By BRUCE DENNILL
Silence / Directed by Martin Scorsese / 13V
100 Streets / Directed by Jim O’Hanlon / 16DLV
Game Night / Directed by Mark Perez / 16VL
The Nut Job 2: Nutty By Nature / Directed by Cal Brunker / PGV
Free Fire / Directed by Ben Wheatley / 18LV
It features brave Jesuit priests willing to travel to the other side of the world in the service of their faith, and it’s directed by Martin freakin’ Scorsese. How can Silence not be the unrelated follow-up to The Mission that fans of the latter film have always wanted but never been comfortable with hoping for? It turns out that the piece is not great at answering questions, direct or not. It’s a rambling, unfocused study of the persecution of Christians in mid-17th Century Japan. The scenes where the sharp end (literally, in some cases) of that persecution is presented are shocking and tense. Whatever your views on the missionaries’ agenda and their way of going about achieving it, or of the Japanese believers who put their lives at risk by going against the will of their harsh overseers, there is never a situation in which that kind of abuse and violence is acceptable. The rest of the movie, however, is almost the diametric opposite of the intensity and noteworthiness of those moral low points. Andrew Garfield as Father Rodrigues, Adam Driver as Father Garupe and Liam Neeson (The Mission!) as Father Ferreira do very little for extended periods, helping the film to live up to its title in the worst way possible. It’s likely that they were given an opportunity to work with Scorsese and grabbed it – who wouldn’t? – but had perhaps not factored in why the iconic director took the better part of three decades to get this project to the screen. Whatever the issues were in that regard, it’s possible that even Scorsese might have done well to heed the signals. This is largely forgettable fare, which is saying something for a two-and-a-half hour chunk of storytelling.
A slice-of-life drama (or melodrama, as it turns out), 100 Streets looks at the actions of, and the consequences of those actions for, six people living in the same square mile in London. Their circumstances could note be more different. Max and Emily (Idris Elba and Gemma Arterton) are married; a national sporting hero and an actress respectively. Kingsley (Franz Drameh) is a youngster being nudged into a life of crime until he meets Terence (Ken Stott), an ageing actor with plenty of wisdom and a generous heart. And cab driver George (Charlie Creed-Miles) and his wife Kathy (Kierston Wareing) are, despite a number of challenges, making the most of their marriage until an accident adds an extra complication. As in many ensemble pieces, the different narratives criss-cross, giving viewers an eerie sense of what might be going on in their own suburbs or places of work that they are unaware of. And there are some good performances, though the script is uneven, and the last part of the film in particular is low on character credibility. Stott is the highlight, making Terence a sensitive, insightful man who, knowing he is unlikely to get anything out of the relationship he begins with his young protégé, is still determined to invest in the troubled young man. A reasonable enough way to pass a couple of hours, but low on fireworks and high on emotional hyperbole.
Bored suburbanites are fodder for a wide range of unlikely tales in which there is a kernel of authenticity – ennui makes people do some strange things. In Game Night, Max and Annie (Jason Bateman and Rachel McAdams) are a married couple whose passion for each other is only outdone by their competitiveness when it comes to games of any kind. This is exhibited in a weekly games night with a group of disparate friends whose collectively edgy humour makes their get-togethers both hilarious and likely as not to end in low-level chaos. The introduction of Max’s brother Brooks (Kyle Chandler) to this mix ups the ante dramatically – he is the rich fun, successful risk-taker in the family, a charmer for whom everything always seems to go right. And when he decides to throw a murder mystery party to which the games night friends are invited, matters take a considerably darker and more dangerous turn. It’s a good set-up, but it could, handled poorly, lead to an average outcome at best, with some unsuspecting nobodies getting caught up in a night out they’ll want to forget. Instead, the script has a number of likeable characters all placed in contexts that are increasingly bonkers and frequently totally unhinged. Where the story will go from scene to scene is impossible to predict – a feat that is incredibly rare in mainstream film. Excellent comic timing all round adds yet more entertainment value.
The Nut Job 2: Nutty By Nature, like its predecessor, has none of the depth of the big Pixar or Dreamworks animated titles, but it is consistently giggle-inducing entertainment for kids, and for adults who are honest enough to admit that a decent storyline and a handful of strong jokes is actually enough sometimes. Indeed, for its PG rating, this nature-versus-man caper has some surprisingly edgy moments and gags, though the tone in those moments is likely unfamiliar to the average youngster. The type of story has been presented a hundred times from Watership Down to Fantastic Mr Fox, but it’s not a theme that’s likely to tire – a greedy, unethical industrialist wiping out the habitat of some helpless creatures. Happily, for the purposes of the plot, the creatures involved here are not that helpless, though they are often hapless, meaning plenty of goofy, harmless fun even as the opposing sides stake their claims to the area they both desire. Fun and fluffy.
Free Fire is far more enjoyable and engaging than anything with so limited a concept has any right to be. It’s the story of an arms deal between two rag-tag groups of criminals that goes horribly wrong early on in the piece, and of the chaotic carnage that follows, as egos and testosterone combine with old-fashioned stupidity and far too much firepower to make the warehouse in which the entire plot plays out a corpse-strewn battleground. It is, in many ways, the sort of thing audiences might have expected of Quentin Tarantino earlier in his career, but other than its general style – the wide collars and iffy hairstyles of the Seventies, mostly – it doesn’t try to stuff private jokes and cinematic references into every scene. Rather, it simply allows the tar-black comedy of a situation in which everyone is arrogant and no-one is truly competent to play out, in a violent, foul-mouthed way. The strong cast all do their bit without having to stretch too far. Sharlto Copley, for instance, plays a cocky South African (which he is), and Cillian Murphy’s character is simply a contemporary update on his gangster from Peaky Blinders. Armie Hammer (pre-scandal) is delightfully smooth and droll, and Brie Larson successfully expands her range in a direction many will have thought unlikely. Daft but effective.
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