Unseen, from Blumhouse

Those thin, fragile little smart phone power-plugs are not just annoying. They could cost lives—Emily’s life to be specific. The vision-impaired woman received a miss-dial from Sam, a total stranger with a beat-up and unreliable-looking phone, whom she must rely on to guide her away from her kidnapper in Yoko Okumura’s Blumhouse-produced Unseen, which releases Tuesday on VOD (and launches on MGM+ in May).

Sam’s life is in a bad place. She is deeply depressed and works for a complete jerk at a gator-themed gas station, in a region of Florida where that sort of thing looks normal. Emily is in a worse place. She has just been kidnapped by her abusive ex-boyfriend, Charlie, who intends to gaslight her back into a dysfunctional relationship—or suffer the violent consequences.

Somehow, she manages to escape, but her glasses are damaged in the brutal scuffle, leaving her natural vision too blurry to navigate the Upper Michigan wilderness outside Charlie’s cabin. She cannot see her phone’s screen, but she manages to return her last call: Sam’s hang-up. The completely freaked-out cashier reluctantly agrees to guide Emily via video-phone, very much like the visual assistance operator in See for Me, but she must also deal with her crummy job and Carol, a customer from Hell, who could only be played by Missi Pyle.

The concept and execution of Unseen are indeed very similar to See for Me, but it works even better because of the more colorful characters and the superior chemistry between Emily and Sam. Midori Francis and Jolene Purdy develop some terrific digital-foxhole rapport and both are appropriately earnest and vulnerable, conveying the urgency of their situation.

Pyle is basically a caricature as the unhinged Carol, but she is funny and definitely ups the stakes for Sam dramatically. Most of her sequences defy credibility, but the lunacy is impressive. Unfortunately, Michael Patrick Lane’s Charlie is a bland, completely disposable villain.

Shainberg’s Rupture

If Martyrs was torture porn as informed by millennial theology, this would be the equivalent for the secular faith so many place in UFOs and fringe conspiracy theories. When a shadowy cabal abducts and tortures a single mother, they do so for the sake of what they consider the greater good. Isn’t that always the case? However, their latest victim will be surprisingly resourceful in Steven Shainberg’s Rupture (trailer here), which opens this Friday in New York.

Renee Morgan is pretty cool for a mom, but her ex is a big jerkweed, so their son is a bit confused. She had planned to go skydiving with friends as an exercise in empowerment, but winds up in a life and death struggle instead. As the victim of a highly-organized kidnapping, Morgan finds herself captive in a grungy, dungeon-like laboratory, where the evil people in lab coats and business suits try to get her to “rupture” through drug treatments and scare tactics, a la the rats in 1984 (its spiders for Morgan).

Just what it means to rupture is sort of a secret, but it is safe to say it would profoundly alter Morgan’s nature and identity. Regardless, she would prefer not to stick around to find out. Her mothering instincts override everything, as we can easily believe. However, we would also expect her drive to reunite with her son to bring out more of a killer instinct as well, but Morgan is strangely well-behaved during her escapes into the ventilation ducts.

In other hands, Rupture could have been far more torture-focused, so Shainberg’s restraint, so to speak, is appreciated. The top shelf cast also helps immensely. Noomi Rapace does some of her best work since the Lisbeth Salander trilogy as the resilient Morgan, making her both resolute and vulnerable. Michael Chiklis, Kerry Bishé, Lesley Manville, and Peter Stormare bring more color and variation to her tormentors than you would expect. Even if it is not spectacularly original, the lab-lair is still a creepily effective setting.

The real problem is it simply isn’t much fun to watch a narrative like this unless it evolves into a shameless payback movie. The fundamental premise, incorporating elements of Martyrs, X-Files, and any number of abduction horror movies, is not exactly unprecedented either. In this case, Shainberg makes us go through all that for an awkwardly flat payoff. The tension is considerable and the performances are more than competent, but it is still hard to justify the trip they take us on. Earning deeply mixed emotions, Rupture opens tomorrow (4/28) in New York, at the Cinema Village.

Tribeca ’17: Take Me

Frankly, in today’s neurotic world, the concept behind Ray Moody’s Kidnap Solutions, LLC has commercial potential. His simulated kidnappings offer aversion therapy (in the tradition of the Tales from the Darkside episode, “Bigalow’s Last Smoke”) and fetishistic escapism. He just isn’t the right person to realize its potential. Anna St. Blair would be the perfect client to spread word-of-mouth, but it is unclear whether she really is a willing customer. The kidnapper and kidnappee may have been set-up in Pat Healy’s Take Me (trailer here), which screens during the 2017 Tribeca Film Festival.

There was a time when Kidnap Solutions was growing in leaps and bounds. Sadly, when Moody’s ex-wife walked out on him, she left him holding the bag for a kidnapping that went awry. Personally and professionally, he still has not recovered from her betrayal. However, the lucrative gig St. Blair is offering will give him a bit of the seed capital he has been seeking. The only catch is her request for more rough stuff than he is ordinarily comfortable with.

When the abduction starts, St. Blair seems genuinely terrified. When she is subsequently reported missing, Moody realizes he might be in serious legal trouble. Rather awkwardly, St. Blair does not seem inclined to forgive and forget, so he will have to hold onto her until he can convince her to see reason.

As lead actor and debut director, Healy has crafted a spritely farce seasoned with tar-black humor. This is a comedy that draws blood (all of it his own). Arguably, he is his own best asset, playing Moody as a likably nebbish striver in the tradition of Willy Loman (wearing a balaclava). Even when we laugh at his humiliation, we sort of want to see him overcome. As the second half of the more-or-less two-hander, Taylor Schilling is a smart, forceful, and altogether worthy foil.

Granted, the predictable predictableness of the final twist is maybe not so surprising, but the film is more about the verbal sparring and gamesmanship of the two leads than the actual power reversals. It is just good fun to watch and listen to Healy and Schilling verbally spar. It is a relatively modest production, but if Take Me becomes a hit, Healy and Schilling could perform it on stage as a nostalgia act for years to come. Recommended for viewers who enjoy a bit of shaggy dog mayhem, Take Me screens again tomorrow (4/27), Friday (4/28), and Saturday (4/29), as part of this year’s Tribeca Film Festival.

Tribeca ’17: Hounds of Love

If Vicki Maloney had paid more mind to her mother, she would not be in this spot. Unfortunately, she snuck out when she was grounded and got into a car with strange people. We can only hope she was wearing clean underwear, because there is a very good chance she could end up dead in Ben Young’s Hounds of Love (trailer here), which screens during the 2017 Tribeca Film Festival.

Maloney and her mother Maggie would be arguing like cats and dogs anyway, because that is what mothers and teen daughters do. However, her parents’ separation only makes matters worse, especially since her more financially secure father Trevor is so good at playing the abandonment card. Tragically, Maloney brief lapse of judgement might be fatal. It is clear John and Evelyn White have abducted, terrorized, and murdered a number of girls before her. Yet, even amid the horrors she endures, Maloney picks up on tensions between her tormentors. She has darn good reason to believe the manipulative John has been playing his needy wife and she can tell the more passive captor is starting to suspect it too.

Meanwhile, the Perth coppers are so unhelpful, they might as well be considered accomplices. However, the alarmed Maggie is in her fiercest mothering mode and will not be intimidated into waiting at home for Vicki to call. Old Trevor largely agrees with her, but he lacks her forcefulness. Basically, they are on their own, with the clock ticking.

It seems like abduction-captivity thrillers just keep getting increasingly more sadistic and disturbing. To be frank, Hounds continues the trend, but it also has redemptive substance to go with the unsettling cruelty. It sounds like a shameless pull-quote, but the third act climax really is so tense you can hardly breathe.

As John White, Stephen Curry creates a chilling portrait of clammy, calculating evil. In the potential victim role, Ashleigh Cummings gives a bravely exposed and vulnerable performance, but the real heart and soul of the film comes from Susie Porter’s defiantly haunting turn as Mother Maggie. In contrast, the arrested emotional development of Emma Booth’s Evelyn White does not always ring true, but her pathological codependency is generally credible enough to cover for it.

The sunny Australian Christmas season is also rather feverishly disorienting, like the original Die Hard transferred to a suburban dungeon. The 1980s period details are also spot-on. It is quite a distinctive way for Young, a TV and short film director, to announce his feature arrival. Recommended for fans of dark, provocative thrillers, Hounds of Love screens again this Monday (4/24) and Tuesday (4/25), as part of this year’s Tribeca Film Festival.

American Fable: Farm Subsidies and Other Crimes

Probably no profession carries as much extraneous romanticizing as the family farmer. Everyone assumes farming is inherited through the genes and if you were born on a plot of land than you are destined to work it. That almost sounds like serfdom. Meanwhile, nobody asks what all those price supports do for the cost of food for the urban working poor. Maybe Gitty’s father Abe was actually better suited to a different line of work, but he considers himself a born farmer. To save their ailing farm Abe and her brutish older brother Martin will entwine themselves in a risky criminal scheme in Anne Hamilton’s American Fable (trailer here), which opens this Friday in New York.

Gitty (short for Gertrude) idolizes her father Abe, but her mega-pregnant mother Sarah not so much—and her jerkheel brother even less so. Therefore, when she discovers a battered man evidently being held captive in their silo, the implications are quite troubling. Rather puzzlingly, he implores her not to speak to her father of him. Instead, he asks her to bring food and books, which she does.

He would be Jonathan, an agri-businessman, who is soon reported missing (under suspicious circumstance) on the local news. Not being an idiot, Gitty starts to suspect Honest Abe and Murderous Martin are behind his abduction, apparently in cahoots with a Cruella de Vil figure known as Vera. The more time she spends with the captive, the more she fears for his safety.

Coming-of-age sure can be disillusioning, can’t it? At eleven years-old, Gitty will have to choose between her soul and her family (and possibly her life). Given her circumstances, we can well understand why she has such surreal dreams. She is also prone to fall into bouts of symbolically laden reverie. Her subconscious takes special inspiration from chess pieces, but she seems to forget her father’s evocative tale of scarecrows (Chekhov would not approve).

Hamilton paid her first dues under Terence Malick’s tutelage and you can see his influence in her Andrew Wyeth-esque imagery. Frankly, there is a lot of Americana influencing Fable, including To Kill a Mockingbird and even Huck Finn. After all, Gitty must decide whether she will do the right thing, even though it runs counter to the class warfare values she has been inculcated in.

Peyton Kennedy is a forceful and relatively mature Scout Finch-figure, who holds up well under the film’s long, close-up scrutiny. Likewise, Richard Schiff is terrific as the hostage, conveying all due desperation, as well as his own compassion for the bullied and misunderstood Gitty. Gavin MacIntosh is just ridiculously hostile as Martin. It gets to the point we just can’t believe respectable parents like Abe and Sarah would put up with his abusive behavior. On the flipside, Kip Pardue’s Abe completely lacks the dark edge a desperate kidnapping accomplice really needs to have.

Hamilton allows Abe to misrepresent the Aesop fable of “The Lion & the Mouse,” presenting it, without correction, more in the spirit of “The Scorpion and the Frog,” which apparently dates back to Orson Welles in Mr. Arkadin. That poor lion gets slandered. Regardless, Fable features two excellent central performances, but the trappings are a tad over-stylized. Still, as debuts go, it shows promise. Recommended for fans of rural gothic, American Fable opens this Friday (2/17) in New York, at the IFC Center.

Get the Girl: Not Meeting Cute

It wouldn’t be Stockholm Syndrome, but it would sort of be related. A rich but painfully shy knucklehead contracts his own fake kidnapping, along with the woman of his dreams, as a way to win her over. Unfortunately, things get more real than he anticipated in Eric England’s Get the Girl (trailer here), which opens this Friday in limited release.

Clarence Clark comes from money—as in the “Clark Fortune.” He should not have problems with women, but Alexandra, the object of his affection is no longer swayed by superficial guy stuff. The fact that he keeps coming back to the high-end gentleman’s club where she works as a bartender, just to moon over her, probably is not helping any either. Help is what he needs, so he hires Patrick, a brash lady’s man and general life of the party, to help improve his game. Soon Patrick hatches a bold plan, in which Clark pays off a desperate gang of kidnappers, saving them both and confessing his love in the end.

Of course, good old Patrick is a major sleaze, who needs money in the worst way. The erratic behavior of his drug-addled crew quickly adds an additional element of danger. Things really spin out of control when Alexandra proves to be far less compliant than anyone assumed. If they are not careful, she might just save Clark instead.

So yes, it is sort of like O. Henry crossed with Quentin Tarantino. It will not rock your world, but it is amusing. As Clark, Justin Dobies is necessarily bland, but gamely navigates the bedlam surrounding him. Noah Segan’s Patrick hardly looks like a virile force of nature, but he compensates nicely with energy and attitude. Most refreshingly, Elizabeth Whitson plays Alexandra with great strength and down-to-earth resiliency, making her nobody’s victim. Arguably, she is far more together than Clark, which makes the fundamentally creepy premise feel much less problematic.

England keeps the one-darned-thing-after-another mayhem coming fast and furious. It is no classic, but it is hard not to chuckle at how fouled up things get. It is a fun distraction that has absolutely no socially redeeming merits, bless its heart. Recommended on those terms, Get the Girl releases this Friday (1/27) in select theaters and on VOD.

Sundance ’17: Berlin Syndrome

If Australian Melanie Joosten’s debut novel had been originally published by a New York house instead, it would probably be titled The Girl in Berlin. The play on “Stockholm Syndrome” might be a bit too forced, but it is still more distinctive than yet another attempt to evoke Gillian Flynn and Paula Harkins. One thing is completely certain, an Australian tourist lands in deadly serious trouble in Cate Shortland’s Berlin Syndrome, which screens during the 2017 Sundance Film Festival.

Clare has a thing for vintage GDR (DDR) architecture and the paintings of Gustav Klimt. Maybe that is why she feels such an instant attraction to Andi, a native East German school teacher. They have similar tastes in art and literature, but he seems rather bitter about both Re-Unification and the grim old days of Communism. Unfortunately, his attitudes towards women are also complicated, in the worst possible way.

After meeting in a promising Before Sunrise manner, Clare wakes to find her one-night stand just won’t end. She is locked into Andi’s refurbished and specially reinforced flat—the only still hospitable unit in an abandoned GDR-era housing complex. Initially, Clare rebels, but that just gets her trussed up. Quickly, she decides making nice is a shrewder course of action, but she remains watchful for any possible escape opportunity. Most ominously, she picks up clues suggesting she is not the first woman Andi has held captive.

Shaun Grant’s adaptation of Joosten’s novel makes the title sound misleading. While there are times Clare puts on a good show for Andi, viewers will never wonder if she is starting to feel a Stockholm Syndrome attachment for him. Still, the cat-and-mouse games are definitely tense stuff. However, Andi’s impossibly good luck is truly cosmically unjust. He just seems to get every break.

Regardless, the glammed down Teresa Palmer gives a harrowingly intense performance as Clare. She makes the audience feel every ounce of her characters suffering. Max Riemelt (who sort of looks like Jason Ritter, who looks a lot like Jason Giambi) is also appropriately clammy and tightly wound, which makes it even harder to believe she could fall for him.

Shortland (the Australian specialist in German language films, probably best known for Lore) shows sure-footed instincts, conveying a visceral sense of Clare’s claustrophobia, but periodically opening the film up to show more of Andi’s awkward interactions with the world. Yet, in all honesty, many of us regular genre [re]viewers are getting a little tired of creepy abduction thrillers. Shortland and cinematographer Germain McMicking give it plenty of style, but it is debatable whether it really fills a void in the world. Recommended for those not fatigued with kidnapping-confinement dramas, Berlin Syndrome screens again tonight (1/22) in Salt Lake and Thursday (1/26) and Friday (1/27) in Park City, as part of this year’s Sundance.

PSIFF ’17: Do It or Die

Talk about ironic. Philanthropist Elaine Chaddick’s primary residence was Chicago, but she was kidnapped during a regular stay in their Palm Springs vacation home. Of course, they were well known in Palm Springs society. Harry Chaddick happened to own the racquet club. Understandably, it remains one of the city’s most notorious crimes, so there should be considerable local interest when Jørn Winther’s Do It or Die (trailer here) screens today during the 2017 Palm Springs International Film Festival.

Harry and Elaine Chaddick were quite the power couple in 1979. One million dollars was also a lot of money at that time, so when Bobby Ray Robbins kidnaps her, demanding a million-dollar ransom, he does not sound like Dr. Evil. Thanks to his wife Ginger, the cocktail pianist, Robbins knew when old Harry would be out of town (“Do It or Die” becomes their motivational mantra). Frankly, the grabbing part they executed out pretty smoothly. However, keeping her under wraps and negotiating with Harry are details far more complicated than they expected.

Mr. Chaddick pretends to follow their instructions, but he actually had his friend, the Palm Springs police chief, secretly bring in the FBI. Chaddick himself will also be a handful for Special Agent Herb Clough to deal with, but his reputation as the Bureau’s best kidnapping expert keeps the concerned husband somewhat at bay.

After retiring, the late Clough settled down in Palm Springs, where he became poker buddies (or whatever) with Winther, who took on the Chaddick kidnapping as his first feature directorial project. Winther’s credits include some pretty high profile television gigs, including the original Frost-Nixon interviews and Alice Cooper’s Welcome to My Nightmare special. Unfortunately, DIOD feels very TV-movie, circa 1980. Frankly, the look is even more down-market than MST3K favorites Mitchell or Riding with Death.

The cast is also uneven, to put it diplomatically. Denise DuBarry and John Callahan are reliable professionals, who have some nice chemistry together as the Chaddicks. On the other hand, Andrew J. McGuinness and Viktoria Stamm are just plain awkward as the kidnappers. Still, it is nice to see David Naughton as Clough, even though he is way grayer and dignified-looking than we remember him from An American Werewolf in London and My Sister Sam.

The Chaddick kidnapping is an interesting case and you have to admire her resiliency. Frustratingly, the film just doesn’t do it justice, even though it was shot at many of the actual locations involved in the crime. Honestly, there is no way a film of its caliber would play the Palm Springs festival, without the built in local interest. Unless you remember where you were at the time of Chaddick’s abduction, you can safely skip Do It or Die when it screens today (1/4) at the Palm Springs International Film Festival.

KAFFNY ’16: The Luncheon on the Grass (short)

Listening to this quartet of amateur criminals is sort of like Rashomon, except instead of four different perspectives, we get eight. It will be up to a professional fixer-cleaner much like Winston Wolfe in Pulp Fiction to tidy up their mess and decide where the truth lies in Hyunyong Park’s short film, The Luncheon on the Grass, which screens during the 2016 Third Culture Korean American Film Festival New York (in Brooklyn).

The young kidnapping victim is now dead, but Luncheon is a comedy, so deal with it. Apparently, he grabbed a knife and killed himself. In fact, that is the only point where their stories agree. With the arrival of the cleaner (a referral from a more connected acquaintance), each tries to convince the outsider of their limited culpability for boy’s death. To “get their stories straight,” the underworld specialist has them re-enact the crime, with the still fresh corpse. However, this leads to more bickering and less clarity. Things get so heated, they almost forget they ordered Chinese. Settling down to eat, they inadvertently recreate Manet’s Luncheon on the Grass, a reproduction of which hangs on the wall of the apartment in question. Then suddenly, their motivation shifts, as do their stories, in tandem.

Luncheon has some wonderfully flawed and damaged characters, including a scandal-tarred university professor and an aspiring actress coveting Botox sessions. It is a bit disappointing that they were brought together by their clay-footed priest, but at least Park buoys us with some razor sharp dialogue and darkly absurdist humor.

Hip viewers might guess the final twist, but the real point to Luncheon is the verbal steel cage battle royale and the resulting narrative confusion. Sly and subversively pointed, it must be one of the funniest about a dead child you will see all year (or so let’s hope). Highly recommended for viewers with a pitch black sense of humor, The Luncheon on the Grass screens this Friday (10/21) as part of the Shorts Two program at the Wythe Hotel in Brooklyn—and remember you can get 15% off tickets with the “jbpins” promo code.

Trapero’s The Clan

This film was made possible by Margaret Thatcher. By standing firm against Argentine aggression in the Falklands, she fatally undermined the despised military regime. You might think progressives would give credit where itis due, but obviously not. Regardless, the fall of the junta left former intelligence services employee Arquímedes Puccio unemployed. With the winking protection of colleagues still in the military, Puccio put his very particular set of skills to work as the head of his own family kidnapping racket. The rise and fall of the Puccios is dramatized in Pablo Trapero’s The Clan (trailer here), Argentina’s official foreign language Oscar submission, which opens this Friday in New York.

Puccio looks like a mild mannered sort, but he maintains a profoundly unhealthy hold over his eldest son Alejandro/Alex. Alejandro is popular within his social circle. He is a star member of the national rugby team and has just opened an aquatic sporting goods store below their flat. However, the patriarch will not let him leave the family business. His two younger brothers simply aren’t nearly as reliable during the abduction process.

Poor Alejandro also feels rather bad about setting up their first victim, Ricardo Manoukian, a classmate from a wealthy family. Unfortunately, Alejandro did not understand his father’s M.O. will be to collect the ransom money and then make the hostage disappear to eliminate any possible witnesses. Of course, their final kidnapping will not work out so well, as we can tell from the in media res opening and the periodic flashforwards.

Clan is more like a series of high quality true crime re-enactment than a sweeping crime saga in the Godfather tradition. It becomes quite an object of fascination, but is never truly engrossing. Although plenty of time is devoted to the toxic Puccio father-and-son relationship, Trapero and co-screenwriters Esteban Student and Julian Loyola never really get inside anyone’s head. Stylistically, it is not so very different from Cédric Jimenez’s The Connection, but it does not have the same sweep as the French film or the extensive law & order POV characters.

Playing at least a decade beyond his years, Guillermo Francella is pretty darned riveting as Old Man Puccio. He is like a veritable black hole of parental dysfunction. Unfortunately, just as Alejandro is no match for the manipulative Arquímedes, Peter Lanzani wilts next to Francella. Much like Johnny Depp in Black Mass, Francella dominates and elevates what would otherwise be a very routine crime drama.

Thanks to Francella, the design team’s spot on period details, and makeup/stylist Araceli Farace’s transforming work, The Clan is a good, solid film, but not a great one. Of course, some weeks good is pretty great. Recommended for those intrigued by the notorious case, The Clan opens this Friday (1/29) in New York.

Rabid Dogs: The French Canadian Bava Remake

For years, Mario Bava’s roughie kidnapping thriller was bottled-up unseen in court due to insolvency and estate issues. Some staid bankruptcy judge must have really gotten an eyeful if he ever had to watch it. The sexual violence is toned down, but human nature is just as sinister in Éric Hannezo’s French Canadian remake of Rabid Dogs (trailer here), which opens this Friday in New York.

Although he was indelibly associated with the genre, Bava’s Rabid Dogs was not a Giallo, per se. However, Hannezo certainly gets his Giallo money’s worth during the throwback opening credit sequence. Four armed robbers have executed a daring daylight bank heist, but there will soon be only three of them. With their getaway plans in disarray, the bandits take two hostages, but they will quickly be left with only one. However, the elegant married woman is certainly an effective bargaining chip. The cops back off after the accidental death of the first hostage, allowing the criminals to slip out of the commercial district. Unfortunately, their escape involves further hostage taking.

The poor carjacked father was taking his daughter to the hospital for a long-awaited transplant. Still, he is pretty cool under pressure, all things considered, but he is played by Lambert Wilson, so it rather follows. Blessedly, her medication should keep her zonked out throughout the ordeal. In the short term, the creepy Vincent’s rapey fascination with the woman hostage will cause most of the problems. Sabri, their new de facto leader will try to restrain him, but the woman is clearly looking to bolt at the first opportunity.

For those familiar with the original, Hannezo and co-screenwriters Benjamin Rataud and Yannick Dahan dispense with the hitchhiker sequence, which sure lightens it the heck up. However, they add a really weird “Burning Man”-style gathering, as Ben Wheatley might re-conceive it.

In addition to their famous names and class value, Wilson and Virginie Ledoyen add plenty of brooding tension to the film. Ledoyen elevates the woman beyond typical victims, emphasizing her proactive assertiveness. (The film is still a far cry from a feminist manifesto, but what can we expect, given its exploitation lineage.) Guillaume Gouix, Franck Gastambide, and François Arnaud all lose their cool quite spectacularly as the robbers. However, cult film fans might not realize that is Alleluia’s Laurent Lucas as the ringleader, since he dons the gang’s intimidating, vaguely S&M looking motorcycle helmet for most of his scenes.

Rabid Dogs is not for those like their mysteries cozy and their endings neat and pat. This is a messy film in just about every respect and it packs a mean punch. For those who feels like stepping over to the dark side, it is a lot of twisted, anti-social fun. Recommended with enthusiasm for connoisseurs of gritty, nervy genre fare, Rabid Dogs opens this Friday (1/21) in New York, at the IFC Center.

Saving Mr. Wu: Andy Lau Plays His Co-Star

Why should Wu Ruofu replay the worst experience of his life when he can get Andy Lau to do it for him? Instead, he takes on the part of the police chief scrambling to rescue the kidnapped actor. It might sound slightly meta but the drama is as gritty as it gets in Ding Sheng’s Saving Mr. Wu (trailer here), which opens this Friday in New York.

Although Wu (scrupulously referred to as “Mr. Wu” throughout the film, in Dragnet-Naked City-style) is a Mainland actor primarily known for television, he is reinvented here as a Hong Kong leading man movie star and former Cantopop idol, to capitalize on the Lau persona. However, the basic arc is reasonably faithful to the actual incident. While coming out of a Beijing karaoke club where he had been celebrating with a producer, Wu is kidnapped by a gang impersonating police officers. Frankly, Wu is never really fooled by them. After all, he has played plenty of cops in action movies. However, Zhang Hua and his accomplices have superior numbers and arms.

Clearly, Zhang is not as smart as he thinks he is, because Xing Feng and his boss, Captain Cao Gang (portrayed by the steely-looking Wu himself) manage to capture him. Unfortunately, they have not discovered his hideout and they suspect Zhang left orders to kill Wu by a certain time. Thus Saving unfolds in a split narrative, as the kidnapping drama catches up with the cat-and-mouse game playing out in the interrogation room.

Normally this sort of flashing-back and flashing-forward structure is just asking for trouble, but Ding maintains such tight control over the temporal shifts, they actually help build suspense. It also facilitates the ironic juxtaposition of Mr. Wu wrapped in chains and the apprehended Zhang ensconced in an iron maiden-ish contraption that looks like it would give Amnesty International a cow if it were used in any other country besides China.

When you watch Lau in Saving, you realize he is not one of the world’s biggest movie stars for nothing. This is a subtle, slow-burning performance that sneaks up and coldcocks you. Watching him protect Xiao Dou, a fellow kidnapping victim who was in the proverbial wrong place at the wrong time becomes seriously poignant. Conversely, Wang Qingyuan is massively creepy as the cruel and erratic Zhang. With him, every twitch screams trouble.

Frankly, as Gang, the real Wu is so hardnosed and grizzled, it seems strange that he has not made more films—or that anyone would want to try their luck kidnapping him. As an extra added bonus, Lam Suet appears as Wu’s trusted army buddy Mr. Su, playing it totally straight, but still showing the dynamic presence that enlivened so many Johnnie To films.

Saving is a tight, tense ripped-from-the-headlines thriller that gets shockingly mature and emotional in its climatic moments. Ding’s Police Story: Lockdown is far better than its reputation suggests (honest, it is), but this film should take him to the next level—and pretty much keep Lau at the top. Gripping and unusually satisfying, Saving Mr. Wu is highly recommended for all fans of procedurals when it opens this Friday (10/2) in New York, at the AMC Empire.

24 Days: Abduction as Hate Crime

The savage Charlie Hebdo shootings only just happened on January 7^th of this year, but one can already feel complacency re-settling back in, predictably like the turning of the seasons. After all, it was not without recent precedent. The kidnapping and torture of Ilan Halimi was a hate crime that shocked France, but only too briefly. Taking the subsequent book written by Halimi’s mother Ruth as his source material, Alexandre Arcady chronicles the tragic events step-by-chilling-step in 24 Days (trailer here), which opens this Friday in New York.

Ilan Halimi was a likable young man, who was always close to his mother and sister, but was also rebuilding his somewhat strained relationship with his divorced father in the months leading up to his abduction. Although he simply worked at a cell phone store, a Muslim gang operating in both Paris and Ivory Coast deliberately targeted him because he was Jewish. In their hatred, they assumed all Jews had money. Alas, the Halimis were rather lower middle class with little ready cash on hand. Therefore, they had little choice but to alert the police.

The police’s secret involvement will be both a curse and a blessing. Initially, the negotiator advising Ilan’s father Didier as the family’s chosen representative is somewhat helpful reducing the unrealistic 450,000 Euro ransom. Tragically though, the police’s refusal to acknowledge the anti-Semitic nature of the crime leads to a fundamental misunderstanding of the “Gang of Barbarians,” as the abductors called themselves.

Considering how easy it is to google Ilan Halimi, it is not much of a spoiler to say the case ends quite dreadfully. However, Arcady maintains a great deal of suspense, as the horror and outrage steadily mount. Yet, this is not a propagandistic passion play. Arcady and co-writers Antoine Lacomblez and Emilie Frèche prefer to focus on resulting emotional toll the ordeal takes on the Halimi family. It is not just limited to his nuclear family either. With the police tightly controlling Didier Halimi’s contact with the kidnappers, the Gang of Barbarians expand their game of psychological terrorism, sending unspeakably graphic photos of Ilan to his cousin and rabbi.

Zabou Breitman viscerally expresses the anguish and sorrow of Ruth Halimi, but it is the quieter, more understated work of Pascal Elbé that will truly haunt viewers over time. Likewise, Jacques Gamblin dials it way down as Commandant Delcour, a sort of problematically politically correct version of Harry Baur’s soul-deadened Maigret. Within the large and diverse supporting ensemble, Audrey Giacomini stands out as Halimi’s terrified pseudo-girlfriend (understandably so, since by grabbing Ilan, the kidnappers also had her flat keys).

24 Days will turn your stomach into ice-water. It is a tense, often brutal white-knuckle ride from start to finish. However, it is important to understand, Arcady and his co-writers somewhat water-down the torments inflicted on Halimi, probably because it would be impossible to release anything remotely accurate in mainstream French theaters. Nevertheless, what we do see is profoundly disturbing.

Frankly, this film speaks for itself, if audiences are willing to listen. Unfortunately, French politicians prefer to pander for “multi-cultural” votes rather than really facing the root causes of the precipitous rise of anti-Semitic violence. Sadly, it is probably only a matter of time before another Charlie Hebdo-Ilan Halimi style attack. Very highly recommended as a masterful work of cinema and an impassioned warning for those who value tolerance and the rule of law, 24 Days opens this Friday (4/24) at the Quad Cinema in Manhattan and the Kew Gardens Cinemas in Brooklyn.

Action Korea: The Man from Nowhere

Cha Tae-sik is not one of those reality TV pawn shop owners. He is all about keeping a low profile. However, when the neighbor girl is kidnapped by drug and organ traffickers, he does what needs to be doing. One-upping the Taken premise and then some, Lee Jeong-beom’s The Man from Nowhere (trailer here) has become a contemporary touchstone for action cinema connoisseurs, so it logically screens during Action Korea, the Museum of the Moving Image’s weekend survey of some of the most explosive Korean films of recent vintage.

Cha does not say much, but young So-mi still likes spending time in his pawnshop. It is a more stable environment than what passes for a home with her junkie stripper mother, Hyo-jeong. However, Cha is reluctant to form attachments because of his tragic backstory. There is also a lot of bone crushing and gunplay in his past.

With little pre-planning, Hyo-jeong and her deadbeat lover steal a heroin shipment from Man-seok and Jong-seok, two Korean gangster brothers looking to make a break from the Chinese mob. When they abduct the mother and daughter, they also pay a call on their neighbor. Cha tries to be reasonable, but when they make it clear they have no intention of returning the now orphaned So-mi, Cha goes into full hunter-killer mode.

So what if Nowhere bears some similarities to prior action films, at least on paper? It is tough to match its fight sequences. Wildly cinematic but still totally down and dirty, they approach the standard set in The Raid franchise. Former heartthrob Won Bin successfully remakes himself into a stone cold hard nose, whereas young Kim Sae-ron is absolutely heartbreaking as the Dickensian urchin, So-mi. Their chemistry together it genuinely touching. They might just get you a little teary eyed, while also getting your blood lust up.

Nowhere has a cast of dozens, with more name character cops and criminals than viewers really need to worry about. Yet, Thai actor Thanayong Wongtrakul towers above the rest of the field as the trafficker brothers’ wildcard henchman, Ramrowan. Wongtrakul performance is unusually subtle for a villain, portraying him as a full blooming psychotic who is increasingly disgusted with his employers’ cruelty, totally keeping viewers off balance at key moments.

It is easy to see why Nowhere was a monster box-office smash in Korea and a cult hit everywhere else. The action scenes give no quarter and the ending just rips your guts out. Many subsequent films have been measured against it, so if you haven’t seen it yet, this is good opportunity to catch up (especially since it will soon no longer be available for Netflix streaming). Highly recommended, The Man from Nowhere screens tomorrow (4/5) at MoMI. The blistering Confession of Murder is also perfect for Easter weekend, screening today (4/4) as part of Action Korea.

Korean Movie Night: Guardian

As a former firefighter, Jeon-mo was briefly famous for saving a group of children. Even though he now runs a florist shop, he still likes to think of himself as one of the good guys. However, when his daughter is abducted, her captor’s ominous demands will push him to his breaking point and fundamental shake his comfortable self-image. Instead of ransom, Jeon-mo is instructed to kidnap another child to exchange for her in Yoo Won-sang’s Guardian (trailer here), which screens this Tuesday as part of the free Korean Movie Night series at New York’s Asia Society.

Jeon-mo and his wife are generally happy managing their shop and running a singing telegram business on the side. He dotes on his bratty young son and frets over his older sister as she approaches middle school years. Initially, a strange caller claims to have snatched their son, but it turns out the cruel game-player actually has their daughter. After stringing Jeon-mo along on a ransom drop that never happens, the kidnapper final reveals his real demand. Jeon-mo is to take a very specific little boy who will be at an appointed place at a certain time and wait to swap him for his daughter.

Given no choice by the kidnapper, Jeon-mo is forced to take the frightened boy to his home for the night. He was already feeling profoundly guilty, but matters get even more complicated when his son recognizes the boy as one of his classmates. However, Yoo has an even more sinister twist in store for viewers.

Kidnapping thrillers tend be rather murky affairs, but Guardian takes its long dark night of the soul to new levels of blackness. Characters in the film do some truly awful things, but it is difficult to pass judgement, given their circumstances. Perhaps most disturbing is what happens when they try to do the right thing. Still, Yoo does not leave the audience completely bereft of consolation, but he hardly ties the film up a neat sentimental bow.

It is pretty unsettling to watch Jeon-mo fall from a position of domestic tranquility and rectitude to utter desperation and self-loathing, but Kim Su-hyeon makes every step believable and painfully compelling. Likewise, Lee Joon-hyeok is quietly forceful as another player caught up in the game. However, they genuinely terrified-looking performances from Yoo Hae-jeong and No Kang-min as the young respective victims are what will really disturb viewers.

Guardian is a tough film with a decidedly dim view of human nature, but it reflects an uncompromising aesthetic vision from Yoo in his impressive feature directorial debut. He grabs the viewers by the labels and drags the through the film at breakneck speed. Still, his decision to hint at but never fully explain the kidnapper’s motive is a mistake. After what he puts us through, he owes us some answers. Nevertheless, those who can digest a thriller marinated in bile will be impressed with his chops. Recommended for emotionally strong fans of Korean cinema, Guardian screens (for free) at the New York Asia Society this Tuesday (3/31), co-presented by the Korean Cultural Service.

A Wolf at the Door: a Kidnapping in Rio

In most violent criminal cases, the cops automatically suspect relatives or someone close to the family. The kidnapper of six-year-old Clara certainly qualifies as the latter. You could say she has a relationship with both the mother and the father. What starts out as a mystery becomes a stark inquiry into motivation, so do not expect any bossa nova in Fernando Coimbra’s uncompromisingly grim and gritty A Wolf at the Door (trailer here), which opens tomorrow in New York.

On this fateful afternoon, poor Clara is picked up from school, but not by her mother, Sylvia, who has good reason to panic. Since she and her husband Bernardo have little money, ransom seems unlikely, so they immediately turn to the police. Det. Delgado is aloof, but he has some choice comments for the teachers who blithely lets Clara walk away with her abductor. Those lines provide the only humor, dark as it is, throughout Coimbra’s relentlessly dour narrative.

Suspicion soon falls on Rosa, Bernardo’s mistress, but she manages to talk her way through Delgado’s first interrogation. However, when we learn she knowingly cultivated an ostensive friendship with Sylvia, her presumptive rival, it is safe to assume something is up with her.

Although the first act is relatively procedural-ish, Coimbra quickly lays all his cards on the table, through a series of flashbacks and time-shifts. We get the facts quickly enough, but the film wants us to agonize over questions of motive and madness. While we can admire the integrity of Coimbra’s approach, most well-adjusted viewers will resent the way he forces the audience to wallow in his characters’ existential wretchedness.

Let’s face it, this film is not much fun. Granted, the performances are powerfully effective, but in a scrupulously realistic way. Obviously, there is no escapism in Wolf, nor is there any stylistic devices to distance viewers from the angst and bile on-screen. It is like watching a disturbingly intimate and exploitative documentary.

Nevertheless, the vaguely nauseous dread Wolf inspires is a testament to its small ensemble. Milhem Cortaz is particularly menacing as Bernardo, the low rent Lothario. Juliano Cazarré is also shrewdly understated as Delgado, while Leandra Leal nurtures Rosa’s corrosive craziness quite believably.

It is easy to resent Wolf for rubbing our noses in its inhumanity, but it must be conceded Coimbra plays a masterfully manipulative game of show-and-tell every step of the way. Unfortunately, it rather belabors the same naturalistic and deterministic notes over and over. Recommended for fans of Latin American miserablism, A Wolf at the Door opens tomorrow (3/27) in New York, at the Village East.

Kidnapping Mr. Heineken: Holland’s Most Notorious Abduction

Alfred Henry “Freddy” Heineken was sort of like the Netherlands’ Lindbergh Baby, except he was nobody’s victim. A desperate group of disenfranchised construction workers pulled off the truly daring abduction, but getting away clean turned out to be a trickier proposition. Nevertheless, their crime-of-the-century had considerable long term consequences that are duly revealed in Daniel Alfredson’s Kidnapping Mr. Heineken (trailer here), which opens this Friday.

Frankly, if Holland in the early 1980s had better respected property rights, Cor van Hout and his business partners might have never resorted to crime. They desperately needed a loan to keep their small construction enterprise afloat, but their only collateral was a building infested with legally protected squatters—not exactly a property the bank would be happy to assume should they default. Ironically, old man Heineken, a supporter of the Dutch People’s Party for Freedom and Democracy, probably would have empathized. Regardless, when Van Hout and his hot-tempered mate Willem Holleeder resolve to follow Willie Sutton’s advice and go where the money is, it necessarily means Mr. Heineken.

Showing considerable patience, Van Hout, Holleeder, and their accomplices spend two years in planning, rather than rushing into the operation. They want the authorities to assume Heineken was grabbed by a well-funded international terrorist organization or the mob. Initially, it all goes according to plan, but old man Heineken is cool customer. His chauffeur Ab Doderer is a different story. Heineken tries to reassure his panicking employee through the walls of their makeshift cells, but the working class immigrant is not holding up well.

You can expect to see a lot of negative reviews of Mr. Heineken from those hung up on class warfare rhetoric because of its largely positive portrayal of Freddy Heineken. He is consistently calm, collected, and caring with respects to poor Doderer. It is also rich to learn how he responded to his kidnapping as a capitalist once he was released (no thanks to his captors).

In large measure, Mr. Heineken is the sort of caper film where the whole point is to watch it go spectacularly wrong. Getting the ransom is the easy part, as it usually is. The getaway is way more difficult. However, in this case, the endgame is especially long and twisty.

Screenwriter William Brookfield incorporates a number of fascinating historical details into the narrative and the mostly British Commonwealth cast looks appropriately continental and suitably beaten down where applicable. Of course, Sir Anthony Hopkins is totally credible as Freddy Heineken, instantly establishing his intelligence and charisma. Jim Sturgess does his best work in years as the angsty Van Hout, while Sam Worthington is reliably tightly wound as Holleeder (but not nearly as awesome-nuts as he was in the under-rated Texas Killing Fields).

Alfredson, who helmed the second two Swedish Lisbeth Salander films, keeps the action moving along and the tension cranked up, despite the fatalistic direction it must take. Cinematographer Fredrik Bäckar also gives it a gritty look that nicely suits the times. It is quite a well-produced period-thriller that does justice to fascinating real life events. Recommended quite highly, Kidnapping Mr. Heineken launches on iTunes and opens in select theaters this Friday (3/6), including George R.R. Martin’s Jean Cocteau Cinema in Albuquerque.

Egoyan’s The Captive

Its population is less than ninety thousand, but evidently organized pedophilia a growing danger in Niagara Falls, Ontario. They now have a sizable police task force working full time on such crimes. The leader even becomes an Oprah style celebrity. However, they have not produced sterling results. After eight years, Matthew Lane’s daughter Cass is still missing. Past his breaking point, the desperate father is more than willing to take the law into his own hands, if he can finally find a target in Atom Egoyan’s The Captive (trailer here), which opens tomorrow in New York.

It has been a hard eight years for Lane and his wife Tina. She still blames him for their daughter’s abduction and so does he. He only briefly popped out to pick up a pie while she rested in the back seat of his truck after ice skating practice. Tragically, it was long enough for the pederast ringleader stalking them. As the years advanced and their marriage imploded, Tina started seeing Det. Nicole Dunlop for counseling, but her partner (and lover) Det. Jeff Cornwall still suspects Lane sold his daughter to a pedophile ring, because he reminds him of a guy he used to know. Seriously, that’s the best he can do after eight years?

Of course, Lane’s investigative techniques basically amount to him driving around looking for something suspicious, but he is still more effective than the cops, who will make a series of spectacular blunders. Eventually, Det. Dunlop will wind up in peril herself, following a head-scratchingly unlikely chain of events.

Frankly, it is a real shame Captive morphs into such a klutzy thriller, because Ryan Reynolds’ lead performance could have been a career game-changer in a tighter, more grounded film. He really digs in and digs deep as Lane. You feel his pain and his rage, without any cheap theatrics. He also makes the thriller mechanics work better than they deserve to, particularly an oblique confrontation with his daughter’s abductor late in the game.

Conversely, Kevin Durand is an excellent actor, but his performance as Mika, the pervert ringleader is beyond caricature. Everything about him, from his affected voice to his sinister sliver of a moustache screams “Chester Molester.” Yet, he still hob nobs with Niagara Falls’ elite without anyone getting suspicious. Rosario Dawson is reasonably competent as Det. Dunlop. She may not look like she is from Niagara Falls, Ont., but diversity in Canadian cinema is a good thing. As if on cue, Scott Speedman also turns up, underwhelming us as Cornwall, arguably the worst cop ever who wasn’t on the take, just to remind everyone this is a Canadian film.

There was a time during the mid-1990s and early 2000s people who did not normally patronize festivals and art cinemas still went to Egoyan’s films because they were so widely acclaimed and zeitgeisty. What a difference three or four films make. Many of his regular themes are still present and accounted for, but the narrative twists are rather clunky and therefore dashed difficult to buy into. Reynolds’ work is legitimately award caliber, but it really needs Ice-T and Richard Belzer. If you have DirecTV, it is almost worth watching just to see how Paul Sarossy’s uncompromisingly icy cinematography conflicts with the otherwise lurid vibe, but it is hard to recommended The Captive when it opens tomorrow (12/12) in New York, at the Village East.

AAIFF ’13: Innocent Blood

James Park ought to know [in]famous undercover detectives never just retire, especially when their biggest case holds some decidedly ugly secrets.  The cop-turned-professor will have to revert to his old ways when his young son is kidnapped by a mystery man with revenge on his unhinged mind in DJ Holloway & Sun W. Kim’s Innocent Blood (trailer here), which screens this Saturday during the 2013 Asian American International Film Festival in New York.

Park knows crime, but with his limited academic credentials he can only land a community college teaching gig.  He plans to go back for the right degrees, once his wife Susan finishes law school.  It has been hard on their son Cody, who does not see his mother nearly as much as they both would like.  As a result, when her husband’s nemesis abducts the young boy, she suffers from an acute attack of guilt.

Prohibited from contacting the authorities, Park will have to figure out just what the kidnapper wants on his own.  It all seems to revolve around Brad Lee, a human trafficker framed for a crime he technically did not exactly commit.  Park’s first clue will be the trail of dead bodies he cannot explain to Carl Grierr and Jim Collins, the odd couple detectives doggedly tailing him.

While the harsh realities of human trafficking remain off-camera throughout Blood, it is an issue the filmmakers feel strongly about.  Like the T.O.M. Film Festival co-founded by screenwriter-co-director Kim, Blood was envisioned as a vehicle to raise funds and awareness.  It is well intentioned, but the on-screen business does not always withstand the common sense test.  (Park really drops his son off on the very urban looking street around the corner from his school, without watching to see if he makes it inside okay?)

Still, Jun-seong Kim’s not quite retired James Kim is a genuinely compellingly angst-ridden everyman.  Alexandra Chun is also entirely believable and sympathetic as the distraught mother.  Although still a relatively young thesp, Lance Lim makes a strong return appearance at AAIFF, following up his solid turn in Il Cho’s accomplished short Jin with his engaging work as Cody Park. 

However, for most genre fans, the main attraction in Blood will be Doug Jones (the Silver Surfer, etc), somewhat playing against type as Grierr, the acerbic but honest copper. He earns a fair number of sarcastic chuckles, which are truly appreciated, considering the film’s grim and gritty tone.  In contrast, C.S. Lee’s villain is rather problematically bland.

Blood tackles some big themes, like sacrifice and redemption, while exhibiting a wider social conscience.  However, Sun W. Kim’s screenplay is not good about sharing information, while keeping its cast of characters severely blinkered.  Yet, it effectively taps into some very real emotions that will keep most viewers fully vested in the outcome. 

Recommended for fans of Jones and dark crime dramas, Innocent Blood screens Saturday afternoon (7/26) at the Anthology Film Archives, as part of this year’s AAIFF (The festival officially starts tonight with Linsanity, Evan Jackson Leong’s entertaining documentary record of Jeremy Lin’s dramatic rise to NBA stardom and concludes Saturday, August 3^rd, with Yang Yonghi’s Our Homeland, a deeply compassionate portrait of a Japanese-North Korean family divided by ideology.)