“I just missed your heart,” says the title character, Hanna (Saoirse Ronan), in symmetrical shots that open and close the film. It’s a concise, somewhat heavy-handed, indication of filmmaker Joe Wright’s intentions with this lyrical, violent, beautifully photographed thriller. Wright wants us to be emotionally invested but in the end, able to walk away without too much attachment lest we be turned off by all the gruesome bloodletting and the psychological ramifications of the characters’ actions.
“The Devil is in the details,” states a different character around the film’s midpoint. Hanna is crammed with details. Some of which are arbitrary – Tom Hollander’s bottle-blond, short short sporting, whistlin’ killer is a hoot to watch, but his quirks ultimately don’t add up to much. More effectively drawn are Sophie (Jessica Barden), the tabloid-obsessed teenage tourist who befriends Hanna in Morocco and Cate Blanchett’s Clarise Starling-esque villainess whose ruthless, tactical precision is visualized in her dental care and whose pig-headed determination is expressed through her vanity and footwear. Without this level of specificity, Hanna would be just a Bourne knockoff (the cinematic impact of that spy trilogy continues to engulf the action genre) but instead, it is a thriller with a personality and an artistic sensibility.
I’ve made it no secret that Joe Wright is one of my favorite directors working today due to his cinematic eye and his drive to make mainstream cinema both entertaining and thought-provoking. He directs Hanna with a mixture of hyperactive cutting and calm restraint, lingering on vistas and background characters, as well as a steadicam shot that rivals the complexity of the Dunkirk scene in Atonement.
The tone here is a change of pace from Wright’s three previous films (literary adaptations Pride & Prejudice, Atonement, and The Soloist), but his adeptness at the thriller genre furthers his credit as one of cinema’s more versatile craftsmen. There are a lot of chase scenes in Hanna, all of which are scored to the pulse-pounding beats of The Chemical Brothers’ new music which keeps the movie zipping along enough to entertain the Saturday evening audience. The film is also very violent, too violent for the PG-13 rating it received and should be withheld from younger teens as its stylized brutality is issued without ample ethical consideration. But for those who can handle it, Hanna is an exciting, peculiar thriller that will impress you viscerally and also exercise your analytical skills, if not win your heart.
Since seeing 2004’s Man on Fire, I’ve been an ardent admirer of director Tony Scott’s films. In particular, his post-millennial work that exhibits a fascinating synthesis of hyper-kinetic formalism and near art-house experimentalism. Some films have been more effective than others (last year’s Taking of Pelham 123 was a low-point, marred by excessive violence and profanity) but his latest, Unstoppable, is one of the best illustrations of his talent: using a cutting edge aesthetic to tell a timeless tale.
Frequent collaborator Denzel Washington stars as Frank, a veteran train engineer and proud father of two daughters working their way through college. He’s paired with Will (Star Trek’s Chris Pine), a rookie conductor whose temper has sent him through a series of short-lived jobs and placed him in the midst of marital estrangement. But their banter and inevitable camaraderie isn’t the film’s sole focus, even though it represents the majority of the two actors’ respective screen time. Rather, the driving force of the film is an unmanned train carrying hazardous material hurtling through the Pennsylvania countryside. After a series of ineffective attempts to sideline the runaway train by corporate-issued mandates, Frank and Will realize they’re the only people who can stop the train.
In an age where our cinematic heroes seemingly need to be comic book inspired guardians, conflicted cops / soldiers or Jason Bourne mega-men, Unstoppable is refreshingly down to Earth when it comes to heroism. Frank and Will are not genetically mutated or born with supernatural powers. Instead they are flawed, recognizable human beings who acknowledge an impending disaster and leverage their trade skills and industry knowledge, along with a palpable dose of bravery, to avoid it, even though it means putting their lives on the line for a greater good. Their heroism is all the more poignant and inspirational because of their fundamental humanness. Unstoppable is perhaps the most humanist action movie of the past decade.
It’s not a physically demanding role for either Denzel Washington or Chris Pine as the majority of their time on screen requires them to be seated. They aren’t given much room to showboat verbally either as they are handed appropriately demotic dialogue. Yet they manage to make their characters engaging and their situation engrossing purely because they are both strong actors. It’s a testament to their talent that they can do so much in an action movie that gives them so little to do.
The film is shot with Scott’s trademark flair but it all looks realistic and does not bare the blemish of overdone CGI. Of course Scott’s camera roves without traditional reason, but it conveys the length of conference rooms, the confined bubble of an engine room and the slithering mass of train cars in a masterful way that gives you the whole picture without multiple camera setups or traditional cutting rhythms. Given society’s obsession with nanotechnology and ever diminishing gadgets, it’s remarkable to see a film that respects the physical mass and immense weight of massive machinery. With a simple story and a simple visual style (at least for Scott), Unstoppable embodies exactly what a modern, enjoyable, socially conscious action/adventure should be.
The first Paranormal Activity was an experiment. The sequel, Paranormal Activity 2, is more of a verification of previous results. Fortunately, it still yields the same result: a masterful chiller whose level of scares matches its astounding profitability.
The film’s structure is the same as that of the first, a house’s inhabitants are plagued by a supernatural force capable of slamming doors, knocking over pans and even physical attacks. This time, the lead characters believe their first encounter to have been a burglary and rig their interior with surveillance cameras. Like the original film, the beauty of its style is that we receive long, static takes that give the viewer ample time to fearfully scan every corner of the frame for the slightest movement or abnormality. Some of the scares are virtual replicas of the most frightening moments from the first film but the shift in focus from a couple to a family (complete with daughter, baby and faithful pooch) creates new dynamics and an added complexity to this modernized haunted house tale.
Paranormal Activity 2 peddles its scares on the disruption of the perceived safety of the home space, a notion that can be instantly undermined by even the slightest sound. Given the current housing crisis, it’s hard for me to watch the movie and not wonder if the success of this series is somehow tied to a collective consciousness of fear attributed to subprime mortgages and foreclosures. Or perhaps the films have been subconsciously discouraging the public’s desires to buy bigger and better houses? I was suddenly thankful I didn’t have to return to a large, empty house with lots of nooks and crannies after I exited the movie theater.
Released just over a year after the astounding word-of-mouth success of the first film, Paranormal Activity 2’s plot makes more effort than might be expected to tie together the events of the two films. While the connections perhaps aren’t entirely necessary, and probably don’t withstand intense scrutiny, the inventive connection between the two plots achieves something I thought was impossible, it increases the rewatchability factor of the first film.
While some critics regard the sequel as a stale retread of the first film, Roger Ebert for one, I regard both of these lo-fi spook stories as the perfect antidote to the torture porn tactics that have defined the millennial horror film genre. Even though they aren’t so much films as they are events, I consider both entries terrifying diversions whose craftsmanship and profitability are equally worthy of admiration. They won’t necessarily stand the test of time but they offer above average thrills in the heat of the moment and just enough haunting imagery to bounce around in the back of your head for a sleepless night or two. The film’s Friday night box office haul of $20 million makes another sequel next Halloween a foregone conclusion. The well will run dry eventually, but I’ll happily be on the ticket line for the franchise’s third entry.
