Reviews

Films

Ruby Blue

Directed by Jan Dunn, starring Bob Hoskins, Josiane Balasko, Jody Latham, Josef Altin

Writer-director Jan Dunn attracted a modicum of attention in 2005 by making Britain's one and only Dogme-registered film, Gypo: a putatively hard-hitting shaky-camera drama about the fractious relationship between residents of a housing estate and the local Roma. Here she tries her hand at less fraught and more technically ambitious fare: a meandering character study revolving around a testy widower, played by Bob Hoskins (pictured).

Dunn introduces a multitude of narrative threads: a grandmotherly French neighbor is trying to seduce gruff Bob, a troubled local teen wants to race his pigeons, while a small girl's friendliness attracts unwelcome accusations.

But despite a nicely nuanced performance from Hoskins, the limitations of the threadbare budget are a little too evident. The acting is of variable quality, to say the least; and many sequences are only sketchily conceived. And an annoying soundtrack score that frequently interrupts the first half of the film doesn't help either.

Death Note

Directed by Shusuke Kaneko, starring Tatsuya Fujiwara, Ken'ichi Matsuyama, Asaka Seto, Erika Toda

This, the first of two live-action movie outings for the Japanese manga franchise, provides a welcome break from the rapidly tiring long-haired ghost lady-haunted cellphone and videotape shtick.

A cursed book that ensures the demise of anyone whose name is written in its pages falls into the hands of the student son of the local police chief. The boy, accompanied by a 10ft-tall demon that only he can see, becomes a vigilante, offing criminals and becoming a mysterious sensation among teenagers.

Kaneko, responsible for the groundbreaking giant-monster Gamera trilogy of the 1990s, keeps things visually bright and matter-of-fact, downplaying the creepiness of the story. And the final half-hour is more than satisfying, tying complex threads together and setting up an exciting sequel.

Iron Man

Directed by Jon Favreau, starring Robert Downey Jr, Terrence Howard, Jeff Bridges

Its opening sequence is an exhilarating, even brilliant wish-fulfilment fantasy dramatizing America's yearning for a virile exit strategy. A military convoy is speeding grimly along with Tony Stark (Robert Downey Jr), billionaire playboy, technical genius and patriotic arms manufacturer under sole contract to the US military.

The convoy comes under terrifying attack, and Tony is taken prisoner, coming round in a cave to find a fellow captive and medic has installed an innovative electro-magnetic ring in his chest keeping him alive. His captors demand he builds a hi-tech bomb for them. Instead, in an inspired twist, Stark secretly creates an iron flying-suit exo-skeleton which repels the bad guys' bullets with a satisfying clang.

Iron Man comes clanking out of his cave and kicks insurgent ass before uncorking a flame-assisted vertical takeoff. A new superhero is born and he is capable of one extraordinary, mindblowing, superhuman feat that every US presidential candidate dreams about. He can get the hell out of the Middle East!

Iron Man, for all its disposability, makes a cheerful and unpretentious change to the current crop of war movies. At least at first. But I am sorry to say that it is guilty of the sneaky chauvinist trick of making the ultimate villain an American: a mannerism common to many Hollywood movies that cannot quite bring themselves to accord foreigners the status of effective enmity.

As for Downey, he is such a distinctive, not to say barking mad performer, quite unlike anyone else around, that it is always good to see him. Clearly Iron Man 2 is being readied: but this is a franchise that is already beginning to rust. The Guardian

(China Daily 05/06/2008 page20)