The Princess: Bold and bodacious

The Princess (2022) • View trailer

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

Available via: Hulu

By Derrick Bang

Guilty pleasure time.

 

Director Le-Van Kiet’s fast-and-furiously paced action thriller is a snarky Me Too riff on fairy tales, with 21st century gal power cheekily re-writing a “woman’s role” during medieval times. 

 

The Princess (Joey King, left) and her friend Linh (Veronica Ngo) prepare to fend off
another wave of enraged mercenaries.

The result is both fun and quite satisfying, thanks in great part to Joey King’s bruised, battered but never beaten performance in the title role.

Ben Lustig and Jake Thornton’s script blends back-story and character development with all manner of ferocious swordplay and hard-charging ass-kicking. Fight choreographer/coordinator Kefi Abrikh makes imaginative use of the mostly confined settings, with Kiet and editor Alex Fenn moving things right along.

 

The result is a thoroughly enjoyable 94-minute roller coaster ride: perfect for a rowdy movie night.

 

The film opens with a droll nod to once-upon-a-timing, as cinematographer Lorenzo Senatore’s camera slowly pans toward a tall castle tower, and then through a window to reveal the Princess — she’s never named — sleeping in this top-most chamber. But illusions of tranquility are shattered when she awakes with a start, her hands shackled in cuffs.

 

Worse yet, her locked room suddenly is invaded by two thuggish guards sent to “check on her.” Whatever the reason for her confinement, it ain’t good, and we get a sense of the Princess’ gritty determination when — fearing the worst from the guards — she deals with the cuffs. Painfully.

 

What follows is an eye-popping display of cool moves and adrenaline-fueled rage, which compensates for the woman’s diminutive stature. Exit two guards, one of them quite dramatically.

 

King is a modest 5-foot-4, but Kiet and Abrikh actually turn that into an advantage, as the subsequent melees and skirmishes become increasingly aggressive.

 

(I must admit, it’s a bit jarring to see King in such a role; I still remember her fondly as Beverly Cleary’s mischievous Ramona Quimby, in 2010’s Ramona and Beezus.)

 

As we soon learn via occasional flashbacks, her parents — the realm’s King (Ed Stoppard) and Queen (Alex Reid) — birthed only daughters: the Princess and her younger sister, Violet (Katelyn Rose Downey). Because of this absence of a male heir upon whom to eventually bestow the crown, the King agreed to let his daughter marry a neighboring noble, the opportunistic Julius (Dominic Cooper).

 

Ah, but Julius is a bloodthirsty, power-hungry sadist, which the Princess — a young woman who refuses to “know her place” — recognizes all too well. Tradition and family loyalty notwithstanding, she’s too headstrong and independent to tolerate such nonsense; she jilts Julius at the altar.

 

Black Widow: Exhilarating grrl power

Black Widow (2021) • View trailer

Four stars (out of five). Rated PG-13, for intense action violence and mild profanity

Available via: Movie theaters and Disney+

By Derrick Bang

The best superhero movies have a substantial human element that helps ground (if only a bit) the landscape-leveling mayhem that dominates the excessive third act.

 

Black Panther and the first Wonder Woman come to mind, as recent good examples.

 

Pausing for breath, while trying to evade the well-named Taskmaster, Natasha
(Scarlett Johansson, left) and Yelena (Florence Pugh) contemplate their next move.

Black Widow belongs in their company.

The script — by Eric Pearson, Jac Schaeffer and Ned Benson — gets its emotional juice from a fractured family dynamic that prompts all manner of interpersonal angst. The result, directed with welcome levels of heart and pathos by Cate Shortland, skillfully balances the slugfests and action sequences with quieter, contemplative moments.

 

This is appropriate, because the title character — Natasha Romanoff (Scarlett Johansson), aka the Black Widow — has one of the more complicated back-stories in Marvel Comics lore (which this film’s scripters have made darker still).

 

That said, at 133 minutes, Shortland’s film is at least one frantic melee too long.

 

In terms of the ever-more-convoluted Marvel movie timeline, the primary events here take place in the immediate wake of 2014’s Captain America: The Winter Soldier. The various Avengers are dividing via their response to increased governmental surveillance at the expense of personal freedom; Natasha is on the run, having (apparently) betrayed SHIELD and U.S. Secretary of State Thaddeus Ross (William Hurt). He wants her head.

 

First, though, this new film opens with a seemingly bucolic 1995 flashback that focuses on adolescent Natasha (Ever Anderson) and her younger sister, Yelena (Violet McGraw). We meet them during carefree, girlish play in suburban Ohio, watched lovingly by mom Melina (Rachel Weisz). But this illusion of white-picket-fence ordinariness is shattered when dad Alexei (David Harbour) arrives home, clearly agitated.

 

And we’re suddenly plunged into a Marvel Universe riff on TV’s The Americans.

 

Melina and Alexei are Russian spies, having lived in Ohio as “deep cover” operatives for three years. The latter has just completed their mission, and they must leave now-now-NOW, in order to evade the U.S. government agents hot on his heels. Natasha, old enough to know she prefers their current surroundings to her earlier life in Russia, is horrified to the point of tears; Yelena is too young to have a point of reference.

 

Both young actresses are terrific: particularly Anderson, whose performance — when this prologue hits its climax — is heartbreaking.

 

(Kudos also to the effects team that so convincingly — and spookily — “youthified” Weisz and Harbour.)

The November Man: Who can be trusted?

The November Man (2014) • View trailer 
3.5 stars. Rated R, for violence, rape, profanity, sexuality and brief drug use
By Derrick Bang • Originally published in The Davis Enterprise, 8.29.14

I always enjoy a well-crafted spy thriller, and this one’s a romp.

Australian director Roger Donaldson knows the territory, having delivered a twisty espionage thriller back in 1987, with his adaptation of Kenneth Fearing’s No Way Out. It remains one of star Kevin Costner’s best early films, thanks in great part to its didn’t-see-that-coming finale.

Devereaux (Pierce Brosnan, left) delights in setting up fight-or-flight "scenarios" for junior
partner Mason (Luke Bracey), which the latter finds a bit tiresome. And insulting. Which
rather misses the point, because the cocky Mason definitely needs to enhance his ability
to analyze a situation before it whirls out of control.

Donaldson’s handling of The November Man is cut from similar cloth, with scripters Michael Finch and Karl Gajdusek delivering an engaging spin on a cherry-picked entry in the late journalist-turned-novelist Bill Granger’s 13-book Devereaux series, which began with 1979’s The November Man and concluded with 1993’s Burning the Apostle. This film’s title notwithstanding, however, it’s based not on Granger’s first Deveraux book, but on the seventh, There Are No Spies.

That said, Finch and Gajdusek’s screenplay more honestly is “flavored” by Granger’s book, with numerous changes obviously intended to satisfy action-oriented audiences. The result is reasonably entertaining in a fast-paced “airplane movie” sort of way, with star Pierce Brosnan ideally cast as a cynical, world-weary spy dragged out of semi-retirement to fix another mess involving the CIA, a corrupt Russian presidential candidate, a lethal assassin, and a possible traitor within the CIA’s highest echelons.

Although obviously aiming for the cerebral atmosphere of 1960s cold-war movie classics such as The Ipcress File and The Spy Who Came In from the Cold, Donaldson doesn’t hit that target too often; he more frequently mines the who-can-be-trusted territory of 1975’s Three Days of the Condor, with a strong nod toward the mentor/protégé relationship at the heart of 2001’s Spy Game.

And heck, we’ve got a cast that include a former James Bond (Brosnan) and a former Bond babe (Olga Kurylenko, from Quantum of Solace). How can it miss?

Mostly, it doesn’t. With a few stiff caveats.

Devereaux and junior partner David Mason (Australian up-and-comer Luke Bracey) are introduced in a 2008 prologue, working a mission that goes pear-shaped when the younger operative fails to heed his mentor’s stern instructions. The anguish and disappointment are clear on Devereaux’s face; the kid has blown it, obviously dashing the older agent’s faith in him.

Oblivion: A sleek, provocative ride

Oblivion (2013) • View trailer 
Four stars. Rating: PG-13, for action violence, sensuality and fleeting profanity
By Derrick Bang • Originally published in The Davis Enterprise, 4.19.13

Director/co-scripter Joseph Kosinski’s Oblivion hearkens back to 1970s sci-fi thrillers that involved lone heroes struggling against horrific situations that weren’t quite what they seemed, at first blush.

Having discovered that somebody — or something — has set up a homing beacon that
is blasting a signal into space, Jack (Tom Cruise) carefully picks his way through the
remnants of the Empire State Building, seeking the source of this unexpected
pocket of technology.

Kosinski and his fellow writers — Karl Gajdusek and Michael Arndt — definitely caught that vibe. Their film carries strong thematic echoes of Planet of the Apes (the original 1968 version) and The Omega Man, with an added dollop of the psychological tension and heightened paranoia present in The Matrix.

Factor in some rip-snortin’ action sequences — which are freakin’ awesome on a giant IMAX screen — and the result is 126 minutes of clever, well-paced, post-apocalyptic suspense.

Which is not to say that Oblivion is destined to become a classic. Kosinski has a tendency toward overwrought bombast even when unnecessary: such as, for example, a love scene that rises to a frankly silly soundtrack crescendo from composers Anthony Gonzalez, Joseph Trapanese and M.8.3. I’m reminded of Giorgio Moroder’s similarly gaudy scores for 1980s rock-video movies such as Flashdance, Scarface and Top Gun: a suitable musical environment for those popcorn flicks, but not quite the right tone for an otherwise thoughtful sci-fi drama.

Kosinski comes by this style-over-substance tendency honestly, having helmed 2010’s laughably bloated TRON: Legacy. Fortunately, he’s working with a much better premise and narrative here, which can withstand his occasional visual and aural assaults.

The year is 2077, decades after an invading alien armada blew up Earth’s moon as the ultimate first-strike assault; the resulting environmental havoc destroyed civilizations around the globe. But mankind rose to the challenge and beat back the so-called Scavengers, although the cure may have been worse than the disease; thanks to the widespread use of nuclear weapons, most of what remained of Earth became uninhabitable.

Humanity’s remnants constructed a massive orbiting space station dubbed the Tet, from which the survivors hope to mount a massive exodus to Titan, Saturn’s largest moon. In pursuit of that grand scheme, Earth’s remaining resources — particularly water — are being extracted by huge, computer-driven factories, and sent to the Tet.

Two-person “monitoring teams” are stationed near each factory, ostensibly to handle any necessary repairs. Unfortunately, pockets of the Scavengers — Scavs — still remain on Earth, and are doing their best to sabotage these operations. In order to help safeguard the repair crews, globe-shaped weaponized “drones” scour the devastated landscape, seeking and eliminating any remaining alien resistance.