REVIEW: Great Expectations

Another retelling of the classic by Charles Dickens.

The thing is, you have to ask yourself, how many times can you be told the exact same story and be entertained? It seems like one more time isn't a complete waste of time.

Great Expectations sticks very rigidly to the original Charles Dickens story, so if you are familiar with the novel then the film isn't anything radically different. It starts with a young Pip (Toby Irvine) who helps an escaped prisoner, Magwitch (Ralph Fiennes). Magwitch is soon caught and sent back to the prisoner ship from which he escaped. Pip is then sought out by Mr Jaggers (Robbie Coltrane) as the local Miss Havisham (Helena Bonham Carter) wants a new playmate for her adopted daughter, young Estella (Helena Barlow). Pip grows up loving Estella and dreams of becoming a true gentleman. His prayers are answered when he grows up, and Pip (now played by Jeremy Irvine) receives and inheritance from an unknown benefactor. He moves to London to live his dream of being a gentleman. However, something is missing from his life, and that is his love for Estella (now played by Holliday Grainger) who has been brought up by Miss Havisham to be cold-hearted and to hate all men, as Havisham herself was jilted at the alter. As Pip starts to find out who his mysterious benefactor is, his life of luxury starts to unravel around him.

Now, I will admit straight away that I haven't seen any of the other versions of Great Expectations, except the 1946 classic version directed by David Lean. I guess you could argue then that I haven't been desensitised to the story by Charles Dickens because I've seen it so many times. However, the charm with this retelling of the story isn't with the story itself, but the way in which it is told.

The first thing that stands out by a mile is the direction by Mike Newell and the cinematography by John Mathieson. The Kentish countryside is beautifully shot through the thick mists and creaking ironwork at Joe's (Jason Flemying) blacksmith shop. The tension was just oozing from the screen when Pip was having to go behind Joe and Mrs. Joe's backs (Sally Hawkins) to try and feed Magwitch. While the London sets didn't hit anywhere near the beauty and tense Kentish countryside, it certainly felt authentic and claustrophobic as Pip is pushed and shoved when he finds his way to his new lodgings.

Then there's Miss Havisham, arguably the film's biggest attraction beyond the budding relatioship between Pip and Estella. Helena Bonham Carter seems like the perfect person to bring the jilted and bitter character to the screen, because let's face it, she's pretty good at playing unhinged characters. And Bonham Carter doesn't disappoint as she grabs the role with both hands and really gives it everything. She's creepy as she tells the young children to come close to her, so she can tell them a secret, only to cover them in her rotten vail to bring them in even closer. She then turns it to childlike shock and innocence when the fire catches her decaying wedding dress and she is engulfed in flames.

However, while Bonham Carter is excellent within the role, it is Pip and Estella and their love/hate for each other that keeps the film rolling. While others may disagree, I thought that Grainger's portrayal as the twisted and manipulated Estella was almost spot-on. The inner turmoil she faces when confronted with her own feelings for Pip when she has been promised to another man by Miss Havisham is heart-wrenching. The only thing that let's the side down is Irvine's portrayal of Pip, as he seems a bit wooden and emotionless in comparison. While he does a standard job, it just doesn't seem enough in comparison to Grainger.

So, if you are a fan of the traditional Dickens' tale, then this version of Great Expectations is pretty solid in what you should be expecting. The cinematography is pretty top-notch in comparison to how some other previous versions look and most of the acting is spot on. The only thing that arguably lets it down is that the third act becomes a little confusing as it tries to cram in every single one of Dickens' plot twists and turns from the original novel.

**** / *****

REVIEW: Alex Cross

Literature to film adaptions have always been hot property. It's pretty much a given that the film will have a built in fan base from the books, but will also hopefully bring in more fans, with the potential for merchandise being quite high (an easy one being to rebrand the book as a "movie tie-in edition").

However, it's never going to be an easy ride to please existing fans and new ones. The old fans want to see a film version of the book they have read, whereas the new fans want action, violence and romance (aka. the basics). Just have a look at One For The Money for an example of how to get it drastically wrong.

Alex Cross is a a film based on a series of books by James Patterson. A series of books - KERCHING! The film follows a homicide detective, Alex Cross (Tyler Perry) who lives a happy life in Detroit with his wife, Maria (Carmen Ejogo), their children and thier Grandmother, Nana Mama (Cicely Tyson). Lead by Richard Brookwell (John C. McGinley), his long standing partner since school, Tommy Kane (Edward Burns) and their colleague, Monica Ashe (Rachel Nichols), the team soon start investigating some terrible torture murders. The murderer is soon nicknamed Picasso (Matthew Fox), because he keeps leaving drawings of his victims behind with clues as to who is going to be next. They soon make a link that the murders are revolving around German Businessman, Erich Nunmacher (Werner Daehn) and billionaire CEO, Leon Mercier (Jean Reno) and plans to attack them at a public conference. When the Picasso murders turn personal against Cross and his partner Kane, they vow to hunt down and kill the Picasso killer, even if it means putting their own lives on the line.

Alex Cross is a film that barely makes any kind of impact. I haven't read the original source material, but doing a slight bit of research online reveals how loosely the film is actually related to the book series and how many changes the filmmakers actually made makes me think that this is a film version in name only. If you have to change character names and motives for their actions, then why not make your own film? Having said that, the plot for this film felt more like an idea for a TV pilot rather than a film. There was hardly any big set pieces that set this film out from small screen adaptations (such as 24 or Dexter) and most of the conflict came from the characters.

Which brings me onto my next point, the casting for this film was completely off. Tyler Perry felt like he was being forced to do this film and had zero chemistry with his on-screen wife, Carmen Ejogo or his life-long partner, Edward Burns. It was like they barely knew each other, yet Perry's character was supposed to be having his third child with his wife and had known his work partner since they were at school together. When Perry and Burns were exchanging lifelong memories in the many downtime moments in the film, it felt like they were just going through the motions of the words written in the script rather than having any emotional investment. I guess it just made it so obvious after seeing End of Watch, a film which has many flaws of its own but got the on-screen chemistry of its leads spot on.

Which brings me onto my next point, for an action/thriller film there were certainly plenty of boring moments. It felt like every single scene was entered too early, providing the audience with too much bogged down dialogue which didn't push the plot or characters forward. Banter in the car between Perry and Burns in the car before they got to the first Picasso crime scene was boring and dull. Any date nights and dialogue between Perry and Ejogo were boring and lacked any spark. The woman was pregnant for crying out loud, yet Perry didn't seem to have much of a reaction (I know it was going to be his third child with her, but still!)

Finally, the worst point of Alex Cross was the fact that when the film finally did pick up in the third act, the camera work was so damn shaky that you could literally see nothing that was happening. I'm all for shaky, hand-held camera work when necessary - heck, I could even stand a bit of the Bourne Identity's most shaky moments - but Alex Cross was so shaky that it was almost like it was trying to hide some bad production values or direction. With an ending reminiscent of Beyonce's so-bad-its-good thriller Obsessed, where the villain is left hanging from a damaged ceiling, not even then could it rack up the tension. Which is strange, because at the mid-point of the film, two successive events happen so quickly that it was easy for the film to create an atmosphere of "anything could literally happen" and "anyone could die at any minute". However, the third act is so paint-by-numbers that this is quickly diminished.

So, Alex Cross is a film that lies to its audience in the first instance by promising them an adaption of a book series, but actually delivers something else. It then disappoints its audience by being a lacklustre action film and a boring thriller film. It just fails on all accounts.

* / *****

REVIEW: End of Watch

Found footage. It's everywhere. It's infecting cinemas and the films that are being shown in them.

It was revolutionary back in the 1990s, (namely with The Blair Witch Project) but now it seriously comes off as "old hat" and a hinderance to the story being told.

Who seriously records that much? How many different people carry cameras at the same time? And more importantly, who edits this 'found footage' into a coherent film?

End of Watch doesn't dodge these problems, but hits them head-on. Unfortunately, it only poses a problem for the opening of the film as the story being told and the characters being presented to us are engaging enough to forget that we are watching a found footage film.

End of Watch follows two buddy cops, Brian Taylor (Jake Gyllenhaal) and Mike Zavala (Michael Peña) who are back patrolling Los Angeles' mean streets after a blip involving a shooting and their names having to be cleared. The two cops are pretty much the stereotype cut-outs that we expect - Taylor being the cocky joker with the new budding relationship with Janet (Anna Kendrick), whereas Zavala is the settled married man, who has a baby on the way with his wife, Gabby (Natalie Martinez). It's when Taylor and Zavala carry out a random money/guns bust, they are targeted to be killed by the largely unseen cartel leader.

That's largely it, because the film largely focuses on Taylor and Zavala's relationship as the buddy around together on every day routine call-outs, including missing children, drugs busts and house fires. Oh, if the stereotypes of Taylor and Zavala weren't enough, there is also the mean, controlling Sarge (Frank Grillo), the annoying cop who plays by the book, Van Hauser (David Harbour), the tough female buddy duo Orozco (America Ferrera) and Davis (Cody Horn) and finally the rookie cop who really isn't cut-out for the job, Sook (Kristy Wu). Fortunately though, the film decides to largely gloss over the supporting characters as the film gives plenty of screen time to Gyllenhaal and Peña to truly blossom as characters and make us care for them as 'brothers', much like they see each other.

Pre-screen press material has hinted at the amount of time that Gyllenhaal and Peña spent with the real LAPD and in each others company to build a relationship and it's certainly paid off. Their friendship is effortless on screen - when they laugh and joke about each others relationships, it's like they actually have been friends for years and when they go through pain/heartache, they are there for each other like true brothers.

Unfortunately, for everything the film and the filmmakers get right with Gyllenhaal and Peña's on-screen relationship, they completely mess up with the cartel gang that are set to kill our protagonists. Demon (Richard Cabral), Wicked (Diamonique), Big Evil (Maurice Compte), La La (Yahira Garcia) and Peanut (Alvin Norman) are completely underdeveloped. They are introduced strongly enough, by gunning down and completely destroying a rival gangs barbecue and then hinted at some long standing ties with the LAPD, but then they practically disappear for the entire second act of the film. The threat to Taylor and Zavala is largely unseen and just hinted at through clues from other members of the LAPD and a weird night-vision sight on the Cartel boss who gives the order to kill Taylor and Zavala. Then, when the Cartel cronies are brought back into the film for the third act, they are caricatures of the characters that they were introduced as - shouting each other down with inane dialogue about having to come up with a 'plan' to kill the cops, calling each other and other people "Puta" a lot and then finally throwing in enough swearing, that frankly, a person who suffers with tourettes would be ashamed of. When the gang deliver the final blow of the third act, it frankly falls a little bit flat as they just aren't the strong antagonists that the film needs them to be.

Secondly, the direction and filming style from David Ayer was nauseating at times. I get the hand-held style of the film was meant to be hand-held, but it's established that there are three cameras (two that are attached to Taylor and Zavala's uniforms and then one hand-held one), but the editing of the film suggests that they were surrounded by about 10 cameras. It made the whole point of the film being found-footage to be redundant. If Ayer had decided to keep the three gritty hand-held cameras but then juxtapose them against some beautifully shot cinematography, it would have arguably been more effective. Instead, we get shaky camera work that brings on bouts of motion sickness, because Ayer obviously thought that the hand-held style would bring a real sense to the film. But, it didn't.

So, for everything that End of Watch gets right, it arguably has something that equally brings it down. It's like Ayer focussed so much on getting the budding relationship between Gyllenhaal and Peña right, that he overlooked other aspects of the film.

*** / *****