Sunday 25 November 2012

Margin Call: My Review



In 2008 everything went wrong, the stock market crashed and all hell broke loose. It was the first the first time people started to hear the dreaded "R" word ... Recession but it was most certainly not the last. Jobs were lost and so were many lives as the shockwaves of the crash started to infest each country like a cancer. Prices skyrocketed as banks shut their doors on the millions of people who had entrusted them with their money.

The 24 hours leading up to this meltdown is where debut director  J.C.Chandor has decided to set his first feature. The film opens with the gutting of an office that will soon be inexorably linked with the collapse. One of the employees being let go is Eric Dale played by Stanley Tucci, hes the risk assessment manager of the firm and is deemed to be no longer necessary to the running of the company. On his way out the door he hands a USB key to his subordinate Peter Sullivan played by Star Treks Zachary Quinto. He leaves Sullivan with the short warning of "be careful".
  When Quinto plugs in the USB key he discovers something that will change his firm and America forever. He then informs his boss played by Paul Bettany of his findings and from there the news begins to travel up the pipeline until its reaches the head honcho of the company John Tuld played by the wonderful Jeremy Irons. The firm is then put to the task of selling all of its stock before anyone realizes how worthless it really is.

Kevin Spacey is then introduced as the moral compass of the film knowing what him and his firm are doing and trying to explain that it will save them now but it will destroy the company in the long run.
 The film is a great ensemble piece with everyone putting in some of there finest work of the decade. The script is superb with killer lines of dialogue being traded throughout, especially great are Paul Bettanys and Jeremy Irons performances with the former making us wonder why he wasted his time on big-budget, CGI- filled nonsense when he is obviously more suited and interested in this type of work, and the former reminding us why he is one of England's finest exports and one the most intelligent actors working today.

The film manages to humanize the type of people who are demonized in the press day in and day out, it exists   in a grey area giving enough character moments to make us at least understand why they did what they did. The film is boosted by some excellent cinematography which helps to further the ominous tone that urrounds the film. This culminates in the third act which shows the level of deception that was going on behind the scenes. Once Paul Bettany utters the line "My loss is your gain" you know immediately what devastation is about to follow.

It is a timely feature which would work as a great companion piece 'Wall Street' as they both show the opposite ends of the spectrum in the business world. These are the people who's job it is to predict outcomes and the film shows what can happen when they get it wrong.

Margin Call is a near-perfect film with superb performances all round, great direction and a brilliant screenplay. This is intelligent film-making at its very finest.

Saturday 10 November 2012

ARGO: MY REVIEW

Argo is Ben Afflecks third feature as a director, and with it he establishes himself as one of the most consistent mainstream drama directors working in America today. His other two features 'Gone Baby Gone' and 'The Town' were both set in his hometown of Boston, a place he knows like the back of his hand and had a much simpler time shooting there compared to his latest film.

With Argo Affleck gives himself his biggest challenge yet with story that has so much more scope and ambition then his last films. Argo is based on a true story, and that information is vital to know before going in . If you viewed it without prior knowledge you could simply pass it off as biased pro-American nonsense, but every important scene in this film did happen. You only have to type it into your search box to read it yourself.

Argo starts off with an unnamed narrator filling in the backstory  on all the events that you are going to witness in its two hour running time. Its very simple, 6 american fugitives have taken refuge in a Canadian embassy while Iran is under siege from its citizens who are baying for the blood of their ex-president who has fled the country, and its up to the CIA to get them out.

Ben Affleck is Tony Mendez, a CIA operative who's job it is is to get the fugitives out of the country. His 'Best Bad Idea' is to pretend that him and the fugitives are a Canadian film crew scouting locations for a science-fiction epic called Argo. Along the way he recruits the great double act of John Goodman and Alan Arkin as two Hollywood insiders to help him make his fake movie seem believable.

There's also excellent support from Bryan Cranston and Chris Messina who lead up the CIA strand of the plot. Affleck has rounded up a great cast and there all on top form with no one letting themselves down. The movie shifts tonally several times wit starting out as hostage drama-then comic relief in Hollywood-and finally a tense thriller in the final stretch.

However the film is not perfect, it doesn't always grip you in the way a movie like this should and it never feels like the stakes are that high. If you find yourself not caring about certain characters you will start to lose interest.

Overall Affleck has managed to make a highly enjoyable, always entertaining but not always perfect thriller.