dispossessed black people. It‘s as grandly cinematic an opening as any film could wish for. Moreover, director Bronwen Hughes uses it to vividly illustrate the stark reality of Apartheid- era South Africa.
Shortly after this. Hughes pulls off another cinematic coup with a superbly orchestrated ghetto riot in which black South Africans protesting against the brutal Afrikaans regime are massacred by heavily armed police. Shot in news reportage style. the sequence again graphically illustrates the gulf between black and white South Africans as well as the explosive stage race relations were at in the country circa the mid-70s The sequence also establishes motivation for the film's titular anti-hero. Andre Stander (Thomas Jane giving a terrific. charismatic turn). a golden boy cop who. with a red carpet career stretching ahead of him. bucks the corrupt system by becoming a bank- robbing outlaw.
discipline-driven Diesel has given up on directing stealth missions. and ends up choreographing the school production of The Sound of Music. winning the hearts and minds of the family. And once Diesel‘s drilled them into a fighting unit. it's no surprise that when danger threatens. the Plummer kids are ready to fight off their adversaries. Home Alone-style.
Like Disney's recent Freaky Friday remake. The Pacifier is a children's film with some vague appeal to undemanding adults. Diesel copes well exchanging badinage with the kids. and offers a series of amusingly baleful stares. After a slow start. The Pacifier certainly gets more laughs or thrills from its child-protection theme to the similar Man of the House. which coincidentally also features Snap's ‘I‘ve Got the Power“. Credit is due to director Adam Bringing Down the House Shankman for his inspired take on the material. used as the soundtrack to a street-fight between two gangs of girl scouts.
(Eddie Harrison) I General release from Fri 3 Jun.
Thereafter, the film. which benefits from another groovy retro soundtrack from David Holmes (here under the Free Association band banner). becomes a freewheeling. flashy feelgood heist/road movie. SpOrting a series of so-bad-they're-good wigs. tashes and suits. Stander and his gang (Dexter Fletcher and David O‘Hara) enrage the police and capture the public's imagination with a series
WHAT IHE BLEEP DO WE
The racial. political backdrop of the KNOW (12A) 108min 0
film is left by the wayside during its central section. although it‘s returned to towards the end. It's an uneven. not wholly accurate portrayal of one man and his diseased country. An admirable mix of social history and the cinema of the spectacular.
(Miles Fielder)
I General release from Fri 27 May.
COMEDY THE PACIFIER (PG) 95min .0
Vin Diesel's career appeared to be running out of gas after dual flops A Man Apart and The Chronicles of Piddick. yet his long cherished and presumably elephantine Hannibal project was finally greenlit after he successfully broadened his range in this Disney comedy. Navy Seal Shane Wolfe (Diesel) is assigned to take care of a single-parent suburban family while mysterious mom Julie Plummer (Faith Ford) goes off on some dubious government business. That means Diesel executing hand-break turns in the family mini van. selling girl-scout cookies and diving into ball-swamps to retrieve soiled nappies. Soon. the
This ‘bleeping' film purpOrts to be an investigation of quantum physics. the physics of the very. very small. In reality it's an advert for something akin to a dodgy American new age cult. There's evidence of that in the celebrity admirers the film's attracted. Madonna among them. It might contain interviews with a series of physicists whose fascination with their specialist field of knowledge is initially infectious. and there may be elaborate visual effects to illustrate the sub-atomic world they describe. but the questions What the Bleep? asks — what are
INTERVIEW
FOR THE KIDS Paul Dale meets one of the UK's greatest living screenwriters, FRANK COTTRELL BOYCE.
Frank Cottrell Boyce (pictured) is being clambered on by two of his seven children. I’ve long been a fan of his. I am one of those slightly pathetic journalists who tells everyone they are working on a screenplay of great mastery and wit and Boyce’s unruly, messy, taboo-breaking scripts for Butterfly Kiss, Welcome to Sarajevo, Hilary and Jackie, The Claim and 24 Hour Party People are the screenplays I actually wish I’d written.
Boyce has spent nearly 15 years working with just a few directors (basically Michael Winterbottom, Alex Cox and Anand Tucker) on largely unsuccessful movies and yet his contribution to new British cinema is immeasurable. There are certainly no more interesting British films from the last five years than Winterbottom’s Code 46 or Cox’s Revengers Tragedy.
Now Boyce can add a very fine family film to his achievements. Millions, a busy, high energy tale about two brothers who find a whole heap of English pound notes ten days before the Euro comes in, is a small gem and Boyce’s connection to the project comes as little surprise. What is amazing, though, is that he was able to drag director Danny Trainspotting Boyle in on the
venture with him.
‘Danny saw the script of Millions before he made 28 Days Later and he said he really loved it. What he actually meant was, “I love the script up to page 35.” We did loads of work on it while he was shooting 28 Days Later. So I’d meet him later in the morning and talk about this kiddies’ film after he’d been dealing with zombies all night,’ explains this kindly, soft-voiced
former teacher.
‘We cared a lot about this project. We both wanted something old
fashioned, a million miles from Pixar.’
It has been a long wait for UK audiences to see Millions, which was completed in early 2004. ‘lt’s hard to place a film like this because it is a family film, and we were unable to get a Christmas release,’ says Boyce. ‘So we released in the US first and we did really well in the States. We had amazing reviews and good box office. So now it’s being marketed as this plucky British film that’s done well in the States”.’
Having just dropped out of a screen adaptation of Lawrence Sterne’s Tristram Shandy, Boyce is working on a big screen adaptation of Homer’s The Odyssey. ‘I work from home, and I’ve got all my kids around me. When I close the door, I don’t want to be writing about ordinary life, I’m Mr Ben, I want to go through the door in that shop and come out in fucking ancient
Rome!”
I Mil/ions is on selected release from Fri 27 May. See review, page 49.
thoughts made of? what is love? what is the meaning of life’?. what is God? — and. moreover. the answers it provides. are bogus in the extreme. Furthermore. if the intentions of writer. director and producer team Mark Vicente. Betsy Chasse and William Arntz are suspect. then their conception and execution of the film is even more questionable. A drama employed to exemplify the film's arguments. which revolves around
Marlee Matlin's depressed photographer having a bad day. veers between the mind-numbineg dull and the utterly ridiculous. And the use of CGI cartoon characters in an embarrassing dance sequence WI“ have you howling (not With laughter). By the time the science boilins get to the meaning of life. you Will have lost the will to live it. (Miles Fielder)
I Dominion. Edinburgh from Fri 27 Mai and OFT Glasgow from Fri (3 Jun.
Jun 2.7.23 THE LIST 47
2t} Man A?