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20/20 Filmsight - Film Criticism by David O'Connell

Film Criticism by David O'Connell

Ex-pat British director Gareth Evans bursts onto the international scene with The Raid, an ultra-violent, insanely assaultive battering ram of an action film. Is this Indonesia’s greatest ever export? The set-up is hardly complicated: a 20-strong SWAT team converge on an apartment building to extract a master criminal, Tama (Ray Sahetapy) - a man for so long viewed as untouchable by authorities - and eliminate any of his swarming minions that get in the way.

Under the direction of veteran Wahyu (Pierre Gruno), fiery team leader Jaka (Joe Taslim) leads his men into battle, unaware of the firepower about to be trained in the direction of his squad. Amongst the crew is inexperienced rookie Rama (Iko Uwais) whose survival instincts prove crucial as the numbers on both sides dwindle. It’s his individual exploits that significantly raise the bar of Evans’ film and make him its star attraction.

The Raid deserves the sounding off of a roll-call of appropriate adjectives: it’s a kinetic, propulsive, merciless edge-of-the-seat drama that carries you along, as if on the lip of a tidal wave, into the fray of relentless gun battles and hand-to-hand combat, utilising everything at the combatants disposal from knives, machetes and the a lethal combination of fists.

The police, working under non-sanctioned orders - and therefore unable to summon replenishments – are reduced to reactive puppets whose lives are blotted out like ink stains. Extricate the evil crime lord proves painfully less feasible by the second with Tama’s men ruthlessly focused on exterminating the marauders.

Uwais, a martial arts star in his homeland provides an impressive physical dexterity in plentiful, magnificently choreographed fight sequences. Evans, who wrote, directed and edited for film, deserves a medal for the attention to detail in his narrative and also for the thoroughly inventive ways he’s concocted for dispatching men to their deaths. A hallway sequence half an hour into proceedings, in which Rama singlehandedly annihilates wave after wave of attackers, is the first real indication of the special qualities this film possesses.

The Raid is not for the squeamish; it uses brutality with all the subtlety of a madman blindly wielding a sledgehammer in a room full of sleeping puppies. Although the inverse of John Carpenter’s Assault on Precinct 13 (1976) it makes its predecessor look like a temperate Play School outing. The throbbing score by Aria Prayogi and Fajar Yuskemal is befitting the explosive, adrenaline charged rush that the film’s zeal for physical chaos inspires.

The slaughter is eye-popping, the flow of blood unremitting. The Raid (2012) pushes the envelope further than any American counterpart in recent memory. Wallow in the carnage with glee; this is the template to follow for years to come, and for its perpetrator, Gareth Evans, infamy – and surely a long, fruitful career - is assured.

The Raid opens in Australian cinemas on Thursday, March 22.

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Posted By: David O'Connell - Category: Asian

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The Boy Mir

March 16th 2012 03:42

Director Phil Grabsky’s latest project has been arduously assembled, spanning a decade in the life of a boy and his troubled country. Afghanistan became a sudden fascination for the British filmmaker and rather than ponder its plight and compelling landscapes from afar he decided, armed with a camera, to journey into the fray, to unravel its mysteries, perhaps even dispelling a few misconceptions while he was at it.

The initial result of Grabsky’s investigation was his 2004 film The Boy Who Plays on the Buddhas of Bamiyan. The Boy Mir is an extension of that work, charting the intervening years as Mir grows up before our eyes, from a smiling, curious, energetic young boy to his first trying year of manhood.

Though as a narrative the film feels undisciplined and occasionally too freeform for the neat confinement of a ninety minute summation, there is still much of worth to savour here, including temperate views of the landscape encasing these nomadic people. Harsh jagged vistas are often juxtaposed against crisp, azure skies to reflect a natural, unrefined beauty.

Unexpected comedy emerges from the bickering relationship between Mir’s parents whose hostility and insults fly with wild abandon. Yet they endure as refugees living in the ruins of the Taliban-destroyed Bamiyan before forlornly trekking over miles of terrain for better prospects. But Mir's family is powerless, as hemmed in to fulfilling their assigned roles as their countrymen to a nomadic quest in retrieval of an increasingly ambiguous identity. Mir’s half-brother Khushdel is perhaps the more interesting case study, his decency and hard-working ideals forged with a grim determination that acts as a foil to Mir’s own free-spirited attitude to life.

As the film nears completion, Mir, on the verge of vacating his teenage years, is torn between vocations, wavering at a metaphorical crossroads. Does he slave away on the land like his half-brother or more adamantly pursue his schooling in the hope of one day ensuring a better life? These are not simple questions to consider for the harshness of the climate and the political uncertainty that both isolates and encapsulates this broken place make any lilting gaze at a possible future unclear.

Grabsky, a prolific documentarian, has made a fine, though not essential portrait of Afghanistan. His view may be distracted from the bigger picture by his fascination with a reduced perspective through increasingly less innocent eyes, but The Boy Mir (2011), regardless of its shortcomings, is still a valuable document with enough cursory insights into its subject matter to imbue it with lasting value.

The Boy Mir opens in limited release in Australia next Thursday, March 22.

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Posted By: David O'Connell - Category: Asian

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13 Assassins

September 4th 2011 18:25

13 Assassins is a remake, of Eiichi Kudo’s original "Jûsan-nin no shikaku", by director Takeshi Miike (Ichi the Killer). The tale is based in historic fact, although the official version of events differs somewhat from the film. The age is just 23 years before the end of the Shogun era. Edo is the capital.

The ancient warrior class of Samurai have their hard won peace threatened by the possibility that the degenerate and sadistic Lord Naritsugu Matsudaira (Goro Inagaki) will one day become the next Shogun. Some Samurai know this would be disastrous as the Lord Naritsugu is a raving psychopath, who finds excitement in other’s suffering and believes war will not only bring excitement to his life, but be good for Japan.

So, the plan is to convince the best Samurai still living to accept the deadly deed, and kill Lord Nartisugu.

13 Assassins - Trailer by DailymotionTrailers

That Samurai is Shinzaemon Shimada (Koji Yakusho) who has retired from his way of life, to quietly fish. Shinzaemon is summoned by the top Shogun official Sir Doi (Mikijiro Hira), who asks Shinzaemon to gather together the best Samurai fighters he knows, but together they can only find eleven others, some of whom must prove they have sufficient skills to be of use and not a hindrance.

So some of these eleven Samurai are put through training to prove they are up to the task.

Along the way, to ambushing the evil Lord, after taking care of a large group of “thugs” sent by surprise to kill them, they discover a young country yokel who lives by his wits in the forest, but when they find him, he is suspended 10 metres above the forest floor in a net trap. They cut him down and agree to use him as a guide. The yokel Koyata (Yusuke Iseya) seems silly and preoccupied with finding things to eat, and he has a grduge against snobby Samurai, but he later proves his mettle, when they decide he will be the 13th member of their assassin group.

The decision is made, kill the Lord

The Koyata character is the typical comic relief, to be found in Japanese stories, and more often in the stage shows of Kabuki.

In general; the initial introductory subtitles flashed by so fast I worried that it would continue, at the same rate, throughout the film. Luckily it didn’t. The dialogue was sparse enough to get into the interaction of characters, albeit they were briefly introduced and then, oddly, apart from the ultimate bad guy Lord, the Samurai blended in with the background, in the mire, mud and blood, so one tended to lose sight of who was doing what.

The DOP (Nobuyasu Kita) and director Miike obviously strove for an ancient look, an almost Daguerreotype imagery; dark and shadowy, with muted tones and often half lit faces, which added that feeling of age and made one concentrate on their facial expressions. Chiaroscuro it may have been, in a painterly sense, but overall I found the lighting levels to be too low, too much detail is missed, and even though it gave the film an aged look and certainly some atmosphere, I felt it was a tone too far down the light meter scale.

However, through the gloom, some stylised posed scenes, with the characters barely moving, except for the eyes, mouth and maybe an eyebrow, served to intensify the predicament at hand.

Then there were the scenes of barbarism, which were deftly handled, I will not elaborate, but, some may not want to watch those scenes. One in particular, where the tortured woman demands justice that the Samurai kill all her persecutors, I shall remember that scene for quite some time! It is like a moment from an epic horror, as was the family scene where the Lord dipenses his unique and twisted type of bloodlust justice.

The final fight scenes, seemingly relentless, with terrible odds, 13 against 200, starts out well, but then realism is interfered with, by the huge and complicated construction work done overnight in a township, which serves as a trap for the evil Lord.

Putting my quibbling aside, the film was not as blood thirsty as I thought it would be, but, there is a lot of violence and lots of incredibly well choreographed sword fighting scenes, quite remarkable, and it left me wondering how many accidents they had on set?

This film certainly has some technical faults and some stylised moments in the fighting, that are quaint and typical of such Japanese period dramas, however, if you grew up on watching the TV show Shintaro, which I did myself, these odd moments of pause midst fighting, will make many old Shintaro fans smile.

However, this film deserves to be seen and I should like to watch it again, as so much is happening in it, you can’t take it all in, on one viewing.

Heavy gore fans may be a little disappointed, saving for a couple of very ugly scenes.

See this film for a slice of what the real Samurai were all about.

PERMISSIONS AND CREDITS:
Trailer and images copyright presumed that of Production Company and/or Distributor and Publisher, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED. Used here to illustrate product for critical review, low res. copies, not meant for redistribution.

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MIFF 2011: Norwegian Wood

July 31st 2011 05:29

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Posted By: David O'Connell - Category: Asian

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MIFF 2011: End of Animal

July 29th 2011 04:21

by David O’Connell

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MIFF 2011: A Separation

July 27th 2011 02:33

by David O’Connell

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Posted By: David O'Connell - Category: Asian

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BMX Bandits vs Lady is the Boss… Fight!

September 16th 2010 03:16

by Matt Shea

Following on from the radness of yesterday’s post, we thought it only fair to take a look at some of the other gnarly BMX action available from the 80s. Perhaps the most bodacious is 1983’s Lady is the Boss (not a phrase that I’d recommend Googling BTW), where a hip, young woman shakes up the conservative Hong Kong martial arts scene. I criticised BMX Bandits for the quality of its foley work, but it turns out it ain’t got nothing on Lady – never before have I witnessed such liberal use of the tyre squeal. And who was responsible for the rattlesnake hanging about the set that day? Still, if anything, we must acknowledge the fantastic choreography of this scene. Laughable, of course, but still fantastic. This lady can be our boss anytime.

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Posted By: Matt Shea - Category: Asian

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The Stoning of Soraya M

May 17th 2010 21:07

by Cibbuano
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Posted By: Cibbuano - Category: Asian

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The 10 Conditions of Love

March 1st 2010 12:05

by Matt Shea

It’s difficult to think of a more controversial recent film than The 10 Conditions of Love. The work generated a storm of debate at the last year’s Melbourne International Film Festival, becoming a major headache for festival organisers

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Posted By: Matt Shea - Category: Asian

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Umbrella Entertainment announces the DVD release of The 10 Conditions of Love

February 19th 2010 02:46

by Matt Shea

The independent Australian-owned distribution company Umbrella Entertainment yesterday announced the DVD release of the highly controversial documentary, The 10 Conditions of Love
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Posted By: Matt Shea - Category: Asian

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The Good, the Bad, the Weird

September 30th 2009 05:52

One of world cinema’s divinely luminous talents, director Kim Jee-woon, reinvigorates a fading genre in his masterful ‘Oriental Western’, The Good, the Bad, the Weird, a much-awaited follow-up to his bravura Korean crime drama A Bittersweet Life in 2005. Amalgamating inferences from a host of genre trendsetters, Kim applies his own visionary talents to a tale of three men in search of a buried treasure in the lawless plains of 1930’s Manchuria.

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Posted By: David O'Connell - Category: Asian

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Crazy Stone (Feng Kuang De Shi Tou)

September 4th 2009 02:56

Crazy Stone Guo Tao checking out the jade stone

At night, a crumbling museum guarded by well-meaning, but hapless security guards, stands alone on a deserted street in Chongqing, China. It's the perfect target for thieves, as the flimsy defenses stand to protect an unbelievably rare jade stone on display at the museum.

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Posted By: Cibbuano - Category: Asian

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The Killer

July 14th 2009 04:13

All the John Woo trademarks are present in scene after scene of explosive action with bullets flying, bodies splaying, white doves scattering, and simple, melodic electronic music, supplemented with dreamy Asian colours, sounding. In The Killer (1989), an astonishing early work that brought Woo’s name to the attention of the world, the director strives for operatic heights in a familiar, but daringly realised, tale of the perplexing duality adjoining adversaries on opposing sides of the law.

In one corner is the hired assassin, Jeff (Chow Yun-Fat), a man with a peripheral sense of morality, despite the ruthless efficiency with which he performs his duty. When he accidentally blinds a nightclub singer, Jennie (Sally Yeh), during his latest hit, his sense of guilt compels him to look out for her; he befriends her without revealing his identity but soon has both the police and the triad he works for on his trail for allowing his identity to become widely known

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Posted By: David O'Connell - Category: Asian

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