25th HOUR
Tuesday 29 April 2003
Newham Showcase Cinema, London E6 VISIT

So what, in the name of Rudy Giuliani and his infamous “zero tolerance”, would a man facing seven years in prison be doing spending the night before the start of his sentence roaming the streets of New York? It’s fairly unlikely, wouldn’t you say? But who cares when a great actor like Edward Norton plays the man in question, the director is Spike Lee and the film has a intelligent and thoughtful script?

Well Peter Bradshaw, the moronic reviewer on the Guardian Film website, for one. He gave this great film just one star, one less than he gave the one-joke comedy Johnny English. The man’s an imbecile and I almost let him put me off seeing ‘25th Hour’ on the strength of his review. I’m never believing a word he writes again.

Norton plays Monty Brogan, busted for drug dealing and deeply suspicious on his last night of freedom that his girlfriend Naturelle (the completely gorgeous Rosario Dawson) is the cause of his impending incarceration. Unsure whether she has sold him out, he is unable to talk to her and instead wanders the streets, visits his old school and meets up with his father, a reformed alcoholic Brooklyn fire fighter (played by Brian Cox). As the day wears on he becomes ever more angry at the predicament he finds himself in, realising he is about to lose the life he has grown used to, not just the expensive flat and car but also the friends and loved ones. In one great scene, Brogan’s reflection in a bathroom mirror rails against every member of New York's multi-racial population, blaming everyone from immigrants to corrupt police to Wall Street brokers for his circumstances before realising there is no-one to blame but himself. In this regard, ‘25th Hour’ is actually a very moral film – throughout, Brogan and especially his friends remind us that he deserves his fate and that his punishment is just. They just wish Brogan had taken a decision to change his life earlier, before change had suddenly been imposed upon him.

Amongst those on Brogan’s list of those he hates is (unsurprisingly) Osama bin Laden and Lee’s film must be one of the first to include an unsentimental nod to September 11 and actual footage of Ground Zero. We see it from the flat belonging to Brogan’s city trader friend Frank, which overlooks the site where the World Trade Centre had once stood and where, of course, many of those that died also had time to prepare for the end. In many ways ‘25th Hour’ is also as much a hymn to Spike Lee’s love of New York and its endurance and we are left in no doubt that just as important as everything Brogan will lose will be the city soon to be taken from him.

Frank and another friend Jacob, a unhappy schoolteacher (played by Phillip Seymour Hoffman) who is obsessed over one of his 17 year old students, spend the final night partying with Naturelle before Brogan finds out how he was betrayed and reveals a plan to help him survive prison. The interaction between the excellent cast is clever, sharp and often very funny but I particularly enjoyed the final scenes (that Bradshaw describes as a “cop-out ending,” the idiot). In these, Brogan is driven to prison by his father, who explains how Brogan can escape and start a new life, the potential events of which unfold on screen. Is this the life that Brogan can expect or the one that he is doomed to lose? Lee keeps the answer to this question ambiguous and I thought it was moving and very thought provoking to reflect on what we may miss by the choices we make.

As you can probably guess, I really enjoyed this film and would recommend it to anyone who likes intelligent and stylish films full of great actors. So don’t believe everything you read. Especially not what you read in the Guardian.

JEREMY HARDY VERSUS THE ISRAELI ARMY
Thursday 24 April 2003
UCL Bloomsbury Theatre, London WC1 VISIT

Why, in the name of a political ideal, do people travel to war zones, deliberately placing themselves in extreme danger? I have had the pleasure of meeting people who fought in Spain in the 1930s against fascism and others who in the 1990s travelled with aid convoys to the Bosnian capital Sarajevo and although the causes are very different, in each case the answer to this question has been the same – raising money or signing a petition was just not enough. The most powerful acts of solidarity, the actions that really change the world, involve standing shoulder to shoulder with people under attack.

Leila Sansou’s 75 minute documentary is the powerful story of acts of solidarity by the ‘internationals’ in the West Bank and Gaza, trying to disrupt the activities of the Israeli military occupation by placing themselves between Palestinians and the tanks and armoured vehicles of the fourth largest army in the world. It focuses on the journey to Palestine taken by the British comedian Jeremy Hardy, to document and participate in actions planned by one of the groups, the International Solidarity Movement. The ISM is the organisation that both Rachel Corrie, the American killed by an Israeli bulldozer, and Tom Hundall, the British activist shot in the head while protecting children in Rafah from Israeli gunfire, were both members of.

Jeremy Hardy’s first trip to the West Bank coincided with the murderous assault on Bethlehem just after Easter 2002. Clearly terrified by events he had been completely unprepared for, Hardy’s initial reaction to the ISM activists – that they are vainglorious middle-class peaceniks involved in some sort of ‘radical tourist experience’ – changes to growing admiration after the group are for the first time shot at with live rounds and a number injured. A later visit (after the first is cut short by Hardy's evacuation by the British embassy) includes participation with coachloads of both Israeli peace activists and internationals delivering medical supplies to a Palestinian village, one that has been cut off for a year. In between, the ISM contingent had somehow managed to enter, under the noses of the Israeli army, both the besieged Church of the Nativity in Bethlehem and Yasser Arafat’s compound in Ramallah, delivering supplies and acting as human shields.

‘Jeremy Hardy versus the Israeli Army’ is a very effective campaigning and recruiting tool for the ISM and in the bar of the Bloomsbury Theatre after the film, people were asking each other, “would you go”? The footage of ISM members risking their lives participating in solidarity actions is inspiring, as are the experiences of those such as the Jewish activist dubbed ‘an American Taliban’, whose parents in New York have received death threats because of his involvement in the ISM. As a film, however, the main problem is its nominal ‘star’. To be brutally honest, the best scenes are the ones Jeremy Hardy is not in. A great comedian, he quite rightly avoids the film becoming a wholly inappropriate comic odyssey, a joke-a-minute showcase of his talents. But by reining in his humour, we were left watching a fairly ordinary bloke whose flat nasal voiceover sounded like someone explaining the highlights of his holiday video (“and this is me in front of the maternity clinic”). At times, this is what the film most resembles – ‘Wish You Were Here’ reporting from the West Bank, with a grumpy middle-aged Englishman embarrassed about his choice of hat purchases.

Nevertheless, as a rallying point for the International Solidarity Movement and the excellent work it does, this film is definitely work seeing. See www.ism-london.org or www.palsolidarity.org for more information about the ISM.

PHONE BOOTH
Sunday 20th April 2003
UCG West India Quay, London E14 VISIT

Stu Shepherd is an arrogant, confident man, a publicist who believes he is in control as flatters the egos of the clients and media contacts he tells lies to every day. Although always on his mobile phone, his daily routine includes heading at a set time to the last enclosed phone booth in Manhattan. Here he removes his wedding ring before calling one of his clients, a young actress he is trying to persuade to meet him, a woman he fantasises about sleeping with. Only one day when he puts down the phone, it rings – and a ringing phone demands to be answered. Lifting the receiver, Stu suddenly finds his life turned upside down as a voice tells him that a gun is pointing at him and that if he hangs up, he will die.

On the face of it, this is a film that shouldn’t work. It’s story, played out in an hour and twenty minutes of real time, is largely set within a single location, the aforementioned phone booth. The central character, played by Colin Farrell, who must not move for fear of being gunned down by his unseen assailant, is a somewhat sleazy and seemingly unlikely candidate for our sympathises. And apart from the sniper, Keifer Sutherland’s disembodied voice at the end of the phone, the other characters are largely incidental.

And yet this is a film that shouldn’t work but does. It works because director Joel Schumacher's relentless pace, constantly raising the suspense to greater levels, is matched by a fabulous performance by Farrell. But for me, the decision to have the calm melodic sound of Sutherland’s gunman as a voiceover, rather than a crackly voice on the end of the line, was inspired. It creates the unsettling impression that he is standing right there in the claustrophobic confines of the phone booth with Stu. No wonder the release of ‘Phone Booth’ was pushed back in the US because of the spate of random shootings in Washington. For people suddenly living in fear, the film would have been terrifying.

There are also a number of clever touches such as a shop window banner on the building behind the phone booth that asks, "Who do you think you are?" This is what Stu’s would-be assassin, who has been stalking him and listening to him hustle, wants to find out. Farrell’s performance is so effective because gradually we do find that Stu is not the irredeemable scoundrel that he first appears. And, without giving the ending away, the fact that the story is not neatly wrapped up in a Hollywood display of good triumphing over evil is refreshing, especially as the Washington sniper murders must surely have put pressure on Schumacher to do so.

At just 80 minutes, the film flies by but in a way is the better for it. Definitely recommended.

INTACTO
Sunday 13 April 2003
UGC West India Quay, London E14 VISIT

Like great films such as Donnie Darko and Fight Club, ‘Intacto’ is centred on a complex, intriguing and brilliantly original idea – in this case that luck is a gift and that those with the power to do so can take that gift from others. The film then reveals an underworld where mysteriously fortunate competitors absorb the luck of ordinary people and gamble it, in order to try and stay ‘intact’ when facing the ‘god of chance’, Samuel Berg, a survivor of the Holocaust, in a game of Russian roulette. Federico, whose own good luck was taken from him by his mentor Berg, helps a thief named Tomas, the sole survivor of a plane crash under guard in hospital, to escape and persuades him to compete. Federico tutors Tomas in the game of chance that must inevitably lead to a confrontation with the luckiest person on the planet. Meanwhile, Sara, a police officer who also has the gift and who has survived a car crash that killed the rest of her family, hunts Tomas and is drawn into the game in an attempt to capture him.

It’s just great. There are no clever special effects, just an eerie and disturbing sense of the strange, in the way that luck is exchanged by a vampiric hug, in the weird landscape (shot in Tenerife) and in the adrenaline rush of the contests. The most memorable of these involves participants running headlong through a forest while blindfolded, the losers crashing into the trees and the last person standing being the winner.

Max Von Sydow, the only English speaker in this Spanish film, gives one of his best performances as the owner of the casino in the desert, seemingly unable to enjoy his excessive good fortune. This may not only be as a result of his terrible experiences but also because of the added suggestion that too much luck takes away the capacity to love. The words ‘I don’t love you anymore’ are spoken by Tomas to his girlfriend Ana before he boards the doomed plane that ‘luckily’ she does not take, saving her life – and they are also those said by Sara to her husband before the car crash that she ‘luckily’ survives. It’s all very strange and whilst I am sure that a second viewing will help unravel the story even more (just as Donnie Darko is even better the second time), it’s still streets ahead of some of the derivative plots I have seen recently.

Recommended? You bet. Enjoy it before Hollywood remakes it.

RULES OF ATTRACTION
Sunday 6th April 2003
Stratford Picture House, London E15 VISIT


There is only one small part of ‘Rules of Attraction’ that could just perhaps save it from being the worst film I am likely to see this year. That’s a five-minute section, a speeded up video diary showing the trip taken by one of the film’s many unappealing characters around Europe. It’s kind of clever in a sort of slacker, fresh out of film school sort of a way. It bears no relation whatsoever to the central plot, which makes it entirely in keeping with the other ‘tricks’ that director Roger Avary uses, like rewinding scenes and split screen, all of which are utterly contrived, a bad case of showing off to hide the complete lack of substance to this pointless, irritating film.

And yet Empire magazine has the absolute stupefying audacity to describe ‘Rules of Attraction’ as “America’s Trainspotting.”

As a Scottish friend of mine would say, "Pish". I think I may have to reconsider renewing my subscription.

The recreation of Bret Ellis Easton’s admittedly uninspiring book seems largely intent on moving ahead from one self-indulgent little set piece to another, but broadly speaking can be summarised as follows. Sean Bateman, a shallow unpleasant drug dealing student at Camden College in New England, is lusting over shallow unpleasant Lauren, who used to go out with shallow unpleasant Paul, who is now gay and lusts after Sean. Lauren, meanwhile, is saving herself for shallow unpleasant Victor, away on the aforementioned Europe trip, although Sean thinks (wrongly) that she is sending him love letters. James Van Der Beer, who was Dawson in TV’s dire Dawson’s Creek, plays Sean Bateman as though he was Dawson having a bad day and therefore frowns a great deal. There’s lots of sex and references to sex, lots of drugs, a comedy drug dealer and parties that look more like preludes to rape rather than anything approaching ‘fun’. And a graphic suicide involving a nameless character, who we suddenly discover is the author of the aforementioned love letters.

I wanted to leave after about an hour. Apart from the five-minute section I’ve already mentioned and a good, nostalgic soundtrack, the other hour and forty minutes were just mind numbing…

What makes the stupid illusion to Trainspotting so completely off the mark is that the only similarity between the two is the extensive use of drugs (and New England students aren’t even in the same league as Edinburgh junkies). Trainspotting has a cast of either intriguing or sympathetic characters and a plot that involves its narrator, Renton, on a journey that eventually leads him to ‘choose life.’ In contrast, ‘Rules of Attraction’ has a cast of uninteresting and annoying characters, insulated in their own little selfish bubbles, whose main protagonist makes the Teletubbies look like intellects on a par with Chomsky. Trainspotting’s cultural references say something about Scottish identity – ‘Rules of Attraction’ doesn’t even bother looking up ‘cultural references’ in the dictionary.

Avoid this film like a sudden outbreak of SARS. It’s a complete and utter waste of yours or anyone else’s money.