list.co.uk/fi lm Reviews | FILM
CRIME DRAMA TRESPASS AGAINST US (15) 100min ●●●●● WAR FILM BILLY LYNN’S LONG HALFTIME WALK (15) 113min ●●●●●
THRILLER PATRIOTS DAY (15) 133 min ●●●●●
Adam Smith’s directorial debut seems like a typical tale of a crook trying to acquaint himself with the straight and narrow, but it strays from the norm in its rural Gloucestershire setting and focus on a traveller family. Michael Fassbender plays Chad Cutler, who’s struggling to get out of the game and looking for a better life for his son. Brendan Gleeson is suitably snivelling as Chad’s pa Colby, a man who undermines his grandson’s education, while keeping his own spawn on a path to prison.
If Fassbender’s cup runneth over with charisma, he fails to project the weak will of a man floundering under his father’s thumb. Writer Alastair Siddons was inspired by a real-life family who terrorised a county but the gang here are beyond shambolic. When a news report describes them as ‘highly professional’ it seems like a joke.
Accents waver and the film lacks audacity as well as authenticity, surprising given Smith’s background as a provocative music video director. It doesn’t know what to make of its characters, eventually plumping for a quirky, feel-good climax – yet another departure from what came before. (Emma Simmonds) ■ Screening on Tue 21 Feb as part of GFF. General release from Fri 3 Mar.
Ang Lee follows up his Oscar-winning take on Life of Pi with another technically ingenious adaptation, this time tackling Ben Fountain’s novel about a US soldier’s bitter experiences. Shot using a uniquely high frame rate, Lee’s film looks pin-sharp and offers a uniquely vivid sense of place and time. Joe Alwyn makes a strong centre as Billy, a teenage soldier who returns to his Texas homeland as part of Bravo Squad after a tour of duty in Iraq. The boys have gained celebrity status due to Billy’s heroism under fire, and travel in a stretch limo to a football stadium where they take the stage alongside Destiny’s Child as part of the halftime entertainment. Billy’s sister Kathryn (Kristen Stewart) wants him to apply for a discharge, while wannabe agent Albert (Chris Tucker) is trying to sell the squad’s story to Hollywood as a film project.
Billy Lynn’s Long Halftime Walk is a real curio, a genuinely experimental film, intermittently successful despite a punishing lack of depth or detail in the characters. Ultimately, the cruel juxtaposition of dark personal angst and glitzy red, white and blue exteriors provides the film’s single ideological punch, thrown by Lee in spectacular style. (Eddie Harrison) ■ Selected release from Fri 10 Feb.
Hot-on-the-heels of last year’s Deepwater Horizon, Peter Berg reworks another real-life tale. This time his focus is the 2013 Boston Marathon bombing and the ensuing manhunt. Based on the book Boston Strong, Berg regular Mark Wahlberg stars as Tommy Saunders (a composite of several law enforcers) who is tasked with security at the finishing line. When the first bomb goes off, Tommy heads directly into danger to help those who have been hurt. Berg pays tribute to the heroes that helped thwart
the terrorists with a visceral race-against-the-clock thriller that finds time for a sense of humour. Utilising a fine cast that also includes Kevin Bacon, JK Simmons and John Goodman, Berg goes to great lengths showing the minutiae of each day, while he contrasts the innocence of the morning of the bombings with the trauma of what follows, and draws the distressing event and its aftermath together using edge-of- your-seat tension. With graphic depictions of the explosions from ground level, Berg never shies from the horror of an attack which killed three civilians and injured over 260 more, yet the emphasis is firmly on humanity, hope and bravery. (Katherine McLaughlin) ■ Screening on Mon 20 & Tue 21 Feb as part of GFF. General release from Thu 23 Feb.
DRAMA MOONLIGHT (15) 111min ●●●●●
Persecuted by his peers, struggling with his sexuality and neglected by his drug-addled, sex-peddling mom, life lobs challenge after challenge at young Chiron and he builds barriers, wide and high, to protect himself. If Moonlight sounds hard-going then it emphatically isn’t: the second film from US writer-director Barry Jenkins is far more than the black Boyhood, smashing stereotypes and trading in hope – hope that people will turn out to be better than they seem and that true love will find a way around those walls. Chiron’s father-figure Juan (Mahershala Ali) tells him, ‘At some point you got to decide for yourself who you wanna be,’ and the film is divided into three chapters that chronicle our protagonist’s evolving persona – from diminutive, painfully shy youngster, to insecure teen, to closeted tough guy.
Moonlight soars skyward on the strength of James Laxton’s cinematography, which provides an intimate, child’s-eye-view of domestic instability, immerses us in the daunting world of teenage schoolyard alienation, and oh-so-softly uncovers the aching loneliness that lies behind the carefully crafted machismo of Chiron’s adult years.
The three actors who play Chiron are equally sublime – Alex Hibbert, Ashton Sanders and Trevante Rhodes – and there’s sensitive supporting work from Ali, singer Janelle Monáe and Britain’s own Naomie Harris, playing Chiron’s addict mother. Best of all, Moonlight is a film of terrific sincerity, subtlety and optimism, one that nonetheless shows the difficulty of fleeing one’s fate and how the responsibility for a child can stretch way beyond the family home. It’s astutely judged, beautifully humane and, in its final throes, devastatingly romantic. (Emma Simmonds) ■ General release from Fri 17 Feb.
1 Feb–31 Mar 2017 THE LIST 59