By Troy Ribeiro
FILM: Mandela: Long Walk To Freedom
CAST: Idris Elba, Deon Lotz, Naomie Harris
DIRECTION: Justin Chadwick
Based on Nelson Mandela’s 1995 eponymous autobiography, the film showcases snatches of his life in an episodic-cum-documentary manner — as a lawyer, anti-apartheid revolutionary, politician-cum-activist who was elected the president of South Africa in 1994.
Laden with dramatically-cliched and generic rousing scenes, director Justin Chadwick’s Mandela: Long Walk to Freedom, set against the backdrop of long-established institutional racism, is a far cry from an awe-inspiring and stimulating biopic.
It gives an insight into Mandela’s persona not as a hero, but as an ordinary man. The film also showcases the history of South African freedom struggle against apartheid. “I dream the same dream, night after night. I am coming back home to Orlando ... they seem fine getting along with their lives, but they do not see me...” a recurring voiceover bookmarks the film that begins with a montage of kids playing in the wilderness of the golden hued South Africa summer.
A little while later, again in a voiceover, Mandela explains why his father named him, ‘Rolihlahla’. “My father called me a trouble maker... but I wanted to make my family proud,” he says defending himself.
Then the narration skips to Johannesburg 1942 to give a glimpse of him as a shrewd and ambitious lawyer. Usually the best biopics tend to be those which use unremarkable moments to showcase why that person was remarkable. Mandela: Long Walk To Freedom has these elements, but unfortunately the passion in portraying it is missing.
Idris Elba does a sterling job as Mandela. He impersonates Mandela’s walk and speech to perfection.
Naomie Harris as Winnie is intense and dazzling. —IANS
A tribute to Hitchcock
By Roger Moore
FILM: Grand Piano
CAST: Elijah Wood, Kerry Bishe, John Cusack
DIRECTION: Eugenio Mira
Grand Piano is a nail-biting thriller in the classic Hitchcock style. This tale of a concert pianist performing under a sniper’s threat — “Call for help and I’ll shoot you right between the eyes!” - is a real corker.
You’ve got the famous, nervous wreck of a pianist (Elijah Wood) pounding away at a work everybody calls “the unplayable piece”. You’ve got John Cusack’s voice in his ear, whispering threats to him about his actress wife (Kerry Bishe). And the pianist is stage whispering pleas, complaints and the like back to the sniper. While playing, mind you.
A laser sight dances across his fingers as he tickles the ivories. There are cell phones ringing in the concert hall, a jovial conductor (Don McManus) who breaks classical music concert decorum — repeatedly — and a pianist who dashes off stage between pieces and movements of pieces.
This just isn’t DONE, you know.
It’s all rather daft, but cleverly so. And the occasional jaw-dropping moment will make you wonder, “Who says classical music is dead?”
Wood is Tom Selznick, a long-dormant concert pianist who is giving a concert in tribute to his late mentor using that mentor’s massive Bosendorfer concert grand piano. His nerves made him give up performing five years before, but conductor Hugh (McManus) jokes around and puts him at ease. “You’re going to hit a wrong note. And you know what? They (the audience) never know.”
The actress-wife is pushing him to get back on the stage, and even pushier radio interviewers urge him to “break a leg”. If only. The trouble starts when Selznick strolls onstage to join the orchestra. He opens his score, and there, in bright red Sharpie marks, is “Play one wrong note and you die!” As he works through the programme (Wood is a pretty convincing pianist) and the threats mount, you think of Phone Booth and The Call.
“Now you know the meaning of ‘stage fright’,” the unseen sniper hisses, a play on both the bane of any performer and a 1950 Hitchcock film. And a producer named Selznick was the bane of Hitchcock’s early career, so we know who was on screenwriter Damien Chazelle’s mind as he concocted this. – MCT
DVD courtesy: Kings Electronics, Doha
Unintentional laughs
FILM: Labor Day
CAST: Kate Winslet, Josh Brolin, Gattlin Griffith
DIRECTION: Jason Reitman
The funniest unintentional laugh in Labor Day is the way adaptor/director Jason Reitman treats this eye-rolling, melodramatic romance novel as if he’s got his hands on the works of Dostoevsky or Tolstoy.
A genteel escaped convict hides out with a grieving divorcee and offers another chance at love? It’s The Prisons of Madison County.
Kate Winslet conveys a quivering, emotionally-crippled vulnerability as the single mom and Josh Brolin suggests the proper balance of menace and chivalry as the convicted murderer. And young Gattlin Griffith is the 13-year-old who realises that he is never going to be adequate as mom’s substitute husband.
The boy Henry is the one the goateed and bloodied Frank (Brolin) approaches in the small-town supermarket. The pitch for a getaway, first to him then to his mother, is polite with just a hint of threat: “Frankly, this needs to happen.”
Frank assures them he just needs to lay low until the law passes by their house, just until he can hop a freight train in the morning. But he sees Adele’s shaky hold on sanity, the ruin she’s let the house fall into, her loneliness.
Before you know it, he’s cleaning the house, cooking dinner and — ever so lovingly — tying her up to keep up “held hostage” appearances.
Henry, who narrates this story as an adult, is confused. He bonds with the new man in their house, is impressed by Frank’s masculine tenderness and consideration.
But Reitman has chosen material too thin to support a deeper, more ambitious story. — By Roger Moore, MCT
A parade of surprises
FILM: The Art of Steal
CAST: Kurt Russell, Matt Dillon, Terence Stamp, Jay Baruchel
DIRECTION: Jonathan Sobol
An art thief-turned-motorcycle daredevil pulls his old crew back together for one last heist in this caper film from director Jonathan Sobol.
Crunch Calhoun (Kurt Russell) has a reputation for big stunts, and hard landings. Now that years of motorbike mishaps have taken their toll on the ageing Crunch, he is tempted back into a life of crime in order to make a fast buck. Unfortunately, Crunch isn’t the best when it comes to choosing his criminal cohorts, and he winds up in prison after being double-crossed by his scheming half-brother Nicky (Matt Dillon).
His retirement fund depleted by the time he’s released, Crunch sets his sights on one last score that will set him up for life.
With his apprentice Francie (Jay Baruchel), the well-connected Paddy Kenneth Walsh, expert forger Guy (Chris Diamantopoulos), and idea man Nicky by his side, Crunch begins preparations for the job he’ll be remembered for. The heist hits the skids, however, when untrustworthy Nicky resorts to his old tricks. But this time Crunch is ready, and as their partnership dissolves he prepares to pull out his ace in the hole.
The film manages to keep its momentum flowing, even though the final third is a parade of surprises.
Russell is perfect as Crunch, delivering a balance of confidence and humanity, giving the film the core it needs, while Dillon hits his marks as the smarmy brother.
Creaky and intriguing
FILM: Locker 13
CAST: Jason Spisak, Rick Schroder, Jon Gries, Rick Hoffman
DIRECTION: Bruce Dellis, George Huang, Jason Marsden, Matthew Mebane, Adam Montierth, Donovan Montierth
Featuring five short yarns, each spun out by its own writer and director, the film takes a decidedly old-fashioned approach to situation and character. The result is an alternately creaky and intriguing ride, one of earnest ambition and dashed potential.
The overnight janitor at an Old West theme park unearths a dark secret involving an old locker, and prepares to make a difficult decision while listening to a series of stories emphasising the importance of making sound choices. With tales involving a battle-worn boxer presented with a life-altering opportunity, a young man who puts his life on the line for admission into a secret society, a suicidal man who discovers a terrifying secret, and a hit man who meets his match in the form of three vengeful women, the janitor quickly realises that making the wrong decision could be the death of him
Locker 13 is a horror/thriller anthology, a collection of five cautionary tales about making the right choice.
DVDs courtesy: Saqr Entertainment Stores, Doha