Three Films Make A Post: Decide For Yourself

The Hunt (2020): Craig Zobel’s satirical horror movie (written by Nick Cuse and Damon Lindelof) has apparently managed to incense the shouty people on both sides of US politics (the places where nuance goes to die). Which, having seen the movie, I very much suspect is what the film was aiming at, trying to express irritation with the way both sides tend to turn their opposite numbers into sub-human caricatures with a holier-than-thou approach lacking in any kind of self-reflection. Alas, I can only suspect that’s what the film is actually trying to say, for the script is an abominable mess of “ironic” clichés, plot twists that make no frigging sense, and a tendency to be vague where actual satire needs to be precise, and a general goofiness in the set-ups of its action that robs the film of all tension too. Otherwise, it’s certainly professionally made, but that sort of competence really doesn’t help against any of these flaws; it really makes them all the more visible.

Bloodshot (2020): Also missing the mark is this (sort of) superhero movie based on the Valiant character starring Vin Diesel as a revived super soldier who is a bit more upmarket than your Universal Soldiers or your Robocops. The script by Jeff Wadlow and Eric Heisserer has exactly one good idea, but to get there, one has to wade through all the usual action movie clichés, directed at best indifferently, at worst badly by former effects man Dave Wilson (who is yet another example that special effects knowledge isn’t the only thing a director needs, even in effects heavy genres). That twist is pretty clever but happens at least fifteen minutes too late, and is of import for about five minutes, after which the film returns to the same old action movie clichés its twist is supposedly meant to subvert, still directed without punch or verve, featuring a Diesel who seems terribly bored by the whole affair. I don’t blame him.

The Gentlemen (2019): But let’s end this on a more pleasant note (well, perhaps not pleasant, exactly), with Guy Ritchie’s return to the self-conscious gangster action comedy. It’s honestly pretty great, the meta elements never getting in the way of the film, the jokes generally hitting as well as do the action and the old ultra-violence. It’s certainly not nice (and one could certainly raise an eyebrow at the film’s racial politics if one wanted) but it’s so fun I didn’t find myself caring. The acting ensemble with guys and gals like Matthew McConaughey, Michelle Dockery, Jeremy Strong, Colin Farrell and an honest to gosh brilliant Hugh Grant seems to have a lot of fun, too, and better, they do project that fun rather nicely, too.


The only major thing I’m not too keen on here is Charlie Hunnam sticking out like a sore thumb by presenting his usual charisma vacuum, but the rest of the film is much to fun for that ruin it for me.

In short: Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2 (2017)

If you’re looking for a counter-argument to the idea that the big commercial movie universes suppress all individual directorial expression, the Guardians movies are your most obvious starting point, seeing as their tone and style fit exactly into the oeuvre of James Gunn. Witness the way crude and blunt humour sometimes hide the rather more clever jokes the film makes; or just watch how cynical little asides so often glide into moments of actual human emotion that are just as important for the film as the big set pieces and explosions are. And these are pretty damn important to the film, it’s just that Gunn clearly sees no qualitative difference between the loud and the quiet, the goofy and the clever. Blockbuster cinema here means a film that sets out to fulfil all kinds of different expectations, not to be all things to all people, but because being a bit messy and complicated and rich is what this sort of filmmaking should be about.

One might argue that the film’s thematic concerns about families of choice, of blood and of chance are not the most original ones but I suspect very much most members of the film’s audience will have found themselves involved in one or more of these kinds of families, and can certainly connect to some of what’s going on under the loud, beautiful and bonkers surface; which is more than I can say about these “universal”, important films beloved by mid-brow criticism that are inevitably about the sex life of rich people or academics. Plus, Gunn really doubles down when he uses well-worn tropes – one just has to look at the shape, form and dimension the standard “killing of the father” takes on in this film. It’s big in the best way.


But what really does make this such a wonderful film is how much care Gunn takes with the small things. It’s not just the nearly absurd number of throwaway gags going on in the background (and certainly not stopping with the end credits), it’s how tiny dialogue moments from the first Guardians are given greater meaning (and ambiguity) through just as tiny throw-away lines here, how there’s always a little more going on in every scene than the most direct reading of it suggests.

The Last Witch Hunter (2015)

For killing the evil Witch Queen (Julie Engelbrecht) responsible for the Black Death, medieval flaming-sword wielding badass Kaulder (Vin Diesel) has been cursed with immortality.

He’s spent the seven hundred years or so since his Witch Queen killing days working as the Witch Police for a secret order of the Vatican tasked with the human side of operations responsible for protecting humanity from evil witches so that the rest of witch-dom and humanity can live in secret, yet peaceful co-existence. The script tells us that Kaulder is by now tired and lonely of his existence, though that sort of thing is unfortunately beyond Diesel’s thespian powers, him being Groot notwithstanding.

Anyway, things become more exciting for Kaulder when his handler, the 36th priest called Dolan (Michael Caine, who’s a Catholic priest guv’nor, right-o) is dying. What is supposedly a natural death turns out to have been murder. It’s all part of a dastardly plan to resurrect the Witch Queen, of course. Kaulder’s only help are Dolan #37 (Elijah Wood) and witch Chloe (Rose Leslie), and the cryptic hint of #36 to “remember your death”.
Breck Eisner’s urban fantasy film that starts promising to be an awesome bit of sword and sorcery got quite a drubbing from mainstream critics, who just love to kick perfectly fine popcorn cinema for the sin of being popcorn cinema. And this isn’t like one of the Michael Bay Transformers movies who deserve all the kicks they get for being just so damn badly made; this is a perfectly entertaining bit of silly nonsense, made for and succeeding in providing its audience with a bit over ninety minutes of dumb fun.

Sure, the film’s flaws are obvious: Vin Diesel is a wonderful physical presence, owns a really deep voice, and looks good in action scenes, but he’s as inexpressive an actor as they come whenever he’s supposed to express more than very basic emotions, so the whole “curse of immortality” angle falls flat, as does him convincing anyone to be several centuries old. The plot is rather on the silly side, with the film spending about half of its running time on Kaulder’s and Chloe’s adventures finding herbs for a memory potion, and the film’s big bads aren’t all that exciting either (I’d have hired British stage actresses and actors who’d go all Royal Shakespeare Company on being evil, instead of a hairy guy and a special effect).

However, these flaws aren’t terribly important for what The Last Witch Hunter is actually trying to do. Diesel is way more involved in kicking various supernatural behinds than being tragic, the film’s silliness is of an imaginative and fun kind that gets a lot of mileage out of throwing a bunch of urban fantasy clichés together, giving them a goth-y gloss, and calling it a movie, and the plot’s only an excuse to get Kaulder and Chloe to visit places like the witch model hive (all in truth disfigured in some form of course and just glamoured up the wazoo), the warlock who makes maggot cookies, and so on and so forth. I hate to go the old “if that sort of thing sounds enjoyable to you, you’ll certainly enjoy this” route, but honestly, if it does, you probably will.

You’ll also see some really cool moving fantasy airbrush art (because that’s what the production design goes for), watch a bunch of decent action sequences, see Michael Caine play a Catholic priest, and suffer through an ending that screams “we are trying to build a franchise here” as loudly as possible.