Rise And Fall: Colin Farrell

Partial Education Presents
Rise And Fall: Colin Farrell

Featuring Partially Educated Reviews of

Minority Report

Phone Booth

Alexander

In Bruges

Total Recall

and Winter's Tale

There are many stories of careers that hit a peak, only to come crashing back down to Earth, and with In Bruges requiring a review, I've decided to start my own little series on them with. There's bigger falls than Colin Farrell for sure (Mr Gibson will make an appearance eventually) and his career is certainly not beyond repair, but, in recent years, it's stalled quite dramatically. We start though with a certain Spielberg film which may have been a Tom Cruise vehicle, but made the world aware of Farrell, whilst I sat there thinking: "isn't that the bloke from Ballykissangel?"

As far as adaptations go, Philip K. Dick has had it moderately lucky. Yes, there's been the odd dud, but most of those get forgotten and pushed aside in favour of the likes of Blade Runner and Total Recall. Though those are the two most respected, Minority Report is up there with the strongest. The word adaptation is used in a very loose sense when it comes to this film, as bar the concept and the lead character's name, there's little else to compare it to the original story. The highly polished nature of the film (this is Spielberg after all) runs at odds with the very rough around the edges feel of the original short story, but this doesn't serve to detract from what is a deeply thrilling blockbuster. Tom Cruise takes the lead role as Pre-Crime cop John Anderton, the lead enforcer in a trial run of a programme that enables murders to be seen before they actually happen. Wouldn't you know it though? Anderton's name arrives as a future offender and he goes on the run. Spielberg makes the most of the fact that the original story didn't focus much on the look of the world it took place in and goes relishes in creating his own. It's an odd vision, as you may sit there thinking "there's no way 2054 is going to look like that", but when you sit back and think about it, every gadget thrown in there could be entirely possible. He also succeeds where he has sometimes failed before, as the film's lack of real humour doesn't serve as much of a detriment, keeping the tone darker, but avoiding the pomposity that could have been there. Performances range from decent to strong, with Cruise sometimes stumbling into melodramatic territory, but pulling it off for the most part. Farrell's very strong performance is the one that pushed him into the a-list and Samantha Morton also plays her role as the main Pre-Cog (future predictor) with the style and panache that we've come to expect of her. Maybe her intensity is a little ramped up at times, but it's a non-issue in the long run. Then there's the ever reliable hands of Max Von Sydow being, well, reliable in a predictable, but nonetheless fun role. If people came to list the Top 10 most important films of Spielberg's career, I'd question whether or not Minority Report would make that list, but as popcorn entertainment it definitely works and it even does it without completely dumbing things down. Bridging that oft forgotten gap between blowing things up and giving the audience something to ponder is often lacking in Hollywood's output, but here lies proof that it sometimes occurs..

FOUR out of five

Coming out of a 2002 in which his star was made, Farrell went on to star in as many high-profile Hollywood projects as he could. When I say that Phone Booth is the best of them, that's less a validation of Phone Booth's quality and more an example of how bad the rest of it was. Phone Booth is one of those films that's just about good enough, qualifying as entertaining, but doing little to justify that entertainment as much more than throwaway. Farrell plays egotistical (is there another kind?) publicist, Stu, who finds himself in the sights of a sniper who wants him to see the error of his ways. Who is this mysterious sniper and which of the many windows is he looking through? The second question is a genuine mystery, but they seem to think that the first one is, even though that's blatantly Jack Bauer's voice. To be fair, Kiefer Sutherland is the best thing about this film, his voiceover holding an unhinged menace that benefits the film's general lack of subtlety. Unfortunately, the recording of his voiceover is painfully distracting, with no effort being made to make it even sound like it's coming from down a phone line. No, instead, you can feel the comforting warmth of the studio booth in which he sits. Farrell is also solid in the role, though hardly revelatory and his scenes are frequently helped along by Forest Whitaker as the chief police negotiator. It's not Whitaker's best role by any stretch, but he's a strong enough actor to rise above the bog-standard troubled police offer character and actually make something of his role. Length-wise, the film is also near enough bang on, with little dragging time as director Joel Schumacher swiftly wraps things up. Phone Booth's fine, good, solid and there's nothing that needs ranting about. That's it though.

THREE out of five

Quick Note: This review is of the Director's Cut. I intended to watch the Theatrical cut, but couldn't get hold of it. On the strength of the Director's Cut, I won't be rushing to watch any other versions.

Have you seen The Recruit? Have you seen S.W.A.T.? Have you seen Daredevil? They're all films starring Farrell. They're all films which received moderately hostile responses. When compared to the epic turd that is Oliver Stone's Alexander, they may as well be masterpieces. The problem isn't just that everyone has proven they can do better than this. It's that even people with a careers worth of bad films would sit back and think "Yeah, that's just not acceptable". The script stinks worse than Geordie Shore dipped in pig shit and the acting is heinous. Every performance in here is as wooden as it gets, with the exception of Angelina Jolie who's attempting to pass off her over-acting as intensity. She fails. Farrell really is the worst thing though. It doesn't help that the script leaves him feeling as though he's about to burst forth with a cry of "FREEEEEEDOM!" every five minutes, but the everlasting look of confusion on his face leaves you wondering whether or not his performance is just the result on an overextended hangover. Hell, if it is, at least he's got an excuse, which is more than can be said of Oliver Stone. In the space of one film, Stone manages to take pretty much all of his integrity and dash it's brains across the pavement. His artistic choices are banal (he emphasises the brutality of a battle scene by saturating the screen with a red tint) and, despite the fact that I watched the Director's Cut, he still makes the film feel as though it's been mangled in a director-producer dispute. Stone attributed the film's box office failure to "raging fundamentalism in morality", linked to the American audience's reaction to the exploration of Alexander's homosexuality. Maybe this is true, but he failed to mention where the film fails as a film: by being ignominious tosh.

ONE out of five

This is the part where Farrell's career begins it's decline, but amongst the ever-decreasing successes comes this week's mandatory review.

There's just something about In Bruges which seems to strike a chord with everyone who watches it. Some of the biggest prudes I know of have made their way through the multitude of f's and jeff's (honestly, if a swear word isn't said in this film multiple times, it's probably because it's not worth saying), the oft graphic violence and the fact that this is a film that pretty much insults anyone it can get it's hands on. Then, at the end, they still have to admit that it's pretty bloody great. Farrell and Brendan Gleeson play two hitmen who have been sent to Bruges following a job gone wrong. While Gleeson instantly settles into the way of sightseeing and history perusing, Farrell has the slightly less welcoming opinion of 'if I grew up on a farm and was retarded, Bruges might impress me. But I didn't, so it doesn't.' Where this would often set up for an overused dose of foreigner bashing, In Bruges slowly reveals itself to have a solid and engaging plot… amongst the foreigner bashing. Much of the story hinges on why they've been forced to go into hiding and this provides us with the film's main emotional thread. Though In Bruges' prime directive is to make you laugh, it's also quite touching at times, even though it's main heart and soul comes from the plight a professional killer. The presence of one of the finest British actors of all time doesn't hurt, with Ralph Fiennes managing to be hilarious, menacing and completely deranged all at the same time. If anything, it's a shame that his face is all over the poster and trailer because it spoils the surprise of his inclusion a little bit. With writer-director Martin McDonagh's outstanding script providing a deeply theatrical sense to the dialogue that plays well against the cinematic view of the Belgian town, In Bruges deserves to be viewed as a future classic of British comedy.

FIVE out of five

This is the part where I'd love to say that Farrell decided to continue on in the smaller projects and leave his blockbuster days behind him...

He didn't.

This may be starting on the wrong foot first, but I'm not the biggest fan of the original Total Recall. I'll save my reasons for when I review it, but it did leave me slightly concerned that I may enjoy the remake and then have to justify why. Turns out my worries were unfounded. Director Len Wiseman has a real concern with his film appearing cool and sexy. This results in Farrell, Jessica Biel and Kate Beckinsale all arriving to up the attractive stakes and Bryan Cranston taking on villain duties because "OH MY GOD! IT'S WALTER!!!". His more modern twist on the story attempts to bring out political statement: instead of going to Mars, we're now transferring from the poor end of Earth to the rich end and he throws as many fast-paced action sequences at us as he can. What does this all serve to achieve? Bugger all. All the high-priced visuals and stunning looking stars (really, they couldn't look more desirable) fail in masking just how hollow and dull this film really is. The "factory worker who turns out to be something else" storyline seems even more ridiculous this time around, as Farrell somehow manages to look even more out of place than Arnie did in the original. When he does enter his hero mode, he's decidedly moribund, lacking any charisma and not even delivering some Alexander-like bad acting to compensate for the boredom. This can all be said again for Biel, so let's not waste those words. Then, on the villain side, Cranston demonstrates the difference between chewing up the scenery and pissing on it, leaving, of all people, Beckinsale to be the film's strongest asset. That's not me saying she's good, it's me saying that in a row of music festival Porta-Loos, she's that's only overflowing a little bit. As for those cool visuals, Wiseman appears to have developed an affinity for lens flare not all that dissimilar to Homer Simpson's affinity for star wipes. They're fairly equal when it comes to their levels of panache too. Despite Wiseman's directorial career containing two Underworld films, Total Recall still manages to somehow be his worst, by quite some distance.

ONE out of five

In the end, Total Recall disappointed at the box office, perhaps breaking even, but only just. If Farrell wanted to re-establish himself, he needed a hit. Unfortunately, a 30 million gross on a 60 million budget is anything but a hit and that's exactly what we got with...

Winter's Tale begins in 1895 when two parents with consumption put their baby in a small boat and let him go under the assumption that he'll get to Manhattan. I mean, they can see Manhattan from where they drop the boat, but it's still hardly a model of great parenting. Fast forward and this boy has become Farrell, a thief under the employ of Russell Crowe. His treachery of Crowe means he's a hunted man (did I mention Crowe's a demon? Probably not, I'm trying to expel that bit from my mind) and his attempted robbery of a mansion leads him to cross paths with Jessica Brown Findlay's Beverly, who also has consumption. That's where the synopsis ends, partly because of spoilers and also because trying to explain it would induce a headache upon myself. Suffice to say, our characters embark on a journey of pretension, ineptitude and narrative flaws galore. The truest blame for the films failures lie in the writing, directing and producing team, with Akiva Goldsman conveniently working in all three roles. It has to be noted that Goldsman's wife passed away not long before he started to make this film, so it is more than fair to see where his inspiration lies, but it doesn't prevent the film from feeling like an overbearing vanity project. It also feels smugly confident and damningly unaware of how weirdly stupid it gets (time travelling arrives and it's unnecessary, a flying horse keeps appearing and it's worse). Now, for the most part, the acting is fine, sometimes even great, rising above the shoddy script to bring us some moments that genuinely move (particularly in Farrell and Findlay's relationship). The one exception is Russell Crowe, doing to the Irish accent what Dick Van Dyke did to the Cockney accent and delivering a performance that Danny Dyer would be proud of. Winter's Tale has left me slightly conflicted though. It's absolute crap, but I can't bring myself to give it a ONE out of five, entirely because of how astoundingly beautiful it looks. Cinematography and lighting combine in perfect harmony to provide a fairytale view of a real-life city and it really is exceptional work. That ordinarily wouldn't be enough for me, but the work is so great that I feel guilty not crediting that in the score. It still doesn't mean I'd ever recommend it though.

TWO out of five

Next Time

There is a mandatory review coming up, but I'm holding it. On Monday...