The Hitman’s Wife’s Bodyguard: Also Starring Frank Grillo

Brexit just keeps looking better and better, doesn’t it? Currently, the UK is far out-performing the EU when it comes to vaccinations. It should also be safely out of the crosshairs when a Greek super-patriot hatches an apocalyptic scheme to avenge Brussels’ policies that humbled his country. Europe’s only hope rests in the three characters referenced in the title of Patrick Hughes’ The Hitman’s Wife’s Bodyguard, which is now playing in actual theaters.

In The Hitman’s Bodyguard, bodyguard Michael Bryce protected his old contract-killer nemesis long enough to testify against an Alexander Lukashenko-like dictator at The Hague, but he is still haunted by Darius Kincaid’s assassination of his most important client. His shrink wants him to move on to safer employment, but Kincaid’s wife Sonia pulls him back in to save her husband (against both of their wishes).

Even though Bryce has temporarily sworn off guns, he and Ms. Kincaid successfully rescue her hubby from the Euro gangster holding him. Inconveniently, they also kill him before Interpol Agent Bobby O’Neil can recover the sensitive European infrastructure information he acquired for the shadowy mastermind. It turns out the villain is Greek shipping tycoon Aristotle Papdopolous, who needs a briefcase full of codes linked to an explosive device that winds up strapped to Sonia’s wrist.

Like its predecessor, HWB is definitely a meathead movie, but it is a rare sequel that manages to be funnier than the original. Obviously, Samuel L. Jackson does his F-bomb-dropping thing as Kincaid—and it is still works as well as ever. Ryan Reynolds probably gets even more laughs as the wildly neurotic Bryce. However, Salma Hayek (who was conspicuously under-utilized in the first film) steals the show as the spectacularly foul-mouthed and hair-trigger-tempered Sonia Kincaid. She is a riot, pretty much literally.

Cahill’s Bliss

Stop me if you've heard this one before: the world we think we know might just be a computer simulation. That is what Greg Wittle is about to learn, when he meets the woman who claims to have created it—and he is inclined to listen, because she is played by Salma Hayek. The Wachowskis’ The Matrix did not open on tomorrow’s date in 1999, so it is just a coincidence two “simulation world” films are releasing this Friday (the other being Ascher’s A Glitch in the Matrix). Of course, there are no coincidences in the Matrix, so maybe these two films really do prove something. Either way, director-screenwriter Mike Cahill’s Bliss does its best to question our conception of reality when it starts streaming tomorrow on Amazon Prime.

One thing is for sure: the world that we start in definitely does not cater to Wittle. He is bitterly divorced from his ex-wife and estranged from his son. Only his daughter Emily still maintains ties. To make matters worse, Wittle will soon be fired from his job at a customer support firm (amusingly named “Technical Difficulties”) and he will then kill his boss through an unlikely chain of accidental events. Fortunately, the woman in the bar tells him she can fix things.

That would be Isabel Clemens and she claims she invented the simulated world they are in. She gloms onto him, because she claims he is “real” and not some kind programmed NPC. The weird thing is, she seems to be right. It does indeed appear she can make things happen and mess with “unreal” people. Eventually, she gives Wittle a glimpse of the “true” world, which matches the idealized drawings he compulsively sketched. The drawback is his beloved daughter Emily isn’t “real” too.

Cahill riffs on some of the ideas introduced in films like The Matrix and Empathy Inc in interesting ways, but his vision of competing realities is rather muddled. Instead of mind-bending paradoxes, he just gives us a headache. There are often logic gaps in science fiction, but they are outright at war with each in Bliss. On the other hand, Bliss offers an unusually thoughtful and mature meditation on the question of love. Can you really love someone who does not truly “exist?” If so, then what?

The Hitman’s Bodyguard: Guarding Samuel L. Jackson

Alexander Lukashenko must be bent out of shape. Hollywood makes a movie about a Belarusian dictator trying to escape prosecution for crimes against humanity, but they can’t be bothered to call him out by name? Instead, it is one Vladislav Dukhovich who has put a price on the only international assassin crazy enough to testify against him. All the other potentially damaging witnesses have been killed, but Darius Kincaid is bizarrely hard to kill. He will also have old nemesis, personal security specialist Michael Bryce watching his back, whether he likes it or not, in Patrick Hughes’ The Hitman’s Bodyguard (trailer here), which opens this Friday in New York.

Several years ago, a Japanese arms dealer under Bryce’s protection was drilled between the eyes, dragging Bryce’s business down with him. It was Kincaid who made the shot. In the small world department, Bryce’s ex, Interpol Agent Amelia Roussel is in charge of Kincaid’s security. Captured through a fluke, Kincaid cut a deal to testify against Dukhovich in exchange for his wife’s freedom. Unfortunately, his lack of faith in Interpol’s security protocols will be vindicated when Dukhovich’s mercenaries ambush their motorcade. Suspecting a mole in the agency, Roussel contracts Bryce to safely transport Kincaid to The Hague, despite their bitter history as rivals. Much Odd Couple-style humor ensues, as the body count escalates.

In between car chases and gun fights, Kincaid and Bryce will bicker and banter—and in the case of the former, drop MF bombs like there is no tomorrow. Yep, he would be the one played by Samuel L. Jackson. Frankly, this is the sort of loopy action comedy that were a staple of 1980s second run dollar theaters. It is therefore rather fitting Richard E. Grant has a cameo in the prologue as Bryce’s latest sleazy client.

It should be readily stipulated Jackson and Ryan Reynolds develop an amusing comedic chemistry together. They settle into a nice rhythm playing off each other and neither is too shy to mug a little for the camera. Jackson is basically recycling his Pulp Fiction persona yet again, but it still hasn’t gotten old yet, so it’s tough to blame him. Reynolds is well cast as the armed-and-dangerous Felix Unger. It is also nice to see Elodie Yung get to participate in the action as Roussel, while Gary Oldman (a reliable villain if ever there was one) chews the scenery as an entitled dictator would. However, Salma Hayek is under-employed as Kincaid’s borderline psychotic wife Sonia.

Bodyguard has plenty of action, exotic locales (getting riddled with bullet holes, but whatever), and some classic blues and R&B tunes licensed for the soundtrack. That doesn’t exactly add up to a masterpiece, but it is fun in a goofy, meathead kind of way. Thanks to the gung-ho commitment of Jackson and Reynolds, it all works on a basic laughter-and-mayhem level. Recommended for fans of Jackson and old school action-comedies, The Hitman’s Bodyguard opens this Friday (8/18) throughout the City, including the AMC Empire in Midtown.

AFI’s EU Showcase ’15: Tale of Tales

Neapolitan poet Giambattista Basile’s fairy tale collection predated Charles Perrault and the Brothers Grimm, but despite their subtitle, “Entertainment for Little Ones,” they are considered idiosyncratically macabre and even a little NSFW. Of course, those are both rather cinematic qualities. Matteo Garrone duly emphasizes the strange and baroque in Tale of Tales (trailer here), his English language adaptation of a trio of intertwined Basile fables, which screens as part of the AFI’s 2015 EU Film Showcase.

Three neighboring kingdoms largely coexist quite peacefully, because their respective monarchs are so self-absorbed with their own issues. Thanks to the help of a necromancer, the Queen of Longtrellis magically conceives the son she always desired, at the mere cost of her indulgent husband (and basically her soul). However, Prince Elias never adequately returns her codependent love. Instead, he prefers to spend time with the commoner Jonah, who is his exact spitting image.

The King of Highmountain is equally problematic in the completely opposite way. He ignores his antsy-to-be-married daughter, Princess Violet, preferring to obsess over his abnormally large trained flea. When he finally makes a show of arranging a contest for her hand, he inadvertently grants her hand to an ogre.

Meanwhile, the horndog King of Strongcliff has fallen in lust with the voice of the peasant Dora. However, he does not realize she is one of two old crone sisters living hand-to-mouth in a cottage on his estate. Feigning coyness, Dora manages to hold off the King until she can come to him under the dark of night. Complications ensue.

If you haven’t realized yet, there is sex in these fairy tales. There are also flashes of violence that are shocking in the moment, but not at all gratuitous. Be that as it may, it is easy to see why the archetypal source material has been largely passed over by animators and children’s publishers. Tale of Tales still seems likely an unlikely direction for an ultra-realist like Garrone, but he reportedly claims all his films have a kinship with fairy tales. You can sort of see that in a morality tale like Reality, but it is less apparent in the thinly fictionalized social expose, Gomorrah.

Regardless, there is a lot of cool stuff in Tale, including Toby Jones talking to a giant flea and Salma Hayek eating a dragon’s heart. There are also tightrope walkers, damsels in distress, damsels causing distress, shapeshifters, and Shakespearean confusion with twins. Garrone and editor Marco Spoletini shrewdly time the shifts between narrative strands, maintaining a nice up-tempo pace. Alexandre Desplat also contributes a very Desplat-sounding score (classy, but not particularly distinctive). However, production designer Dimitri Capuani and the battery of art directors creates a richly detailed fantasy world that is both lovely and sinister.

Tale of Tales could be considered The Princess Bride’s evil twin, making it exactly the sort of fairy tale movie we have needed. It is much more fun than Catherine Breillart’s fairy tale films and more subversive than Snow White and the Huntsman. Recommended for fans of dark fantasy, Tale of Tales screens this Saturday (12/12) as part of the AFI’s EU Film Showcase.

NYICFF ’15: Kahlil Gibran’s The Prophet

He was born into a Maronite Catholic family and wrote his best known work in English, but Kahlil Gibran was subsequently embraced as a symbol of Arab culture. Without question, his best known work is The Prophet, arguably the original break-out New Age bestseller, whose celebrity admirers include Elvis Presley, John Lennon, and Salma Hayek. Her regard for the instantly recognizable Knopf title was such that she produced a big screen animated adaptation of the book few would have thought adaptable. The ambition and animation are definitely impressive, but the source material remains unwieldy in Roger Allers’ Kahlil Gibran’s The Prophet (trailer here), which screens during this year’s New York International Children’s Film Festival.

In order to give the film a central storyline, Allers took some liberties with the framing device. The exiled prophet Mustafa (here more of a hipster painter and poet) is indeed bidding a fond farewell to the citizens of Orphalese, but he will not simply hop on the tall ship and sail off into the sunset. The oppressive Pasha and his thuggish police sergeant are planning permanent measures to halt his progressive influence before they let him go anywhere. The resulting narrative is like a weird passion play, with the assorted peasants in the countryside and merchants in town celebrating his presumed release with much feasting and drinking. At each stop along the way, Mustafa gives the crowd a pithy bit of prose poetry wisdom that are impressionistically rendered by a diverse roster of animators.

No longer is Almitra a seer. She is now the rebellious mute daughter of Kamila, the widowed housekeeper hired to tidy up the prophet’s exile cottage. Sharing a connection with the island’s seagulls, she is the first to suspect the fate awaiting Mustafa. Presumably, these liberties taken with the text pass muster with the Gibran establishment, given their active role in the production.

Regardless, the film as a whole is necessarily uneven, since Allers and Hayek-Pinault (as she is billed here) deliberately embrace its episodic structure. Not surprisingly, the best sequences are “On Love” animated by Tomm Moore (Song of the Sea) and “On Marriage” crafted by Joann Sfar (The Rabbi’s Cat). The abstract nature of the texts are also particularly well suited to the styles of Nina Paley (Sita Sings the Blues) and Bill Plympton (Cheatin’). However, the other four parables largely blend together.

Following in the footsteps of Richard Harris’s Arif Mardin-produced musical interpretation of The Prophet, Liam Neeson continues the Irish Gibran tradition as the voice of Mustafa. To be fair, his husky, reassuring tones are rather well suited to the film. Hayek-Pinault is perfectly serviceable as Kamila. (Since she is once again playing a mother facing difficult circumstances, Prophet should really be considered a companion film to Everly and the two should be screened together whenever possible). Quvenzhané Wallis gets precious little actual dialogue as Almitra (but perhaps that is just as well), while Alfred Molina does his best to keep up with the slapstick humor directed at his pompous Sergeant.

Whatever you do, always observe the authorial possessive in the title, like “Bram Stoker’s Dracula.” Although the film’s cultish impetus is a little creepy, it is intriguing to see such a high profile attempt at impressionistic, non-narrative animated filmmaking. Unfortunately, some of the contributing filmmakers are better suited to the task than others. A strange hybrid, Kahlil Gibran’s The Prophet is recommended for animation enthusiasts who want to see something a little outside the norm (whereas younger viewers will probably find it indulgently lecture-y) when it screens again today (3/22) at the DGA Theatre, as the closing film of the 2015 NYICFF.

Everly: Salma Hayek vs. the Yakuza

Even if you believe “violence is never the answer and what the world really needs is more love and understanding,” just keep it to yourself. Everly does not have time for warm and fuzzy liberal new age platitudes and we do not want to hear them. She is simply too busy worrying about escape and payback. For several years, she was enslaved as a prostitute by the Yakuza, but now she will try to shoot her way out of their fortified brothel. It is not a well thought out  plan, but at least she will be able to take a lot of bad guys with her in Joe Lynch’s Everly (trailer here), which opens this Friday in targeted markets.

Everly used to be the favorite of the kingpin, Taiko, but not anymore. An honest cop also lost his head over her. Taiko had it boxed up and presented to her. She had agreed to testify for the late detective, but obviously that will not be happening. Taiko’s men were supposed to do their worst to her, but she was able to stash a gun in the toilet bowl. Bullets will fly—and they will keep flying, but Everly is not immune to them. In fact, she starts the film pretty dinged up, but she is able to patch herself up and keep going.

Unfortunately for him, one of Taiko’s bean-counters gets gut-shot in the first volley. There is clearly no way he will make it. Much to her surprise, the dying paper-pushing gangster offers her some helpful strategic consultation as he slowly expires. Acting on his advice, she makes a risky play, arranging a pretext for her mother and the daughter she never knew to pick up a bag of traveling money from Taiko’s high-rise of hedonism-turned war zone.

To their credit, Lynch and screenwriter Yale Hannon understand the point of a film like this and therefore never cheapen it with a disingenuous take-away about the supposed dangers of firearm possession or the folly of vengeance taking. Taiko and his associates need to die—period. Frankly, some bits are rather disturbingly explicit, particularly those involving the “Sadist” played by the classy Togo Igawa (the first Japanese member of the Royal Shakespeare Company), but that makes it extra satisfying when they get theirs.

It should also be noted the forty-eight year old Salma Hayek looks all kinds of dangerous as Everly. She is in tremendous shape and shows real action chops, but in a grittier, less cartoony way. She conveys the well-armed rage of a desperate mother, which makes each showdown deeply primal. There are real stakes in Everly—and plenty of blood, but her relatively quiet scenes with Akie Kotabe as the dying suit are some of the film’s best.

We have often lamented the dearth of legitimate female action stars in Hollywood and mainstream indie movies. It is so bad, Meryl Streep has laughably been suggested for the female Expendables film in development. With Everly, Hayek blasts herself into contention to lead the whole darned shooting match. Despite its obvious debt of inspiration to Gareth Huw Evans’ The Raid, it is an old school, deliciously sleazy revenge thriller that always delivers the goods right to your doorstep and never expects a tip. Highly recommended for fans of exploitation action, Everly is now available on VOD via iTunes and opens this Friday (2/27) in selected cities.

As Luck Would Have It—Need It Like a Hole in the Head

Roberto Gómez never demonstrated much talent for the advertising business, having only had one notable success with a slogan for Coca Cola.  He is also rather awkward socially.  Not surprisingly, when times got lean, his firm let him go.  With Europe mired in economic doldrums, his long-term unemployment is undermining his finances and self-esteem.  In desperation, he seeks to capitalize on a freak accident in Álex de la Iglesia’s roundly disappointing As Luck Would Have It (trailer here), which opens this Friday in New York at the IFC Center.

Gómez has one thing going for him: his wife, Luisa.  She duly tries to buck up his confidence before a rare interview, even though they both know it is futile.  Depressed by his inevitable failure, Gómez makes his way to Cartagena, where they spent their honeymoon back in the day.  Through a forced sequence of events, Gómez falls off a scaffold, impaling the back of his head on an iron spike.

With the EMS uncertain how to move Gómez without causing a fatal loss of blood, he finds himself trapped in the construction zone, resembling a crucifix.  As the media swarms around him, Gómez senses an opportunity.  Acquiring a bottom-feeding agent, he tries to sell exclusive rights to his story.  For the sake of his dignity and well-being, Luisa tries to dissuade him, but Gómez is content to trade both for his family’s financial security.

Smart, sophisticated, and tragic, Luck’s Luisa is a great role for Salma Hayek.  It is hard to understand what she is doing with a schlub like Gómez though.  Still, she is about all the film has going for it.  Subtlety certainly is not one of its virtues.  Randy Feldman’s screenplay is so eager to deemed au courant, it is frankly rather pathetic.  Dramatically, Luck is also quite flat.  Never throwing in any twists, turns, or reversals of fortune, it is always blindingly obvious where it will all end.  As a result, the film is about twenty percent set-up and eighty percent endgame.  That is just punishing, regardless of subject matter.

Spanish TV actor José Mota is pretty darn cringy as Gómez, which was clearly the intention.  The interchangeable battery of reporters, lawyers, and politicians are all indistinguishably sleazy.  Aside from Hayek, only Eduardo Casanova makes any sort of impression as Gómez’s rebellious punker son, Lorenzo.

Unlike the operatic madness of Iglesia’s The Last Circus, his latest effort to reach our shores is predictable and laborious.  Far too self-important and heavy handed, the entire enterprise falls flat.  Have a Coke and smile and skip As Luck Would Have It when it opens Friday (2/1) at the IFC Center.

Demy’s Americano

Considering Martin, the deeply depressed Frenchman, holds dual American citizenship, one would expect him to be a shrewder traveler.  Instead, he blunders through Tijuana asking for trouble.  He finds plenty in Mathieu Demy’s Americano (trailer here), which opens this Friday in New York.

Martin has issues with his estranged mother that now may never be resolved.  She has recently died after years in Los Angeles without contact.  Reluctantly, Martin flies out to dispose of the flat holds only unpleasant childhood memories for him.  However, family friend Linda paints a far rosier portrait of his childhood years.  Intrigued by references to his mother’s life-long confidante Lola, Martin heads south of the border in Linda’s Mustang convertible to track her down.

It turns out Lola is a stripper about his age, working as the featured act at the extra divey Americano club—a fine place for the French tourist to have his midlife crisis.  Martin wants insight into who his mother really was, but Lola does not want to talk.  She just wants his money.  Over and over again, characters have the opportunity to save themselves and others so much grief if they would just act reasonably.  Yet, each time they pass it up, which becomes dashed distracting.  Leave a vintage car parked on the Tijuana streets with your passport and cash in the trunk?  Sure, why not?

As the son of Jacques Demy and Agnès Varda, any film from director-screenwriter-lead actor Mathieu Demy will come loaded with expectations.  Clearly, the name Lola is no coincidence.  However, the younger Demy raises the stakes, incorporating entire scenes from his mother’s Documenteur, in which he appeared as a child actor, while also lifting George Delerue’s melancholy soundtrack themes.  While it positions Americano as a pseudo-sequel, it also highlights the contrast between it and the work of his parents.  At times, viewers can maybe possibly see some of humanistic solidarity of Varda’s The Gleaners and I in his depiction of the down-trodden Tijuana working poor, but that’s pushing it.

It must be like old Dusk Till Dawn times for Academy Award nominated Salma Hayek, once again playing a bordertown stripper.  At least her Lola is only a metaphorical vampire.  In truth, she ultimately plays the character with admirable sensitivity, yet that makes her early set-up scenes somewhat problematic in retrospect.  As Martin, Mathieu Demy is a bland screen presence leaving little lasting impression.

Despite its seedy setting, Americano is not aiming for cheap titillation.  Nonetheless, the sluggish pace makes the characters’ dubious decision-making all the more conspicuous.  Given its lineage, there will definitely be a constituency for this film hoping it will be better than it is.  Fatally underwhelming, it opens this Friday (6/15) in New York at the Landmark Sunshine.