Apostle

Watching the opening salvo of Gareth Evans' Apostle it's difficult to get a sense of what kind of film you're being primed for. Dan Stevens' Thomas Richardson quivers and quakes, cutting the figure of a sweaty, scarred-up pub fighter physically convulsing his way through some deep-seated indignation and the tincture shakes of self-medication. He arrives on a remote Welsh island, home to a heavily overdrawn religious cult, in search of his kidnapped sister. The lush, hungry island seems to exist just out of reach of Britain's authorities, veiled by a churning, stormy sea that defeats unsanctioned approach. Its beaches are littered with rotting wrecks and derelicts, a ready-made resource for the erection of driftwood churches.

From moment one we're waiting for Richardson to unleash himself on the men ransoming his sibling. Evans' biggest successes, The Raid films, concern a righteous, religious man willingly entering a maelstrom to thump his way towards justice. Apostle often seems to promise something similar: smuggling someone violent and capable into the midst of a 70s folk horror. Once ashore Richardson is canny, noting and defeating the subtle steps designed to reveal him. These notes of potential upset are compounded by Stevens' presence. His eyes blare throughout, lending him the slathering energy of a wounded animal. Stevens also moves with the same robotic gait he gave to his genetically engineered infantryman in The Guest; a dead certain murderer programmed to overwhelm. These performance building blocks would seem to be teasing a methodical, mechanical satisfaction.

A laudanum addiction aside, the snarling Richardson is focused and deliberate. The film assumes his pace, lazily circling around several disparate threads that threaten to converge. Apostle builds to a head, a rational point of conflict or resolution, then abandons these simple opportunities for might to triumph. Writer-director Evans plays against type, revealing a film more interested in situations and set-pieces built around the consumptive terror underpinning primitive, pagan religion. Power shifts dominate the final third as the bloodletting faith battle over their greedy, malfunctioning prize. At this point Mark Lewis Jones' Quinn - a Magwitchian convict who simmers with a dark, incestuous desire that eventually tips over into violent egomania - seizes hold of the film, hurtling us deeper and deeper into an all-consuming chaos.

Films 2014

5. Sabotage

Hidden deep within the relentless hostility is a thesis on star power and the incompatibility of our 80s relics with modern, team orientated action fictions. With this in mind Sabotage's key moment comes when Schwarzenegger's Breacher discovers his family have been kidnapped by a cartel. This information comes to light out on an airport runway with a private jet to hand. Mooks on standby, ready to be blazed through.

Schwarzenegger's team resists, they swarm him, restraining him. An 80s action narrative is bubbling up, Commando come again, but this false, self-proclaimed family won't allow it to happen. In doing so, they fail Breacher. They should have smoked those Federales on principle, piled into the jet then crashed themselves into the nearest drug compound.

That never happened and Breacher hates them for it. That's all I could think about watching Sabotage, Schwarzenegger had been denied an instinctual, suicidal impulse. His team should've wanted to die gloriously in their commander's service but they didn't. For all their bluster about brotherhood they weren't truly committed to him, or his psychotic ideals, so he stopped loving them. They ceased to be allies or even people in his eyes. Their short-comings transformed them into grist for Schwarzenegger the walking Gulag, fuel to be consumed and excreted on the way to a petty, self-destructive revenge.

Original Review


4. The Raid 2

What are we getting out of superhero films? The colourful application of overwhelming force? What backs up the anger? What emotions drive these heroes? Do they even suffer? Captain America: The Winter Soldier hits harder than the usual dross because Cap is trying to coax a friend out of a lethal, amnesic funk. It's lip service though. Neither body is broken. Cap's life isn't on the line. Nothing is lost.

In The Raid 2 Rama gives everything he has. He turns his back on his wife and newborn for a bullshitted abstract. He compromises his morality, his identity even, to stay hidden. In a finale fight with a slash happy equal his body is pummelled, gouged, and rended. Rama takes an incredible amount of punishment and still keeps coming. That's the kind of superheroism I can key into. Obstinate, illogical, and utterly devoid of any sense of self-preservation.

Original Review


3. '71

You don't hear a great deal about The Troubles over here. Despite lasting the best part of three decades you're more likely to read about a 74 day conflict with Argentina over the invasion of a distant archipelago. I suppose it's like anything. People are only directed to care about outbreaks and resolutions, the difficult, messy centre is to be glossed over with rhetoric and forgotten.

Go in with zero knowledge, as I more or less did, and '71 is almost like something out of Action or 2000 AD, a terrifying occupation war being fought on the same kind of densely terraced streets you see all over my city. Turns out everywhere that came up during the Industrial Revolution looks the same. All the people sound similar too. It happened 300 miles away and you know fuck all about it. It makes you feel ashamed.

Original Review


2. The Wind Rises

"I've become sceptical of the unwritten rule that just because a boy and a girl appear in the same feature, a romance must ensue. Rather, I want to portray a slightly different relationship, one where the two mutually inspire each other to live - if I'm able to, then perhaps I'll be closer to portraying a true expression of love." 

- Hayao Miyazaki

Original Review


1. Inside Llewyn Davis

I've read a few reviews of Inside Llewyn Davis in which the author hasn't been sure if Davis is supposed to be talented or not. Their take from the Coen Brothers' latest is a pitch black comedy in which a marginally capable person rubs up against failure and refuses to change. For them his craft is indistinguishable from the manufactured graspers he rubs shoulders with. Presumably this failure to connect makes every performance a kind of cosmic punchline in which we are expected to shake our heads and grin at the delusional man with the guitar.

For me Llewyn is obviously, painfully gifted. When he performs diegetic sound dies off, Davis is the focus. During gigs the film's soundtrack is dominated by Oscar Isaac's vocal range. Edits and shots attempt nothing more complicated than a relaxed glance around the show. The meat is always the singing, from hushed, melodic whispers to the peeling, agitated roars of Davis' solo performance of Fare Thee Well. The arrangement is like a fight film or a musical, everything stops dead to drink Llewyn in. We see him in his moment, briefly triumphant and unyielding. Inside Llewyn Davis is a beautiful film about feeling like you're banging your head against a wall. No-one cares, no-one's interested. The only consolation to people in this situation is that at least they're pulping their brains for their own ends and not compromised, in service to someone else.

Original Review

Also Liked:

Under the Skin / Interstellar / The Guest / Map to the Stars / Blue Ruin / The Wolf of Wall Street / The Grand Budapest Hotel / Edge of Tomorrow / The Amazing Spider-Man 2 / Dawn of the Planet of the Apes / Transformers: Age of Extinction

Merantau

Merantau shares the same basic creative impetus as The Raid films. Gareth Evans is attempting to legitimise the fight film by actively addressing the kind of pat, disinterested criticism that martial arts films tend to attract - one dimensional characters, dramatic beats given short shrift, etc. The problem with this kind of approach is that it might not even be necessary. Martial arts films have their own distinct shape developed through decades of reiteration.

A puny dramatic structure can be forgiven because it's not what's attracting us to the film. Martial arts is exploitation cinema, we come to see expert practitioners mime putting each other in comas. Stray too far from this and you have to start making time for other recognisable genre beats, further mutating the final film. Similarly, a star like Iko Uwais doesn't need to be a completely engaging emotional presence. Spending more time with him doesn't deepen our relationship with him. If anything it can sabotage it by exposing his limitations.

Gareth Evans' efforts to justify Merantau are laudable but counter-productive. He spends so much time trying to weave pathos into a proportional, Hollywood style frame that the film ends up lopsided. Merantau doesn't necessarily even need less scenes, it'd just flow better if the ones it had were shorter and more concise. Still, make it through the glacial first hour and you'll be rewarded with forty minutes of exceptionally well-shot and choreographed dust-ups. These delights include Iko Uwais and Yayan Ruhian locking horns in a lift, as well as an anime inflected finale in which a flagging Iko appears to leach fighting energy from a throng of imprisoned sex slaves to vanquish his human trafficking foe.

The Raid 2

The Raid 2 has attracted comparisons with Terminator 2: Judgment Day, presumably because, like Cameron's sequel, it takes an intense, low budget idea and explodes it in a million different directions. As with T2, Raid 2 is closer to a series of successive phases than an organic three act. There's a prison section that plays like Alan Clarke doing Riki-Oh, then Super Cop wanders into a dilute version of a Johnnie To gangster film. It's interesting that this is the structure Gareth Evans has chosen for his sequel. Raid 2's story isn't just a bare bones set-up for martial arts action, there's a real attempt here to create an engaging dynastic struggle.

While this aspiration doesn't quite work - Iko Uwais' undercover rookie Rama never really impacts on how the various betrayals unfold - the frame does provide ample opportunity for Rama to get himself into trouble. There's probably an argument to be made that Raid 2 is too long, and too action-packed. The film is exhausting, piling on the mayhem for a finale that breathlessly moves through several successive boss encounters. However Evans never loses sight of how these events physically affect his hero. As in The Raid, Rama suffers and adapts. The story is told in how the hero fights. Recurring enemies are never considered the same way twice - Rama learns from his mistakes.

This is best expressed in how he tackles repeated bouts with Cecep Arif Rahman's Assassin. When they first meet Rama expects to destroy him, attacking him as if he was disposable muscle. When this proves unsuccessful, Rama changes tact. For their next battle, Rama slows himself down, allowing an Enter the Dragon style stance-off to happen. Rama recognises an arrogance in the Assassin, then uses the opportunity to learn and overcome his particular style of Silat. In a sense, Evans is eating his cake and having it too. For broad action interludes Rama is Bruce Lee demolishing subordinates. For main-events, he's Jackie Chan in his period films, soaking up punishment and eventually winning by refusing to lose.

Raid 2 also functions as a reminder for how exciting action films can be. Hollywood's obsession with computer generated superheroics is numbing, we're stuck firmly in a place where tentpole films use animation techniques to illustrate an impression of action. There's never a sense that anyone's in any real danger, and the stylised dynamics typical to animation are dialled way back to conform to an idea of reality. It's gotten so bad that Captain America: The Winter Soldier impressed recently entirely due to a preference for real auto-destruction. Rest assured that the stunts in that film are pedestrian compared to the wonders Evans and co conjure up here.

For his car crash setpiece, Evans has three distinct levels of carefully composed action competing for attention. First there's a punch-drunk Rama stuck fighting heavies within the confines of a car. Chasing and crashing into them is mob lieutenant Eka, attempting to return the recent favour Rama has done him. Finally there are fleets of enemy cars and motorbikes hot on Eka's heels. Evans flicks back and forth between these engagements, giving us an update then moving on to the next collision. This is the point Evans' genre mash-ups work best. We get cramped martial arts, car crashes, and human level stunt work as fragile, injured people transfer themselves between speeding vehicles.

Above all, Raid 2 is just exciting. It's long past time we had another filmmaker who views action not as something you hand off to a second unit, but as an extension and a comment on the unfolding narrative. Raid 2's action feels considered and authored rather than simply accomplished. Arm bruising back and forths never sag, there's always a shocking detail or injury to make you sit up. Evans and his team have mastered the pop, every single confrontation containing a prompt to either cheer or groan. Raid 2 is sustained skill and ingenuity. It's the Braindead of fight films, it's Hard Boiled come again. It's overwhelming.

THUG

Word out of Sundance is incredibly positive - among other plaudits, The Raid 2 is being compared The Dark Knight and The Godfather. Apparently such is this film's violence that during the première screening the film had to be paused, and the lights raised, for medical staff to attend to a gentleman who had gobbled up some ecstasy then had himself an episode.

VEHICULAR MANSLAUGHTER

A new The Raid 2: Berandal trailer, providing evidence that melee weaponry and car stunts have been added to Gareth Evans' mayhem repertoire.

MAXIMUM VIOLENCE 2

Gareth Evans, refusing to rest on his laurels.

BERANDAL

This teaser has been doing the rounds, supposedly giving us a first look at The Raid's sequel. Digging a little deeper though, it seems like this might actually be a proof of concept clip shot before The Raid when Gareth Evans was trying to secure funding for a prison fight flick called Berandal. When that project fell through, Evans narrowed his focus, and began thinking about tower blocks.

KNIFE CRIME

Knives seem to be becoming the extinction weapon of choice in cult clobber flicks. Apparently, bone breaking lacks permanence; gunfire much too anonymous. If you really want your movie ruin to compete, you've got to arm your hero with something sharp. Notable examples in the last few years include Van Damme stabbing up derelict Soviet blocs in Universal Soldier: Regeneration, and Won Bin never meeting an artery he didn't like to slash in The Man from Nowhere. The Raid: Redemption makes a play for similar notoriety with this sequence. The re-branded Raid is out now in the US, and will arrive in May in the UK.

MAXIMUM VIOLENCE, IMMEDIATELY

Gareth Evans follows up traction catalogue Merantau with sweaty SWAT apocalypse The Raid, which, judging by this two-minute clip, expertly juggles Assault on Precinct 13 style siege seizures with martial arts hyper-kinetics, and Die Hard's lone-wolf heroics. Expect a review as soon as possible.