September 5: Impressively powerful

September 5 (2024) • View trailer

Five stars (out of five). Rated R, for profanity and dramatic intensity

Available via: Movie theaters

By Derrick Bang • Published in The Davis Enterprise, 1.26.25 

Ingenuity under pressure is fascinating.

 

Director Tim Fehlbaum’s fact-based depiction of what occurred during the 1972 Munich Olympics — and how those events were broadcast to the entire world — is a suspenseful and riveting docudrama: a true, edge-of-the-seat nail-biter.

 

Members of the ABC News sports team — from left, standing, Jacques Lesgardes
(Zinedine Soualem), Geoff Mason (John Magaro) and Carter Jeffrey (Marcus
Rutherford) — surround translator Marianne Gebhard (Leonie Benesch) as she 
dictates an update from the Munich police radio frequency.

The suspense derives not from the terrorist attack itself — the details of which are well known, and remain seared into history — but the resourceful, behind-the-scenes scrambling by the ABC News sports broadcasting team, which allowed 900 million global viewers to witness this incident, in real time.

The key phrase in that previous sentence is “sports broadcasting team” ... as opposed to seasoned television news journalists. That distinction heightens this story’s drama.

 

Events begin quietly, following coverage of events taking place during Day 10 of the Olympics. Newbie coordinating producer Geoffrey Mason (played by John Magaro) is granted the opportunity to helm the next day’s coverage, thanks to a recommendation by Marvin Bader (Ben Chaplin), then vice-president of ABC-TV’s Olympic Operations. They both answer to Roone Arledge (Peter Sarsgaard), then president of ABC Sports (and later president of ABC News, from 1977 to ’98).

 

World-wide broadcast of the Games has been made possible, for the first time, thanks to new satellite technology.

 

The “thrill of victory and agony of defeat” sporting events aside, these summer Olympics are hugely important for political reasons: the first Games hosted by a German city since Adolf Hitler’s notorious 1936 Berlin travesty. The 1972 invitation was extended, in part, as a means of giving West Germany an opportunity to showcase its reborn democratic virtues.

 

This is tremendously important to the ABC team’s German translator, Marianne Gebhardt (Leonie Benesch), who wants the world to see her “new and improved” country.

 

(Unlike the aforementioned individuals, and a few others, Gebhardt is a fictitious character based on a composite of several translators.)

 

Everything goes pear-shaped at 4:30 a.m. September 5, when gun shots are heard from within the Olympic Village. They’re followed quickly by reports on the local police radio frequency — which Gebhardt translates — that armed individuals have invaded the quarters of the Israeli Olympic team.

The Ice Road: Thrills 'n' chills

The Ice Road (2021) • View trailer

3.5 stars (out of five). Rated PG-13, for dramatic intensity, violence and occasional profanity

Available via: Netflix

By Derrick Bang

This is an intriguing riff on 1953’s The Wages of Fear: Instead of hauling hazardous cargo, these truckers are traveling on a hazardous highway.

 

Mike (Liam Neeson) and Tantoo (Amber Midthunder) watch in horror, as an expanding
pattern of cracking ice rips toward their trucks.

Writer/director Jonathan Hensleigh’s nail-biting thriller is another ideal vehicle (ahem) for star Liam Neeson, who continues to enjoy his late-career status as an action hero. Hensleigh’s script is completely formulaic — he leaves no cliché behind — but the crisply executed result is sufficiently entertaining.

Events begin deep underground, when part of a Northern Manitoba diamond mine collapses, trapping a couple dozen miners. Rescue requires specialized, heavy-duty wellheads that aren’t on site, and can’t be delivered via plane. Speed also is of the essence, as the miners — able to communicate topside, by rapping Morse code on an exposed pipe — have limited oxygen.

 

The sole option is to haul the equipment with big rigs, and the fastest route — the only route that’ll make it in time — is the “ice road” across frozen Lake Winnipeg.

 

In the dead of winter, that wouldn’t be a problem. But it’s early spring, and the frozen ice isn’t nearly as thick; it may not be solid enough to handle the weight.

 

Goldenrod (Laurence Fishburne), the trucking operator in charge, puts out a call for seasoned drivers willing to risk their lives. By coincidence, just across the border in North Dakota, Mike (Liam Neeson) and his brother Gurty (Marcus Thomas) are between jobs. Steady employment eludes them, because Mike tends to beat the crap out of anybody who teases Gurty, who suffers from PTSD impairment.

 

Goldenrod isn’t in a position to be choosy, particularly when Gurty reveals genius mechanical talents. The only other taker is Tantoo (Amber Midthunder), a feisty young Cree woman with a tendency to get arrested while participating in First Nations protests. She’s also a highly capable big rig driver, and determined to participate because her brother Cody is one of the trapped miners.

 

The plan involves triple redundancy: three trucks — Goldenrod driving the third one himself — each carrying the necessary equipment. Ergo, only one needs to make it. 

 

(One could argue that three heavily laden trucks are much more likely to break the ice than a single vehicle, but you can’t apply that sort of logic to this sort of story.)

The Choice: Choose something else

The Choice (2016) • View trailer 
1.5 stars. Rated PG-13, for sensuality and dramatic intensity
By Derrick Bang

If we’re gonna get treacle, it needs to be served better than this.

Movies based on Nicholas Sparks’ novels have become an annual nuisance, much like the return of hurricane season. His formulaic plots have grown tedious, his signature narrative gimmicks ripe for parody.

Gabby (Teresa Palmer) is happily attached to a longtime boyfriend. She doesn't even
really like her neighbor, Travis (Benjamin Walker). She nonetheless invites him over for
a romantic dinner. Can you guess what happens next?

The newest assault on our tear ducts, The Choice, offers all the same ingredients. A quaint, gorgeous setting, often coastal; check. Somebody at an emotional crossroads; check. An introductory romantic dinner in a quasi-isolated setting; check. Written messages exchanged in some droll or unusual manner; check.

And, of course, a tragedy of some sort — illness, accident, meteor strike — that Destroys Everything; double-check.

One’s willingness to buy into such sudsy melodrama depends on many factors, but we must acknowledge the necessity of a competent script and reasonably talented actors. The Choice has neither, which — coupled with the usual Sparks contrivances — makes it not only unwatchable, but hilariously awful. I’d love to see the ’bots from Mystery Science Theater 3000 take a poke at it.

Bryan Sipe’s screenplay is dreadful, his dialog the stuff of puerile TV soap operas. People simply don’t talk like this. Director Ross Katz doesn’t help matters, having no distinguishable talent that I can determine. He gets nothing but stiff and robotic performances from his stars, and a middle-school film student could improve upon the bland camera set-ups.

Most damningly, though, leading lady Teresa Palmer can’t act a lick. (Alternatively, and to maintain the shared blame, Katz can’t draw a performance out of her.) Her line readings are flat and howlingly awful, and her fallback “emotional reaction” — employed relentlessly — involves bobbing her head and flipping her hair: a dead giveaway to her (one hopes more successful) former career as a model.

Her introductory “meet cute” exchange with co-star Benjamin Walker is impressively awkward and forced. And Katz deemed it worthy of a “cut and print” command? He’s delusional.

In the Heart of the Sea: Waterlogged

In the Heart of the Sea (2015) • View trailer 
Three stars. Rated PG-13, for dramatic intensity, startling violence and considerable peril
By Derrick Bang • Originally published in The Davis Enterprise, 12.11.15

The ingredients are sure-fire: a fascinating, fact-based narrative; a plot that demands bravery and ghastly sacrifice by the men involved; a solid cast led by Chris Hemsworth, who makes ample use of his steely, blue-eyed resolve; and everything under the capable guidance of seasoned director Ron Howard.

Facing an undeniably vengeful attack by a massive white sperm whale, ship's first mate
Owen Chase (Chris Hemsworth, foreground right) does his best to protect his men.
Unfortunately, even he won't be able to prevent what's about to happen...

And yet, In the Heart of the Sea somehow fails to resonate. Too many of the characters are defined solely by one-dimensional tics; the storyline is completely predictable; and the interpersonal squabbles are the stuff of trite cliché, particularly the sniping between Hemsworth’s first mate, Owen Chase, and their ship’s inexperienced and incompetent captain, George Pollard (Benjamin Walker).

On top of which, the thoroughly pointless 3D effects, added after the fact, do no favors to the otherwise exemplary work by cinematographer Anthony Dod Mantle. The entire film is too dark and frequently looks washed out: the inevitable results of poor post-production 3D processing.

Howard’s film too often feels like a routine Boy’s Own Adventure Saga, albeit one granted a first-class budget. Everybody hits their marks like a pro, but the result just isn’t very involving: nowhere near as riveting as, say, Master and Commander: The Far Side of the World, several big-screen versions of Mutiny on the Bounty, or even the many British TV episodes of Horatio Hornblower.

Scripters Charles Leavitt, Rick Jaff and Amanda Silver also play fast and loose with historical accuracy, despite basing their screenplay on Nathaniel Philbrick’s meticulously researched 2000 book, In the Heart of the Sea: The Tragedy of the Whaleship Essex, which in turn is based on two published accounts by men who survived the incident. The scripters cherry-picked some details, glossed over others, and most particularly “adjusted” both Chase and Pollard for melodramatic intensity.

Perhaps borrowing from a similar technique in 1997’s Titanic, the saga is recounted in flashback via a framing device that finds an aging Thomas Nickerson (Brendan Gleeson), long ago the Essex cabin boy, recounting these events to a certain Herman Melville (Ben Whishaw).

It’s a cute touch — and Gleeson and Whishaw display more acting chemistry than can be found in the film’s primary storyline — but it’s totally bogus. Although these events definitely helped inspire the 1851 publication of Moby-Dick, Melville wouldn’t have needed to approach Nickerson for “the truth of the matter.” Chase’s own account of the tragedy was published in 1821, shortly after his rescue and return to his home in Nantucket.

Ah, well. Picky, picky, picky, right?

Abraham Lincoln, Vampire Hunter: Sharp-edged alternate history

Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter (2012) • View trailer
3.5 stars. Rating: R, for considerable horror violence, brief sensuality and fleeting nudity
By Derrick Bang

The only thing more audaciously lunatic than this film’s skirmish atop — yes, atop — a panicked herd of horses, is the climactic battle royale aboard a speeding train.

Say what you will about this storyline’s cheeky absurdity; director Timur Bekmambetov has style to burn.

Having beheaded and otherwise dispatched most of the vampire
minions in his undead host's New Orleans mansion, Abraham Lincoln
(Benjamin Walker) suddenly must face the far more deadly
Vadoma (Erin Watson).

Actually, Bekmambetov has built his entire career on visual pizzazz; the trouble — until now — is that the scripts for his various projects have been seriously flawed. The Russian-born director came to our attention with his bizarre, often incomprehensible vampire franchise, Night Watch and Day Watch. Both films were massively popular in his native country; on our shores, however, they felt quaintly retro.

But they looked fabulous and boasted plenty of creative touches, even when it was difficult to follow the seemingly random, fever-dream narratives.

Hollywood took note, and Bekmambetov made his American film debut with 2008’s similarly flamboyant adaptation of Wanted, based on the Mark Millar/J.G. Jones comic book series. Again, though, the frenetic editing, sleek cinematography and loopy action scenes overwhelmed the ill-defined characters and insufferably haphazard script.

Happily, things are much better with Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter. Seth Grahame-Smith’s screenplay, adapted from his own impudent novel, establishes solid characters and progresses through a clever re-boot of 19th century American history.

This saga belongs to the new literary sub-genre that Grahame-Smith founded with his first parody novel, 2009’s Pride and Prejudice and Zombies (due to hit the big screen next year). Although Jane Austen undoubtedly rolled over in her grave — and let’s hope she stayed there! — Grahame-Smith definitely tapped a fresh vein in the zeitgeist; if TV shows like Glee can mash up new pop songs with old classics, why not do the same with written genres?

More to the point, if Quentin Tarantino can employ his own gonzo talents to re-write history so that a squad of Jewish U.S. soldiers successfully assassinates Adolf Hitler, in 2009’s Inglourious Basterds — while also scoring an Academy Award for co-star Christoph Waltz — then surely Bekmambetov and Grahame-Smith can achieve the same results by giving “Honest Abe” something other than wood to chop, with his trusty axe.

And, frankly, Grahame-Smith’s narrative is rather clever. Once we accept the notion that 19th century vampires infiltrated the United States, with the hopes of helping the South preserve slavery — in order to maintain a readily available food supply — then everything else falls into place quite neatly. Grahame-Smith borrows just enough authentic history to help certain plot points look and sound familiar; beyond that, we simply hang on for dear life.