rarely
a dull moment, but you’re constantly wondering what Lee is really
trying to say. At least he’s trying to say something.
Switchblade Romance
2/5
Dir: Alexandre Aja
With: Cecile De France, Maiwenn Le Besco, Philippe Nahon, Franck
Khalfoun
91 mins, cert 18
This presents itself as an edgy new French horror movie, but it’s
essentially a derivative old-school horror movie – with a twist that
only leaves you feeling even more cheated. It starts with urbanites
Alex (Maiwenn le Besco) and Marie (Cecile de France) coming to stay at
Marie’s family in their isolated farmhouse. But after a bloody
slaughter on the first night, courtesy of a random redneck, they’re
the only two left. What follows is less a game of suspense than a
drawn-out game of hide-and-seek, with the requisite false alarms and
idiotic decisions. Almost everybody needs killing at least twice
before they stay dead, and there’s some questionable gender
stereotyping to boot. If nothing else, though, it’s a warning against
selling axes in service stations.
Spivs
1/5
Dir: Colin Teague
With: Ken Stott, Kate Ashfield, Nick Moran, Jack Dee94 mins, cert 15
No! It’s back! The Brit gangster comedy rears its empty, Brylcreemed
head again. It’s all here: smart suits, split screens, short cons and
Nick Moran – until spiv-in-chief Ken Stott discovers a lorry load of
illegal immigrants. Then it lurches clumsily into an issue drama, as
he takes two eastern European urchins under his wing. The presence of
comics like Jack Dee and Paul Kaye only reinforces the impression that
these are two incompatible genres struggling to coexist. It’s like
Lock, Stock meets In This World.
The Punisher
1/5
Dir: Jonathan Hensleigh
With: Tom Jane, John Travolta, Will Patton, Laura Harring, Ben
Foster124 mins, cert 18
This lunk-headed action movie feels like something you’d have found on
video-store shelves in the mid-1980s, and passed over in favour of
something better, like Commando or Cobra. It’s the same old formula: a
gym-pumped brute of a hero (Tom Jane); a distastefully high body
count; and lots of big explosions. For John Travolta, it looks like
Pulp Fiction never happened.
The Ister
3/5
Dirs: David Barison, Daniel Ross
189 mins, no cert
Few films this, or any other, year will be such an unashamedly
intellectual long haul. Part travelogue up the Danube from mouth to
source, part meditation on writings by Martin Heidegger, this
three-hour documentary is not for the faint-hearted. The title is
borrowed from a poem by 17th-century German Friedrich Holderlin (Ister
being the Danube’s classical Greek name), that in turn gave rise to a
series of lectures Heidegger gave at the height of the second world
war. Heidegger, of course, is forever tainted by his enthusiastic
embrace of Nazism; here, with considerable rigour, a series of French
philosophers attempt to grapple with his thought. Another
controversial figure, film-maker Hans-Jurgen Syberberg, of Hitler: A
Film from Germany fame, weighs in for a few minutes at the end.