I Was Monty's Double

I Was Monty's Double (1958) 

Starring M.E. Clifton James and John Mills
Directed by John Guillermin 

This remarkable, if somewhat curiously inauspicious film, tells the true story of a remarkable episode  from the Second World War; British Military Intelligence, who displayed something of a penchant and particular accomplishment for subterfuge and deception in their quiet war with the Abwehr (German Military Intelligence) during the conflict, hatched a plot to try to convince the Nazis that the inevitable invasion of Europe would come from the South, rather than from France in the North, by having British Field Marshal Bernard Montgomery sighted in the Mediterranean just days before the assault was launched.  As a favourite to be a senior figure in the Allied assault, if not Supreme Commander, surely it would be inconceivable that "Monty" wasn't with his troops on the eve of invasion.  A fortuitous sighting brought one Clifton James, known affectionately by his comrades as Jimmy, (not the chap who played the Sheriff in "Live and Let Die"!), a lowly Second Lieutenant in the Royal Army Pay Corps and an amateur actor, to their attention.  He bore a striking physical resemblance to the feted Field Marshall.  If he could play the biggest role of his life he could be sighted in various Mediterranean, North African and Middle Eastern locations in the days leading up to D-Day - June 6th 1944 - in the slim chance that the Germans would buy into the "open-topped secret" and could not be certain where the invasion was coming from.  Might this crazy plan just work?

The film, scripted by Bryan Forbes from James' own 1954 book, is notable for casting James as himself - playing Monty.  One might think that since he'd pulled off the ruse in real life, and would be playing himself, it wouldn't be a great challenge.  But the drama of the stage is very different from the drama played out in the theatre of war.  Clifton James is by far the greatest thing about the movie.  His performance is nuanced and breathtaking.  Bubbling and giddy when first approached about the job, anxious to please as he thinks he's up for a role in a recruitment film.  He displays touching uncertainty and nervousness when the scheme is laid before him, knowing the potential dangers.  And ultimately, monumental courage, which he - the man - doesn't milk.  But as he grows into the role the viewer can see that he gets a taste for it.  Being treated as a renowned Field Marshall, a warrior who has won victories over the estimable Rommel in North Africa, starts to affect him.  Jimmy bluffs his way through a series of tensely played potentially disastrous encounters, having to meet people who know the real Montgomery, under constant threat of exposure, with potentially fatal consequences, especially in the Iberian Peninsular which is riddled with enemy spies.  He grows in strength and confidence, most notably in the scene in which he has to give a speech to a group of less than impressed U.S G.I's about the coming "party".  Given a pre-approved script by Colonel Logan (Cecil Parker), he is instructed not to deviate one word from it.  But he goes down his own track.  His vision swims and he is clearly racked by stage fright.  But gradually he wins his skeptical audience over with jokes about cricket and baseball, and he's motoring.  It's an inspiring scene.

Many triumphalist scenes of "Monty" rallying the troops follow, and the tone is suitably rousing.  It's a typical 1950s British war film; the war had been one, but at a heavy price.  Empire had been lost and times had been hard.  John Addison's score, preformed by the London Sinfonia, is at times almost unbearably stirring.  But it's purpose is to rouse the audience of the time.  Things might be tough at the present time, but look what we did.  We defeated Nazism.  These men are heroes.  But heroism is a mighty task.  There's a pair of wonderfully touching scenes in which, firstly Jimmy is told that the big show is on the way, and his gig is over.  The sadness is visible in his face, as he realises he won't be able to tell anyone what he's done and will have to return to his old drab life, despite being comforted by his minder / companion Major Harvey (the utterly incomparable John Mills - what would a British WW2 film be without John Mills?!) that the Germans have held back a horde of troops instead of sending them to Northern France to repel the landings.  Latterly, in a tiny moment, he chats with a Sergeant, head of Security where he is, and asks if perhaps he might be permitted to share a drink with him.  In that moment his humanity and humility are back on show.  It's deeply affecting. 

 Director John Guillermin, who went on to make "The Towering Inferno" and "Death on the Nile"  amongst many others, and who sadly recently passed away, juggles bombast and melodrama with a surprising amount of humour, and some standout moments.  There's a vastly over-wrought final act, in which Monty is target for kidnap by the Germans, thanks to some nefarious spies (not sure about the historical validity of this part!).  But the scene in which they approach the house in which he's waiting to depart, features a great shot where the camera passes through the bushes outside and up to the door of the house.  When they get inside, he is listening to a gramophone, and the short scene plays out with no dialogue, no thundering score, but just with the loud music playing out.  It feels slightly more interesting than most films of the time.  There's just enough time for John Mills to perform his customary heroics in rescuing Jimmy from his abductors in time for an inspiring, flag-waving climax.  This story has been widely written about, but coincidentally I just read the excellent book "Double Cross" by Ben MacIntyre - highly recommended to all.  Whilst largely that's about equally outlandish history of the network of Double Agents run by Britain and later the US against the Germans and expounds on the various deceptions (building a "fake army" in Kent so that German spotter planes would be convinced the assault would come in the Pas-de-Calais, for example) , it does talk about the plan depicted in this picture.  I have yet to track down Jimmy's book but from what I understand, much of it is truthful, but then truth is often stranger than fiction.

This is a solid film, by turns funny, enjoyable, tense and exciting.  Clifton James was an ordinary fellow, thrust into an utterly surreal and unpredictable scenario, asked to perform a virtually impossible task under huge pressure.  The movie - known in the US under a few different titles I believe - is a huge tribute to the courage of such ordinary men who played such a large part in winning the war.  If you come across a copy or a showing on television, please do check it out.

Prometheus

Prometheus (2012)

Starring Noomi Rapace and Michael Fassbender
Directed by Ridley Scott

SPOILERS, SORRY (but it has been out since 2012)

Back in 2012 there were rich pickings to had when it came to blockbusters arriving in cinemas.  Near the top of the heap of those most keenly anticipated was Ridley Scott's "Prometheus", and with good reason.  From the outset it was touted as a prequel to that same director's own classic "Alien", which had been released back in 1979. If true to any degree, this was a wildly exciting prospect, given the high regard in which that film is held and the influence it still weilds over science fiction and horror films today.  But that franchise had somewhat fallen into disrepute.  Mistreatment of epic proportions by the studio, 20th Century Fox, had seen just one superb sequel, James Cameron's "Aliens" in 1986, followed by a string of increasingly sad disappointments, culminating in 2007's "Aliens vs Predator: Requiem", the second of a pair of ill-judged attempts to spawn a crossover series with Fox's sci-fi action franchise "Predator".  A prequel seemed to be the ideal solution, as it could allow the "Alien" universe to be imagined in new and interesting ways.  Unencumbered by the events and timelines of those unfortunate sequels, hirtherto unexplored stories could be told.  And Scott, despite some misfires in his portfolio, had attained an 'elder statesman of cinema' reputation; surely if anyone could pull things back from the brink and reinvigorate both the series and the genre it would be him.



The publicity campaign was cranked up a few gears for this one.  On-set "exclusives", reports, interviews and features popped up in seemingly every magazine and on every website going, albeit with journalists sworn to secrecy regarding all but the scantest plot details.  Viral videos and websites appeared, including a special TED Talk by Peter Weyland, a character in the film.  But not much was really given away.  Even the advance trailer was wordless, mimicking the quickly-cut glimpses of scenes from the clip which had trailed "Alien", and used the same eerie soundtrack of screeches, as the letters of the film's title gradually take shape across the screen.  The parallels were obvious.  Sir Ridley, however, did his best to dampen down the prequel rumours, admitting only that the two films would share "strands of the same DNA".  A word he used often to describe this movie was "fresh".

But the hype might not have been wholly necessary, because on the face of it, even without the potential heritage and the attachment of one of the great modern directors, "Prometheus" was a good prospect.  The plot, what was know of it, had a team of archaeologists discovering a prehistoric cave painting on the Isle of Skye showing a humanoid figure pointing to the stars, to a particular constellation, far out of sight of the people of the time.  They surmise that it is an invitation from an alien race of creators - dubbed "Engineers" - and duly find themselves, a few years later, halfway across the universe in search of answers.  Things are not guaranteed to go smoothly.

Now, even those with a steely resolve can find it hard not to buy into the anticipation for a film, or any entertainment, when it reaches these sorts of levels.  And in the quest for info, what was true in the past [ Find out what Michael "Batman" Keaton likes to read on long-haul flights, only in this weeks issue! etc etc. ] seems more intense nowadays; what has been lost in terms of print media has been replaced by use of the internet, social media and scrolling entertainment news.  Even after a film has passed through cinemas, there are the "dvd extras", double-disc "collectors editions", and alternate cuts.  The hunger for every last detail is created and then fed to consumers who may not even have known that they wanted it.  But once they have the taste for it the prelude has become as important as the headline act.

So what of the film itself, on its own terms?  Well, to give it its due, it comes out of the traps pretty sharply.  After a short promotional video for the Iceland Tourist Board, we find a giant, white-skinned, hairless humanoid figure, naked save for a loincloth.  This, we discover, is to be one of our Engineers, and standing on the top of a volcano by the stunning vista of an enormous waterfall, he promptly sets about engineering; that is, he drinks a vial of black liquid, which very soon causes him to convulse, disintegrate, and eventually dissolve into the waterfall, dissipating his DNA - strands of which are shown in Fincher-esque CG - through the planet's waters.  In the skies above, a huge spacecraft flies away.  It's clearly hinted that this is pre-historic Earth, although never explicitly stated as such.  This directly precedes the discovery of the cave markings which spark the interstellar jaunt, implying equally that the alien race planted the seeds for life on this planet.  It's a visually striking scene, which posits an interesting idea, and poses epic questions; who made us? And why?

Once we catch up with the future, the year 2193 to be precise, we learn that the good ship "Prometheus" is on its way to planet LV-223 (so in the same system as LV-426, setting for "Aliens") with our passengers in hypersleep (a trope of the "Alien" series).  We are introduced to the obligatory "artificial person", David, who spends the voyage riding around the empty ship shooting hoops, spying on the dreams of his passengers, learning ancient languages, and watching his favourite film, "Lawrence of Arabia".  As he styles his hair after Peter O'Toole's blond flick, he watches the famous scene where Lawrence extinguishes a match with his fingertips for the amusement of his fellow soldiers; "certainly it hurts... the trick...is not minding that it hurts."  After a cursory introduction to the wakened crew, of whom only 5 or 6 have any meaningful dialogue, and a mission briefing from a dead hologram, they set off to explore the giant structure found on the planet's surface.  Inside, they find the dead bodies of several Engineers, one of them decapitated, and a cavernous chamber overseen by a massive sculptured head and filled with cylinders of viscous black liquid.  With a storm rapidly approaching they take the Engineer's severed head back to the ship, whilst David removes a sample of the liquid.  Fun and games ensue...

At first look, the film is solidly entertaining.  The story, whilst treading very familiar ground, bowls along relatively briskly.  It throws out questions, some of them narrative related, one or two philosophical, but moves on to the next scene and the next question before anyone has much of a chance to realise the previous one hasn't been answered.  There are some good shocks, and a suitable amount of gloopy gore.  The cast are really playing second fiddle to whatever terror they've unleashed.  Noomi Rapace as lead scientist Dr. Elizabeth Shaw makes a fair fist of playing the plucky heroine (even at one point recovering in double quick time from a rather atypical medical procedure).  Permanently cool Idris Elba as ship's Captain Janek seems intentionally disinterested until the final reel; Charlize Theron plays the superbitch Meredith Vickers to requirement, although her tightly pulled back hair and space age power dressing chic do some of it for her.  Most of the rest of the crew, including Rafe Spall and Sean Harris, are essentially marked for doom from the start.  Unsurprisingly rising above all is Michael Fassbender as David, somehow managing all at once to be subservient and supercilious, innocent and scheming.  Where (Ian Holm's) Ash was coldly no-nonsense, and (Lance Henriken's) Bishop was exasperatedly normal, David is different, suave, multifaceted and harder to read.

As one would expect from Scott, the film looks amazing.  The Cinematography is by Dariusz Wolski, veteran of, amongst many other things, "Dark City", one of the most striking sci-fi films of the last 20 years; even without the 3D offered on its cinema release, the film's look is deep and textured, with cool greens and blues layered beautifully over bedrock grey, and properly does justice to Arthur Max's grand Production Design.  Double Oscar winning Editor Pietro Scalia keeps things tight and snappy, and whilst Marc Streitenfeld's theme sounds like it belongs in a World War 2 score, it at least is reaching and epic-sounding.   Strictly by the rules laid down within itself, not to mention the "Alien" series at large, the film contains severe gaps in the logic of what the intentions of the Engineers are - particularly in the last act - and what the oily substance actually does.  This suggests, rather presumptuously, that people will have to wait for the / any sequel to find out, if they're still interested.  Ideas wise, there is some interesting stuff floating around.  Shaw wears a cross and clings to a faith in God and Heaven because "that's what I choose to believe", the same reason she gives as justification for the mission.  If science shows that the Engineers did create life on Earth - their DNA is indeed shown to be a match for human - the question remains, who made them?  David and Holloway (another scientist, and Shaw's lover) debate creation; why did men make him, an android?  How would they, humans, cope if they found their creators but discovered equally trifling motives for their own existence - "we made you because we could"?  There's obviously the film's title, too, which invokes the Greek myth of the Titan who created mankind and then stole fire from the Gods, for which he incurred eternal punishment at the hands of Zeus.  Do the Engineers equate to Gods, with Humans equating to the mythical Prometheus, creating life in the form of androids like David, and giving them the "fire" - the gift of thought, self awareness, and intelligence?  It's diverting, and a little more than you'd find in your average blockbuster, but it's hardly "2001", and certainly is never allowed to get in the way of the marauding alien life-forces.  It feels a little too pat, though, simply to throw all this into the mix without having anything firmer to offer.  So, first impressions are that the film is a pleasing, almost overwhelming, but ultimately a little unsatisfying, entertainment.

But any film, particularly one of this type, should probably stand up to multiple viewings, even more so when it has offered itself up for as much scrutiny as this one did.  This is where "Prometheus" starts to unravel.  Freed from the necessity of having to follow a story, the viewer can pick up on any of the multitude of things in the film which are either factually incorrect, irrational on the part of its characters, or otherwise nonsensical.  Red flags are raised almost immediately with the calendar placement of the narrative, 2189 for the discovery of the star map, 2193 for the main action, less than two centuries hence.  In the grander scheme of things this means nothing, but it's generally better when an it's an unspecified future (as in "Mad Max", set "a few years from now") and not inherently obsolete ("2001", say, or Scott's own "Blade Runner", set in 2019).  There are plenty of niggles, some trivial - David's description of the passing of time (x years, x months, x days, and 36 hours - not one more day and 12 hours?), Vickers' description of how far they've traveled ("half a billion miles from earth") - some just annoying.  The geologist gets lost, despite operating a mapping device; the biologist loses the plot at the first sign of alien life; the man who bankrolled the mission pretends to be dead, only to turn up at the end demanding eternal life from the EBEs (and why was Guy Pearce even cast as an old guy, to suffer under dodgy prosthetics, when a genuine older actor could have played the part?); the ship just happens to come down, apparently randomly, right next to the structure they want to investigate; despite the cost and importance of the mission, half the personnel hadn't met each other or even been briefed prior to taking off; the trained scientists throw procedure to the wind and think nothing of bringing the alien head onto the ship without any checks, and then decide to try to spark it back to life; no-one thinks to check whether there's a massive storm brewing as they head out; David deliberately infects a human with the alien substance, with unknown consequences, and for no apparent motive; the black gooey stuff infects Holloway but doesn't grow inside him, it grows an entity inside Shaw after they have sex; Shaw conducts an emergency caesarean section on herself (!) but is running around the place moments later; Elba seems to have lost the American accent he perfected on "The Wire" and sounds more Balham than Baltimore; the Engineers, we've been led to believe, created life on earth but at the end seem hell-bent on destroying it  (why?); two supposedly intelligent people don't seem to realise that the way to evade a rolling obstacle coming towards them is to run in a different direction out of its path (although Theron's death is brilliantly played); and in virtually the final shot, a fully grown Xenomorph alien emerges from an infected Engineer, which makes for a great image but belies the carefully crafted life-cycle of the creature previously seen.  It's just nonsense.

Excessive scrutiny?  Perhaps, but there are so many things which could have been rectified without much effort.  The unsatisfying nature of the script has drawn criticism to one of its scribes, Damon Lindelof, a key contributor to the tv series "Lost", which many felt lost its way and posed more questions than answers.  As a tv veteran, it certainly seems he has drawn inspiration from the great "The X Files", which wrote the book on posing the rolling-question.  The film is certainly full of "X Files" lifts, from the black oil onwards, but it doesn't carry them off with the same class.  But what works on tv, when an audience can always tune in next week in the hope of answers, just isn't good enough in this medium.   The nicest thing to say about the film is that it's entertaining.  Perhaps it suffers the misfortune of having been made in 2012, and is thus subject to the kind of film-making necessary for "big movies" now, rather than in the 1970s.  As a "team in space on a mission" film it makes one yearn for "Sunshine", "Event Horizon" (yes, even), and of course the original "Alien", which is a masterclass in characterisation and tension in comparison.  It's beautiful, but it's still a mess.

So, unfortunately, given the huge potential, high expectations, and ties to other films, "Prometheus" hurts.  Of course, the trick is not minding that it hurts.

Kelly's Heroes

Kelly's Heroes (1970)

Starring Clint Eastwood and Telly Savalas
Directed by Brian G. Hutton

Whilst it would make few people's "All time top ten" lists, I'm hard pressed to think of a film which is so relentlessly enjoyable as "Kelly's Heroes". Part war movie, part comedy, part bank-job caper flick, the different elements combine seamlessly to produce a distinctive and memorable film.

Clint Eastwood, who owns the screen arguably more than anyone in American Cinema in the last 50 years, gives in an unusually subdued but nonetheless commanding performance, playing the leader of a platoon of restless GIs in the chaos of post D-Day France. When he captures a German officer who just happens to be in possession of a solid gold bar, Kelly (Clint) extracts the necessary information and before you can think of an appropriate war-based robbery movie, he's hatched a plan to make it 30 miles beyond enemy lines to nab the $16 million stash.  He can't do it alone, of course, but has no trouble in convincing his fellow troops that if they're going to be killed in this war, the reward for them should be worth the risk.  Enlisting the help of Quartermaster "Crapgame" (Don Rickles) Sergeant "Big Joe" (Telly Savalas) and Sherman tank driver "Oddball" (Donald Sutherland) among others, Kelly and his platoon of ironic "heroes" are soon on their way to an eventual showdown with the German Tiger tank unit guarding the bank...



All too often cross-genre pictures can be let down if the balance isn't right, but that's not the case here because each element is as good as it can be. The action and battle scenes are well executed, especially that in which Oddball and his delapidated Shermans attack a German depot. The comic relief is genuinely funny rather than cheesy, and includes a beautiful scene at the climax of the movie which gently parodies Clint's spaghetti-western days, complete with the strains of cod-Morricone music. The suspense is well maintained where necessary, such as the scene where the platoon is caught exposed in the middle of a minefield with a truckload of Germans bearing down on them. And of course there is the ensemble cast, which is uniformly excellent. Keep an eye out for a young Harry Dean Stanton, and Len Lesser, who is better known as Uncle Leo in "Seinfeld". Sutherland's proto-hippie, and Carroll O'Connor's manic General Colt are just two performances which live long in the memory, alongside the ever-reliable Eastwood and Savalas.  Eastwood, of course, maintains an understated control of proceedings at all times.  It's also dripping with quotable one-liners, mostly from the mouth of Sutherland's Oddball.  "Why don't you knock it off with them negative waves...?"



There are a few points made about the madness and futility of war if that's what you're looking for.  Bearing in mind that the film was mad right in the middle of the Vietnam War.  Anti War films would be easy to pull off and strike a chord, but cynical and funny anti war films are a different matter.  People think of Altman and "M*A*S*H", still 2 years off, and rightly so, but this is arguably up there.  Accordingly, allied bombers knock out bridges by day, German mobile engineers rebuild them by night... neither the Americans or the Germans seem to know what's going on or where their lines are supposed to be... behind the lines our heroes are attacked by their own aircraft... General Colt mistakes Kelly's gold-inspired push for a patriotic determination to end the war, and mobilizes his army to follow him, chastising the staff officers around him for failing to show the same spirit...

But ultimately, this movie is about entertainment rather than political comment. And as such it is one of the most successful examples of its type, coming near the end of a procession of highly successful "guys on a mission" movies (both warbound and not). The script by Troy Kennedy Martin ("The Italian Job") is tight, and direction by Brian G Hutton ("Where Eagles Dare") equally assured. Perhaps regarded as lightweight in comparison to other, more serious "men on a mission" movies such as Robert Aldrich's "The Dirty Dozen" or Hutton's aforementioned "Eagles", the film has nonetheless been influential. For example, although David O Russell's "Three Kings", a sharp vehicle for George Clooney, Mark Wahlberg and Ice Cube, veers off on a tangent and makes more of a serious comment on the US role in the Gulf War, its matchbook plot (ie that which can be written on the back of a matchbook) is the same as "Kelly's Heroes".  And in the speakers mounted on the side of Oddball's tanks, used to blast music at the enemy and freak them out, there is more than a hint of the Wagner-playing helicopters in Coppola's "Apocalypse Now", still some nine years hence at the time of this film's release.

Operation Overlord, the liberation of Europe, the Second World War as a whole, are not to be taken lightly.  But every once in a while it pays to take a breather from the horror and laugh at the stupidity of it all.  "Kelly's Heroes" does just that, and is a supremely enjoyable way to spend a couple of hours.  It doesn't intrude on the legitimacy of something like "The Longest Day", nor in retrospect does it diminish a film as straightly aimed as "Saving Private Ryan".  You will be doing yourself a favour if, next time you get the chance, you take a look.  It's rare that I see a film and don't think at least once that I'd change something about it, but if there is something to change in "Kelly's Heroes", I don't know what it is. 

"To a New Yorker like you, a Hero is some kind of weird sandwich, not some nut who takes on three Tigers."

SB

Mad Max: Fury Road

Mad Max: Fury Road (2015)

Starring Tom Hardy and Charlize Theron
Co-written and Directed by George Miller

When is a sequel not a sequel?  When is a remake not a remake?  When is a "reboot" not a reboot?  Come to think of it, what exactly constitutes a reboot anyway?  "Mad Max: Fury Road" is all of the above, but also none of the above - only turned up to eleven.  It doesn't directly follow on from or refer to the events depicted in the last film in the series, "Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome", which was released 30 years previously.  It doesn't retell the story of 1979's original "Mad Max", nor does it embark on a different version of that tragic 'origin' story.  It simply exists in the same fictional universe as that first trilogy, features the same eponymous hero, and drives the same violent dusty highways.  Tom Hardy takes on the role of Max Rockatansky, the part which gave Mel Gibson his big-screen break, and there are no contrivances to link this directly with the originals, suggesting that this is the other Max's son, for example.  We're just given the character and it's up to the filmmakers to convince us that this is the same person.  Largely, they succeed.

Complexity of plot was never a hallmark of this series.  Emphasis was instead placed on atmosphere, tension, exhilaration, and a vivid creation of a desperate environment and existence.  Latterly the films became celebrated for their elaborate, extended vehicular chase scenes, akin to automotive running battles.  "Fury Road" most resembles "Mad Max 2: The Road Warrior" (see review below).  Or, more specifically, the final third of it.  This film opens with a thumbnail introduction to the protagonist, roaming the wastelands alone, dishevelled, and reduced to eating raw lizard.  His world, he tells us in voiceover, is one of "fire and blood".  He is a "road warrior, searching for a righteous cause... it was hard to know who was more crazy, me... or everyone else."  Almost immediately he is set upon by a band of white-skinned scavengers, dragged away, and taken to their base location, a miniature city of sorts.  This is the Citadel of Immortan Joe (Hugh Keays-Byrne, who played the Toecutter in the original film), a ruthless overlord who rules over a community of survivors.  Encased in a respirator mask decorated with animal teeth, and body armour which hides his pox-scarred body and face, Immortan keeps the populace in check by rationing their water, warning them against becoming addicted to it, whilst he and his lackeys live in luxury.  The white-skinned young men are the 'War Boys', Immortan's troops, whom he controls with tatantalizing promises of eternal glory at the gates of Valhalla.  As a physically healthy universal donor, Max's fate is to be used as a 'blood bag', as he is hooked up to a sick War Boy, Nux (Nicholas Hoult).  Immortan has dispatched Imperator Furiosa (Charlize Theron) in a 'War Rig', a fearsome, heavily armoured tanker, to collect precious gasoline from the neigbouring refinery at Gas Town.  But she has turned off her course, heading into hostile territory, smuggling Joe's five breeding-wives with her.  An army of War Boys sets off after her to reclaim the women, one of whom is pregnant; Max, still plugged into Nux, finds himself along for the ride too.  Thus, pursuit is essentially the order of the day for the rest of the film.  But what spectacular pursuit.

Were it simply a lengthy car chase movie, there wouldn't be much to take from this film.  Certainly, those chase scenes are amazing, a wild storm of flamethrowers and firebombs, crossbows and bullets, grinding wheels, fearsome juggernauts, and an incredible array of hybrid vehicles.  But these sounds and images are broadcast in the context of a unique, thrillingly realised world, one that is utterly bizarre.  It's a world in which a man washes his bloodied face not with water, but with mother's milk.  Where the chasing pack has room for a bank of drummers beating time like slaves on a Roman galleon, and for a masked musician called The Doof Warrior (iOTA back in the real world) whose electric guitar shoots jets of flame as it booms out through phalanx of speakers mounted on the back of the truck, augmenting the techno-laced score by Tom Holkenborg (aka Junkie XL).  And where the last-act allies turn out to be a gang of geriatric bikie chicks.

This emphasis on visceral thrills and spills does not discount that this film belongs to the actors.  Tom Hardy, yet again, shows why he is unquestionably one of the finest actors working today.  He fully invades this role, and within minutes the thought that it was made iconic by another actor is gone.  He invokes Gibson just enough and at just the right times, but this Max is all his.  He doesn't have much to say, no great soliloquies here, but Max never did (16 lines in all, in "The Road Warrior").  So when he does speak, it counts.   But it's typically nihilistic; "hope is a mistake", he tells one character.  "If you can't fix what's broken... you'll go insane".  It could be argued that for all Max's minimalism, the true protagonist is Theron's Furiosa.  One-armed, sporting a mechanical prosthetic, crew-cut, black grease smeared in a mask around her eyes like war paint, Furiosa is a sight to see and a force to be cautious around.  She's the instigator of the action and the dominant presence, especially in the first movement of the picture, at a time when Max is largely impotent, muzzled and chained.  There's a wonderful game of oneupmanship (onewomanupmanship?) between Max and Furiosa shortly after he is brought on board the rig, as they both by turns seek to dictate the terms of their common flight.  A gradual shared arc develops between them, as they go from outright animosity, to cautious acceptance, to determined collaboration in search of a mutual goal.  Furiosa's driving aim is to return to the place where she was born, the 'Green Place', from which she was taken as a child, and to provide sanctuary for the unfortunate young enslaved girls; Max... well his is just to get to the next place, wherever that is.  Nic Hoult, superb and barely recognisable as the wild and frantic Nux gives an amazing performance (to add to his brilliant turn in "Warm Bodies").  His character is probably the one that thinks and changes the most over the course of the story.



And then there are the wives.  They may be somewhat under-dressed (it is the desert, after all) but this is no glamour magazine photo shoot.  They are, essentially, sex slaves, but these ladies are hardened by their environment, as they have to be, and use their wiles to survive.  At one point, The Splendid Angharad (Rosie Huntington-Whitely), heavily pregnant with Joe's child, thrusts her bulging belly at her pursuers, shielding and protecting her companions.  The film's feminist credentials have understandably become something of a talking point.  Certain - male - critics have dismissed "Fury Road" as nothing more than "Trojan Horse" feminist propaganda, gatecrashing the testosterone party.  "No one barks orders at Mad Max", bleated blogger Aaron Cleary, impotently.  Other commentators, such as Sasha James take a different perspective, one which feels much more appropriate.  Ultimately it gives pause for thought, which is always an added bonus in a summer blockbuster, but it's not worth obsessing over because it doesn't interrupt the rush of blood to the head that this movie provides.  So what if Furiosa uses Max's shoulder as a rest for her gun (when he's just wasted vital bullets on a missed killshot)?  It's essential to the story that it's she who leads the wives towards their liberty, not Max; he never was a knight in shining armour, no matter how much other characters might have wanted him to be.  His gradual acceptance of the people around him here speaks volumes.  Hardy's is a mellower Max than Gibson's; maybe he's just wearied now that he's further down the road.  

As is to be expected from a film in this franchise, the off-kilter nature of this world is enlivened no end by the deliciously off-the-wall character names, from the Wives - Angharad's companions are Cheedo the Fragile (Courtney Eaton), The Dag (Abbey Lee), Capable (Riley Keough) and best of all, Toast the Knowing (Zoe Kravitz) - to Immortan's array of underlings, Rictus Erectus (Nathan Jones), Slit (Josh Helman), The Organic Mechanic (Angus Sampson), The Bullet Farmer (Richard Carter) and The People Eater (John Howard).  Max, it seems, is the only sanely named character on show.  All are set against an almost tangible backdrop.  The stunning cinematography by John Seale (whose credits range from "Witness" and "Rain Man" to "The English Patient" and beyond) renders the desolate Namibian landscape, standing in for Australia, in vigourous ochre by day, and electric blue by night.  To say that the film is slightly too long is not the point; it's doesn't feel too long, and the pace barely lets up - even in the quiet moments it's tense.  Rather, given its comparatively slender narrative, it feels as if there are many more ideas bubbling away here which could have borne closer inspection.  Presumably - hopefully - the worldwide box-office takings have secured a future for this incarnation of our anti-hero, in which further corners of his world can be explored.  "Mad Max: Fury Road" is unlike anything else seen in cinemas this year.  Counter-intuitively, its DNA is familiar, but at the same time it is utterly original.

SB

Zero Dark Thirty

Zero Dark Thirty (2012)

Starring Jessica Chastain and Jason Clarke
Directed by Kathryn Bigelow

Telling the story of the decade long search for Osama Bin Laden following the terror attacks on September 11th 2001, "Zero Dark Thirty" is an interesting film, in many ways.  It's interesting on one hand because there was always going to be a significant level of attention paid to what the first female winner of the Best Director Academy Award would choose to make next; Kathryn Bigelow won in 2009 for the Iraq-set bomb disposal drama "The Hurt Locker".  It's interesting because although there is obviously a narrative threading through the film, it's told by necessity in a very different manner from most "mainstream" films.  And it's interesting because it could potentially serve as a historical document of some sort in years to come, depicting as it does, with the usual disclaimer about the names being changed and certain characters being fictional composites, the quest for the most wanted man on Earth; this was the closing of a significant chapter in contemporary American history.  Bigelow, along with her "Hurt Locker" screenwriter Mark Boal, had originally been planning a film about the battle of Tora Bora, the allied offensive of December 2001, an ultimately unsuccessful attempt to capture Bin Laden from his suspected hideout in a cave complex within the mountains of Eastern Afghanistan.  When news of Bin Laden's death was announced, the script was completely re-written to tell that story.  It's an achievement in itself that the film premiered on December 19th 2012, barely 19 months after Seal Team Six's successful mission.

Considering the subject matter it's unsurprising that a certain controversy abounded.  The debate mostly centred around the CIA's use of torture, or "enhanced interrogation techniques", to obtain information vital to Bin Laden's eventual location, the film's depiction of it, and the question of whether it justified or even glorified that use.  To a lesser extent there was discord that the film opens on September 11th, with a mosaic of audio clips from the day, civil authorities interspersed with recordings of victims' frantic phone calls to loved ones, playing over a black screen.  On this point, the objections and accusations that this is needlessly manipulative are understandable, but dramatically and factually it feels necessary in providing a stunning context to the narrative set to unfold.  From that brief 9/11 exposure the viewer is thrown immediately into the first of many of said torture sequences.  A young, female CIA operative named Maya (Jessica Chastain) observes an interrogation carried out by Dan (Jason Clarke) on a terrorist financier.  These scenes are not for the squeamish, and they are curiously rambling and unfocused; but this points to the CIA, despite the bluster, essentially having no viable leads and no idea what they were doing.  Maya watches, devoid of emotion, a counterpoint to Dan's (nervous?) constant chattering and air of confidence and superiority.  It's an in-the-room-out-of-the-room apparent long game, but comes over as quite desperate.  There can be little doubt that waterboarding, sleep deprivation, and other methods of torture employed by the U.S. in recent years are unethical or barbaric, but the fact that they were used is not the question.  What is in question is whether the film's depiction of them implicitly or explicitly condones those methods.  Many argue that it does, because the eventual success of the mission relies largely - but not solely, it should be noted - on them.  The counter argument, on a moral and political level, says that they were a necessary evil.  The "artistic" view is that they are depicted as a matter of fact, without any moral standpoint.   Bigelow herself stated that "confusing depiction with endorsement is the first step toward chilling any American artist's ability and right to shine a light on dark deeds, especially when those deeds are cloaked in layers of secrecy and government obfuscation"; essentially, she's saying, don't shoot the messenger.  Unless one brings a political agenda to viewing, this has to be the approach to take.

Maya, based, by some accounts, on a real agent, named as "Jen" in the book "No Easy Day" by Mark Bissonette aka Mark Owen, is the closest the film comes to offering an emotional touchstone for the audience; but even then it's a struggle, because she's an emotional blank page.  She calmly takes in the happenings around her and sets about her task with ice-cold abandon.  It's only much later - years later, in the timeframe of the film - that she starts to show stress, frustration, exhaustion and anger.  So to that effect it strengthens the claim that the film doesn't endorse torture, it just shows it happening.  Having the characters treat the whole process so matter-of-factly backs this up; they don't stop to debate the morality of their actions, the makers leave it to the viewer to take away and consider.  There is even a case to be made that the film hints at the pointlessness of the whole process, or at least the need to employ other methods of information gathering, as a key clue is discovered as having been on file all along, but on the back burner.  Potentially the case could have advanced without the need for "enhanced interrogations".

Wisely, the story is broken into chapters, marked by title cards.  This is no Tarantino-esque indulgence, however, it's a skillful way of marking the distinct phases of the ongoing quest.  Starting with "The Saudi Group", and progressing through "Abu Ahmed" (bin Laden's courier), "The Meeting", and "The Canaries", the latter referring to the SEALs who will carry out the raid.  The film also uses place and time-line captions, marking out the passing of time and location with forensic detail, creating a documentary-like air of realism.  Such a sense is heightened further by the predominance of hand-held camerawork, not in a distracting "shaky cam" manner, but just enough to imbue in the viewer a vaguely unsettling sense of being a hidden observer. 

Aside from the torture, moments of physical violence are few and far between, and come mostly, shockingly out of the blue; only the London bombings of July 2005 are given any obvious visual signpost in the moments before the explosion, although another scene depicting a suicide bomb attack is agonizingly, grimly foreseeable.  These moments are all the more unnerving because, for the most part, the narrative depicts very slow progress in the investigation.  That's not to say it's hard to follow, but it does feel slightly bogged down, particularly in the middle section.  However, this is offset to spectacular effect by the final segment, in which the compound in Abbottabad is identified, argued over, and eventually attacked.  Mercifully, the build up to the mission is largely glossed over.  When the go-ahead is given, there's an exchange between Maya and the SEALs; Justin (Chris Pratt) and team leader Patrick (Joel Edgerton) express their skepticism as to whether it really is bin Laden they'll be going after, as they've chased ghosts before, and lost friends and colleagues on similar mission.  Maya bluntly says she'd have preferred to drop a bomb on the compound, but has to send this group of soldiers in as "canaries", to find and kill bin Laden for her, and has stated that she is "100% certain" it's him.  

The raid sequence, when it comes, is nothing short of breathtaking.  Some of it is hard to make out, shown in almost total darkness, some sections are shown in the bright green images seen through night vision goggles.  Only a few of the SEALs have been given any degree of characterization by this point, so the viewer isn't particularly given an anchor from which to experience the action, rather a number of men sweeping through the buildings with swift efficiency.  It's disorientating, chaotic, and frenetic.  The only real criticism seems to be that the troops talk too much, and that no-one called out Osama's name, but surely this can be forgiven for the sake of dramatic license; total silence and hand signal communication only may have been more authentic, but would have made the events much harder to follow.   Despite the outcome being foregone knowledge, there's a sense of danger - as when a crowd of locals gathers, advancing on the compound - and an increasing apprehension as room after room is cleared with no sign of the ultimate target.  And when, at last, the kill shot is taken, it's almost an anticlimax.  The body is photographed so it can be identified, but the dead man's face remains tantalizingly unseen.  There's no valve to release the tension, as the unit has limited time to gather as many files and as much information as they can in the few minutes before they have to evacuate.        

  

And then it's all over.  Back at base, Maya nervously makes the ID, and seems to go into a state of shock.  Later, she boards a transport plane, and sits, numb, as the crewman calls out to her; "You must be pretty important, you've got the whole plane to yourself", and asks "Where do you want to go?".  Maya starts to cry.  There are no flag-waving triumphalist scenes of patriotic Americans wildly celebrating the death of their greatest foe.  Nothing.  The film has shown her obsession, and presented a wide range of supporting characters along the way (including Mark Strong as a CIA superior, the Kyle Chandler as the Station Chief in Pakistan, James Gandolfini as the CIA Director, and - bizarrely - John Barrowman, in a blink-and-you'll-miss-it cameo), but none of them are there at the end.  Indeed, none of them, with the partial exception of Dan, are indulged with anything approaching backstory or character-arc; they are purely functional.  Having progressed through the film becoming gradually more animated - frustrated, angry, determined - Maya is suddenly deflated, and blank again.  Is she shocked that her actions have landed a dead man in front of her (Bisonnette writes "people at (her) level never had to deal with the blood")?  Is she grieving for the sudden hole in her life and purpose, or something more?

One can choose to focus on the negative aspects of what occurred during the period addressed, and indeed many commentators were positively outraged by what they took from the movie, whether conservatives complaining that President Obama is presented in an overly favourable light (he's not) or liberals decrying its glamourization of torture (which isn't there).  Ultimately, it's unlikely that this film, or any other, will decisively sway anyone or settle the argument on such a divisive topic.  To focus on this element is to overlook that "Zero Dark Thirty" is a rare achievement.  Politics should be left at the door, if at all possible.  Technically brilliant, it is by turns, compelling, absorbing, vaguely depressing,  thrilling, slightly overwhelming, but never less than thought-provoking.  It's a cold, essentially heartless film, about a grim, unpleasant matter from start to finish.  As such, it's a film which has a great deal in and about it to admire and appreciate, but one which is very difficult actually to like.  But then, that's the point.

A last word: "Violence is taboo.  Not only does it produce answers to please, but it lowers the standard of information." - Colonel Robin 'Tin Eye' Stephens, Commandant of Camp 020, British Interrogation Centre, Latchmere House, World War 2.

'71

'71 (2014)

Starring Jack O'Connell and Paul Anderson
Directed by Yann Demange

 "The Troubles."  What a typically British euphemism for a bloody, 25 or more year conflict which saw violent sectarian paramilitary factional groups wage war over the issue of independence for Northern Ireland from the United Kingdom, and by inference, union with Eire (the Republic of Ireland).  The conflict at times spread to the ROI, included bomb attacks on mainland British soil, and stretched away to Europe.  Overt hostilities all but receded in the mid 1990s are are thought, ostensibly, to have been brought to an end by the Good Friday Agreement of 1998.  The period saw British Army troops deployed in Ulster, and ultimately resulted in at least 3,500 civilian and military deaths.  Tit for tat murders continue to this day. "Troubles" indeed.



Understandably, such a momentous political event in the UK's contemporary history induced a reaction from the country's artistic community, somewhat quicker off the bat and less bombastic than, say, America's cinema's response to the war in Vietnam.  Of course, that involved much more devastation, but it wasn't on home soil.  In the film world, some memorable pictures have been produced.  I would not claim to have seen a huge number, but some standouts are in particular Paul Greengrass' "Bloody Sunday" (2002), Jim Sheridan's "In the Name of the Father" (1993),  and I have a strange fondness for the Clive Owen / Andrea Riseborough / Gillian Anderson starrer "Shadow Dancer", based on ITV Political Correspondent Tom Bradby's novel.  Some have missed the mark - I never really thought Neil Jordan's "The Crying Game" was any good at all.  But the most heinous examples occur when the subject crosses the Pond, and with due respect to our transatlantic colonial cousins, I think they have almost uniformly missed the boat in large part.  We have the ridiculously muddled politics of something like "Patriot Games" (see the Jack Ryan review below), the awful homeliness of the IRA assassin presented in the "The Devil's Own", just for a couple.



So comes a  UK flick, set against that backdrop.  "'71" concerns a young British soldier named Gary Hook (Jack O'Connell)  We first see him in a pugilistic combat with a friend, a fellow recruit, and an ensuing harsh training session.  They are both deployed with their unit to Ulster on an "emergency basis".  "Don't worry, you won't be leaving the country", their CO tells them (true but disingenuous).  Once in Belfast, caught mistakenly in hostile territory after assisting the RUC in a house-to-house  search in the Falls Road which goes bad, due to a mess up by his green, new Commander, Hook is  left adrift in "Enemy Territory",  Subsequently therein film depicts his attempts to survive a night in a neighbourhood of Belfast in which almost every person he meets will be keen to kill him.  This starts with an absolutely thrilling footchase between Gary and some IRA hoods, through back streets, alleyway and every which way.  He survives, but, hiding in an outhouse, he still needs a way back to base.  The film transforms his journey not from merely something that simple, but into an almost mystical, treacherous Odyssey.



Night falls, and in the careworn streets, lit by burning cars, Gary comes across a young loyalist, cocky (and foul-mouthed) beyond belief, who leads him to a "friendly" pub, where he encounters two undercover British operatives, recognised from his base, who appear to be upto something extremely dubious, with disastrous consequences.  Suddenly it seems he's witnessed something he shouldn't have, and even his own side are out to get him and everyone in sight is banging heads with each other.  The air of tension, mistrust and fear on all sides is palpably realised.  There isn't much heft to the plot - Gary tries to get back to base with death and danger all around - and it doesn't feel as if the film has a political point to make.  Everyone knows how messy this whole situation was, and that the British forces weren't necessarily above acting nefariously.  Hook seems blankly unaware of the complexity of the situation, or even what it's all about; self-preservation is his primary goal.  There's a priceless, laugh-out-loud funny moment when Gary is taken in by Brigid, the daughter of Eamon, a Catholic doctor (and former Army medic).  Making small talk he mentions that he's from Derbyshire, and she counters that they have cousins in Nottingham.  Gary grimaces: "It's just Derby and Nottingham don't really get on."  True, but in this setting it's an amusing comment.



If there were any doubts after "Starred Up" that Jack O'Connell is going to be huge, this film squarely banishes them.  He's simply immense.  It's an all the more remarkable performance, as he has barely ten lines of dialogue.  It's a brooding, physical turn conveying elements of confusion and fear, he comes across like a wounded animal, as he cowers, kneeling beneath the barrel of a young terrorist's gun.  The (largely unknown to me) supporting cast are good too, in particular Richard Dormer as the sympathetic Eamon, Sean Harris as the shady Captain Browning and Sam Reid ("Belle") as the young, out-of his depth Lieutenant Armitage.  But this is Jack's film.



"'71" is high on atmosphere and tension without adopting any overt political stance.  It doesn't take sides or attempt to moralise or rationalise the situation.  It's just a thriller, and a taut, highly effective one at that.  One is put in mind of Carol Reed's "Odd Man Out" starring James Mason as a young IRA gunman - so on the other side of the fence - in a similar situation in Belfast.  What a double bill that would make with this fillm.  There's almost a dreamlike quality on show here, enhanced by David Holmes's slightly off-kilter score, and striking cinematography by Tat Radcliffe (who also shot "Pride" last year).  First time feature director Yann Demange brings a neutral eye to the nightmare, making "'71" on of the most interesting - certainly most memorable - British films of the last few years.  Definitely worth a watch.



Mad Max 2: The Road Warrior

Mad Max 2  - aka The Road Warrior

Starring Mel Gibson and Bruce Spence
Co-written and directed by George Miller

Here's one of the less prevalent posters for "Mad Max 2", found online,  Marketing-wise, the film might have suffered something of an identity crisis, as it was re-titled simply "The Road Warrior" for its US release (audiences there probably wouldn't have been familiar with the original "Mad Max" of 1979 as it hadn't been widely received there), and was therefore mostly known by that name. And in retrospect that's no bad thing, because this film, whilst taking place definitively within the world created by the original film, and featuring the same central character, stands perfectly independently as one of the great action adventures of its time.  It's vastly different to the first film too.  With "Mad Max: Fury Road" currently roaring onto screens and tearing up box-offices, it's worth looking back at its origins.

The movie opens with a narrated, potted history of how civilization came to fall apart, and how we arrive at this state of anarchy depicted onscreen, with savage gangs roaming the outback, and survivors desperate to make it.  In the original film, the title card wisely pitted it as "a few years from now."  (I hate it when futuristic movies put a definitive date on their vision, because it's never right.)  So the viewer can heed the warning despite, or because of, the lack of a definite date and time... it just means, this could happen any time soon. This film slyly uses archive, black and white footage of civil unrest in the post WW2 world to depict the crisis which let to the apocalypse in which we have arrived.  It's brilliant, because it clearly projects something non-specific from the past into this imagined future, so doesn't suffer the temporal jar encountered by many dystopian works... it says, this is where we are, the past is messed up, it could have been 1960 or yesterday... but this is our world.  It's such a strong point for the film's environment.

There follows a stunning, wordless, eight-plus minute sequence depicting our anti-hero Max attempting to acquire some petrol (gas) from a ruined tanker which he discovers whilst riding the wilds of the desolate Australia.  He encounters a hostile group of scary, threatening raiders, led by the strikingly red-mohicaned Wez,   Max faces them off, and sees them off, and returns to the road.  But Wez's departing screech commands a future encounter between the two...   Petrol, it's established, is the most valuable commodity around, because it allows for mobility, and the potential escape from the barren world in which the characters find themselves.  Max encounters, is captured by, but shortly outwits an oddball fellow survivor, pilot of an antiquated gyrocopter.  Bruce Spence's portrayal of "Gyro Captain" - latterly named as Jedediah in the film's sequel - is fantastic, full of quirky tics and sly looks behind Max's back, and allows for some of the funniest and most human moments in the film, what with his harlequin multi-coloured costume sprites the screen.  Having taken him captive, Max one night chows down on a tin of dog food, some of which he spares for his dog... Spence's creeping attempts to get some food for himself are at once hysterical and tragic.

The pair happen upon a community which seems to sit upon a petrol refinery; so they are in charge of a huge stock of the most valuable thing around.  Wez's companions, the wasteland raiders, led by a character named "The Humungus" who are intent on a battle to retrieve the gas, and destroy the little community.  There has been some speculation that "Humungus" was actually originally meant to be Steve Bisley's character, Jim Goose, from the original film.  This could have worked, but in the context of this film it's maybe safer to avoid specifics.  The plot, as it were, is essentially threadbare, but that really doesn't matter, because it's a two-part thrill ride which comes completely out of the blue.  The first half of the film is surprisingly bereft of dialogue, it's actually striking how few lines of dialogue Gibson has in the first half of the movie.He is, however, excellent in the part.  Mostly silent, brooding... he does this really neat little thing where he licks his lips, showing he's thinking... it's a great performance.

There are huge amounts of humour in the film too., mostly involving Max's interaction with Jedediah.  There's a brilliant moment when they are both spying on an atrocirty being carried out by our antagonists, Max regarding though a small pair of binoculars, Jed watching through a giant telescope... Max just looks up and grabs the telescope, no questions asked... A smile evoked during a moment of horror.  There's a great deal of silent comedy too, which is perhaps missed on first viewing.

There are so many tiny parts in the film also which give it huge memorability.  Spence, obviously, is the mainstay, as he essentially plays second-fiddle to Gibson's titular character, and plays off as the comedy sidekick to Mel's decidedly dour (and rightly so) straight man.  Most notable is Emil Minty as "the Feral Kid", a tremendously outrageous savage who has associated himself with our band of heroes, and who has a truly awesome line in razor-edged boomerangs (no, really). His guttral grunts of pleasure at an opponents demise are a thing to see.  Mike Preston is grave, serious, and brilliant as Pappagallo,  Vernon Wells' Wez is one of the most memorable villains of 80s Cinema.  And as for Humungus... how can you top a leather-masked microphone-talking bad-guy dressed as a gimp...

Where the film really kicks into gear, however, and takes its opponents to town, is in the final third, when the chase sequence kicks in.  Max relents and decides to rescue the tanker full of fuel from the camp, and undertakes a spectacular mobile battle with his enemies.  This is an exercise in action cinema at its finest.  I can't think that it has been rivaled in the realm of automotive chase sequences ("The Cannonball Run" gets an honourary bye though), unless arguably until this year with another film in the same franchise... .  There are some brilliant set-pieces... as the raiders attack the refinery, the inhabitants defend with spectacular flamethrowers.  The elongated chase scene at the climax is about as spectacular as they come. Miller's direction is unquestionable; Brian May (not that one) provides a score which initially seems excessively melodramatic, but settles in nicely on repeated viewings; and the use of silence on the soundtrack is equally effective.  Perhaps most importantly, the scene created a definitive look.  Cinematographer (and future Oscar Winner) Dean Semler paints a red-brown desert landscape which lives long in the memory.  The budget is obviously limited, and once or twice noticeably so, but what's created is a huge achievement, and the limitations might even have benefited the film, particularly in the area of costume (keep an eye out for a cricket glove on one of the survivors!).  Some comments are thrown around regarding Max's integrity... is he noble and a good man, or is he just wasteland garbage?  It doesn't matter.  He reminds me in a way of Rooster Cogburn in "True Grit".  It adds a dimension to the film which prompts thought.  And it makes it a step above the original, and indeed most adventures of 80s cinema.  Where the film in retrospect seems most inventive nowadays, in light of the current trend of "reboots" is that it takes things from the first "Mad Max" and does something new with them, so it's not really quite a sequel, more of a progression.

Hugely hugely recommended.