French Lover: An affair to forget

French Lover (2025) • View trailer

Two stars (out of five). Rated TV-MA, for sexual candor, mild nudity and profanity

Available via: Netflix

By Derrick Bang

Although numerous sources have called this romantic dramedy a French, gender-reversed response to 1999’s Notting Hill, the comparison is superficial at best.

 

Despite the fact that ABel (Omar Sy) repeatedly behaves badly, like a spoiled child, he
always apologizes ... and Marion (Sara Giraudeau) always forgives him. Too many times...

Hugh Grant’s “regular bloke” in that earlier film is a successful bookstore owner, with a solid gaggle of supportive friends; he also has his act together. Sara Giraudeau’s Marion, in director Lisa-Nina Rives’ new film, has neither a job nor savings, is in the midst of messily divorcing her loutish husband Antoine (Amaury de Crayencour), and is an emotional wreck. Her only companion is an adored Great Dane named Claudine.

Even so, Marion’s vulnerability is endearing, and Giraudeau plays her 

well; she’d have been a great character in a different film.

 

Getting back to Notting Hill, Julia Roberts’ famed Hollywood actress is a nice person ... whereas this story’s similarly celebrated Abel Camara (Omar Sy) is an arrogant, self-centered horse’s ass who expects everything, including female companions, to be handed to him on a silver platter.

 

Sy, who has charisma to burn, can’t make this jerk appealing. Not even at his better moments.

 

As a result, this story — scripted by Noémie Saglio and Hugo Gélin, loosely inspired by the Israeli TV series A Very Important Person — never successfully sells its relationship of unequals. Sy and Giraudeau give it their best, and Rives’ film has some charming moments ... but accepting the telegraphed inevitability of where this will conclude, is a major eye-roller.

 

The story opens with a terrific tracking montage, as Abel swans his way through a TV commercial shoot for a perfume dubbed French Lover; once in the can, he angrily stalks off, believing himself “above” doing such twaddle. He lands in a bistro where Marion works as a waitress; after taking his order, she responds to a text on her phone, at which point Abel narcissistically accuses her of filming him, in order to post on social media.

 

The resulting brouhaha costs Marion her job, and she stalks off in a huff. Suddenly contrite, full of apologies, Abel slowly paces her while in his car, insisting — at the very least — on being allowed to drive her home.

 

It’s important to note that although Abel behaves as if his contrition is sincere, he never clarifies why he’s apologizing ... meaning, he never acknowledges his conceited assumption.

The Killer: A well-crafted slayride

The Killer (2024) • View trailer

Four stars (out of five). Rated R, for profanity and frequent strong, bloody violence

Available via: Peacock

By Derrick Bang

I’ve of two minds about this film.

 

On the one hand, I respect the feelings of purists; goodness, I’m one of them.

 

On the other hand, we must acknowledge the march of time, and changing styles.

 

Onward, then:

 

********

 

Directors don’t often remake their own films, although notable exceptions exist: Cecil B. DeMille (The 10 Commandments, 1923 and ’56), Frank Capra (Lady for a Day and Pocketful of Miracles, 1933 and ’61), Alfred Hitchcock (The Man Who Knew Too Much, 1934 and ’56), George Sluizer (The Vanishing, 1988 and ’93), and Michael Mann (L.A. Takedown and Heat, 1989 and ’95) leap to mind.

 

Veteran cop Sey (Omar Sy) may think that he has the handcuffed Zee
(Nathalie Emmanuel) under control, but he reckons not with her cunning, quick wit
and lightning-fast resourcefulness.

Celebrated Hong Kong action director John Woo now joins their ranks, with this English-language remake of his 1989 classic: widely considered one of the greatest action thrillers ever made, and which strongly influenced filmmakers such as Quentin Tarantino and Robert Rodriguez. (And Woo’s 35-year gap tops all the others mentioned above.)

When asked about his two versions of Man Who Knew Too Much by fellow filmmaker François Truffaut, in the latter’s influential 1966 book-length interview, Hitchcock/Truffaut, the Master of Suspense immodestly replied, “Let’s say the first version is the work of a talented amateur, and the second was made by a professional.”

 

The same can be said of Woo’s two cracks at The Killer. This new version boasts Mauro Fiore’s vastly superior cinematography, and is a brighter, sharper “daytime experience,” as opposed to the original’s grainier, dingier “nighttime look.” The split-screen touches and cleverly presented flashbacks also are quite cool.

 

The new film’s gender switch is a novel touch. Scripters Brian Helgeland, Josh Campbell and Matt Stuecken also modified and expanded Woo’s 1989 screenplay, making the plot more relevant to real-world events, and altering interpersonal dynamics in ways that definitely improve the story. It’s easier to like these characters.

 

(Although ... should we?)

 

The original’s brooding, almost overwhelming atmosphere of Shakespearean tragedy has been replaced with a greater sense of fun and dark humor, which likely will play better with modern audiences.

 

However...

 

Woo’s longtime fans are certain to decry the loss of that relentless sense of foreboding, and with justification. More crucially, this new version lacks the breathless, chaotic energy of the first film’s multiple melees, chases, and mano a mano face-offs. The stunt work may be cleaner and more inventively edited here — credit for the latter to Zach Staenberg — but only a handful of sequences possess the thrilling, balls-to-the-wall mayhem that occurred more than half a dozen times in the original, which — let’s not forget — put Woo on the cinematic map.

 

That’s a shame.

 

(However, we do get a welcome reprise of the tense, straight-armed handgun pas de deux between the two primary characters, which is so iconic in the first film)

The Takedown: Take it back

The Takedown (2022) • View trailer

Two stars (out of five). Rated TV-MA, for violence, gore, profanity and graphic nudity

Available via: Netflix

By Derrick Bang • Published in The Davis Enterprise, 5.13.22

It’s comforting to know that French buddy cop dramedies can be every bit as silly and preposterous, as many of those made here in the States.

 

Having learned that a vicious killer works for a mysterious protection agency known as
Securitec, our unlikely heroes — from left, François (Laurent Lafitte), Alice (Izïa
Higelin) and Ousmane (Omar Sy) — debate their next move.

(That said, I’d hate to think director Louis Leterrier and writer Stéphane Kazandijian crafted this flashy nonsense with American audiences in mind.)

To the degree that it succeeds at all, The Takedown is a textbook case of star charisma over thin material. Omar Sy, recently seen in the far superior TV miniseries Lupin, lights up the screen here as Ousmane Diakité, a reckless, take-charge detective in Paris’ Police Criminal Division.

 

Even when spouting the most wincingly awful one-liners — Kazandijian feeds him plenty of those — Sy’s broad grin, mischievous gaze and loping, well-toned physique make him utterly irresistible.

 

The same cannot be said of Laurent Lafitte’s portrayal of François Monge, an insufferably narcissistic and condescending detective in the Judicial District. François is the epitome of an arrested adolescent: childish, petulant, arrogant, determined to have the last word, and convinced that he’s the smartest person in the room (to the aghast disbelief of everybody else in the room).

 

Ousmane and François once were partners in the Criminal Division; indeed, this film is a sequel to 2012’s equally clumsy On the Other Side of the Tracks. (One wonders about that lengthy gap; I suspect this new film is prompted mostly by Sy’s rapid rise to fame during the previous decade.)

 

Following a ludicrous perp collar that takes place during a cage boxing match, and establishes Ousmane’s tendency toward bull-headed brawling, he’s summoned to the scene of a rather grisly crime: the severed upper half of a male body, jammed between two cars of a passenger train. This discovery is made by François, who is at the station by chance.

 

Their reunion is prickly. Ousmane, now a captain, outranks François, a lieutenant who has repeatedly failed the captain’s exam, and been denied his frequent requests for transfer. No doubt remembering that his former friend is more liability than colleague, Ousmane would prefer to politely wave farewell … particularly when they learn that the victim’s lower half has been found alongside the tracks in a small town in Southeastern France.

 

Ah, but François isn’t about to put up with that.

 

(How many dozens — scores! — of times, have we seen the subsequent sequence? “You’re not coming, and that’s final,” intones Person A to Person B, after which we smash-cut to the two of them traveling side by side, a resigned expression on Person A’s face. Leterrier and Kazandijian do nothing to make it fresh here.)

The Call of the Wild: Bad dog!

The Call of the Wild (2020) • View trailer 
Two stars. PG, for dramatic intensity
By Derrick Bang • Originally published in The Davis Enterprise, 2.21.20

This certainly isn’t Jack London’s Call of the Wild.

To a certain degree, that’s good; among other things, the novel’s handling of Native Americans is a lamentable reflection of its 1903 origins.

As they spend more time in the wilderness of the Canadian Yukon, John Thornton
(Harrison Ford) senses that his canine friend Buck is responding to something
instinctively more powerful than his attachment to mankind.

But prudent adjustment on behalf of cultural sensitivity does not justify the insufferable Disney-fication of this otherwise classic saga. Although Harrison Ford does his best — as both narrator and human star — the story’s nobility has been lost in scripter Michael Green’s clumsy, tone-deaf and wildly uneven adaptation.

On top of which, the decision to rely on CGI fabrications — as opposed to actual dogs — is a serious miscalculation. That may fly with the wild animals in The Lion King and The Jungle Book; most of us aren’t intimately familiar with how lions, tigers, elephants and the like actually move. But we all know how dogs think, behave, walk, run and jump … and this film’s faux canines frequently look wrong, wrong, wrong.

No surprise, given that visual effects supervisors Ryan Stafford and Erik Nash “built” their canine star — Buck — from the athletic movements of a former Cirque du Soleil performer pretending to be a dog.

Are we to imagine that Hollywood lacks real dogs that could have served as models for London’s powerful, 140-pound St. Bernard-Scotch Collie mix?

Poppycock.

OK, fine; the SFX grants Buck more insight, sensitivity and expressive personality than we’d likely get from an actual dog actor (although seasoned canine trainers likely would argue that point). But this anthropomorphization constantly feels false and phony; it was fine for the wholly animated pooches in Lady and the Tramp and 101 Dalmatians, but here it’s merely distracting.

Green’s script follows most of the significant plot beats in London’s novel, so we initially meet Buck as the pampered, wholly out of control pet in the genteel, staff-laden household of wealthy Judge Miller (Bradley Whitford). This prolog marks an inauspicious beginning by director Chris Sanders, who unwisely channels the dreadful 1960s Disney comedies that involved animals — often dogs — running amok and destroying furniture, spilling the contents of every container in sight, and generally making as huge a mess as possible … supposedly because this was the height of hilarity.

It wasn’t then, and it isn’t now.

Inferno: Flickers and dies

Inferno (2016) • View trailer 
Two stars. Rated PG-13, for action violence, dramatic intensity and brief profanity
By Derrick Bang

I’ve no idea why this series continues to be popular; each entry is sillier than the one before.

Dan Brown may be able to maintain reader credibility in a lengthy novel — Inferno runs a self-indulgent 609 pages — but director Ron Howard’s film adaptations are no more sensible than the old Perils of Pauline silent movie serial.

A series of arcane, art-related clues eventually lead Robert Langdon (Tom Hanks) and
Dr. Sienna Brooks (Felicity Jones) to the fabled "death mask" of Italian poet Dante
Alighieri. But what has this to do with a potential world-wide plague? And do we care?

David Koepp’s screenplay for Inferno reduces the plot to little more than a race-race-race against time, occasionally alleviated when famed university symbologist Robert Langdon (Tom Hanks) pauses for breath in order to solve another arcane riddle locked within a famed piece of artwork.

On top of which, attempting to make sense of the conspiracy-laden supporting characters is beyond the ability of mere mortals. “Duplicitous” doesn’t begin to cover the crosses, double-crosses and triple-crosses in this ludicrous plot, which quickly devolves into a tiresome guessing game.

Lessee ... first they’re all bad guys. Then some of the bad guys become good guys. Oh, wait, no; that one was bad all along. And that one was good. Until turning bad again.

All with poor Langdon caught in the middle.

It quickly becomes impossible to believe — or care about — any of these people. All we can do is wait for the murk to clear, accompanied by tediously complicated explanations, so matters can build to a staggeringly inept climax, and we can go home.

Brown may have sold all this meandering nonsense to his readers — full disclosure prompts acknowledging that I’m not among the faithful — but Koepp can’t begin to distill it into a two-hour film. We can’t help wondering, as loyalties finally become apparent in the third act, why Certain Parties didn’t simply ask for Langdon’s help, rather than concocting such an elaborate means of “forcing” his assistance.

What makes Howard’s Dan Brown adaptations even more exasperating is their insistence on taking such stuff and nonsense so seriously. Robert Langdon’s profession and expertise make him a close cousin to Harrison Ford’s Indiana Jones, but director Steven Spielberg wisely turns those chapter-play adventures into larkish thrill rides, with plenty of winking and nudging.

Brown’s style, on the other hand — reproduced here by Howard and Koepp — always collapses under the weight of its own pomposity.

Burnt: Overly scorched

Burnt (2015) • View trailer 
Three stars. Rated R, for profanity
By Derrick Bang

We’re supposed to root for this guy — and it shouldn’t be difficult; we are, after all, talking about Bradley Cooper — but his character is too damn mean.

Dragged against her will into joining Adam (Bradley Cooper) in the kitchen of his
restaurant-to-be, Helene (Sienna Miller) almost immediately is the target of a belittling
tirade by her new boss. Which she tolerates, thereby losing all of our respect for her.

Redemption stories get their juice from the intensity of atonement: The deeper the downward spiral, the more we cheer the dogged climb back to salvation and forgiveness.

That said, this story’s protagonist is such a temper tantrum-throwing bully — such a relentless prick — that viewers likely will write him off as unworthy, long before he tries to get his act together. Scripters Steven Knight and Michael Kalesniko give him too many unpalatable virtues, and — as directed by John Wells — Cooper obligingly delivers too many thoroughly persuasive rages.

Matters probably aren’t helped by the fact that this story takes place in the world of London and Paris’ haute cuisine restaurants, where screaming enfant terrible chefs browbeat their staffs into delivering the perfect artistic touch to dishes with portions so small they wouldn’t satisfy a mouse, which then are served to über-rich snots who smack their lips and roll their eyes over imagined sensory marvels.

We live in a post-Gordon Ramsey world, where — rather weirdly — boorish behavior by celebrity chefs has come to be synonymous with gastronomic perfection. I ain’t buyin’ it. Frankly, this film’s most interesting moments come during the occasional montages that find our hero (?) exploring food carts, back-alley stalls, bodegas, street markets and even fast-food restaurants, while searching for intriguing spices, sauces or seasonings.

Once back in his high-end kitchen, applying said discoveries to laughably over-decorated menu items ... not so much.

But maybe I’m just not enough of a foodie.

All that said...

We meet Adam Jones (Cooper) at an oyster shack in New Orleans, where he has spent the past few years doing self-prescribed penance for previous bad behavior. His path to spiritual salvation: the shucking of one million oysters, a task he has recorded meticulously in a pocket notebook. He reaches this goal as the story begins, and then he’s off to Paris, scene of his previous extremely bad behavior.

Jurassic World: Dino-might

Jurassic World (2015) • View trailer 
3.5 stars. Rated PG-13, for intense sci-fi violence and peril
By Derrick Bang • Originally published in The Davis Enterprise, 6.12.15

We never learn.

Which is a good thing ... because, otherwise, where would Hollywood find most of its plotlines?

Having managed one narrow escape after another, our besieged heroes — from left,
Claire (Bryce Dallas Howard), Owen (Chris Pratt), Zach (Nick Robinson) and Gray
(Ty Simpkins) — wind up trapped in a lab when yet another dino-menace appears out
of nowhere. These poor folks just can't catch a break...

In a few key respects, Jurassic World is an honorable sequel to the sensational 1993 film that Steven Spielberg made from Michael Crichton’s riveting, way-clever novel ... not to mention Spielberg’s almost-as-good 1997 follow-up, adapted from Crichton’s own sequel. (Equal credit also goes to scripter David Koepp, who worked on both films.)

We’ll just sorta pretend that the series’ third entry, in 2001, never happened.

Which also seems to be the attitude adopted by this new film’s director, Colin Trevorrow, and his three co-writers: Rick Jaffa, Amanda Silver and Derek Connelly. Jurassic World does acknowledge the first two films with several nice nods toward those who sculpted this franchise so superbly. Even Michael Giacchino’s exhilarating score references key John Williams themes from the two Spielberg movies.

Visual effects supervisors Tim Alexander and Glen McIntosh also do phenomenal work, further enhancing the “you are there” verisimilitude that made the first film such a jaw-dropping wonder. It’s no imaginative stretch at all, to accept these various beasties as living, breathing ... and highly dangerous.

Trevorrow and editor Kevin Stitt concoct a hell-for-leather third act, with each suspenseful encounter and/or chase building to an even better one. Additionally, the script is laden with perceptive social commentary, taking some well-deserved jabs at our jaded 21st sensibilities, while reminding us anew that — to paraphrase a droll 1970s TV commercial — it’s not nice to mess with Mother Nature.

Sounds great, right?

Well ... not entirely.

Despite its many virtues, Jurassic World is marred by an abundance of unpleasant, mean-spirited and just plain stupid characters who spend the entire film behaving like complete idiots. On top of which, Trevorrow seems to have coached everybody to play at hyper-melodramatic, back row/third balcony opera house levels.

That’s frankly surprising, since Trevorrow’s sole previous credit is 2012’s droll Safety Not Guaranteed, a little sci-fi mystery that gets its oomph from being so deliciously coy, subtle and quiet.

So why switch gears here? Did Trevorrow worry that his human players had to compete with their dino co-stars, when it came to chewing up the scenery?

Whatever the reason, it’s hard to like or admire most of these characters, including the few whom we’re definitely supposed to root for. Brainless behavior demands the opposite; I’d have been perfectly content to watch a few more become dino-chow.