Hunter Killer: Old-school Cold War thrills

Hunter Killer (2018) • View trailer 
3.5 stars. Rated R, for violence and profanity
By Derrick Bang

Boy, this one takes me back.

Director Donovan Marsh’s handsomely mounted adaptation of 2012’s Firing Point is a suspenseful, well-paced thriller. The George Wallace/Don Keith novel is, itself, a throwback to Alistair MacLean classics such as The Guns of Navarone and Ice Station Zebra, both of which also became crackling adventure films.

U.S. submarine commander Joe Glass (Gerard Butler, right) and his counterpart,
Russian commander Andropov (Michael Nyqvist) contemplate how best to handle
an international crisis that is escalating rapidly out of control.

The comparison to Ice Station Zebra is particularly apt, because Hunter Killer unfolds like a 1960s Cold War thriller, complete with U.S./Russian anxiety, posturing politicians, ground-level grunts given an impossible mission, and a maverick submarine commander willing to defy D.C. in order to avoid World War III.

Ah, the good ol’ days.

This new film also unfolds like a mystery, if only initially. The story begins deep beneath Arctic Circle ice, as a U.S. “hunter-killer” submarine clandestinely shadows a Russian sub: one side keeping tabs on the other. Suddenly the Russian vessel explodes, to the astonishment of the Americans; before they can consider whether to mount a rescue, they’re also crippled and sent to the ocean floor.

By whom, we wonder.

Back at the Pentagon, anxiety mounts when the American sub fails to make its scheduled report. Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman Charles Donnegan (Gary Oldman), a veteran hawk always willing to believe the worst of the Russians, wants to mobilize nearby battleships and destroyers. Rear Admiral John Fisk (Common), a next-gen negotiator loathe to jump to conclusions, seeks alternative solutions.

U.S. President Dover (Caroline Goodall, standing in for Hilary Clinton), considering all options, authorizes investigative reconnaissance by the USS Arkansas: a second hunter-killer sub, to be commanded by Joe Glass (Gerard Butler). He’s an unusual choice: a blue-collar “guy’s guy” who gained his knowledge of submarines the practical way, by working his way up through various departments, in marked contrast to Annapolis graduates with no hands-on experience.

In other words, Glass is savvier — and sneakier — than all those Pentagon desk jockeys.

Meanwhile… 

Long-range satellites have revealed unusual activity at the Polyarny Russian naval base, at the outermost western side of Kola Bay. Senior National Security Agency analyst Jayne Norquist (Linda Cardellini), sent to the Pentagon with need-to-know details, advises that Russian President Zakarin (Alexander Diachenko) has just arrived at Polyarny for unknown reasons.

John Wick: Should be snuffed out

John Wick (2014) • View trailer 
No stars (turkey). Rated R, for relentlessly strong, bloody and gory violence, profanity and brief drug use
By Derrick Bang

Vile, reprehensible trash.

Ineptly scripted, badly directed and atrociously acted by the name “star” — Keanu Reeves — who, as one of this tawdry turkey’s executive producers, likely is the only reason it got made in the first place.

Having reached this point in his vengeance-fueled crusade, Wick (Keanu Reeves) hasn't
killed anybody for at least 5 seconds ... so it must be time to shoot another nameless
thug in the face. Wick does that a lot, to rapidly diminishing returns.

The fact that Reeves keeps getting assignments remains a source of amazement; he can’t emote a lick. Indeed, he makes Clint Eastwood look like Laurence Olivier. Reeves lucked into two popular genre franchises awhile back, Speed and the Matrix trilogy, which granted the illusion of A-list credibility.

But everything else he has touched in the past 20 years has bombed, in most cases with ample cause. Really, now ... have you even heard of Hard Ball, Ellie Parker, Thumbsucker, The Private Lives of Pippa Lee, Generation Um... or Man of Tai Chi, let alone had the opportunity to actually watch them? Could anything have been worse that his laughably pathetic efforts at romantic leads, in A Walk in the Clouds or the ill-advised remake of Sweet November?

Is it perhaps time to wonder how much better both Speed and the Matrix movies might have been, with a better lead actor?

Reeves never offers anything beyond a grim scowl apparently intended to convey a wealth of emotion. Far from it; he simply seems smug and contemptuous ... and not necessarily within the parameters of the part he’s playing. It looks, sounds and feels more like a deliberate absence of acting: a smirky sense of superiority, as if he’s delighted to once again make a pot of money for doing no work whatsoever.

I’m not sure which would be worse: that Reeves knows he has scant talent, and keeps trying to fool us into believing otherwise ... or that he truly has no talent at all, but has failed to recognize as much. Still. All these years later.

He also needs to wash his hair more often. And get a better style to begin with.

Sadly, when it comes to no-talent behavior, Reeves has plenty of company in this revolting excuse for a revenge thriller. John Wick is “directed” — and I employ the term in the loosest possible sense — by David Leitch and Chad Stahelski, both of whom have impressively long Hollywood résumés ... as stunt and action coordinators.

Leitch and Stahelski apparently believed that they had learned something, operating under the guidance of other directors for the past two decades.

They believed incorrectly.

The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet's Nest: Not Much Sting

The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet's Nest (2010) • View trailer for The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet's Nest
Three stars (out of five). Rating: R, for violence, profanity and smarmy content
By Derrick Bang • Originally published in The Davis Enterprise, 11.5.10

Continuity of vision may not be essential when adapting a rigorously interlaced series of books to the big screen … but it’s certainly desirable.

The guiding hands of Peter Jackson and Fran Walsh obviously contributed to the richly textured success of all three Lord of the Rings films. And who but Francis Ford Coppola could have interwoven the two timelines of Godfather Part II so seamlessly into its predecessor?

Although accused of murder and facing the possibility of renewed
imprisonment in a psychiatric ward, Lisbeth (Noomi Rapace) refuses
to compromise the image that has served her so well ... and struts
into the courtroom in full punk regalia.

Vexingly, the Swedish film adaptations of Stieg Larsson’s Girl Who books, although made almost concurrently, are scripted by three different writers and directed by two different individuals. Daniel Alfredson, who helmed the middle installment, has returned for the final chapter in the trilogy.

I don’t understand this revolving-door approach; surely a savvy producer should have recognized the value of artistic continuity. After all, those same guiding hands were smart enough to hang onto Noomi Rapace and Michael Nyqvist – both still in top form, as the emotionally damaged Lisbeth Salander and her hard-charging journalistic champion, Mikael Blomkvist – so why not take similar care behind the scenes?

The unhappy result of such scattershot filmmaking is the realization, now that the trilogy has concluded with The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet’s Nest, that Alfredson simply isn’t right for this material. His handling of this film is even less viscerally involving than the previous entry, and Ulf Ryberg’s screenplay is a discouraging disappointment: an overly talky thriller that might have been fine with a different set of characters, but not these characters, darn it!

In fairness, Larsson’s third novel is partly to blame; the author obviously suffered from a (not unreasonable) desire to wrap up his saga with exhaustive detail. But here, again, we perceive the value of more talented hands: Director Niels Arden Oplev and screenwriters Nikolaj Arcel and Rasmus Heisterberg brilliantly condensed Larsson’s dense prose while making the first film, wisely concentrating on developing suspense and the character interplay between Lisbeth and Mikael, while downplaying Larsson’s tendency to over-write. (Let’s face it: The second hundred pages or so of The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo are a truly tedious slog.)

The Girl Who Played with Fire: Smoldering

The Girl Who Played with Fire (2010) • View trailer for The Girl Who Played with Fire
Four stars (out of five). Rating: R, for violence, profanity, nudity, rape and strong sexual content
By Derrick Bang • Originally published in The Davis Enterprise, 8.6.10
Buy DVD: The Girl Who Played With Fire • Buy Blu-Ray: The Girl Who Played with Fire [Blu-ray]

The characters are no longer as provocatively fresh, and we've learned that Stieg Larsson's plots can be extremely nasty. 

But familiarity certainly doesn't breed contempt. Noomi Rapace's Lisbeth Salander remains one of cinema's truly great characters, and parts of The Girl Who Played with Fire are just as tense as what went down in this film's predecessor. 

Having gotten to know Lisbeth Salander quite intimately
during the events depicted in the previous film,
investigative journalist Mikael Blomkvist (Michael
Nyqvist, right) refuses to believe that she could be guilty
of the three murders with which she has been charged.
Alas, investigating detective Jan Bublanski (Johan Kylen)
doesn't share Mikael's faith in the absent Lisbeth, whose
location remains unknown. To make matters worse,
Bublanski resents Mikael's tendency to embarrass the
police ... which leaves our crusading reporter to do his
own sleuthing. (Would we have it any other way?)

Perhaps even more suspenseful, since we now know that Larsson doesn't pull his punches. If no single scene in this film generates the sickening horror of Salander's rape in The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, it ain't for lack of effort. Bad things happen to good people here. 

That said, replacement director Daniel Alfredson simply doesn't have the snap that Niels Arden Oplev brought to the first film. Alfredson's approach is more routine, less galvanic; he doesn't exactly dilute the twisty plot or intriguing characters, but he also doesn't bring much to the party. 

Were she not so emotionally damaged and oddly vulnerable, Rapace's character could be regarded as less mortal and more iconic: a pierced, black-garbed avenging angel placed on Earth hunt down "men who hate women," as crusading journalist Mikael Blomkvist (Michael Nyqvist, also returning) perceives her. 

The beauty of Rapace's performance, though, is the intriguing balance between human frailty and adrenaline-fueled hatred. Salander is such a tiny little thing — one wonders how she's able to handle a huge motorcycle, in one scene — that first-time acquaintances can be forgiven their assumption of weakness. But Rapace makes us believe that rage and ferocious skill trump size, particularly when she sets her mouth grimly and we watch, with both satisfaction and horror, as all humanity and compassion drain from her dark eyes. 

Aside from some quick scenes that establish the sex-traffickers who hover malignantly throughout this story, Fire begins somewhat quietly, allowing us to get a better sense of the relationships between Blomkvist, Salander and various side characters that were given short shrift in the first film. Larsson's books are dense, to say the least; while the screenwriters — Jonas Frykberg here, Nikolaj Arcel and Rasmus Heisterberg on Tattoo — have done an impressive job of compression while retaining all the crucial bits, one can lament the missing subtleties. 

The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo: Fiery thriller

The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo (2010) • View trailer for The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo
4.5 stars (out of five). Rating: Unrated, but comparable to an R for violence, nudity, profanity, rape and strong sexual content
By Derrick Bang • Originally published in The Davis Enterprise, 4.16.10
Buy DVD: The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo • Buy Blu-Ray: The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo [Blu-ray]

The late Stieg Larsson's U.S. fans have been salivating over the prospect of seeing his debut novel on the big screen, ever since the American translation of The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo hit our shores in September 2008.

The wait has been worthwhile. Director Niels Arden Oplev has delivered a taut, intelligent and thoroughly absorbing adaptation of Larsson's intriguing and quite nasty thriller. Kudos, as well, go to screenwriters Rasmus Heisterberg and Nikolaj Arcel, who've done a masterful job of transforming Larsson's dense novel (480 pages!) into a 152-minute film that never, ever flags.

After realizing that their quarters have been searched in their absence -- thanks
to the perfect recall she has for the location of every object in the room --
Lisbeth (Noomi Rapace) drags Mikael (Michael Nyqvist) outside, where they
discover the tell-tale scratches of forced entry. Perversely, Lisbeth regards this
as good news: The bad guys are getting nervous...

Although the literary world has given us a wealth of gripping thrillers and mystery novels during the past several decades, the genre has been woefully under-represented on American movie screens ... that is to say, in a manner that does justice to the original books. Hollywood adaptations of such stories are invariably superficial and additionally compromised by the reflexive need for the high-power wattage of movie stars, and their presence always wrecks the gritty integrity of the source novel.

We've had to rely on foreign filmmakers for adaptations that are true to the atmosphere of the written word. Roman Polanski's current handling of Robert Harris' The Ghost Writer is a marvelous drama: grim fiction by way of familiar real-world newspaper headlines. And I still have very fond memories of French director/scripter Guillaume Canet's sensational 2006 adaptation of Harlan Coben's Tell No One, without question one of the best mystery thrillers ever brought to the big screen.

Even French director Bernard Tavernier's 2009 interpretation of James Lee Burke's In the Electric Mist with Confederate Dead — shortened to In the Electric Mist when filmed — is an intriguing effort, despite its flaws. How can one not appreciate the perfect casting of Tommy Lee Jones as Burke's world-weary Dave Robicheaux?

To this list we must add Oplev's adaptation of The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, highlighted by another example of perfect casting: Noomi Rapace's utterly mesmerizing performance as the damaged and deliciously complex title character, Lisbeth Salander.

You won't quickly forget her. Which is as it should be.