Deepwater Horizon

This review was first published by The Student Pocket Guide

For many, director Peter Berg will be forever associated with Battleship – the 2012 action blockbuster in which any sense of character or narrative was swamped under waves of special effects and explosions. Oh, and the bizarre appearance of pop star Rihanna who occasionally muttered one-liners whilst shooting aliens. 

A year later, Berg went on to direct Mark Wahlberg in the war film Lone Survivor. Fast-forward to 2016 and he has again hooked up with Wahlberg and returned to the ocean, this time in Deepwater Horizon which follows the real-life events that resulted in the worst oil spill in the history of the United States. The event was an environmental catastrophe but the human tragedies which unfolded on that April night back in 2010 are often forgotten. Deepwater Horizon is a compelling account of the spill which left eleven men dead. 

There’s little doubt about the identity of the villain in Deepwater Horizon: BP. In a “you couldn’t make it up” twist, on the day of the disaster, a few bigwigs from the petroleum company were visiting the Deepwater Horizon oil rig to celebrate its safety record. In the film, this ironic committee is headed by John Malkovich who, in a rather manic performance, pressures the rig’s workers into restarting pumping oil from the sea bed, in spite of several safety concerns. Time, after all, is money. Such a decision, of course, leads to disaster, and the film follows engineer Mike Williams (Wahlberg) as he battles to save both his own life and the lives of his fellow workers. 

The film opens with the fairly standard disaster film characterisation which is meant to make an audience care about the characters over the coming two hours. We see everyman Mike at home with his wife (played by Kate Hudson) and his daughter, who would like nothing better than for her dad to bring back a dinosaur fossil from his explorations at the rig. This backstory is competently outlined and, it turns out, is the deepest characterisation of the whole film. Once on the rig, we’re given brief, thumbnail sketches of the other characters, enough to work out that Kurt Russell is the father-figure of the rig who objects to being ordered about by BP’s executives, and that Gina Rodrigues (giving a nice performance) is the rig’s only female worker. 

What the screenplay reveals in more depth, in contrast, is the technical jargon and physics of oil rigging. You’ll leave the cinema knowing a lot more about negative pressure tests, blow out preventers and kill lines than you ever thought you would. This exposition-heavy first act does surprisingly well to racket up the tension and anticipation of the eventual disaster, which comes as a very abrupt explosion of mud and oil. The resulting fireball which engulfs the floating rig is realised with great realism, and the sound design, too, brings events sharply – and horrifically – into focus. 

Once fires have begun to rage, the action is sustained well and Wahlberg makes for a strong lead, especially in the more emotionally-charged scenes. Peter Berg has, rather surprisingly, reined himself in in terms of both the special effects and the film’s ending which, rather than saccharine reunions between rig workers and their families, chooses to focus on Wahlberg collapsing on the floor of a hotel, the shock and pain of events overwhelming him. This is nicely handled by Wahlberg, and Kate Hudson also gives a powerful performance. 

It’s a cliché that characters in disaster films always talk about their family left back at home, but in a chaotic, but moving scene, towards the film’s end, Wahlberg literally shouts at Gina Rodrigues’ character about his need to see his wife and daughter again. This is the real and distressing human dimension of the disaster and gives the film its raison d’être.    

The environmental costs of the BP oil spill were, of course, massive. Equally emotive are the stories of those who worked on the rig and Deepwater Horizon tells their story with sensitivity. The special effects carry a weight to them which is underpinned by the great performances from the cast. Fundamentally a tale of corporate greed, this is a worthy cinematic tribute to those who died. 

Clapperboard Review: * * *

Bridget Jones's Baby

 This review was first published by The Student Pocket Guide

Many people will have had a Bridget Jones moment. You know, when you end up sitting at home on a Friday night, all alone, bucket-sized glass of wine in-hand and singing/sobbing along to “All By Myself”. Since her big-screen debut back in 2001, Miss Jones has become something of a cultural icon – symbolising the ultimate thirty-something, middle-class woman with a disastrous love-life and a keen appreciation for alcohol. 

The success of the character – and the chord it struck with millions – is largely down to Renée Zellweger, whose easy on-screen charm and warmth endeared Bridget to audiences the world over. Perhaps the ultimate testament to her performance is the fact the hostility which greeted news of an American being cast as the British Bridget was soon forgotten. After the success of Bridget Jones’s Diary, a second film followed and now, a third has just hit cinemas. And what fun it is!

As with any comedy, Bridget Jones’s Baby would live or die by its script. After the tonally-misjudged Bridget Jones: The Edge of Reason (which, bizarrely, saw action zip across to a Thai prison), the humour in the latest film is, thankfully, consistently funny, and some of the jokes are laugh-out-loud hysterical. We join Bridget spending the evening of her forty-third birthday alone in her flat with her love life in tatters after breaking up with the love of her life, Mark Darcy (Colin Firth). Her career as a cable news producer, on the other hand, is going great-guns and, keen to reinvigorate Bridget’s personal life, one of her colleagues invites her to a music festival for a bit of glamping. 

A key component of this trip is, of course, getting Bridget to interact with members of the opposite sex – quite a feat when she ends up falling face-first into the festival mud. A knight in shining armour in the form of billionaire Jack Qwant (played by Patrick Dempsey) is on hand, however, to pluck Bridget from her floundering, and the pair end up sharing his yurt in a night of passion. A few weeks later, Bridget ends up falling into bed with her old flame, the emotionally reserved Mr Darcy and, as the film’s title would suggest, becomes pregnant. The only thing is, she doesn’t know if the child’s father is old-flame Darcy or newer-flame Qwant. 

Much of the comedy stems from her concealing this fact, confessing to it and dealing with the subsequent fall-out. The screenplay was originally written by creator Helen Fielding and Dan Mazer, and national treasure Emma Thompson was then brought in to help with a re-write. The result (for the most part) is lean and witty, only faltering in the third act when exploring Qwant and Darcy’s fractious relationship. Old characters make a welcome return, including Bridget’s parents played by Jim Broadbent and Gemma Jones. Her mother, this time, is running for “high office” in the local parish council and, on Bridget’s advice, updates her political campaign to better reflect modern Britain and represent “the majority of homosexuals”. 

Renée Zellweger must take much of the credit for the film’s success, anchoring the rather contrived plot with a credibility and geniality which is very engaging. Sharon Maguire (who directed the first film) returns to direct again, and her skill is evident throughout. Emma Thompson has given herself a part as Bridget’s no-nonsense gynaecologist and creates many laughs, especially when warning Qwant and Darcy that witnessing Bridget in labour might not be a wise idea: “my ex-husband said it was like watching his favourite pub burn down”. This being a Bridget Jones film, there’s a lot of sexual humour and swearing, but it always stays on the right side of the line and seeing Bridget in her work environment, complete with hipster boss, also creates plenty of new laughs. 

With old and new characters alike, the supporting cast bounces off one another and Zellweger, Firth and Dempsey do well to handle the humour, with moments of slapstick comedy which culminate in an in-labour Bridget being man-handled through a revolving door. All the rom-com requirements are hit and never feel laboured (if you’ll pardon the pun).

Bridget Jones’s Baby ditches the high-jinks of the previous film and is a warm return to the characters and humour which fans will love. As the voice of Ellie Goulding rings across the closing credits, you’re left with a sense of immense satisfaction. Satisfied that Bridget might have everything worked out; satisfied that the comedy was very funny; and satisfied that no matter the current state of your love life, if Bridget can make it, so can you. 

Rating: * * * *

The Mechanic: Resurrection

This review was first published by The Student Pocket Guide

Hollywood action films are often hit by narrative famine. That is, they suffer a lack of decent story which results in a film which wastes away, leaving only a bare skeleton of action sequences with little coherence and even less impact.

Indeed, it would appear that Mechanic: Resurrection neglected to spend its budget on competent script writers, choosing instead to splash out on exotic locations for Jason Statham to run around and look generally menacing. Whether its Jason scaling Sydney skyscrapers or breaking into high-security South East Asian prisons, the action sequences are dramatic to watch, but without the underpinnings of an engaging plot, things never hang together. 

A few years ago, Jason Statham became Arthur Bishop, an elite assassin and the titular character in The Mechanic, enhancing the very recognisable brand of tough-guy action hero which he firmly established in the Transporter series. A blend of Ethan Hunt, James Bond, Jack Reacher and Jason Bourne, Arthur Bishop’s talents lie in the ingenuity of his kills and his ability to go (largely) undetected during the process. 

In Mechanic: Resurrection, we find him in retirement, living a low-key life in Brazil which is rudely disrupted by a mysterious woman who tasks him with killing five people for her mysterious boss. The ensuing scenes establish a link with Bishop’s past and he finds himself zipping around the world to assassinate three arms dealers in order to save his new beau (played by Jessica Alba). 

Naturally, any sense of plausibility in films such as this goes out of the window, and the film’s messy plot is as believable as Team Brexit’s NHS claims. Coupled with the ridiculous narrative is the catastrophically awful dialogue which follows every action film cliché, right from Statham and Alba’s predictable relationship, to stereotypical bad-guy mutterings. Alba’s character, too, does little for gender politics, spending most of the film waiting around to be rescued by Statham.   

Despite Statham’s very watchable on-screen performance (and type casting which was very successfully exploited in the Melissa McCarthy comedy Spy), the special effects look like they were done about ten years ago, exemplified by a cable car fight sequence during the film’s opening which raised a few laughs in the audience – hardly the effect desired by director Dennis Gansel, I should think. Stiff dialogue and some very clunky mobile phone product placement only added to the general soulless feeling of the film.

The action zips around the globe, culminating in an encounter with Tommy Lee Jones as an eccentric arms dealer (complete with pink-tinted glasses and an Elton John sense of style) and the narrative even strays into moral questions surrounding arms dealing. Such discussion, however, is even more superficial than a Kardashian’s Instagram account, and things soon return to Statham shooting and punching his way around the superyacht of bad-guy Crain (played by Sam Hazeldine).

All in all, Mechanic: Resurrection satisfies the action blockbuster tick boxes of “wildly outrageous stunts”, “exotic locations” and “high body count” but, on all other levels, it fails with its lacklustre and erratic approach to plot or meaningful characters. Whilst Jason Statham does again prove that he’s a reliable action hero, shots of his chiselled torso strolling along a Thai beach don’t compensate for the awfully predictable script or the poorly-realised special effects. At its best, Mechanic: Resurrection is a diversionary 90 minutes with occasional moments of excitement. At its worst, it represents an underwhelming, rather cynical, corporate exercise in action film-making.

Clapperboard Rating: * *