Film
This film should come as a welcome relief from the summer of sequels and Freddie Prinze Jnr-ridden hashes. The cast of Marlon Brando, Robert De Niro and Edward Norton has led hyperbolic reviewers into paroxysms of delight as they gush forth on the magnificence of a project uniting what they have called the "three greatest actors of their generations." However, just as Norton has candidly admitted in his interviews, it's the thought of the poster that's pulled them in.
Feel free to skip on if you've heard this before, just be aware that you can't do that in the cinema. De Niro plays Nick, a life-long professional conman who's giving it all up to pursue the more respectable, but no less clichéd, persona of Nick, the loving husband who just wants to run his jazz club. Brando is De Niro's fence who pulls him back in and teams him up with newcomer Jackie (Norton) for the famous elast heist' to steal a priceless gold sceptre from the customs house.
The plot is as flabby and improbable as the sight of balaclava-ridden septuagenarian De Niro dangling precariously above the infrared detectors. The eone last job' set-up, and obligatory double-crossing etwists', were done to far greater effect earlier in the summer by Swordfish and Blow. Despite the spectacular cast, Norton seems to be the only member of it to give his role any attention, possibly because he has the most to lose. The effect is destroyed, however, by the fact that his retarded character is revealed as a ruse in his first scene, and we all saw his talent to splice characters in his 1996 Academy-Award nominated Primal Fear. However, no matter how sharp the division between eJackie' the thief and eDanny' the retarded janitor, he couldn't hope to out-schizophrenic Angela Basset's performance as De Niro's long-suffering girlfriend. No character could have a more cursory role, and yet the coldness with which she manages to paralyse it leaves the drama of the will-he/won't-he get the girl story line totally lacking.
The first shot of the film's most illustrious star shows the monolithic Brando from behind, practically mincing through the bar, dressed in a white suit and trilling ebonjour'. It couldn't get more camp and, at this stage in his career, it's clear why Marlon Brando seems to be the only one enjoying his role: his fee must be comparable to De Niro's, and there are rumours that director Frank Oz was continually bullied by him on set. The great actor, although withholding any of the intensity with which he could have played the part, gives the film a much-needed injection of relaxed kitschness. He seems to be the only actor comfortable in the crucial scenes which join all three renowned men together - Norton is as eager as his character for the approval of the legends above him, and De Niro seems bored by all but the reported $15 million fee.
But the actors are simply reacting to the lazy plot line, and more specifically, the clunking direction by Frank Oz. In a desperate effort to engage the audience and inject the tension lacking in the basic story, Oz employs classic techniques to raise suspense. However, someone should have explained that basic biology prevents an audience from biting its collective fingernails for thirty minutes if there's not going to be a few surprises. Instead, Oz relies on repetitive, nerve-inducing music and heavy-handed close-ups to bring you to the edge of your seat. Sustaining such an approach for the 30 minutes he decided to give the heist, however, leaves the lens practically in De Niro's pores as Oz desperately scrabbles for the drama that is oddly absent in this thriller. Sadly, unlike The Sixth Sense, no one will ask you if you've seen this film before they discuss it with you - there's no chance of spoiling the ending.
Lucy CoggleRich Sracken
Call it prejudice, call it snobbery, but I just can't muster any enthusiasm whatsoever about the prospect of a film which effortlessly unites two of my most irksome bugaboos, namely mid-budget brit-flicks pushed relentlessly due to the presence of a credible actor in the lead role, and men being boringly enthusiastic about football. The premise of the movie is that an inept small-time soccer boss and armchair pundit is suddenly thrust into the job of England Manager (his name is Mike Bassett, in case you were worrying about that element of the title I didn't deal with). Predictably, he's rubbish, and from there the humour arises, or so we're told.
Flimsy as the premise may sound, the fim's script is surprisingly sharp throughout, with the faux-documentary style, complete with tight-lipped commentary by Martin Bashir, providing a few moments of People Like Us-type sublimity which are complemented by the impeccable timing of Ricky Tomlinson (Bassett). Mildly-humourous stereotypes of tanked-up fans and incoherent commentators abound, while the occasional flash of brilliant satire lays bare the utter ridiculousness of our nation's obsession with eleven men kicking around a ball.
But the most enduring emotion this film inspires is not, as one might expect, amusement, but instead eerie deja-vu. It seems that while American directors are perfectly happy making films about everything from the Cuban Missile crisis to the life and times of Frieda Kahlo, we benighted Brits feel we really ought to stick to what we're good at, namely being self-consciously British. Hence wave upon wave of uninspired cockney gangster flicks (Lock Stock, Snatch, Essex Boys), films about the inimitable humour and spirit of people not from London (Brassed Off, The Full Monty, Lucky Break), or movies in which Hugh Grant stammers, has annoying hair and drinks tea (every other British film ever made). So the idea, pitched enthusiastically in a boardroom somewhere around eighteen months ago, that football would make an excellent premise for a high-profile British comedy deserved, in my opinion, to be answered by a long, awkward silence in which everyone exchanged nervous looks, a church clock chimed and some tumbleweed rolled by.
Still, there's a certain buoyancy about the film that makes it difficult to dislike, and the gooier, more patriotic moments are redeemed in part by the sight of celebrities ranging from the seriously well-respected to the desperately publicity hungry lining up to make tits of themselves (the words Atomic and Kitten spring to mind). It's a film you'll enjoy if you're hopelessly obsessed by Ricky Tomlinson, or football, or preferably both. Otherwise, why not spend that spare hour and a half racking your brains for a football-related pun with which to end an article? God knows I did.
Heleina Postings
Enigma has received plenty of media attention in recent weeks, since it emerged that the newly-svelte Kate Winslet had shed not only several pounds, but also her husband, and had reportedly been spending a significant amount of time with her dashing (and married) co-star Dougray Scott. It's a shame, really, seeing as this is the sort of film that is perfectly capable of standing on its own two feet as a stylish and polished war movie without the added intrigue of a sordid on-set romance. But then, this wrongly-focused attention fits in perfectly with the film's whole approach.
The story upon which the film and its precursor, Robert Harris's book, are based is a truly amazing one. A team of codebreakers at Bletchley Park, led by the mathematician Tom Jericho (Scott), realise they will be able to crack the Nazi's most complex code by studying the position of the U-boats in the forthcoming landings. But in order to crack the code, the convoy of allied boats will have to be sacrificed with the loss of hundreds of lives. Tense stuff, but, it seems, not tense enough. Instead of allowing his narrative to create momentum, director Michael Apted felt he had to bolster his already fascinating raw material with countless nods to the traditional action-movie genre. Car chases and rogue exploding submarines distract from the power of the narrative and compromise its subtle power. There's drama enough in the fact that the activity of a tiny group of people sequestered in an English village managed to alter the course of the Second World War, but much of it isn't sufficiently brought out; Tom Stoppards's script doesn't mention the fact that the team involved in the Enigma operation had to fight constantly to have their ideas accepted by the British Military services, and were seen as being peripherary to the war effort for many years.
You get the sense throughout that Enigma longs to be a fast n' furious thriller, full of loud bangs and cartoon-like villains. But in the end, it never quite manages to shed its almost cosy, pipe-and-slippers, Sunday evening TV-movie feel, and is a better, subtler film for it.
Tom Rivers
If films were cakes, this would be one of those great big éclairs filled with jam and cream and more cream and funny swirly stuff. But much, much weirder, and in French.
Amelie Poulain, played by Audrey Tatou, is the elfin heroine upon whose powerful imaginative faculites the film is based. Her life working as a waitress in a Parisian café sounds fairly mundane, but don't be fooled; any veneer of normality this film has is extremely thin indeed. This is due to the fact that the idealistic Amelie, having already created her own private universe, takes it upon herself to improve the lives of her eccentric customers, right wrongs and generally make the world a sunnier place. Her child-like visions of reality are portrayed beautifully in the film, which is at its best when it is allowed to momentarily abandon plot and concentrate on simply painting pictures instead. But the inevitable difficulties arise when Amelie finds herself falling for the the handsome, mysterious and obviously hopelessly unsuitable Nino (Mathieu Kassowitz). She must attempt to assimilate her benign games with the adult world of emotion that Nino represents.
Visually, Amelie is always engaging and occasionally stunning, with director Jean-Pierre Jeunet creating a vision of a Paris which is magical, mysterious and dripping with colour. It's taking the idea of the feel-good movie to a whole new level; there's absolutely no attempt made to show the city as it really is, haunted, as all modern cities are, by poverty and racial tension. Instead, we are given a dream-like tour through cobbled streets lined with tiny cafes while a lone accordion plays in the background. It's an approach which is somehow refreshing and liberating, albeit, perhaps, difficult to justify.
After the first hour, though, all this saccharine escapsim begins to grate, both because Jeunet's breathless, hyper-real visuals have ceased to be a novelty and also because the narrative loses momentum at a rate of knots once its initial premises are established. The sub-plots become ever more unlikely, and we begin to lose sight of Amelie herself amongst the detritus of her vibrant imagined world. It also begins to emerge that the script, co-written by Jeunet and Guillaume Laurent, can't keep up with the often inspired direction. Two hours, you begin to realise, is a long time to be stuck in an intense, often garish universe that bears little relation to real life; that jam-smothered éclair looks great, but eating a whole one makes you feel ever so slightly nauseous.
These problems, however, are never enough to seriously compromise the film; overall, it remains witty and tremendously stylish. Amelie is a vivid, charming film that's definitely worth a look; seven million French people can't be wrong.
Jennifer Newman
4th Oct 2001