Mish Mash 25 (The Guilty, All Square, Inside Moves, The Boys from Brazil)

The Guilty

This Danish high concept thriller is fucking phenomenal.  The entire thing takes place in an emergency call center where they get a ring from a lady who says she’s been kidnapped.  You can hear she’s upset, frightened and barely holding it together on the phone.  The operator trying to help her through the situation is a cop who’s on phone duty as punishment for some shady shit he did as a patrolman.  He’s pretty good at detecting though because from previous calls he can tell pretty quickly when someone’s freaking out on drugs and when some dude obviously got ripped off by a prostitute but refuses to admit it.  He has a strong intuition.  Unfortunately he doesn’t always use it for good.

So we got a nail biter if I ever saw one.  All the action is left to your imagination leaving a powerful impression.  The only bits we have to go on are voices on a phone and the protagonist’s facial and body language.  It’s so fucking intense because you can’t see what’s happening on the other end of the goddamn line.  You feel like you’re drowning in helplessness. 

And I couldn’t stop thinking about the people that do this job for real every day.  I don’t know how many calls involve a circumstance this dire with an abduction and little children in danger but even one in a rare while has gotta drive you insane.

With something like this that’s very play-like and essentially a one man show it becomes extremely fragile.  The script has to be perfect, the performances have to land flawlessly, the shooting has to be dynamic enough to keep the audience engaged, the audio has to be clear yet slightly distorted to give agonizing distance between the victim and their lifeline and the editing has to be spot on to achieve just the right flow.  It seems like such a difficult film to make and they knocked it out of the park.  One of the quickest and most suspenseful ninety mins I’ve ever experienced.

(An American remake is coming out sometime soon but I can’t imagine it getting any better than this)

 

All Square

John Hyams’ (Universal Soldier: Regeneration) dramedy about a bookie named John (Michael Kelly (House of Cards, Law Abiding Citizen)) who has the genius idea of placing bets on little league games is really nice.  It’s full of genuinely tense moments like when John has trouble covering an unusually large bet and gets a visit from some goons.  And there are genuinely funny moments like when the parents and drunken onlookers who have money riding on the little league matchups take the games waaaaay too seriously.  Of course John doesn’t see an issue with this.

More of a character study than anything else John is an interesting guy.  He was moving through the baseball farm system when a family tragedy forced him to give up his dream.  He’s been fiercely bitter ever since and doesn’t take shit from nobody. Well, except when he gets sucker punched.  His morals are definitely screwed up with the little league scam but he also befriends one of the kids and teaches him how to pitch.  Maybe he doesn’t always give the best advice but deep down he’s got a heart and sometimes he listens to it.

If any of this sounds familiar that’s because it’s basically a better twist on The Bad News Bears.  They share a number of the same attributes like the beer guzzling protagonist who once played semi-pro ball with questionable ethics who inexplicably gets involved in little league, there’s a dickhead coach of one of the teams (played by Josh Lucas (American Psycho)) and there are lessons about integrity and sportsmanship, etc.

Hyams continues to be one of the most overlooked/underrated directors out there and further shows he has range beyond action/thriller material (he also made an excellent doc on MMA fighter Mark Kerr (The Smashing Machine) and one on bull riding (Rank)).  In fact I liked this better than his newest serial killer thriller Alone.  So put this one on the bump for a few innings.  It’s got good stuff.

 

Inside Moves

Here’s another sports related picture in this particular jumble except this time it’s basketball.  Honestly there’s too much story to give a decent synopsis but very basically it’s about these two guys and their friendship.  Bartender Jerry (David Morse (The Long Kiss Goodnight) in his debut) is a very affable guy who’s really good at basketball but he has something wrong with his leg.  He limps and that prevents him from being an exceptional professional level player.  Roary (John Savage (Do the Right Thing)) recently recovered from attempting suicide by jumping out of a window.  He now walks with a terrible hobble and starts off awkward around people.  Eventually though they help each other out with Roary working towards getting Jerry the surgery he needs to remove his limp and Jerry bringing Roary out of his shell to the point where he might be able to overcome his crippling suicidal depression.

It’s a beautiful picture with a positive message that I absolutely dig.  There’s a theme of overcoming one’s disability and the bar where Jerry and Roary work are full of folks with some sort of hindrance.  A blind man, a man in a wheelchair and a double hand amputee are their best friends who they hang out and bullshit with all day long.  They find strength in each other to keep moving forward.

The performances are the definite standouts here with Savage and Morse slaying it.  It looks like Savage had to distort his body in a pretty extreme manner due to the brace on his leg and Morse must’ve had to practice his basketball moves because he makes a lot of the shots for real.  Beyond the physical the emotional turmoil they go through with all the baggage they carry around inside is heartbreaking and ultimately uplifting.  Morse and Savage had to exude a warmth but be standoffish at the same time which couldn’t have been easy.

Interestingly this was Richard Donner’s follow up to Superman (or Superman II I suppose would be more accurate) which is about as far from a comic book movie as you can get.  Donner does such a great job developing the characters in a natural way while never losing sight that their progress could be erased at any moment.  Even though he was known more for action pictures he could turn on the tragedy and drama when he wanted to.  Sadly he died last month so let’s honor his memory by remembering a real masterpiece of his.

The Boys from Brazil

Let’s completely switch gears and talk about The Boys from Brazil for a moment.  It’s about Josef Mangele (notorious Nazi doctor who brutally experimented on concentration camp prisoners during WWII) and his attempt to bring the Nazis to power once again from his home base in modern day (70’s) Paraguay.  What I mainly want to point out is Gregory Peck’s (Cape Fear, Roman Holiday) performance as Mengele because he hadn’t really played a villain before, at least not to this extent where he’s a soulless monster.  Peck is imposing, commanding, charming when he wants to be, ruthless and creepy as a sonuvabitch.  His monologue towards the end about his plan for world domination is riveting and spooky with the camera right up in his face making you feel even more uncomfortable.  I also love the scene where he’s at a party and spots one of his soldiers who he thinks should be on an assassination mission in another country.  He freaks the fuck out and tackles the guy right into the buffet table.  It turns out to be a misunderstanding but the incident shows you how serious Mengele is taking the operation.

Lawrence Olivier (Dracula (1979), The Bounty) does a great job too as a Nazi hunter who’s trying to piece together what the fuck Mengele is up to.  I definitely don’t want to leave him out of the discussion because he turns in a memorable performance as well.  He gives a lot of character to someone who could’ve been very bland by playing him hard boiled towards his allies and enemies but sympathetic towards the victims.  He’s not some master sleuth but a guy doing what he can to protect the world from war criminals that seek to destroy it.

And the plot to the movie could’ve been played as a straight up horror picture which would’ve been kinda neat.  Instead they go for a thriller which is the smarter route because it brings the material into the realm of reality just enough to give it some weight while the core concept remains wacky enough that you can still have fun with it.  If you stop and think about what Mengele tries to pull off though it’s really fucking disturbing.  And as a capper the final moments leave you with a fascinating moral thought experiment.  Anyway, pretty engaging movie.  Check it out.