Film Review | Tyrannosaur (2011)

Paddy Considine the actor has attempted a diapason of roles, from revenge-consumed former soldier Richard in Dead Man's Shoes to one half of the "Andys", the detective double act seen in Hot Fuzz. Considine the director opted very much for a bleak and heavily realistic tone closer to his dramatic work with Shane Meadows for his feature debut. It's one decision of many which make Tyrannosaur surely one of the strongest inaugural works seen from any director in some time.

Considine's film is confident and mature showing an understanding for the director's craft that perhaps even surpasses his acting ability, with shot after shot crafted expertly and presenting the bleak and angry version of Britain Considine clearly wants us to see. It's hard to place Tyrannosaur geographically to one place: despite being filmed in Yorkshire there's very little to tie the film to that part of the country, and many of the actors perform using their natural accents making things even less clear. It's a clever choice from Considine as director, giving the film's message about the nature of humanity a feel of universality.

The film's strongest element alongside the direction of Considine is in its cast. Peter Mullan's performance as anger-infused alcoholic widower Joseph is incredibly powerful, creating an enigmatic anti-hero by turns both inspiring and repulsive. Olivia Colman opposite him as Hannah is quite simply extraordinary in a demanding role, delivering incredible raw emotion throughout. Completing the trifecta is Eddie Marsan as Hannah's husband James creating surely one of the most loathsome male characters seen on screen for some time through an unsettlingly authentic turn.

Considine's choice to make his film relentlessly bleak and unforgiving allows the director to produce some incredibly effective and hard-hitting drama, but it's also the main factor that holds the film back from perfection. Watching Tyrannosaur could never be accurately described as enjoyable. It's a film to appreciate, admire and applaud, but its persistently harrowing nature does make it hard viewing at times. When the lightest and most upbeat moments of a film happen during a funeral and wake, you know you're in for a punishing cinematic experience. Occasionally too Considine threatens to allow the brutality of Tyrannosaur's world to overflow into the ludicrous; it never happens, but the film teeters on the brink once or twice.

If you can take Tyrannosaur's perpetually angry and savage perspective, this is a film which will reward you with some of the finest contemporary British cinema you're likely to experience. It forms an astounding debut for Considine as a director, and will leave you excited for the actor's next venture behind the camera.

8/10

Film Review | Sherlock Holmes: A Game Of Shadows (2011)

In 2009's Sherlock Holmes, Guy Ritchie delivered a flawed but enjoyable new take on one of British literature's most loved characters. Whilst the film was far from perfect, it felt like a solid platform upon which to launch future installments in a new franchise where the faults could be remedied and the successful elements - not least the central performance from Robert Downey Jr. - could be capitalised upon. Unfortunately, Sherlock Holmes: A Game Of Shadows almost comprehensively fails to do that.

The film catches up with Holmes (Downey Jr.) investigating links between a series of crimes across Europe and Professor James Moriarty (Jared Harris) following the tip he received from Irene Adler (Rachel McAdams) at the end of the first film. Watson (Jude Law) meanwhile is preparing to marry his fiancée Mary (Kelly Reilly), but soon becomes embroiled in Holmes and Moriarty's game of cat and mouse.

Downey Jr. as Holmes again delivers the strongest performance here, slipping comfortably back into the mannerisms and personality he successfully established in Sherlock Holmes. It's unfortunate that Holmes this time is regularly written as self-parodical of the character Downey Jr. created, adopting a series of ridiculous and entirely unconvincing disguises throughout the film and transforming the character from manic genius to harebrained clown. Law too falls back into the character of Watson comfortably, but suffers from sharing less screen time with Holmes than in the first film and feeling like a half-hearted straight man to Holmes' fool when he does.

Elsewhere, the casting is a mixed bag. The biggest improvement from the first film is the reduction of McAdams' role as Irene Adler to not much more than a cameo. Noomi Rapace replaces McAdams as the film's main female character, and is much stronger than her predecessor at the points when she is given something to do. Jared Harris as Moriarty does well enough, but feels somewhat forgettable considering he is playing Holmes' archenemy. Stephen Fry as Mycroft Holmes, Sherlock's older brother, is sure to raise a smile in his first scene despite the fact that he is essentially playing the character as himself; the appeal is short-lived however as it's clear the plot has nothing of worth for Fry's character to do, epitomised in a scene between Mycroft and Mary which Fry inexplicably delivers naked. Pointless and unfunny.

The action scenes that irked in the first film are more overblown here to the point of overindulgence. Each sequence essentially comes across as an excuse for Ritchie to include bigger and more powerful guns than were seen in the last point of action. The excessive use of slow motion, particularly in one scene towards the end of the second act, is also distracting and just serves to make the film come across as lacking in craft or depth.

Whilst the story here is arguably stronger than that seen in the first film, the cinematic execution of A Game Of Shadows makes it considerably less enjoyable than Sherlock Holmes. Despite setting up several elements with which he could run and make a sequel superior to the original, Ritchie instead squanders most of the potential held and creates a film which is sometimes no better than the first, but more often inferior. The biggest failing of A Game Of Shadows, however, is that it manages to take a literary character known for his ingenious intellect and churn out a film which regularly feels really quite brainless.

4/10

Film Review | Sherlock Holmes (2009)

The first ten years of the 21st Century will almost certainly be seen in cinema as the decade of the reboot. I've written at length about the importance of hitting the reset button for both the Batman and James Bond franchises, but Arthur Conan Doyle's consulting detective was a less obvious and, perhaps, less urgent candidate for rebooting. Add in the fact that the man behind the reboot is Guy Ritchie, a director known for British gangster flicks rather than adaptations of Victorian literature, and all of a sudden 2009's Sherlock Holmes becomes a more intriguing and unpredictable creature.

Ritchie's film sees the titular detective (Robert Downey Jr.) and his friend and partner Dr. John Watson (Jude Law) assist the police in arresting Lord Blackwood (Mark Strong) for a series of murders. However, when Blackwood appears to have risen from the grave after being hanged for his crimes, Holmes and Watson's  investigations take a more sinister and supernatural turn.

It's clear from the very start that Ritchie's vision for his version of Conan Doyle's detective is quite far removed from the deerstalker wearing gent of past incarnations. Downey Jr. makes his Holmes an alluring and unconventional take on the character; whilst it never feels as though he quite fits the role as perfectly as he does Tony Stark in the Marvel Cinematic Universe, his performance in the role is compelling and strong throughout. Law also does well as Watson, again going against the stereotypical depiction of the character and instead playing things much closer to Conan Doyle's source material, focusing on Watson's status as a war veteran to generate the character's temperament and physicality. Whilst his turn is pleasing, Law is most entertaining when sharing the screen with Downey Jr., which thankfully for him takes in the vast majority of his scenes.

Elsewhere the casting is less successful. Rachel McAdams as Holmes' shady love interest Irene Adler never convinces, having neither the chemistry with Downey Jr. nor the presence on screen to make her character entertaining, mysterious or, at some points, necessary. Mark Strong is fine, but never receives enough screen time to make Lord Blackwood anything more than a scowling villain. Eddie Marsan also does well as Inspector Lestrade, but again the character just receives too little development to give the actor a chance to genuinely impress.

The film's plot, not taken directly from any of Conan Doyle's stories but instead inspired by elements from several of his works, engages well enough throughout, but suffers from a final act that can't quite live up to the mystery generated before it and a climax that underwhelms. The action elements throughout the film also jar too much with the detective story into which they have been placed. An underground bareknuckle fight Holmes takes part in early on in the film works well, revealing elements of the detective's character cleverly and enjoyably. Other sequences that see Holmes and Watson brawling with various baddies through Victorian London are uninspired, adding nothing to the story and feeling as though they are only there because director Ritchie doesn't know how else to link his film together.

Sherlock Holmes ends up, at least in part, as a wasted opportunity. There are several elements here that reboot the character and universe of Holmes incredibly well, led by a robust and compelling performance from Downey Jr. But there are also too many areas in which the film falls short or misfires to judge it as a true success. What we're left with is a good film that entertains well enough, but also feels as though it doesn't do enough with the ideas it has and the rich literary source material from which it takes inspiration.  But there's enough here to launch the franchise, with future installments having the potential to remedy the less successful elements and create something genuinely pleasing.

6/10

Film Review | War Horse (2011)

My anticipation of War Horse was perhaps significantly less than that of many. I haven't read Michael Morpurgo's children's novel, now thirty years old, from which the film is adapted; nor have I seen the acclaimed West End production, perhaps most famous for its intricate and impressive full-size horse puppets and the realistic way in which they are brought to life by those operating them. In fact, the biggest draw of the film for me was Steven Spielberg sitting in the director's chair revisiting wartime Europe once again. Nominated for a multitude of awards, including a Best Picture nod as well as five other Oscars at this year's Academy Awards, War Horse certainly on paper held a wealth of potential to be another Spielberg classic.

Beginning shortly before the beginning of the First World War, War Horse follows the life of a horse named Joey, raised and trained by teenager Albert Narracott (Jeremy Irvine) on his father's (Peter Mullan) farm in the Devon countryside, before being sold to the British Army in 1914 when war breaks out.

Joey's story takes him through a wealth of settings, from his beginnings as an unlikely plough horse in Devon through to wartime France at various stages of the war. It's a journey which allows Spielberg as director to create some beautiful and captivating sequences. The cavalry charge beginning in a French cornfield is particularly memorable, as is the scene which sees a terrified Joey hurtling through both British and German trenches before becoming stranded in the middle of no man's land.

Unfortunately, the cinematography of these scenes can only be appreciated in isolation. Structurally, the film is decidedly unsatisfying, with Joey's story moving too hurriedly from one set of human characters to the next. No sooner do we feel settled in Spielberg's decidedly chocolate box vision of early 20th Century Devon at the start of the film than the director moves us on to a new set of characters. Tom Hiddleston as Captain Nicholls, Joey's next owner, is undoubtedly one of the film's strongest characters thanks to the talented actor's performance, but we simply aren't afforded the time to get to know him well enough to truly invest. It's a pattern which happens again and again until the film's conclusion thanks to the plot's rigidly episodic structure. It's a source of constant frustration: other enjoyable talents such as Benedict Cumberbatch, David Thewlis and Toby Kebbell receive just enough screen time for us to want to get to know them better, before being snatched from under our noses, thereby building up layer upon layer of unsatisfying and underdeveloped character arcs.

Tonally, the film ranges from the stark realism of the battle scenes, to the heavy-handed sentimentality of much of the final act, to - perhaps least satisfying of all - the ill-advised and amateurish humour generated by a meeting between a British and German soldier in the middle of no man's land, united in their desire to help the injured Joey. In the end, War Horse ends up as a film which never manages to develop fully, and doesn't have a strong or consistent enough script to prop it up. With a running time at least half an hour too long and a host of British talent that deserve meaty roles to sink their teeth into, but end up with extended cameos at best, it's a film which ultimately puts style over substance. Aside from a few directorial flourishes from Spielberg, War Horse ends up as a shallow and mediocre melodrama.

5/10