End Of Watch & The Hunt

Two films out in a week or so, and with nothing to link them together, other than the fact that I've seen them both and they provoked strong (albeit almost contradictory) reactions.

End Of Watch is, on first spec, immensely enjoyable. And therein lies the problem with David Ayer's buddy cop movie set in the ganglands of LA (a bit like his other scripts for buddy cop movies set in LA such as Training Day). This is supposedly a gripping tale of the daily efforts of Jake Gyllenhaal and (the superb) Michael Peña in dealing with the grimier side of American urban life. This includes child abuse, drug culture, quite spectacular violence (watch out for the knife attack - even hardened film critics gasped at that bit) and naturally LOTS of guns. Yet by the end one can't help feeling exploited. Ayer (the man who gave us the most historically inaccurate film of all time) trades thrills for real human drama.

For starters, there's the standard (and surely now past its sell-by date) use of the video camera device to add verite. If you stop for a second to analyse where this footage is supposedly coming from it falls apart. Gyllenhal we're led to believe is an ex-serviceman (ie: a rough and ready but essentially good ol' patriotic boy) who's improving himself by studying law at nightschool and slyly videoing his daily adventures as some kind of college diary project. At the same time the latino gangs they're pitted against, luckily, seem to have their own handheld documentary maker. 

Yeah, right...

Secondly this is an immensely reactionary movie. The cops, while having a tendency to rough house and play jokes are family men, strong on kids, wives and utterly at odds with any of the life they see on the streets. Officer Brian Taylor (Gyllenhaal) begins the film with the words 'We stand together, a thin blue line, protecting the prey from the predators…',  yet at no time do you get a sense of anything good to be protected. This is frontier territory. Lawless and bleak. 

Remind you of anything?

Yes, this paean to law and order and the terrible price it extracts from its enforcers is, when you strip away the contemporary trappings,  a WESTERN. Short of horses, black vs white hats and a saloon, this is morally simplistic stuff. There's a somewhat half-hearted attempt to give contemporary credibility by including a plot  that refers at the terrible drug cartel killings and human degradation of Ciudad Juárez that provide the background to work like Roberto Bolano's 2666.  This LA is now infested with human trafficking and dark Mexican gangs, replacing the black culture of the '80s and '90s. But it's a bit like watching a John Ford movie that sees the cavalry buddy up with the indians to fight… erm, the Mexicans. 

The film's filled with fine performances (especially from the aforementioned Michael Peña) but it's ultimately just a right wing, two-dimensional tale, made even thinner by comparison to an LA cop tale such as this year's  gritty and thoughtful Rampart (coincidentally - Rampart was co-scripted by James Ellroy, who wrote the first draft for another of Ayers' cop movies, Street Kings).

So, hold on to your money to see The Hunt.

This, it has to be said, is not an easy watch, but is nonetheless wonderful. Mads Mikkelsen (previously best know to UK audiences for his underused turn as Le Chiffre in Casino Royale, but here really acting his socks off) plays Lucas, a well-liked divorcee struggling with child support issues who, while helping out at a local village infant school becomes wrongly accused of the abuse of his best friend's daughter. It's director Thomas Vinterberg's own answer to his incredible Festen, showing the opposite side of the coin from the accusee's side.

This is one of those amazing films that doesn't forget that to make a drama both poetic and addictive you need not get too clever. The hunt of the title is both metaphorical and literal. Against a background of typically Scandinavian outdoorsmanship and small town Calvinism, it skilfully shows how close friends can so easily be turned to bitter enemies as Lucas is driven half-insane by people both scared and too quick to judge. It's a film about honesty, bravery and the dangers of small-mindedness.

There's a scene near the end set in the local church on Christmas eve which is so utterly intense that you may end up watching it through your fingers, yet for all its fearlessness there's a huge amount of warmth and humour at its heart. It's especially amazing when you consider that this is by Vinterberg whose role was as the prime instigator of the Dogme movement. The Hunt is mature, haunting and, yes I'm going to say it, a classic.

End Of Watch is released in UK theatres on November 23rd
The Hunt is released in UK theatres on November 30th

Blue Collar Shame

'Early in the morning we'll be startin' out
Some honeys will be coming along
We're loading up our woody…'
(Surfin' Safari - The Beach Boys, 1964)

A tenuous quote, to be sure, but HOW loaded down is Woody Harrelson in Oren Moverman's Rampart? However much it is, one thing's for sure: the boy's come a long way since being the butt of Ted Danson's jokes in Cheers.

Set two years after the infamous titular scandal which implicated 70+ LAPD police officers in widespread corruption charges and almost ruined their reputation forever, Rampart concerns itself with the (mis)deeds of Dave 'Date Rape' Brown, and his attempts to overcome his (mainly) self-created adversities and keep both an unconventional family and a lifelong career in the force together.

It's beautifully shot, with digital photography rendering the colours as glowing orange interiors and greenish exterior neon. And performances are consistently great - especially from Ben Foster as wheelchair bound vagrant. Harrelson himself (who apparently really suffered for his art) is possibly the most serious we've ever seen him: his gaunt frame (he looks like he lost several stone to effectively capture the martini-swilling, food-avoiding wired-ness needed for the part) oozing the kind of slow-dawning realisation of a man who's spent a lifetime lying to himself about how badly he behaves.

With James Ellroy as screenwriting co-pilot with Moverman, you can probably guess that this is NOT going to be America's answer to Hot Fuzz. In fact, if any parallel can be made with recent cinema, it's with Steve McQueen's Shame. Like the arbitrary divisions of USA hip hop, this is, if you like, the Westside equivalent to Michael Fassbender's Eastside descent into a fleshy hell.

Except that this time, as the narrative moves on, the singles bar indulgence in flesh declines - only to be replaced with pharmaceuticals, voyeurism, erratic behaviour… and cigarettes. God, how MANY cigarettes did Harrelson smoke in this film? Every scene comes with a Strand moment, even though by the denouement Woody is very much alone with his habit. And unlike Fassbender's blingy uptown broker lifestyle, here we're made all too aware of the importance (and lack) of money. A fact that made me like this film more.

Shown from the off to be a policeman for whom, 'illegal's just a sick bird', Brown is a lifer, bullying female rookies, using excessive force in pursuit of leads and with a moniker derived from a previous incident where he's alleged to have murdered a man for his history of violence to women. Ah, there you have it - the classic Ellroy trope - misguided tough guys who defend women for the wrong reasons. Remember Russell Crowe breaking that chair in L.A. Confidential? This is a world where despite the obvious wrongdoing going down, men can still justify their actions by recourse to some faded (mythical?) familial moral code, long since obliterated by shoddy circumstance.

This moral code has shoehorned Dave's two ex-wives (Cynthia Nixon and Anne Heche) into being neighbours, each with one daughter apiece and (confusingly) sisters. It's here that the shit gets real for Dave. Divorced from both he still attempts to woo them (unsuccessfully). His couch dwelling days are numbered as what's perceived as a racist beating by him is captured on national TV and his past crimes start to revisit him with increasing intensity. In all senses, this is a study of a man who's fast wearing out his welcome.

The observation of his awkward relationship with a teenage daughter exploring her own crisis of sexuality mirrors his problematic relationship with his superiors. This is a man trading on his Vietnam and police service record: smart-mouthed and (another classic Ellroy trait) a failed lawyer, eloquent in legal terminology and unafraid to use it in his precocious and misguided defence.

if anything, Rampart is about self-delusion. Dave's a man who's eventually forced to admit his own culpability while still clinging to the notion that he's only doing what everyone else has. In a sense this is true, Rampart certainly doesn't overly simplify - the most surprising thing that happened in the screening I attended was the comic effect of the videoed beating: almost everyone laughed at that point.

And while his descent into rampant paranoia is tempered with a justifiable sense that, just maybe, there ARE darker motives at work here, plotting his downfall as a distraction from the greater storm ripping through the department, it doesn't stop you being appalled by his confusion. This tangle of morals and misdeeds, even leads to him, at one point, inappropriately coming on to the DA, played by Sigourney Weaver. Ouch...

But ultimately, as paternal family friend (and equally corrupt ex-cop) Ned Beatty points out: maybe it's just because no one likes a cop who, by his own admission, isn't racist but 'hates everyone equally'. Either way, like Shame, there's no tidy end to this very human drama - Dave drives off towards long dark night of the soul, cigarette glowing in the darkening night, and all we're left to comfort us with is the twinkling cityscape. Excellent stuff...