Frozen

Dear Kristen Anderson-Lopez, Song Lyricist

When it comes to power couples on Broadway, you and your husband Robert Lopez are certainly the toast of the town. It makes sense that he, the two-time Tony award-winner for Avenue Q and The Book of Mormon, and you, with celebrated work on Winnie the Pooh and the Finding Nemo musical, would be hired to create the music for a film like Frozen. It also sounds a lot like, well, a Disney fairy tale. Which is only appropriate, I suppose, for an animated film that is a triumphant return-to-form for the storied company.

From the first musical notes, which evoke the tribal hymns of The Lion King, Frozen is warmly reminiscent of Disney’s animated classics. Like The Little Mermaid, it’s inspired by a Hans Christian Anderson story. It borrows elements from the Sleeping Beauty storyline. The world-building uses Beauty and the Beast’s approach to anthropomorphism, where magic can make objects talk but not animals – in this case, an aloof and ever optimistic snowman, Olaf (Josh Gadd), who also happens to be the best comic relief since Robin Williams’ Genie in Aladdin. One sequence with a snow monster even feels like it’s embracing stop-motion animation techniques from that beloved black sheep of the Disney family, The Nightmare Before Christmas. Yet even with all these comparisons, Frozen never feels derivative or parodical. Instead – and thanks to your music – it’s exactly what Disney fans have been waiting for.

The opening song “Frozen Heart” introduces us to the winter kingdom of Arendelle, with male labourers carving out blocks of ice to the rhythm of their deep baritone chants (inspired, no doubt, by Les Misérables show-opener “Look Down”). You then do a wonderful job of pushing the story along through the time-ellipsing heartbreaker “Do You Want to Build a Snowman?”, which transitions our child characters to their adult selves. The hopeful longing continues in the dueling performance of “For the First Time in Forever”, sung between two perspectives of sisters Anna (Kristen Bell) and Else (Idina Menzel). This is where even more of your eccentricities are allowed to shine through, with lyrics like “I don’t know if I’m elated or gassy, but I’m somewhere in that zone”. You also do something novel for Disney by having the characters speak in the repetitive and emphatic verbiage of teenage girls. Take this in stanza, for example:

There’ll be actual real live people
It’ll be totally strange
But wow, am I so ready for this change.

The songs just keep getting better, from the quirky sing-a-long “Love is an Open Door” to the slightly absurd but wonderfully dippy “Summer Song”. Sure, the film doesn’t have 90s-era Céline Dion or Elton John-esque power ballad, but that actually feels appropriate for a film that ultimately aims to subvert both story and song conventions whenever possible. You obviously wanted to put some distance between yourself and your predecessors Howard Ashman and Alan Menken. It works, and the film succeeds as a result.

So in that spirit, here’s hoping you and your husband can keep working in such “sync-ro-ni-city” and continue to finish each others… sandwiches. 

Sincerely,

Christopher

Status: Priority Post (4.5/5)

Kill Your Darlings

Dear Randall Poster, Music Supervisor,

Capturing the youthful rebellions of another time on film is tricky.  The things that once felt dangerous and subversive turn quaint as they become our parents and grandparents’ eras. By the time we hit great-grandparents, well, it’s hard to separate the rebels from the squares amongst all the period costumes and sets.  So it’s probably tempting to take a shortcut by giving modern audiences something familiar to grasp onto rather than doing a lot of world building. Too bad you gave in to this temptation by leaning on music from bands like TV On The Radio and Bloc Party to make-up for the faults in this mid-1940’s set film. 

Sure, if you were working with a director like Baz Luhrman, you could get away with it. But Luhrman is a magpie – he’s constructing his world out of those pieces. The mash-up is the point.  Unfortunately, in Kill Your Darlings, director John Krokidas seems to be asking something different of your soundtrack – he wants the jazz for the period feel, the classical music to show that his characters are intellectual, and the alt-pop to give them a more modern edge.  It ends up being a bad mix, with those contemporary songs belonging on an angsty teen TV show rather than a literary drama.

Based on an actual 1944 murder involving friends of the college-age pre-Beat writers, Allen Ginsberg, Jack Kerouac and William S. Burroughs, Kill Your Darlings is also meant to show the birth of a literary movement that resonated for decades.  Daniel Radcliffe at least does a good job of conveying the evolution of Ginsberg’s sexuality and writing style, things that would set him on the fringes of his society.

Unfortunately, the movie doesn’t show us what Ginsberg and his friends were rebelling against. The movie mentions homophobia, anti-Semitism, and the peril of a world at war, but they only give us a sense rather than the crushing weight it must have been.  The movie spends more time on the oppression of poetic rhyme schemes – deadening to be sure (especially to a music enthusiast like you), but not something that really engages the average audience.

As music supervisor, there are much better options you could have presented to the director.  Last year’s On the Road had its flaws, but it was able to convey the audacity of jazz.  It wasn’t fun swing, or moody torch songs, but raw-edged bebop.  In that movie, when we saw Kerouac and Ginsberg dancing sweaty in a proto-moshpit, it was easy to understand how this music would concern the authorities and stir up the youth.  Here, the most we see is Radcliffe doing some enthusiastic table drumming.  No wonder you and Krokidas thought you needed to bring in the modern music. 

That’s not to say that there aren’t things in the film that work and work well. Radcliffe and Michael C. Hall both do excellent jobs of making us forget that they’re best known for other work, and Ben Foster as Burroughs is a treat.  Dane DeHaan as the murderous Lucien Carr has the charm of a baby DiCaprio, though somewhat hampered by overly arch dialogue.  The story itself is an interesting one, with Hall’s character being both stalker and mentor to Carr, while Carr is manipulative enough that it’s hard to believe his version of events. 

If Krokidas had trusted his actors and story more the movie might have had a chance to sing. 

Sincerely,

Erin

Status: Return to Sender (2/5)

I’m an Old Communist Hag

2013 European Union Film Festival coverage

Dear Nicolae Ceausescu, Former Dictator,

Your specter looms large over modern-day Romanian life in Stere Gulea’s new film I’m an Old Communist Hag. Televisions buzz and chatter with impending news of a DNA test that will determine whether the bodies buried in your gravesite indeed belong to you and your wife. Meanwhile, a documentary is being shot about life during The Golden Era of Ceausescu (as you, yourself, so demurely christened it), requiring hundreds of volunteers to recreate the scenes of state-orchestrated adoration that used to greet you each time your helicopter alit or your motorcade zipped through the streets. Thankfully, this film doesn’t have to strain nearly as hard to make an impression.

One of those volunteers is Emelia, a sixty-something woman living modestly in a Bucharest suburb with her vendor husband. When she receives word that her daughter and soon-to-be son-in-law will be visiting from Canada, she seeks a small loan to feed her guests for the week. And it’s at one of these dinners that Emelia is revealed to be the communist hag of the title; pressed by her daughter, she admits that, yes, she preferred your good old days of communism to the shaky free market that threatens each day to swallow her family up.

This is a surprisingly common sentiment. Democracy hasn’t been a cakewalk for Romania. And neither has membership in the European Union. Many who lived through your rule are nostalgic for its security and steadiness. Romania always seemed to be the most progressive of Eastern Bloc nations (at least from the West’s point-of-view), but while you were careful to distance yourself from Russia’s geopolitical influence, you were, perhaps, the leader who carried forth Stalin’s style of authoritarian rule most vigorously—what with the crippling economic policies and the brutal suppression of dissenting viewpoints and all.

Those aren’t necessarily the things Emilia is pining for in this film. Even she isn’t sure what she misses exactly. For all the talk of the halcyon years of stable housing and employment, Emilia recalls, in a series of flashbacks, being kept away from her family in the days leading up to one of your factory visits. The reason? It’s never clear whether it was your phobia of germs or your sense of paranoia that required her to be quarantined before shaking your hand, which makes the situation even more disturbing. There is no reason. But Emilia nonetheless complies.

As played by the renowned Romanian actress Luminita Gheorghiu, Emilia is stout and strong-hearted and also completely adrift in the contemporary world; she frets over the worldwide financial crisis; she goes to get her hair cut and comes back with a bright-red punkish do. This sort of incarnate performance is deserving of no small number of superlatives, though what those superlatives might be, I can’t quite say. All of the adjective and metaphors typically used to describe great acting all seem a little too pompous. And if there’s one thing her performance isn’t, it’s pompous.

See, that’s the problem with epithets, Nicolae: they don’t aggrandize a person; they obscure. You may have created around yourself the most impressive cult of personality in Eastern Europe when that part of the world was replete with big personalities, but the names you gave yourself – genius, demiurge, titan, Prince Charming – are heavy with their own meaning, and do nothing, today, to define what kind of man you were. They do, however, shed a bit of light on what kind of leader you were.

Director Stere Gulea is a survivor of the lean artistic years under your rule – he made several films in the 70s and 80s, during the Communist studio system – and whether or not he shares Emilia’s conflicted feelings about Romania’s past, this much is for certain: he knows better than to give you credit for her wistfulness. It’s herself that she misses. The innocence of her daughter. The simplicity of youth. But not you. Sure, your specter looms large over this film. But that’s all you are, anymore: a ghost.

Sincerely,

Jared Young

Status: Air Mail (4/5)

Catching Fire

Dear Dominic Drane, Crowd Supervisor,

In a world of authoritarian dictatorship, you need to keep a close eye on the masses. Make sure nobody steps out of line. If people disobey orders, they need to be eliminated. Erased from existence. After all, if even a few get out of hand, they could disrupt the whole delicate system. Which is of course why you were brought into the world of The Hunger Games. Well, the post-production visual effects world anyway. But I’m sure the same rules applied.

See, in the dystopian vision of the future imagined by Suzanne Collins’ popular book series, tall poppies aren’t just cut down – they’re poisoned, uprooted, and exterminated. Much like extras on a film set, no one is allowed to stand out unless “chosen”. In the first film, Katniss (Jennifer Lawrence) and Peeta (Josh Hutcherson) were drawn from the crowd as sacrificial lambs to represent their district in The Hunger Games. They emerged as co-victors, but are now dragged back into 75^th anniversary super-games with previous winners. Or “survivors”, as they more aptly put it.

And thus we have Catching Fire, which retraces many familiar plot points from the first film. Too many, in fact. Like the games themselves, the story is treated like another season of a desperate TV show. We get a slightly new setting and a few new secondary characters, but the larger world is explored much less than I had hoped.  The biggest difference is supposed to be that the crowds you had to supervise are getting restless and revolting. Although even that element was shown in the first film (in a small sequence directed by Steven Soderberg). This time, there doesn’t seem much the oppressed can do other than salute in defiance. Yes, this has some pretty grave consequences, but ultimately it feels like you and your collaborating overlords exuded a little too much control over this other storyline.

“But wait for the next film!” I can already hear you say. I do look forward to the upcoming installments, but I couldn’t help but feel like this chapter was more about stalling. The focus on Katniss and Peeta’s complicated and deceptive relationship is a worthy emotional anchor, but their agency as characters feels strangely defeated. Too much happens outside of their knowledge and control, which, unfortunately, seems to be the more interesting part. And when the crowd is making more important decisions than your lead characters, you know you have a problem.

Here’s hoping the others finally get their moment in the upcoming revolution.

Blending in,

Christopher

Status: Standard Delivery (3/5)

Living Images

2013 European Union Film Festival coverage

Dear Tambet Tasuja, Editor

As an editor, you probably appreciate a film with a solid organizing principle. An idea to which you can return, a theme that keeps things cohesive when dramatic events threatens to pull everything apart. Fortunately for you, Living Images  keeps all of its action well-contained. Literally contained. The entirety of this multi-decade story is told from within the confines of a large estate in Tallinn, Estonia.

That’s not to say the house itself is the main character. As the narrative traverses the 20th century, it’s used to create different microcosms of Estonian society. The actual main characters are Julius and Helmi, both born in the old house to servants of the Baltic nobles who own it (each both played by a number of actors who depict them at various ages). Their stories weave through history as the house changes owners (and purposes) while Estonia is occupied by Germany, becomes an independent state, is once again occupied (this time by the Russians), and, finally, gains its independence once again, only to fall under the spell of capitalist greed.

That greed is the framing device for the film: Estonia’s estates have become valuable in the new economy, and Helmi’s grandson Paul wants to sell the old house to a foreign investor. Also valuable is the old cinema attached to the house, which Julius runs until its final showing (ominously enough, of the apocalyptic blockbuster Terminator 2: Judgement Day); the various owners of the house always find ways to use the small theatre as it suits them.

As an editor, this aspect of Living Images must have appealed to you; the history of cinema informs the style of the film itself. Director and co-writer Hardi Volmer shoots each episode of the story in a style representative of the era we find ourselves in: from scratchy silents, to silky black and whites, to garish technicolor. I can only imagine how fun it must have been to splice together and age  the elements to achieve this effect. And it’s a good thing Volmer decided on this technique, because storytelling-wise, Living Images is a bit of mess. Relationships (apart from Julius’ unrequited love for Helmi) are not always clear, and this creates confusion as the years stack up. But maybe this isn’t unintentional; these memories are codified by the popular storytelling medium of the time, and memories don’t always adhere to logic.

At times,  Living Images threatens to break under the weight of its story. There’s a lot of Estonian history crammed into these past hundred years—so much that characters are sometimes simply describing what’s happening outside the house. But Julius’ two loves – Helmi and the movies – creates a foundation that is strong enough to support it all, and adds an emotion that, unlike the tumultuous events heap pending around them, snuck up on me in the final moments of the film.

To editors, the idea that “the whole is greater than the sum” is more than a cliche. But worse than using a cliché is not using the right words. And here they certainly fit.

Checking my math,

Casey

Status: Air Mail (3.5/5)

Blue is the Warmest Colour

Dear Monya Galbi, First Assistant Director,

Many people are obsessing over the lesbian sex scenes in Blue is the Warmest Colour. They’re too graphic! Too long! Too hetero! The media focus, meanwhile, has shifted to extratextual analysis about the on-set treatment of the actresses by director Abdellatif Kechiche. But you seem to have escaped the controversy. Not surprising, perhaps, since many people outside the industry don’t understand the role of a First A.D. Well, lucky you. Because this film deserves to be seen and discussed, but you should probably also bear some responsibility for the faults.

As you know, in filmmaking the director is the top of the creative food chain. He or she, therefore, receives an unbalanced percentage of the praise and criticism when a film is released (and shifting that balance is the very reason we write these open-letters). Blue is the Warmest Colour is receiving uncommon levels on both accounts – winning the prestigious 2013 Palme d’Or at Cannes but now suffering backlash from the story’s original author, the actresses, and even parts of the LGBT community. It would be almost impossible for anyone to see the film right now without having heard something about that. Too bad, because that shouldn’t be leading the discussion (or a review, for that matter); but it is. So let’s clear the air.

You’re obviously a trusted collaborator of Kechiche, having been an assistant director for his past three feature films: Games of Love and Chance (2003), The Secret of the Grain (2007) and Black Venus (2010).  You know how he works, and can no doubt anticipate his demands better than anyone. This is important, because you’re the one responsible for the mechanics of the shoot, like overseeing the management of the set-ups, the schedule and the actors. If someone ever needed to pull the director aside because he was being unreasonable, it’s you. However, if you treated your role more like an obedient servant, well then you probably thought anything goes in the service of art. Which it sounds like you did. So the next logical question is, was it worth it?

Speaking as a critic, yes, it was (if I was in the labour union, it might be another story). The emotional complexities Adèle Exarchopoulos delivers are quite mesmerizing. If Kechiche obsessed over her performance as much as his camera lingers on her face in close-up, then it’s no wonder the process felt so invasive. The film refuses to let her escape our gaze, from numerous shots of her sleeping, eating, and, of course, having sex. Her expressions and even physical appearance appear to morph before our eyes as her character struggles with her blossoming sexuality. The blue-haired object of Adèle’s affections, played by Léa Seydoux, is equally able in her role as an emerging artist and confident individual. Though her screen time is much more limited, it’s the interplay between the two that wins the day.

Yes, Blue is The Warmest Colour is a film all about relationships (both on- and off-set, it seems). But this powerful and effective emphasis can be a problem for both the characters themselves and the filmmaking. The art direction, for example, is often painfully lazy. During a picnic scene, it feels like the whole art department gave up and just went blue – from jean jackets, to shirts, to pants, to backpacks, to hair.  The characters also lose sight of their professional ambitions when their relationship gets in the way. And in that vein, maybe you felt too close to the director to ever say no to his demands.

Yet ultimately, for Blue is The Warmest Colour, the ends may have justified the means. But on a thousand other films where actress will be pressured to give more and bear more, that won’t be the case. So please, don’t be afraid to step in next time.

Sincerely,

Christopher 

Status: Air Mail (4/5)

Miracle

2013 European Union Film Festival coverage

Dear Kamila Zlatusková, Associate Producer,

There’s no murkier job description on a film set than that of the Associate Producer. How you personally earned this title, and what your responsibilities included, are anyone’s guess. Maybe you’re an up-and-coming big shot, or a bona fide number cruncher, or a valued creative partner, or a local string-puller, or someone the director just needed to pacify by slapping a label on you. If it’s the latter (as is often the case), I’m going to imagine you as a troubled Slovakian 15-year-old girl willing to do terrible, terrible things to get that title you desire – be it “associate producer” or simply “girlfriend”.  

I really hope I’m wrong. Drawing that parallel between you and Ela (Michaela Bendulova), the main character in Miracle, is far-fetched, right? Surely you would be smarter than selling yourself to human traffickers just so some asshole guy that you like can get himself out of debt. Because – spoiler alert for idiots – that might not go so well. Even if your plan is just to eventually “escape”.

Luckily, the way co-writer and director Juraj Lehotsky tells the story, I couldn’t help but feel sympathetic to Ela’s plight. Much like his main character, we as audience members are taken straight to a female re-education centre without any proper explanation. The resulting friction between the girls we meet there reveals more than enough for us to piece together what’s ailing Ela. Her father is not in the picture, her mother (Katarina Feldekova) is tired of dealing with a troubled teen, and there’s a mysterious man whose name is tattooed on her knuckles named Roby (Robert Roth). When Ela finds out she’s pregnant, she runs away to find Roby, but he’s hardly happy to see her, even before she breaks the news. In fact, she seems more like a forced-upon intern pushing for a full-time position than she does an actual girlfriend. 

Still, my sympathy rested squarely on Ela’s shoulders, since few other characters even register. And as the story skips quickly between scenes and seasons, brevity may be the film’s greatest virtue. At 78 minutes, Miracle manages to make a strong enough impression to recommend it as at least a cautionary tale to young stubborn women. Which, again, I’m sure you’re nothing like.

Making false associations,

Christopher

Status: Standard Delivery (3/5)

12 Years a Slave

Dear Michael S. Martin, Property Master,

They say possession is nine-tenths of the law. In other words, the person with an object is presumed to be rightful owner unless there is clear evidence to the contrary. This must make your job a bit of a nightmare, with so many props flying around set. Still, it would be a pretty rich for an actor to, for example, tear off the tag and walk away wearing a Civil War-era tricorne, pretending it was theirs, right? You would have them fired and give them a real tongue-lashing, no doubt.  But master, I pray that your anger and outbursts aren’t multiplied by the size of the claim. Otherwise, you’ve learned nothing from working on 12 Years a Slave.

This trivial comparison of a hat with a human being wouldn’t be ridiculous in the American South of the mid 1800s (not to suggest that stealing and selling people is only a thing of the past). But the slavery debate shaped modern America, and the ultimate refute to those barbaric principles has to be the story of Solomon Northup (Chiwetel Ejiofor). In the extremely able hands of director Steve McQueen, this true story is done justice in ways that are both subtle and severe. Most notably, of course, with the one prop that I’m sure had everyone on set reeling: the whip.

Even before Jesus Christ suffered his 39 lashes (considered one short of killing a man), the whip was the ultimate symbol of dominance and punishment. In your film, its use on characters and exposure to the audience is amplified each time it appears. There are other instruments of torture, such as knives, nails and rope, but it’s hard to surpass the theatrics and visceral pain of a lashing. Hardly entertaining, but also hard to shake. And that seems to be the strategy of the film. There’s an uncomfortable air throughout, with shots held a bit longer than we’d like and no foreshowing of relief. The title alone presumes that Northup will eventually be unchained, but unlike the fictional Django, we can also know that his retribution (if any) will never right how badly he was wronged. 

And how could it?  Effectively cut together with non-linear editing, the film bounces between scenes of Northup struggling in captivity, and his previous life as a well-educated musician and freeman in Saratoga Springs, New York. The very first scenes show a failed attempt to compose a letter out of a shaved stick and tree sap, and, in what seems another life, tightening the string’s on his violin. The extreme close-ups of these props help build tension even before we completely understand the context. This mirrors the understanding of certain characters, such as the slave traders, slave drivers and slave owners played with increasing cruelty by Benedict Cumberbatch, Paul Giamatti, Paul Dano, Sarah Paulson and Michael Fassbender. Caught up in the minutia of the law and scripture, they completely fail to see the larger picture.

The rest of us, luckily, aren’t so lucky. We see everything.

Masterfully done,

Christopher

Status: Priority Post (4.5/5)

Thor: The Dark World

Dear Magdalena Kusowska, Concept Artist,

It seems absurd to argue that an original idea can be expressed in a sequel to a film that is part of a contiguous cinematic universe based on a comic book series inspired by a pantheon of mythological characters born from a millennia-old pagan religion. And perhaps even more absurd when one actually sits down to watch Thor: The Dark World. From the very beginning, with its epic, overbearing prologue and charging digital armies, it’s clear that this is not a flick that cares much for bending the rules of blockbuster filmmaking (it seems nervous, in fact, to even brush up against them). Everything unfolds as you might assume. Everything turns out like you might predict. And, at first glance, everything looks like exactly like you’d expect it to look.

But there’s something tricky about this second Thor movie (or third, if you count The Avengers). As much as it feels the same as everything else, it’s different. And as much as it looks just like all the other big-budget comic book fantasies, it doesn’t. Somehow, here in dreary November, we’re getting the bombastic, self-aware, fun and colorful blockbuster we were waiting for all summer.

How did you do it, Magdalena?

There you were, hunched over your drafting table, your sketch pad, your digital tablet, conjuring up the environments and costumes and objects that would occupy the nine realms of Yggdrasil, The World Tree. They are (of course) imperiled by (of course) an ancient evil. And though we’ve seen the golden spires and constructivist walkways of Asgard in the previous Thor movie (no, not that one), we spend a lot more time among them in this sequel, and there’s a thickness and richness to the world that feels tangible—even in sprawling shots clearly built in pixels.

That richness is in the details. The winged gondolas that patrol the skies of the city; the knifelike spaceships with whom they dogfight; the porcelain-doll facemasks worn by the dark elf infantrymen—it all seems a step too clever for the average Hollywood popcorn flick. Somehow, despite the tangle of constraints applied to your work by the previous film’s production design and the Walt Simonson comic art that inspired it, you and your fellow conceptual artists managed to create some beautiful landscapes and objets d’art.

This level of cleverness and craftsmanship is the sort of thing easily taken for granted. Many critics made it a point to admire the production design in Man of Steel (for lack of anything else to admire, I suppose), but all that insectoid, polished-ebony, bio-industrial type-stuff has been de rigeur since H.R. Giger ripped off his own lithograph to create the creature Alien. And while there’s certainly nothing as innovative happening in Thor: The Dark World, there is something innovative about how well your designs fit the mood – and, I’d guess, the aspirations – of the film.

This is a big dumb movie that knows it’s a big dumb movie, and finds space, in the seams between its bigness and dumbness, to sneak in just enough humor and shrewdness that the films seems constantly to be subverting its own mythic inclinations.   

Sure, it doesn’t make sense. Yeah, we’ve seen it all before. But nonsense and sameness, when correctly applied, can be virtues for this sort of populist art. It just takes a real artist to bring those concepts to life.  

Sincerely, 

Jared Young

Status: Air Mail (4/5) 

The Counselor

Dear Ali Moshref, Completion Guarantor,

Sometimes, you just need to get the job done, right? I mean, that’s the whole reason you’re on set. Getting daily production reports, overseeing the cash flow, making sure stars come out of their trailers – you’re the person who has to say, “It doesn’t matter how stupid this all seems, you agreed to make this fucking thing, so do it.” And on a movie like The Counselor, you might be the only reason the film ever got finished.

But really, who can blame you for buying into a film so packed with potential?

First, you have Sir Ridley Scott at the helm. True, he hasn’t directed a proper critical or commercial success in over a decade, but the man is a bona fide talent who can attract the best in the business. For this job, he lined up a parade of A-listers to tackle the material: Michael Fassbender, Brad Pitt, Javier Bardem, Cameron Diaz, Penelope Cruz and some impressive supporting players. But the best part? They’re working from an original screenplay Cormac McCarthy! No chance anything will be lost in translation from his novel for once, right? Start printing the money and Oscar ballots now.

Well, hold on a second. Clearly you, Scott and co. didn’t learn anything from Oliver Stone’s eerily similar venture.

So once again, a star-studded cast is pitted against the savage drug trade along the U.S.-Mexican border. This time, the story focuses on an unnamed legal Counselor (Fassbender) who wants to finally make the big bucks by bankrolling a risky drug scheme (is this suddenly sounding a little close-to-home?). He’s looped in by Bardem’s thinly painted portrait of a wacky cheetah loving drug-lord and the man’s sexy, nympho, cheetah-spot-tattooed girlfriend (Diaz). The Counselor keeps his own girlfriend (Cruz) blissfully in the dark about his exploits, and politely refuses to heed the warnings of Brad Pitt, playing a Brad Pitt-in-a-cowboy-hat drug-dealer type. It’s a very straight-forward and ultimately, silly affair, capped off by a lot of decapitations and a pointlessly provocative car sex-scene (literally – sex with a car). 

Did I miss something? Was there ever supposed to be more to this standard cautionary drug tale than what we got? Maybe not, and maybe it’s that safety in familiarity that got the film financed. But what a waste. Why not leverage your assets, take a gamble and try to actually surprise people?

I know, easy for me to say.

Bucking off,

Christopher

Status: Standard Delivery (2.5/5)