By BRUCE DENNILL
7 Days In Entebbe / Directed by Jose Padilha / 13LPV
24 Hours To Live / Directed by Brian Smrz / 18DLV
Billy Lynn’s Long Halftime Walk / Directed by Ang Lee / 16LV
Jumanji: Welcome To The Jungle / Directed by Jake Kasdan / 13V
Tyler Perry’s Acrimony / Directed by Tyler Perry / 16LSV
Churchill / Directed by Jonathan Teplitzky / PG
When dramatising an historical event, it shouldn’t be possible to release a film – constructed over many months, with the benefit of the use of special effects and repeated takes – that is considerably less dramatic than the actual incident. But that has been managed in 7 Days In Entebbe, which takes some doing when the event in question was the hijacking of a plane and the rescue, by armed soldiers, of the hostages. The context is tricky: the real event involved Palestinian hijackers seeking the release of countrymen held prisoner in Israel and elsewhere, and many of the passengers on the Air France flight they took control of were Jewish, with Israeli commandos sent to rescue the hostages. The tone of the film suggests an unwillingness on the part of the filmmakers to take a stance on who was wrong or right or what actions were valid or otherwise. This fence-sitting denies viewers the chance to pick a perspective, which means that whatever any of the characters is up to is rendered largely meaningless. In addition, generally reliable performers including Rosamund Pike and Daniel Bruhl stuggle with the tentative writing and pacing, failing to lift what should be an action-packed, meaningful revisiting of a tense confrontation beyond a dreary, even tedious staging of news headlines from 1976.
Even with the likes of Training Day on his CV, it’s easy to forget what a convincing action film headliner Ethan Hawke can be. In 24 Hours To Live, he plays a CIA hitman who’s on a mission in Cape Town when he meets a messy end (minor spoiler, but it’s early on), before being reanimated via some nifty surgery for a last 24-hour period in which to complete his final mission. The set-up, plot and action intensity all recall a Jason Statham vehicle and, as in those films, there is never a huge amount of common sense involved the twists and turns the story takes towards its brutal conclusion. Seeing the story unfold in South Africa adds a fresh aspect to the film, though what happens does as few favours for our attractiveness to tourists as American gangster flicks that make Chicago or New York seem like good places to go to get shot or beaten up. Negligible intellectual impact aside, though, this is a whirling, swirling roundhouse kick of film with plenty of punch in every sense of the word.
Part war film, part satire and part steady but unspectacular drama, Billy Lynn’s Long Halftime Walk succeeds in two particular areas. In the battle scenes – American soldiers fighting in the confusing, racist, hyper-violent arena that was the Iraq conflicts – the terror, bewilderment and pointlessness of the whole enterprise is made crystal clear. Then, when the soldiers are back in America, the hubris and hyperbole that greets their “victories” is proven to be equally hollow, with many of the folks at home rather nastier human beings than the soldiers’ declared enemies in the Middle East. The rest of the piece – its connective tissue, if you like – is less impressive, with a few minor threads meandering off into the distance to no great consequence. Final outcome? Underlining why war damages, permanently, which always needs saying.
The value of resurrecting an old title via a sequel is, for the purposes of this review, a moot point. Filmmaking is a business and where something is marketable for whatever reason, it’s fair enough that it’ll attract investment and, hopefully, make profits. The basic appeal of the story in Jumanji: Welcome To The Jungle aside – a group of kids get magically transported into a computer game and take on the body shapes (all very different to their own) of the characters they’re playing – still works, though it’s clearly not a fresh idea. But the rest of the piece, from big-name actors Dwayne Johnson, Kevin Hart and Jack Black to a script with sufficient smarts and laughs to satisfy most viewers, make this an enjoyable comedy-adventure. Johnson in particular seems to be having a good time, and his megawatt charms are consequently close to the surface. Both Hart and Black also stop short of hamming it up, giving their characters enough depth to help the project avoid being fluffy. Huge, Jurassic Park-sized setpieces also give the film entertainment muscle.
Tyler Perry is a polarising filmmaker at the best of times. The title of this film will cement the feelings of those who already in the group who are not fans. Tyler Perry’s Acrimony is a generic broken relationship thriller, where a couple – Melinda (Taraji P Henson) and Robert (Lyriq Bent) meet and have a whirlwind romance before the more brittle, damaged reality sets in, eventually leading to the snapping of psyches and potentially mortal danger. Handled well, such a set-up becomes Fatal Attraction or something similarly tense. In this instance, though, other than in the very early phases of the film, the protagonists prove themselves unlikeable in every way. In a piece that is built around a relationship, this makes things difficult for the viewer. It’s not only that it’s almost impossible to feel any empathy for anyone, but that it’s almost worse than that – you might find yourself actively wishing a painful comeuppance on those involved. A sour, unpleasant film.
The abiding image of Winston Churchill is of a strong, forthright, no-nonsense bulldog who took no nonsense whatsoever. The perspective in this film is markedly different, with British World War II leader at odds with himself, his political responsibilities and the upcoming D-Day invasions. Brilliantly portrayed by Brian Cox, Churchill is exhausted by the war and by the pettiness of his own government. And he is desperately worried that Operation Overlord, with its gargantuan complexity, will fail, his confidence crippled by the mistakes he made in World War I in the Battle of Gallipoli. This reversal of expectations – a true-life titan reduced, in the eyes of the generals he has to deal with as well as much of the population he leads, to something approaching a relic – gives the film a completely different feel to what many might be expecting from a war story. The piece gives great credit to a person often forgotten in the retelling of these crucial days at the end of the war – Churchill’s wife Clementine (Miranda Richardson), the one person entirely immune to his ego and forcefulness (whether that was expressed via a filter of stoic leadership or deep depression). The pair’s relationship is beautifully portrayed, as is Clementine’s unflustered approach to getting Winston back into a headspace to believe in himself, his cause, and the possibility of his nation and its allies winning the war. It’s an unexpectedly tender perspective on an unbelievably stressful period, and an effective if not especially thrilling piece.
