Eddie Marsan Archives – CULTURE MIX

Review: ‘Back to Black’ (2024), starring Marisa Abela, Jack O’Connell, Eddie Marsan and Lesley Manville

May 13, 2024

by Carla Hay

Marisa Abela in “Back to Black” (Photo courtesy of Focus Features)

“Back to Black” (2024)

Directed by Sam Taylor-Johnson

Culture Representation: Taking place in the 2000s, mostly in England, the Amy Winehouse biopic drama “Back to Black” features a predominantly white cast of characters (with some black people) representing the working-class, middle-class and wealthy.

Culture Clash: British singer Amy Winehouse becomes a Grammy-winning international superstar with her 2006 second album “Back to Black,” but her life is plagued by insecurities, drug addiction and a toxic relationship with Blake Fielder-Civil, who would become her husband in a doomed marriage.

Culture Audience: “Back to Black” will appeal primarily to people who are fans of Amy Winehouse, but the movie is mostly a superficial and glossed-over portrayal of her life.

Marisa Abela and Jack O’Connell in “Back to Black” (Photo by Dean Rogers/Focus Features)

The best things about the Amy Winehouse biopic “Back to Black” are Winehouse’s original songs, and the cast members put in very good efforts in their performances. But this disappointing drama does almost everything else wrong. It’s a movie that is so intent on glossing over harsh realities of Winehouse’s life, the results are very phony-looking recreations where the overall narrative of the movie can’t be trusted.

Directed by Sam Taylor-Johnson and written by Matt Greenhalgh, “Back to Black” takes place in the 2000s, the decade when London-based Winehouse rose to fame as a gritty and sassy singer heavily influenced by American R&B and 1960s pop music. She also wrote very confessional songs about her life. Winehouse, who struggled with various addictions, died of alcohol poisoning in 2011, after having a period of sobriety. She was 27.

Marisa Abela has the role of Winehouse in “Back to Black” and does her own singing in the movie. Winehouse had a unique contralto that would be difficult for anyone to duplicate. Abela’s Winehouse impersonation is passable, but Abela’s singing is noticeably inferior to Winehouse’s real voice talent. (For the purposes of this review, the real Amy Winehouse is referred to as Winehouse, while the character of Amy Winehouse in “Back to Black” is referred to as Amy.)

“Back to Black” is a “checklist” celebrity biopic (with a lot of corny dialogue) that follows the usual formula of a celebrity who rises to fame and fortune and then comes crashing down because of various issues, usually having to do with addiction, money, egos, love life problems, or a combination of all of them. Movies like this usually end with some type of “redemption” or “triumph” arc. And if the celebrity is dead, the death and aftermath of the death are usually tacked on as an epilogue.

The “Back to Black” movie follows Amy’s transformation from a guitar-playing pop singer (whose 2003 debut album “Frank” was a big hit in the United Kingdom, but flopped everywhere else except Europe, Australia and Brazil) to ditching her guitar as part of her stage act (at the urging of her management), in order to become a sultrier R&B-influenced singer known for her 1960s-styled beehive hairstyle. The movie makes it look like Amy’s beloved grandmother Cynthia (played by Lesley Manville), the mother of Amy’s father, was largely responsible for Amy’s image makeover into a 1960s-inspired “bad girl” diva after Amy showed an interest in 1960s music.

Amy is encouraged and enabled by her taxi driver father Mitch (played by Eddie Marsan), who plays an increasingly influential role in her career. Amy meets Blake Fielder-Civil (played by Jack O’Connell) at a pub, and they have a volatile on-again, off-again relationship that leads to them eloping in 2007. Blake doesn’t seem to have a steady job (he describes himself as a video assistant when he first meets Amy), but he is a full-time drug addict, with Amy also indulging in the same addictions, including alcohol, cocaine and heroin. The movie’s depictions of Amy’s self-admitted eating disorders, self-harm and rehab stints are mostly superficial and fleeting.

The well-documented physical abuse in Amy and Blake’s relationship is only hinted at in the “Back to Black” movie, in a scene where Amy is seen running away in the street with bruises and cuts on her face and body. Amy is shown with some friends in the beginning of her career, but those friends eventually fade away in the movie and are replaced by Blake and people who work for Amy. Mark Ronson—one of the main producers of her breakthrough 2006 second (and last) studio album “Back to Black”—is mentioned but never seen in the movie. The same goes for Simon Fuller, the owner of 19 Management, the company that is most famous for managing the Spice Girls and Amy Winehouse.

The “Back to Black” movie sidelines Amy’s songwriting talent, her work in recording studios and her concert tours, in order to make the majority of the story about the dysfunctional relationship between Amy and Blake. The movie makes it look like Amy was much more in love with Blake than he was with her. And that is probably true. In real life, the “Back to Black” album was written during a period of time when Winehouse and Fielder-Civil had broken up, before they got married. Their marriage lasted only two years.

The movie only shows the stories behind only a few of her songs. The inspiration for “Rehab,” her biggest hit, is in a scene where Amy’s manager Nick Shymansky (played by Sam Buchanan) and other people in her entourage have an intervention to urge her to go to rehab, but Amy says “no,” and Mitch backs her up and says she’s just fine. In real life, Shymansky has given interviews saying that Mitch originally agreed to convince Amy to go to rehab during this intervention, but Mitch went back on his word and ended up by siding with Amy. By all accounts, Amy Winehouse in real life was not “just fine” when she recorded the “Back to Black” album but she was actually deep in the throes of addiction, which the movie constantly glosses over by downplaying how serious her addictions were.

The “Back to Black” movie dishonestly makes it look like paparazzi had more to do with Amy’s downfall during the height of her fame, instead of all the enablers (including her father Mitch) who pushed her to go on tour when she didn’t want to tour and she should have been getting necessary and proper medical care for her health issues. Amy’s mother Janis (played by Juliet Cowan), who separated from Mitch when Amy was 9, is depicted in the movie as mostly a passive bystander. Amy’s older brother Alex (played by Izaak Cainer), who was four years older than she was, is barely in the movie.

The movie dutifully recreates one of the high points in Amy’s career: the 2008 Grammy Awards, when Amy performed “Rehab” from London and then won the Grammy for Record of the Year for “Rehab,” with her parents in the audience cheering her on. She won a total of five Grammys at the ceremony, including Song of the Year (also for “Rehab”); Best Pop Vocal Album (for “Back to Black”); Best Female Pop Vocal Performance (for “Rehab”); and Best New Artist. She became the first British female artist to win all of these Grammy Awards in the same ceremony.

Taylor-Johnson and Greenhalgh previously worked together on the John Lennon biopic “Nowhere Boy” (about Lennon’s troubled teenage years), a drama released in 2009 in the United Kingdom, Ireland, and Australia, and in 2010 everywhere else. Greenhalgh also wrote the screenplay for the 2007 biopic “Control,” a drama about Ian Curtis, lead singer of the British rock band Joy Division. Just like the “Back to Black” movie, “Nowhere Boy” and “Control” also had good performances in a movie with a very flawed screenplay. Although “Back to Black” certainly does an admirable job with costume design, production design and hairstyling, viewers are better off watching the Oscar-winning 2015 documentary “Amy” for a more insightful and more accurate story of Winehouse’s life.

Focus Features will release “Back to Black” in U.S. cinemas on May 17, 2024, with a sneak preview in U.S. cinemas on May 15, 2024. The movie was released in the United Kingdom and other countries in April 2024. “Back to Black” will be released on digital and VOD on June 4, 2024.

Review: ‘Firebrand’ (2023), starring Alicia Vikander and Jude Law

July 8, 2023

by Carla Hay

Jude Law and Alicia Vikander in “Firebrand” (Photo courtesy of MBK Productions)

“Firebrand” (2023)

Directed by Karim Aïnouz

Culture Representation: Taking place in the 1540s, in the United Kingdom, the dramatic film “Firebrand” (based on the novel “Queen’s Gambit: A Novel of Katherine Parr”) features a nearly all-white cast of characters (with one black person and one person of Arab heritage) representing the working-class, middle-class, wealthy and royalty.

Culture Clash: King Henry VIII’s sixth wife Katherine Parr is secretly a feminist who wants to shake up the establishment.

Culture Audience: “Firebrand” will appeal primarily to people who are fans of stars Jude Law, Alicia Vikander, and dull period dramas about the British royal family.

Alicia Vikander (center) in “Firebrand” (Photo courtesy of MBK Productions)

Good acting from Alicia Vikander and Jude Law can’t save “Firebrand” from its plodding screenplay and lackluster direction. This revisionist drama, about the British royal family in the 1540s, distorts feminism by turning the film into a man-hating lecture. For a movie that’s supposed to be about an eventful time in British history, “Firebrand” has an awfully thin plot that gets padded with a lot of repetition. “Firebrand” had its world premiere at the 2023 Cannes Film Festival.

Directed by Karim Aïnouz, “Firebrand” is based on Elizabeth Fremantle’s 2012 book “Queen’s Gambit: A Novel of Katherine Parr.” (In real life, Katherine Parr’s name was also spelled as Catherine Parr.) Henrietta Ashworth and Jessica Ashworth, who are twin sisters, adapted the novel for the “Firebrand” screenplay. Viewers who know in advance that “Firebrand” is based on a novel, not a biography, might enjoy the movie better. However, it still doesn’t erase the movie’s problems.

“Firebrand” begins with a voiceover monologue by a teenager whom viewers later find out is King Henry VIII’s daughter Princess Elizabeth (played by Junia Rees), who will be the future Queen Elizabeth I. Princess Elizabeth says: “In a rotten, blood-soaked island kingdom cursed by plague and driven by religious unrest, there once was a queen by the name of Katherine Parr. She was the sixth wife of an angry and ailing king.”

Princess Elizabeth continues: “Of the wives who had gone before, two were cast out, one died in childbirth, and two had their heads struck from their bodies, on the king’s order. Twice a widow, but not yet to conceive a child herself, Queen Katherine gathered the other wives’ children around her, and loved us as her own.”

The monologue continues, “She is the only mother I have ever known. The queen believed in a land free of tyranny. She believed she could steer the kingdom to the light. When the king went to war across the sea, Queen Katherine was made regent. For a moment, it was as though a great weight had lifted and a new dawn was approaching.”

An early scene in the movie shows Queen Katherine (played by Vikander) in a wooded area, where she is watching a religious and political activist named Anne Askew (played by Erin Doherty) give a fiery speech to a small group of people assembled around her. “We must rise up and take what’s ours!” shouts Anne. “Revolution is upon us. The king will be with us, or we well go without him!”

Anne sees Katherine nearby and smirks at Katherine before walking away. Anne and Katherine have not seen each other in seven years. And it would be scandalous if King Henry VIII or anyone else in the royal court found out that Katherine was at at this political rally. (“Firebrand” was actually filmed in the German cities of Reinbek and Hamburg, which look convincing as 1540s England.)

When Katherine and Anne have a private moment together in the woods, Katherine tells Anne that King Henry VIII respects Katherine. She tells Anne: “I believe I was chosen to change the king’s mind.” Anne is skeptical. And it turns out that Anne is right.

King Henry VIII (played by Law) returns from the war. He’s every bit the self-centered brute that someone is to be cruel enough to have spouses murdered by execution, just to end the marriages. The king has gout (shown in graphic details in the movie), but that doesn’t stop him from having passionless sex with Katherine, who doesn’t enjoy these encounters but endures them because she doesn’t want ill-tempered Henry to get angry at her. Katherine wants to placate Henry because she wants him to agree with some ideas she has to give women more rights.

Over time, Katherine finally sees the obvious: Henry isn’t going to change his misogynistic ways anytime soon. He does things such as openly flirt with would-be mistresses right in front of Katherine and other people seated at the royal dining table. In this dinner flirtation, Katherine is hostile to the giggling younger woman named Agnes Howard (played by Anna Mawn), who flirts back with Henry, even though Henry (not Agnes) is more at fault.

Meanwhile, Henry hears gossip that Katherine has been hanging out with Anne, who is considered a radical disrupter. Katherine denies it. What’s a secretive, ahead-of-her-time “feminist” to do? She pretends to be a devoted and submissive wife who goes along with whatever her husband wants until she can figure out a way to outsmart him. That’s essentially what takes up about 70% of “Firebrand,” in very tedious scenes that don’t do much to further the story.

Historical figures such as Princess Elizabeth, Princess Mary (played by Patsy Ferran), Prince Edward (played by Patrick Buckley), Thomas Seymour (played by Sam Riley) and Edward Seymour (played by Eddie Marsan) come and go in the movie like background characters. Thomas and Edward were the brothers of Jane Seymour, Henry’s third wife, who died in 1537, shortly after giving birth to the future King Edward VI. Thomas and Katherine were in a romantic relationship before she married Henry, but she chose to marry Henry because he was the king. That intriguing backstory is barely acknowledged in the movie.

Instead of looking like a feminist, as the movie intended, Katherine just looks like someone with delusions of grandeur in thinking that she can change a murderous misogynist like Henry, just by being cute and adoring to him. Katherine also has a catty attitude toward women who make themselves available for meaningless flings to Henry, who doesn’t really love and respect Katherine anyway. It’s also questionable if Katherine’s “feminist” plans are really for the good of all women in the kingdom, or are really ways to gain more power for herself.

Worst of all, even with Katherine’s scheming and trying to fool herself into thinking that she can outwit Henry, she does the most soap opera-ish thing that someone can do in her situation. Katherine’s way of solving her problem doesn’t involve any intelligence. It’s a heinous copout that doesn’t make Katherine any better than some of the corrupt people she acts like she detests.

“Firebrand” is the type of movie that gets it right when it comes to technical crafts, such as production design, costume design and musical score. And there’s nothing terribly wrong with the acting performances in the movie. Law as the villainous Henry is much more entertaining to watch than Vikander’s somewhat muted interpretation of pseudo-feminist Katherine. Even with these assets in “Firebrand,” the movie’s message is very misguided in how problems are dealt with at the end of the story, even if it’s complete fiction.

UPDATE: Roadside Attractions and Vertical will release “Firebrand” in select U.S. cinemas on June 14, 2024. The movie was released in Spain in 2023.

Review: ‘Operation Fortune: Ruse de Guerre,’ starring Jason Statham, Aubrey Plaza, Josh Hartnett, Cary Elwes, Bugzy Malone and Hugh Grant

March 6, 2023

by Carla Hay

“Operation Fortune: Ruse de Guerre”

Directed by Guy Ritchie

Culture Representation: Taking place in various countries in Europe and Asia, the action film “Operation Fortune: Ruse de Guerre” features a predominantly white cast of characters (with a few black people and Asians) representing the working-class, middle-class and wealthy.

Culture Clash: A group of undercover operatives, who work for the British government, recruit a movie star to work with them on a mission, as they try to stop an illegal deal involving weapons of mass destruction, in order to save the world.

Culture Audience: “Operation Fortune: Ruse de Guerre” will appeal primarily to people who are fans of filmmaker Guy Ritchie, star Jason Statham, and formulaic and soulless spy movies.

Lourdes Faberes and Hugh Grant in “Operation Fortune: Ruse de Guerre” (Photo by Dan Smith/Lionsgate)

When does a movie about undercover operatives become boring and useless? When you can predict everything that will happen within the first 10 minutes of watching the film. “Operation Fortune: Ruse de Guerre” is so formulaic and lacking in creativity, you could literally fall asleep in the middle of the film and not miss much, because there isn’t much of a plot. This smug and cliché-plagued action flick is proof that Guy Ritchie and Jason Statham have gotten lazy in their movie collaborations. The fights look too fake. The whole film is a failure of imagination, motivated by greed and paid trips to exotic places.

Ritchie directed “Operation Fortune: Ruse de Guerre” from a screenplay that he co-wrote with Ivan Atkinson and Marn Davies. Ritchie, Atkinson and Davies previously collaborated on the screenplays for 2020’s “The Gentlemen” and 2021’s “Wrath of Man,” which were both also directed by Ritchie. The quality of each of these collaborations has rapidly decreased with each subsequent film.

Stop if you’ve heard this plot before: A ragtag group of undercover operatives jet back and forth to various countries to try to stop a “fill in the blank” from happening, in order to save the world. In the case of “Operation Fortune: Ruse de Guerre,” the mission is to stop a billionaire arms dealer from selling a stolen cargo of weapons of mass destruction, and to prevent these weapons from being available on the open market. This over-used concept describes every other big-budget spy film with an ensemble cast of stars, whose characters fight, get involved in car chases, dodge explosions, and maybe have a little romance along the way.

“Operation Fortune: Ruse de Guerre” (“ruse de guerre” means “ruse of war” in French) is a checklist of these stereotypes, without coming close to being as charming and funny as the movies thinks it is. Half of the principal cast members look like they’ve checked out emotionally and act no better than robots, while the other half of the principal cast members try to salvage the weak and derivative screenplay by playing their roles with a “tongue in cheek” tone that just looks awkward when they’re in the same scenes as their lackluster co-stars. It’s not the worst spy movie ever, but it shouldn’t be this bad, since the filmmakers and stars of this movie are capable of doing much better.

“Operation Fortune: Ruse de Guerre” (which was filmed in Turkey and Qatar but takes place in several countries in Europe and Asia) opens with a scene of a world-weary British government operative named Nathan (played by Cary Elwes) being somewhat annoyed, as he walks through a government building to have an office meeting with his supervisor: a no-nonsense and bland bureaucrat named Knighton (played by Eddie Marsan), who has summoned Nathan to this meeting on a Sunday morning.

Nathan is irritated because of the time and day of this meeting. Nathan apparently still doesn’t understand that he doesn’t have the type of job where the only work hours are 9 a.m. to 5 p.m., from Monday to Friday. Nathan acting like he should have regular office hours is one of many ways that “Operation Fortune” makes these spy characters look like idiots. Knighton tells Nathan that 20 armed guards were killed two nights earlier, during an armed robbery that happened near Johannesburg, South Africa.

Knighton gives Nathan this order about the stolen cargo: “I want you to retrieve what went missing, and to find out who the seller is, who the buyer is, and what it is. It’s worth about $10 billion. it’s been given the name The Handle.” Translation: The screenplay is so sloppy and underdeveloped, the screenwriters didn’t bother to come up with any interesting details before this mission began. And if Knighton doesn’t know what the missing cargo is, how does he really know it’s worth $10 billion? It’s all just so illogical and stupid.

Knighton says to Nathan: “I need a creative, cunning and unconventional vision to retrieve this kind of mercurial threat. A courier on a bicycle in congested traffic. Not the official team. They’d take forever to wade through traffic, and the clock doth ticketh.”

First of all, “creative, cunning and unconventional” is not how to describe this movie. Second, who says nonsense like “The clock doth ticketh?” Third, the answer to that question: Only people in a badly written movie.

Nathan then begrudgingly assembles a team that includes these three core members for this mission:

Orson Fortune (played by Statham), a stern Brit, is described as having claustrophobia, agoraphobia and a penchant for having the British government pay for his lavish expenses, which he calls “rehab,” whether it’s for legitimate rehab or not.
Sarah Fidel (played by Aubrey Plaza), a wisecracking American, is a quick thinker and a computer technology expert.
JJ Davies (played by Bugzy Malone), a quiet and loyal Brit, has keen shooter skills and can handle himself well in a fist fight.

This is the type of idiotic dialogue in the movie. In the meeting between Nathan and Orson to get Orson to join the team, Nathan says, “[A] threat is imminent.” Orson asks, “How imminent?” Nathan replies, “Imminently imminent.”

Nathan is not looking forward to working with Orson, because Nathan thinks that Orson is too high-maintenance and problematic, but Knighton has ordered that Orson be on Nathan’s team. Meanwhile, Orson and Sarah have some friction with each other because they each think they are smarter than the other one. JJ is truly a token character who doesn’t say or do much except show up at the right times to help out in a fight. Nathan does some traveling with his crew, but for most of the movie, he’s giving orders while he’s in an office or away at a luxury resort.

Sarah used to work for Nathan’s fiercest operative rival Mike Hook (played by Peter Ferdinando), who also works for the British government, but Mike has a habit of poaching Nathan’s best employees. John Welch (played by Nicholas Facey) is a recently poached employee who currently works for Mike. Nathan thinks hiring Sarah for Nathan’s team is some sort of revenge that he can get on Mike.

“Operation Fortune” has several repetitive scenes showing Nathan and/or members of his team having snarling, sneering and sniping encounters with Mike and his team. After the third time this happens, you’ll feel like yelling at the screen: “We get it: Nathan’s people and Mike’s people don’t like each other!” Here are some choice words that Nathan has to say about Mike when Nathan is having a phone conversation with Knighton: “Mike only has two talents: blowing his cover and blowing himself.”

After Nathan and Orson go to Madrid to bring Sarah and JJ into their team, there’s a silly caper sequence that’s supposed to take place at Merchant Logo Adolfo Suárez Madrid–Barajas Airport, where a retired professor named Donald Bakker (played by Ian Bartholomew) with a brown crocodile briefcase has been identified as the “bag man” with an important computer data drive. Nathan’s team and Mike’s team are all spying on Donald at the airport at the same time.

Somehow, throughout the entire movie, Sarah seems to have video surveillance and wireless microphones everywhere. She works like a one-person, far-reaching command center to tell people, who are long distances away, everything she’s seeing while they all wear hidden ear pieces. Sarah also spends a lot of time directing people on where to go, as if they’re characters in a voice-activated video game.

Nathan’s team finds out that a billionaire arms dealer named Greg Simmonds (played by Hugh Grant) is involved in the deal to sell the stolen cargo. Greg (who is jaded and arrogant) and a dimwitted action movie star named Danny Francesco (played by Josh Hartnett) have a platonic bromance that heats up during the course of the movie. It’s a one-note joke that quickly gets old. Orson and Sarah come up with a plan to enlist Danny’s help to spy on Greg, by having Sarah pose as Danny’s girlfriend when Greg invites Danny to stay at Greg’s luxurious estate in Cannes, France.

Greg has several generically shallow people in his entourage, including a scowling assistant named Emilia (played by Lourdes Faberes); other employees named Trent (played by Tom Rosenthal) and Arnold (played by Oliver Maltman); and hangers-on/friends named Alexander (played by Tim Seyfi), Dmitry (played by Ayhan Eroğlu), Yiv (played by Savaş Ak), Natalya (played by Oleksandra Zharikova) and Katya (played by Mishel Lazarenko). These characters have no real purpose in the movie except to possibly add to the inevitable body count of murdered people.

“Operation Fortune: Ruse de Guerre” has no shortage of glamorous-looking locations, as these characters zip around to places such as Morocco, Quatar and Turkey. But having pretty-looking scenery just looks like an ineffective distraction to a flimsy plot. The movie’s fight scenes are underwhelming, while the jokes mostly fall flat, despite Plaza and Grant making an effort to bring some personality to this hack job pretending to be a thrilling spy caper.

“Operation Fortune: Ruse de Guerre” rehashes the same outdated spy-movie ensemble stereotypes of having a group of protagonists consisting of several macho men and one token woman. And (sexist cliché alert) she has to use her sexuality to accomplish her work goals, while the men never have to use their sexuality to accomplish their work goals. Filmmakers who resort to these tired clichés, when there are so many other options that are fresh and innovative, just expose how backwards their mindsets are when it comes to how women are presented in their movies. “Operation Fortune: Ruse de Guerre” has several scenes that show off how much money was probably spent to film the movie in exotic or pricey locations. But make no mistake: “Operation Fortune: Ruse de Guerre” is creatively bankrupt.

Lionsgate released “Operation Fortune: Ruse de Guerre” in U.S. cinemas on March 3, 2023. The movie was released in several other countries, beginning in January 2023.

Review: ‘The Virtuoso’ (2021), starring Anson Mount, Abbie Cornish and Anthony Hopkins

May 25, 2021

by Carla Hay

Anson Mount in “The Virtuoso” (Photo by Jessica Kourkounis/Lionsgate)

“The Virtuoso” (2021)

Directed by Nick Stagliano

Culture Representation: Taking place in Ohio and unnamed parts of the United States, the crime drama “The Virtuoso” features an all-white cast of characters representing the middle-class and criminal underground.

Culture Clash: An assassin finds out one of his hit jobs might be his most dangerous assignment when he has problems finding his murder target.

Culture Audience: “The Virtuoso” will appeal primarily to people who don’t mind watching badly written and tedious movies about assassinations.

Anthony Hopkins in “The Virtuoso” (Photo by Lance Skundrich/Lionsgate)

The first clue that “The Virtuoso” will be an annoying, witless bore is within the first five minutes, when the main character starts droning on in voiceover narration about what’s happening on screen. It’s never a good sign when movies over-explain things that don’t need to be explained, but it’s even worse when the explaining is for things that don’t even make sense and no amount of explaining will help. The lead character is supposed to be an expert assassin, who thinks so highly of himself that he calls himself a “virtuoso,” but he makes so many dumb mistakes, viewers will be left with the impression that this drama is really an unintentionally bad comedy.

However, there’s nothing really funny about “The Virtuoso,” unless you consider it a cruel joke that Oscar-winning actor Sir Anthony Hopkins ended up in this bottom-of-the barrel dud. Viewers will be more intrigued by speculating how Hopkins found himself in this embarrassing mess of a movie than intrigued by the dull, so-called mystery that’s supposed to be the film’s main plot. “The Virtuoso” director Nick Stagliano (who co-wrote the movie’s atrocious screenplay with James Wolf) was extremely lucky to get a talented actor on the caliber of Hopkins to be in this forgettable garbage.

“The Virtuoso” is one of those pretentiously conceived films where all of the main characters are supposed to be so mysterious that they don’t have any names. The movie’s locations are mostly unnamed, but “The Virtuoso” was actually filmed in New York and Pennsylvania. Anson Mount is the lead character, a loner assassin who is seen doing a hit job in the movie’s opening scene. This character is credited as The Virtuoso in the movie’s end credits, but he’s such an idiotic bungler, that calling him a “virtuoso” is too generous.

In the movie’s opening scene, the assassin is staked out in a hotel room, where he shoots a middle-aged man in another hotel room across the street. And just to make this movie look “edgy” (when it’s actually very unimaginative), the shooting takes place while the targeted man (played by Blaise Corrigan) is having sex with a much younger woman (played by Estelle Girard Parks), who is not his wife. In this hit job, the assassin is so precise in his shooting that he is able to shoot off several bullets at his target, starting with the groin area, without any bullets hitting the woman.

She screams in terror and then quickly leaves the room, but not before robbing the dead guy of whatever cash was in his wallet. She doesn’t call for help because she knows that the murdered man is the type of person who wouldn’t want the cops around. And she doesn’t want to stick around to answer any questions.

In a voiceover, the assassin predicts all of these actions because he knows exactly who was in that room when he did the hit job. He also predicts how long it will take before the police arrive, so he can make his getaway. What he doesn’t explain is how he had the good luck of the murder victim having his hotel window curtains wide open so the assassin could clearly see where to shoot in the room.

Get used to this assassin over-explaining every single thing he does, as if he’s dictating an instruction manual called “Assassinations for Dummies,” because this constant narration plagues almost the entire movie. Here’s a sample of what he says in voiceover narration about this particular hit job: “With this employer, you rarely get more than a name—sometimes not even that. It adds to the risk, and it adds to the fear.”

When he calmly walks out of his hotel room after murdering his target, the assassin continues to drone on about how to be a top assassin: “It’s vital that you show no urgency. You trust your planning, your accuracy. You’re a professional, an expert devoted to timing and precision—a virtuoso.”

The assassin lives with his dog in a remote, unnamed wooded area, because as he over-explains in the narration, a “virtuoso” assassin is supposed “live off the grid as much as possible.” He get his mail by renting a box at an independent, privately owned mail service, not the U.S. Postal Service. And he never uses his real name.

The assassin has a mentor (played by Hopkins), who oversees the hit jobs that the assassin does. The next assignment that the assassin has is to murder a corrupt CEO, who was indicted on an unnamed charge, but the indictment was recently dropped by a judge. The assassin travels to Ohio to complete this mission.

It’s another murder where he shoots at his target from a nearby building. This time, the scene of the murder is on a street that looks like it’s in a business district of the city. And the target gets shot while driving in his car, which crashes into a reacreational vehicle camper that’s parked on the street. The CEO’s car and the camper explode. And something happens that the assassin could not predict: A woman, who was an innocent bystander, happened to be standing on a sidewalk next to the camper when it exploded, so she caught on fire and died.

The assassin makes a hasty exit back to his remote home. And because he prides himself on not killing innocent victims, this mistake has left him shaken to the core. He screams out in emotional pain and guilt. Although this screaming scene is supposed to be serious, it’s done in such an over-the-top way that viewers might laugh when they see it. Throughout the movie, the assassin has guilt-ridden flashbacks and nightmares of seeing the woman screaming in agony while engulfed in flames.

Viewers will find out a little bit more about the assassin and his mentor in a scene that takes place in a graveyard during the day. The assassin is there to visit the grave of his father. And then, the mentor suddenly shows up unannounced, almost as if he had been following the assassin (or hired someone to follow him), so he knew exactly where his protégé would be at that exact moment. The mentor has followed the assassin there because the assassin hasn’t been answering the mentor’s phone calls.

During their conversation, it’s mentioned that the assassin, his late father and the mentor all served in the military. The assassin’s father and the mentor were soldiers together during the Vietnam War. And in the movie’s best and most harrowing scene, the mentor delivers a monologue that only a few actors such as Hopkins would be able to deliver with credibility and gravitas. The monologue describes in vivid and horrific details a Vietnam War experience that the mentor had with the assassin’s father, when they were ordered to massacre all the people and animals in a Vietnam village, and what happened to a toddler boy who tried to escape.

The assassin’s mentor gives this monologue as a way to tell the assassin to “get over it” when the assassin seems to be mentally cracking under the guilt of accidentally killing an innocent bystander during a hit job. The mentor says that the dead bystander was just “collateral damage,” and that when these things happen, assassins just need to be professional and move on. “We humans are homicidal killing machines,” the mentor coldly tells the assassin. Privately, the assassin vows to himself to never allow this mistake to happen to him again.

And that’s why the assassin’s next assignment exposes the idiocy of this story. He takes an assignment where he doesn’t really know who his target is except that it’s someone whose identity is somehow connected to the words “white rivers.” Knowing full well that he could kill the wrong person due to mistaken identity, the assassin takes the assignment anyway.

The rest of the movie is a silly slog of the assassin going to a small town, where he encounters people who might or might now know who his target is, and one of them might be the actual target. All of the possible targets are people who spend time at a local diner called Rosie’s Cafe. They include:

A cop named Deputy Myers (played by David Morse), who’s immediately suspicious of the assassin when he sees him in the diner.
A waitress who calls herself Dixy (played by Abbie Cornish), who works at Rosie’s Cafe.
A sleazeball named Handsome Johnnie (played by Richard Brake), who has a criminal record and a gun.
A timid woman (played by Diora Baird), who is Handsome Johnnie’s new girlfriend.
A quiet loner (played by Eddie Marsan), who carries a gun with him.

And so, in this empty-headed story, the assassin who’s supposed to be as discreet and undercover as possible, shows up and starts asking people if they know anything about “white rivers.” He might as well have just worn a sign that said, “I’m a Stupid Assassin and I’m Here to Let People Know I’m Looking for My Target With My Biggest Clue About My Target’s Identity.” He acts more like a bumbling detective than a “virtuoso” assassin. What was that lecture he was saying in the beginning of the movie about “planning” and “accuracy”? Pure crap.

And since this is a small town, and the assassin hangs out at the diner acting like he’s looking for someone, it doesn’t take long before the word gets out that this stranger is probably up to no good. Needless to say, “The Virtuoso” is so sloppily written that the assassin’s process of elimination in figuring out the identity of his target makes absolutely no sense and contradicts the vow that he made to himself about not killing the wrong people.

“The Virtuoso” tries very hard to be like a neo-noir thriller, but the washed-out and dreary cinematography and monotonous editing just drag down this already sluggishly paced and nonsensical film. Fortunately for Hopkins, his screen time in “The Virtuoso” is no more than 20 minutes. His graveyard monologue really is the best thing about this terrible film. The rest of the cast members are serviceable in their roles. However, even the best acting in the world couldn’t save this very clumsy and vapid movie.

And because “The Virtuoso” recycles as many tired stereotypes as possible, the waitress and the assassin find themselves attracted to each other. Too bad Mount and Cornish have very little believable chemistry together. And since “The Virtuoso” is a very “male gaze” movie, only the women have nudity in the sex scenes. The only thing to say about the big “reveal” at the end is that it’s another very predictable cliché that’s a big yawn, assuming that any viewers who make it that far in this mind-numbing and plodding movie haven’t fallen asleep by then.

Lionsgate released “The Virtuoso” in select U.S. cinemas, on digital and VOD on April 30, 2021, and on Blu-ray and DVD on May 4, 2021.

Review: ‘Wrath of Man,’ starring Jason Statham

May 6, 2021

by Carla Hay

“Wrath of Man”

Directed by Guy Ritchie

Culture Representation: Taking place in Los Angeles, the action flick “Wrath of Man” features a nearly all-male, predominantly white cast of characters (with some African Americans, Latinos and Asians) representing the middle-class, law enforcement and the criminal underground.

Culture Clash: A crime boss goes undercover as an armored truck driver to avenge the murder of his teenage son, who was killed during a heist of an armored truck.

Culture Audience: “Wrath of Man” will appeal primarily to people who want to see a predictable and violent movie with no imagination.

Raúl Castillo, Deobia Oparei, Jeffrey Donovan, Chris Reilly, Laz Alonso and Scott Eastwood in “Wrath of Man” (Photo by Christopher Raphael/Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Pictures)

The fourth time isn’t the charm for director Guy Ritchie and actor Jason Statham in the vapid action flick “Wrath of Man,” their fourth movie together. It’s tedious and predictable junk filled with cringeworthy dialogue and stunts with no creativity. People who are familiar with Statham’s work already know that his movies are almost always schlockfests that are essentially about violence and car chases. However, Ritchie’s filmography is much more of a mixed bag. “Wrath of Man” isn’t Ritchie’s absolute worst film, but it’s a movie that could have been so much better.

Ritchie co-wrote the “Wrath of Man” screenplay with Marn Davies and Ivan Atkinson. The movie is based on the 2004 French thriller “Le Convoyeur,” directed by Nicolas Boukhrief and written by Boukhrief and Éric Besnard. Ritchie and Statham previously worked together on 1998’s “Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels” (Ritchie’s feature-film debut), 2000’s “Snatch” and 2005’s “Revolver.” Whereas those three movies had plenty of sly comedy with brutal action, “Wrath of Man” is so by-the-numbers and soulless, it seems like a computer program, not human beings, could’ve written this movie.

The movie’s simplistic plot could’ve been told in 90 minutes or less. Instead, it’s stretched out into a nearly two-hour slog with repetitive and unnecessary flashbacks. In “Wrath of Man,” which takes place in Los Angeles, Statham plays a mysterious crime boss who’s out to avenge the murder of his son Dougie (played by Eli Brown), who was about 17 or 18 and an innocent bystander when he was shot to death by a robber during a heist of an armored truck.

Dougie’s murder (which is not spoiler information) is shown in a flashback about halfway through the movie. Until then, viewers are left to wonder who Statham’s character really is when he shows up at the headquarters of Fortico Security to apply for a job working as a guard in an armored truck. When he applies for the job, he identifies himself has Patrick Hill, a divorcé with more than 25 years of security experience. Later, viewers find out that it’s an alias; his real last name is Mason.

But he was able to create an entire false identity as Patrick Hill, with documents provided by his trusty assistant Kirsty (played by Lyne Renée), one of the few women with a speaking role in this movie. The false identity includes phony job references and a fake job stint at the now-defunct Orange Delta Security, which was a well-known company. Based on this elaborate scheme, Patrick is easily able to get a job at Fortico.

Fortico is described in the movie as one of the top armored vehicle companies that does cash pickups and deliveries in the area. The company’s clients include retail department stores, marijuana dispensaries, cash vaults, casinos and private banks. On a typical pickup or delivery, there are two or three employees in the truck: a driver, a guard and/or a messenger. The company isn’t huge (it only has 12 trucks), but it’s very profitable. A Fortico truck haul can total around $15 million a day, sometimes more.

Patrick is trained by Hayden Blair (played by Holt McCallany), who goes by the nickname Bullet. Almost everyone Bullet works with directly seems to have a nickname, so he immediately gives Patrick the nickname H, an abbreviation of Hill. Patrick/H goes through the training process (including gun defense skills) and he barely gets passing grades. He’s assigned to work with a cocky driver named David Hancock (played by Josh Hartnett), whose nickname is Boy Sweat Dave. Another colleague is Robert Martin (played by Rocci Williams), whose nickname is Hollow Bob.

When Bullet introduces H to these two co-workers, Bullet says, “He’s H, like the bomb. Or Jesus H.” The bad dialogue doesn’t get any better. H is told that he’s replacing a co-worker named Sticky John (who came up with these cringeworthy nicknames?), who died during a heist that killed multiple employees. The robbers got away, so the Fortico employees on are on edge about this shooting spree, which they call the Gonzo Murders. Boy Sweat Dave says, “We ain’t the predators. We’re the prey.”

The insipid dialogue continues throughout the entire movie. In a scene with some Fortico workers off-duty in a bar, Boy Sweat Dave is playing pool with Dana Curtis (played by Niamh Algar), the token female on Fortico’s armored truck crew. Dana says sarcastically to Boy Sweat Dave: “The point of the game is to get the ball in the hole.” Boy Sweat Dave snaps back, “The point of a woman is to shut the fuck up, Dana.”

Dana replies, “Well, that Ivy League education is really working for you, Boy Sweat.” (How can you say a line like that with a straight face?) Boy Sweat Dave retorts, “Pretty soon, you’ll all be working for me. The power is in this big head here.” Dana snipes back, “Well, it’s definitely not in your little head. Or are you still blaming the beer?”

The character of Boy Sweat Dave is an example of how “Wrath of Man” wastes a potentially interesting character on silly dialogue. What kind of person with an Ivy League education wants to work as an armored truck driver, a job which doesn’t even require a high school education? Viewers never find out because Boy Sweat Dave is one of several characters in the movie who are shallowly introduced, just so there can be more people in the body count later.

And because Dana is H’s only female co-worker, this movie that treats women as tokens can’t let her be just a co-worker. No, she has to serve the purpose of fulfilling H’s sexual needs too, since he and Dana have a predictable fling/one night stand. He finds out something about her when he spends the night at her place that helps him unravel the mystery of who killed his son.

It isn’t long before Patrick/H experiences his first heist as a Fortico employee. He’s partnered with Boy Sweat Dave, who’s driving, while H is the lookout. The heist is unrealistically staged in the movie as one of those battles where one man (in this case, H) can take down several other men in a shootout where a Fortico employee has been taken hostage by the thieves. Post Malone fans (or haters) might get a kick out of the scene though, since he plays one of the nameless robbers who doesn’t last long in this movie. H has saved his co-workers’ lives in this botched heist, so he’s hailed as a hero by the company.

Meanwhile, the FBI has been looking for Patrick because he’s been an elusive crime boss. There are three FBI agents, all very uninteresting, who are on this manhunt: Agent Hubbard (played by Josh Cowdery), Agent Okey (played by Jason Wong) and their supervisor Agent King (played by Andy Garcia). Hubbard and Okey come in contact with Patrick/H, when they investigate the botched robbery where Patrick/H ended up as the hero.

Agent King orders Hibbard and Okey not to let on that they know H’s real identity and to keep tabs on why this crime boss is working at an armored truck company. Eddie Marsan, a very talented actor, has a very useless role in “Wrath of Man,” as an office assistant named Terry. Terry becomes suspicious of who H really is, because in his heroic rescue, H showed the type of expert combat skills that contradicts the mediocrity that he displayed in the company’s training.

And just who’s in this group of murderous thieves? They’re led by mastermind Jackson (played by Jeffrey Donovan), a married man with two kids who lives a double life. This seemingly mild-mannered family man works in a shopping mall. But he also apparently has time to lead a group of armored truck thieves, who pose as street construction workers when they commit their robberies. The robbers use a concrete mixer truck to block the armored truck and then ambush the people inside the armored truck.

What’s really dumb about “Wrath of Man” is that these armed robbers use the same tactic every time. In real life, repeating this very cumbersome way of committing an armed robbery would make them easier to catch, not harder. Apparently, these dimwits think that the best way to not call attention to yourself during a robbery is to haul out a giant concrete mixer truck.

Jackson’s crew consists of a bunch of mostly generic meatheads: Brad (played by Deobia Oparei), Sam (played by Raúl Castillo), Tom (played by Chris Reilly) and Carlos (played by Laz Alonzo), with Jan (played by Scott Eastwood) as the loose cannon in the group. Guess who pulled the trigger on Patrick/H/Mason’s son Dougie? Guess who’s going to have a big showdown at the end of the movie?

Of course, a crime boss has to have his own set of goons. Patrick/H/Mason has three thugs who are closest to him and who do a lot of his dirty work: Mike (played by Darrell D’Silva), Brendan (played by Cameron Jack) and Moggy (played by Babs Olusanmokun). There’s a vile part of the movie that shows Patrick/H/Mason ordering his henchman to beat up and torture anyone who might have information on who murdered Dougie. The operative word here is “might,” because some people who had nothing to do with the murder are brutally assaulted.

Mike has a conscience and he says that he won’t commit these vicious attacks anymore to try to find Dougie’s killer. Mike advises Patrick/H/Mason to think of another way to find the murderer. And that’s when Patrick/H/Mason got the idea to go “undercover” at Fortico, with the hope that he could catch the murderous thieves in their next heist on a Fortico truck.

And what do you know, this gang of thieves will be doing “one last heist” on a Fortico truck, to get a haul that’s said to be at least $150 million. What could possibly go wrong? You know, of course.

Ritchie’s previous film “The Gentlemen” (which was also about gangsters and theives) had a lot of devilishly clever dialogue and crackled with the type of robust energy that hasn’t been seen in his movies in years. And although “The Gentlemen” wasn’t a perfect film about criminal antics, it at least made the effort to have memorable characters and to keep viewers guessing about which character was going to come out on top. “Wrath of Man” is a completely lazy film that has no interesting characters, no suspense, and not even any eye-popping stunts. It’s just a silly shoot ’em up flick that’s as empty as Statham’s dead-eyed stares.

Metro Goldwyn Mayer (MGM) Pictures and Miramax Films will release “Wrath of Man” in U.S. cinemas on May 7, 2021.

Review: ‘The Gentlemen,’ starring Matthew McConaughey, Hugh Grant, Charlie Hunnam, Colin Farrell, Michelle Dockery, Henry Golding and Jeremy Strong

January 20, 2020

by Carla Hay

“The Gentlemen”

Directed by Guy Ritchie

Culture Representation: Set in London, this group of predominantly white male characters (with a few Asians and black people), who are from the middle and upper classes, live on the edges of the law and are primarily motivated by greed and revenge.

Culture Clash: The characters in the “The Gentleman” constantly try to one-up and outsmart each other in their betrayals.

Culture Audience: “The Gentlemen” will appeal mostly to people who like movies about groups of criminals who mix dirty deals with aspirations to belong in the upper echelons of society.

Colin Farrell and Charlie Hunnam in “The Gentleman” (Photo by Christopher Raphael)

In case people might think British filmmaker Guy Ritchie was turning soft because he directed Disney’s 2019 live-action remake of “Aladdin,” he wants to remind everyone that he’s still capable of making the down’n’dirty British crime capers that made him a hot director, starting with his feature-film debut, 1998’s “Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels.” (And then his ill-fated 10-year marriage to Madonna brought him another kind of fame: tabloid hell.)

With “The Gentlemen,” Ritchie returns to the theme that he seems to like best when he writes and directs a film—men behaving very badly. And who needs to have legal consequences? Ritchie makes it clear in his movies about drug dealers or gangsters that the harsh realities of police busts and courtroom appearances are pesky distractions that shouldn’t really get in the way of the story he really wants to tell, which is from the lawbreakers’ perspectives.

The movie’s title is quite cheeky, since the shady and sleazy characters in “The Gentlemen” act like anything but gentlemen. All of them are violent, and some of the Anglo characters spout racist and anti-Semitic remarks. There’s some content in this movie that’s truly twisted, including a bestiality scene that’s in the movie for laughs. The deviant act is not shown on screen, but what happened and who was involved are made very clear to viewers.

“The Gentlemen” has an all-star cast, but the movie really comes down to the sparring between two of the characters who want to be the alpha male who’ll outsmart them all. The two opponents are Michael “Mickey” Pearson (played by Matthew McConaughey) and Fletcher (played by Hugh Grant), who see themselves as brilliant manipulators who like to play people off each other like pawns in a chess game.

Mickey is an American who’s been a marijuana dealer in the United Kingdom, ever since he was a Rhodes Scholar student at Oxford University. He’s built up his business by renting out large estates worth millions and using the land to build underground areas for growing marijuana. His operation (which spans the entire nation) has grown to the point where he’s ready to sell it, now that marijuana might become legal in the United Kingdom.

Fletcher is a private investigator and aspiring screenwriter, who wants to tell Mickey’s story (and dirty secrets) in a movie screenplay that he’s writing. Fletcher describes the screenplay in vivid detail (which viewers see acted on screen) when he has a tense confrontation with Mickey’s right-hand man, Ray (played by Charlie Hunnam). It’s a story-within-a-story conceit that works well in some areas of the movie, but gets too convoluted and messy in other areas. Fletcher tells Ray that the salacious details of the screenplay is Fletcher’s way of extorting £20 million from Mickey if he wants to keep Fletcher from spilling those secrets. Fletcher has found himself in Mickey’s orbit in the first place because Fletcher has been hired by a tabloid editor named Big Dave (payed by Eddie Marsan), who has a grudge against Mickey and wants Fletcher to dig up dirt on Mickey.

Viewers should know before seeing this movie that the hyper-absurd situations in the story basically serve to poke fun at the characters, who mostly think they’re smarter than everyone else in their world. And make no mistake: This is definitely a man’s world, since Michelle Dockery (who plays Mickey’s Cockney-accented loyal wife, Rosalind, nicknamed Roz) is the only woman with a significant speaking role in the movie—and her screen time in the film is less than 20 minutes. Fletcher describes Roz as the “Cockney Cleopatra to Mickey’s Cowboy Caesar.” It’s a fairly accurate description, since Roz’s scenes basically revolve around her sexuality, and Mickey’s scenes revolve around him asserting his power.

Mickey’s asking price for his marijuana operation is at least £400 million, and he finds a potential buyer in billionaire Matthew Berger (played by Jeremy Strong), another successful, upper-echelon drug dealer who’s been a longtime rival of Mickey’s. And there are some other sordid characters who are entangled in this spider web of a story. One of them is Dry Eye (played by Henry Golding), a gangster/wannabe mob boss who answers to his real mob boss, Lord George (played by Tom Wu). Their gang is also at odds with Mickey.

Then there’s deadpan henchman Coach (played by Colin Farrell), who’s somewhat of a mentor to a group of young thugs who like to video record their mischief-making and crimes while in disguise, take the footage, make them into rap videos, and post the videos on social media. The young hoodlums make the mistake of breaking into one of Mickey’s marijuana bunkers and stealing some of what’s stashed there, so Coach offers to make amends by doing favors for Mickey.

All of the stars of “The Gentlemen” do a very competent job with an often-verbose script, which requires a massive suspension of disbelief in the fight scenes—especially in an assault-weapon shootout aimed at a vehicle, where someone very unrealistically walks away unscathed. Grant’s Fletcher character has the best lines, and he’s the one who’s the least predictable. But many of the other characters (such as Ray, Dry Eye and Big Eddie) are very two-dimensional, and a few humorous one-liners don’t quite fill the voids in their personalities.

Put another way: Ritchie is no Martin Scorsese when it comes to gangster films. “The Gentlemen” tries to be a little too clever for its own good, but if you’re curious to see Ritchie’s take on a backstabbing criminal subculture, then “The Gentlemen” might be your stinging cup of tea.

STX will release “The Gentlemen” in U.S. cinemas on January 24, 2020. The movie was released in the United Kingdom on January 1, 2020.