The Infiltrator

Bryan Cranston playing someone pretending to be a drug dealer. Hang on, does this qualify as meta?

The Partially Educated Review

So, I’ve still not seen Breaking Bad…

…and this is the first time where I’ve actually felt like perhaps I should have done now. Other than all the times people have told me that I should have seen it by now. Those many, many times.

So yes, this is a film where the casting team didn’t exactly apply their imagination. Cranston plays undercover customs agent (and real life person) Robert Mazur, who goes undercover in order to try and infiltrate the goings on of Pablo Escobar. He was also a real person.

Director Brad Furman was responsible for commencing the McConaissance with The Lincoln Lawyer, a film which came with little to no fanfare and then turned out to be a bit of a good thing. However, where that film was like winning a high-priced scratchcard, Furman’s follow up Runner, Runner was a bit like promptly dropping said scratchcard down a drain. As such, there was no guarantee of where The Infilitrator would land quality-wise.

It’s somewhere in the middle.

Storytelling wise, The Infiltrator is generic as it comes. There is nothing about the events or the way they’re told that will surprise you in the slightest. Maybe that’s because the source story doesn’t make room for that. I don’t know. Research?

Regardless though, it’s still a problem. It’s like when an old person tells you a story for the fourth time that day. You feel this overwhelming need to react with enthusiasm each time so as not to offend their feelings or suggest that the story itself isn’t any good, but there’s only so many times you can laugh at a description of a cat falling over. The Infiltrator doesn’t have imbalanced cats, but it does have snitches, drug barons and enough crises of conscience to outdo a UKIP lobbyist.

Throw in capable actors though and you can make that over-familiarity a little easier to sit through. It probably goes without saying that Cranston is a good lead, but he's not what makes this film. It’s the supporting cast. Diane Kruger is one of those actors who seems to only crop up sporadically, despite the fact that she has gotten progressively better as time has gone along. That trend continues here. Likewise, John Leguizamo is one of those “oh, it’s that guy from that thing” actors, but it feels like he’s actually trying to push himself here and the results are positive. However, good though they are, neither of those are the revelation. Step forward, Benjamin Bratt, former romantic lead in…

Bratt is not an actor who excites me (and not just because of that film). He exists in a non-offensive, but equally unmemorable manner. Until now. Bratt plays Roberto Alcaino, Mazur’s main route into Escobar. He does so with a charm and elegance of such brilliance that you may find yourself just as taken with him as the people that surround him, forgetting that this guy is one hell of a dangerous man. If Bratt’s going to enter a late(ish) period of his career where he’s busting out performances like this, you can colour me excited

It’s those performances that are enough to make this film worth watching. Maybe not a rush to the cinema, but certainly on home release or streaming. Or on your phone, if you’re a freak. I’m still waiting for Furman to match The Lincoln Lawyer, but at least he’s back on track here.

 out of 10

Suicide Squad

Bring the blog back with something positive, he said. Stop being so negative, he said. Embrace what you love about films and throw it out there for the world to see, he said.

Then Suicide Squad happened.

The Partially Educated Review

DNR

Spoilers for Batman V Superman lie within. Deal with them.

In 50 Words or Less: Not awful, but it is a mess. Taking on far more characters than any self-respecting film would dare, it all congeals into a mess of seen before action and unearned emotional punches. Decent performances make the film worth seeing if you're interested, but the DC Universe isn't getting any healthier.

In Detail: Remember when people lamented those comic book films which tried to throw way too many villains into the mix? They may have been justified complaints, but those films were usually trying to throw 3 villains in there. Brace yourselves then, because here we have 4 definite villains and 2 ones of dubious villainy being guided by 3 people who may or may not be villains to take on a spirit of definite villainy that’s hibernating within the body of someone who most certainly isn’t a villain and turning non-villains into subservient villains. Further to this, you’ve also got one other person of definite villainy who’s attempting to disrupt the mission of the potential villains in an effort to bring back one of the definite villains into his own fold of many more definite (but characterless) villains. Then Batman arrives and-

Writer-director David Ayer was on to something good 15 years ago. He wrote the very good Training Day, before writing and directing some decent films that eventually led to the fantastic End Of Watch. Since then, he’s been on the slide. Sabotage was an Arnie film of such garbagery (it’s a word) that it almost made people consider The Expendables to be a part of the glory days (I said almost) and while Fury was one that admittedly divided opinion, I didn’t like it and that’s what counts.

Suicide Squad was meant to be the film that would bring not just Ayer’s career back on track, but also the DC Cinematic (or Extended) (or Protracted) Universe, which may have been doing OK financially, but hasn’t been putting the necessary throb into the fanboys… hearts. I’ve heard the film referred to as a victim of overhype and it isn’t really. There’s too much shoddy filmmaking on show to blame every failure on inflated expectations. The obvious litany of deleted scenes makes the film feel jumpier than Tigger with Tourettes and the detail with which characters are or aren’t introduced means every one of them might as well have a meter under them that tells us exactly how many shits we’re meant to give about them. Usually, that's...

Then there’s the dialogue and this is where the real surprises lie. Looking at Ayer’s previous work, it's not hard to detect his affection for a particular word beginning with F and it isn’t flip. Despite this, his dialogue has remained his strongest card to play. That changes here. For (I’m pretty sure the first time) Ayer finds himself within the constraints of PG-13, meaning that favourite word (it also isn’t flump) must fall by the wayside considerably. To replace this, he’s tried to get more inventive and quirky with his lines and he’s done that by trying to ape off Guardians Of The Galaxy. The difference is that Guardians’ quips felt both fluid and natural to the character’s speaking them. The ones in Suicide Squad often don’t, particularly in the case of Viola Davis, who you can almost see cringing every time she has to deal out yet another witless put-down. Though if we’re going to start talking about all the things Guardians did better, we’re going to be here a while.

There are still positives here though and enough of them to lift this from the doldrums. Ayer has always been a filmmaker that looks after his lead characters far better than his supporting ones and there is no change to that trend here. For a start Deadshot is played by Will Smith, a man who could ooze charisma reading the Chilcot inquiry. Jared Leto’s Joker is obviously the performance that people were most intrigued and he’s done a good enough job. He's fun, if not a patch on previous incarnations. But, in Margot Robbie’s Harley Quinn, we have the definite highlight. In fact, this combined with The Legend Of Tarzan is putting a lot of my doubts about her to rest. The films may have been lacking (mild term) overall, but they both benefitted exponentially from her presence. Credit too must go to Jay Hernandez who does some solid work as El Diablo (the only supporting roles that comes close to getting a fair shot).

The presence of these characters makes this enjoyable, but doesn't stop you from realising that the film is still a complete mess. Plot holes are everywhere, perhaps as a result of it’s ever-noticeable butchering in the editing suite. There’s also a general failure to justify the whole of the events that are going on. The banding of these characters together never feels like a good idea and frequently shows itself not to be. Also (someone else brought this point to my attention, but he can go to hell if he wants naming), there’s a persistent question of why they didn’t just get Batman to sort this out. Superman may be “dead”, but Bruce Wayne’s going perfectly strong still. Throwing him in there for a cameo (not a spoiler) just makes you question it even more and not one character thinks to bring it up.

At least it took more than a decade for me to get fed up with the Marvel films.

FIVE out of 10

Fifty Shades Of Grey

Right off the bat: I did not watch this film out of any interest in the subject matter. I’m the sort of person who asks someone out and then screams his safe-word if they expect me to also decide on a time and place. BDSM is about as appealing to me as french kissing a bovine rectal cavity. Appropriately, so is this film. 

The Partially Educated Review

Yes, I went there

In 50 Words or Less: Not the worst film ever made. Now that's out of the way, it's still rubbish. It's also setting back gender equality at least 20 years and has the sex appeal of me in a mankini. Given how many people went to see this, I'm going to start wearing said mankini.

In Detail: I’m fairly sure I’ve said this on here before. There isn’t a single film that I would flat out refuse to ever watch. Of course there are films which I consider a higher priority, but if the opportunity presented itself to see every film ever made, I’d take it, regardless of how much dross I’d have to sit through. Fifty Shades Of Grey was a tricky one though. It falls into that category of films that I can’t help but have an opinion on before watching; what I call…

That’s the main reason why I’ve waited a while before giving it a chance. Letting all the vitriol ease off a bit before I try and establish my opinion without pre-judgment. Also, there was no way I was going to the cinema to watch this, particularly given the fact that some cinema’s felt the need to put plastic covers over their seats for ease of cleaning.

Now I’ve watched it though and I don’t so much lament the 2 hours I lost watching it as I do cry for the people who lost 2 years of their lives making it and have this to show as the end result. I genuinely feel as though a lot of them don’t deserve it. In areas such as lighting, the way the film is shot and the soundtrack, people have done some really good work here.

All of that work is for a film which isn’t just bad because of it’s stunted acting and appalling script. This is an inherently scuzzy piece of work that doesn’t ooze any sense of temptation into you, instead leaving you to question whether the human race really does deserve the air we breathe. 

For those of you that don’t know the plot, good on you. Wish I could be right there with you. If you insist though, Anastasia Steele (Dakota Johnson) interviews mega-rich businessman Christian Grey (Jamie Dornan). “How’d he get rich?” I wondered. “Look! Boobs!” said the film. Through a series of scenes in which Grey establishes himself as a slimy, reptilian bag of inferiority, Steele quite alarmingly becomes seduced by him, becoming a very special kind of partner to Grey.

The film’s gross gender imbalances are a huge problem. In fact, if anyone knows a voodoo priest, please provide me with contact details. By the time the sequels come out, I genuinely think we may need to resurrect Emmeline Pankhurst. It’s made worse though when the film tries to bring some morals into it. Instead of empowerment, the whole thing starts to deflate and you get the impression they want us to resent Steele for finally employing the use of her brain.

Director Sam Taylor-Johnson hasn’t done a great job here either, but with all the stories of interference from the author (that’s her above if you’re wondering), it seems like that was going to be an impossible job. Wisely, she has decided to step away from the sequels. 

This is a prime example of a film being a non-starter. No one went to see this expecting quality and even the most illiterate person I know (it's not you, I promise) appears able to recognise that the book is a literary shocker. I can't comment. I've never read it. I intend to keep things that way. Unfortunately, this weird sense of slightly perverse curiosity overcame people and meant that this film was funded with enough money to guarantee that those aforementioned sequels are happening.

And I'll probably watch those as well. 

TWO out of 10

Freddy Got Fingered

Name me a Tom Green film that came out in the last 10 years. You can’t, can you? Civilised society wins again.

The Partially Educated Review

And on the 8th day, Satan created Tom Green

In 50 Words or Less: Tom Green masturbates a horse. If that sells it to you, suffer through this. You deserve it.

In Detail: Goes to find that “flogging a dead horse” GIF.

There we go. It’s a gracious mercy that Tom Green has always been fairly well ignored over here in England. I remember The Tom Green Show first arriving over here and the palpable sense of indifference that came with it. Proof, if needed, that England has excellent taste when it comes to television shows.

Oh, sod off. This lack of care changed a bit when Freddy Got Fingered arrived, with a lot of interest suddenly appearing from teenage boys who gave the instant stamp of approval to anything remotely scatological. Usually, I was one of those teenage boys and yet, at at time when I liked most films that I was too young to watch, Freddy Got Fingered became one of the two main films that taught me how to hate my television screen. The other one?

It’s a charming tale of a man who wants to follow his dreams of being a professional animator. A man who, along the way, masturbates a horse, accuses his father of sexually molesting his younger brother (oops, sorry, spoilers) and swings a newborn baby around by it’s umbilical cord. Amongst other things.

Ordinarily, when a film is this bad, it involves having to root out the blame. You need to be fair, you need to make sure that everyone is held accountable for their actions. The writer, the director, the star. They must all share blame if it is there to be equally shared. Oh wait, Green is all of those things. This one’s for you, mate!

Now, I’m happy to accept that this sort of reaction may be precisely what Green wanted. There is enough in this film to suggest that Green was wanting to make himself into a real-life Max Bialystock, taking the notoriety that came with it and the ability to say: “at least I’m remembered for something”. Which is a mentality I just don’t get. Anyone can make themselves remembered. Tomorrow, I could go commando, walk into work and drop my chinos and I can guarantee that image is getting etched into everyone’s brain for all time. If anyone I work with is reading this, don’t worry, I’m not going to do it.

He’s failed though. Not at making a bad film. No way. This is a film so bad that if someone put a gun to my head and gave me the option of watching this one more time or only being able to listen to Mika for the rest of my life, I’d definitely want some time to think about it. Actually, imagine that. Imagine that the only thing you can hear for the rest of your miserable existence is THIS…

It’s not half as offensive as it’s trying to be though (the film, not Mika. Mika is very offensive). Mainly because it’s all so laughably transparent. Any initial wincing or grimacing that you may feel will go away fast, followed by the bleak, harrowing realisation that you just spent 87 minutes of your life watching celluloid dreams die. Those 87 minutes aren’t coming back. They’re gone. Lost. Wasted. And Tom Green has managed to make just as much of an impression on your life (be it good or bad) as a fart on the other side of the world.

ONE out of 10

Blended

I said to myself: “this week, you should really try and write something positive”.

And then I decided I don’t feel like writing something positive. I feel like destroying something. I feel like taking a sledgehammer wrapped in barbed wire and smashing the last vestiges of life out of something (entirely metaphorical, I assure you). Who could I possibly turn to for fulfilment of that purpose?

The Partially Educated Review

"Hello darkness, my old friend"

In 50 Words Or Less: would give away the last paragraph of the review. So read that.

In Detail: I will say this and you can choose whether or not you want to believe me. I don’t hate Adam Sandler quite as much as you would probably expect me to. Go back to some of his earlier work and there’s some enjoyable enough films kicking around in there (yes, Happy Gilmore). Then he started providing Rob Schneider with his own starring roles. As well all know, this yielded similar levels of success as would asking the Westboro Baptist Church to co-ordinate the global security for all Pride events. Though there were a couple of acceptable moments after that, the downhill slide was taking on a sharper gradient. Then Jack And Jill came down from the hill with no broken crowns and decided to dash the audience’s brains out instead. He hasn’t recovered since.

With Blended, Sandler made two fairly fatal mistakes. First off, he decided that he wanted a holiday in Africa, but should be entitled to make money from said holiday. As if that’s not enough to resent him for, he also seemed to think that Round 3 of his partnership with Drew Barrymore was also something everyone wanted. 50 More First Dates, anybody?

One of the worst box office openings of Sandler’s career followed and his box office reliability began to look a lot like this.

Here's your plot. After a blind date that’s just as painful for the characters as it is for the audience having to sit through it, Sandler and Barrymore’s paths just can’t stop crossing; a bit like my eyes after the convoluted chain of events that leads to them accidentally holidaying together in Africa. Most of the film’s humour comes at the expense of both characters' young children. Barrymore has two sons: a serial masturbator (remember, this is a Sandler film) and a tantrum throwing adrenaline junkie. Sandler, meanwhile, has three daughters. One of them’s there to be cute, but they still allow her to make devil noises and (in the film’s longest running joke) the other two apparently look like men. Despite the fact that one of them looks like this.

As ever, Sandler has failed to grasp the rule of three when it comes to a joke. Instead, his every amusement is rammed harder into the ground than a rat under a skyscraper. Further to the problem, rule of three’s only applicable if the joke is actually funny the first time. My face after every "is she a boy or a girl?" joke:

By this point, Sandler has been peddling his brand of humour for 25 years and it's not hard to argue that a lot of those who liked him at first have become fed up. Those who never liked him to begin with have taken such a joyous pleasure in his dwindling financial successes that I’m starting to wonder if they laugh when a puppy gets shot in the face. As for that handful of people who are still tolerating Sandler…

I went in to this film with a ONE out of 10 for it to improve upon and developed a system that would enable it to do that in a fair manner. For every time a joke in this film made me laugh I would give it one more point. That’s right, if it made me laugh 9 times I would be obligated to give this film a TEN out of 10, in spite of whether or not I hated everything else about it.

TWO out of 10

Batman V Superman: Dawn Of Justice

Preconceptions can be a nasty old bitch. Either you’re slagging something off before you’ve seen it, or you’re complaining about the people doing the slagging off as if you’re completely innocent of ever doing it yourself. And you’re not. You’re lying. I include myself in that. Case in point: try telling me that the next Resident Evil film is going to be any good. 

There are, however, two films that I needed to be great this year. If only so I could see the mouths of those pre-judgers clamp shut for at least a few blissful seconds. There’s still a chance with Ghostbusters.

The Partially Educated Review

It’s the Caped Crusader taking on… hang on, aren’t they technically both caped crusaders?

In 50 Words or Less: Suffering from an amazing opening that it can't hope to follow, Batman V Superman is also beleaguered by dull characters and a total humour bypass. That being said, the film coasts by quite admirably on premise alone and certainly isn't the outright disaster many seemed to wish it to be.

In Detail: Let me clarify right off the bat (pun not intended, but I’m leaving it there). Batman V Superman isn’t a bad film and compared to Man Of Steel, it’s definitely superior. That being said, a bollock removal was preferable to Man Of Steel. There are even some true flashes of brilliance here. Remove the opening credits which seem to believe that we need reminding of the murder of Bruce Wayne’s parents, as if he doesn’t remind us enough himself…

…and we move straight into one of the best opening sequences to a superhero film that I can name. And I’ll stand by that statement. In this post 9/11 world, big budget films have felt an alarming need to re-create carnage on a similar scale, without bringing any thought whatsoever to the loss of life that comes with it. Man Of Steel was one of the most guilty parties of this and that is addressed here, as them pesky superhero shenanigans finally get shown to us from a real world point of view. It’s alarming, it’s gripping and it’s a brilliantly played effort.

So brilliant that the rest of the film can’t follow. Despite his best efforts, director Zack Snyder just can’t keep the momentum going, mainly because we’ve realised how boring the characters are. In just about all cases, feelings of warmth are as absent here as they would be in a polar bear’s nutsack (two testicle jokes in one review, this is your fault, Snyder). Both Clark Kent and Bruce Wayne are played well enough (Affleck comes out best and I’m not just saying that), but there’s nothing new about their characters or their alter egos that hasn’t been explored elsewhere. Stop me if you’ve heard this one before. Batman and Superman are divisive figures in the eyes of the-

Making them really likeable though has always been a tough one. I would personally claim that no one’s properly achieved it, particularly in the case of Batman. Instead, they usually succeed if the villains are so hateful that you’ll cheer for anyone against them. Surely, Lex Luthor is that figure of hate?

Technically? Yes. He is hateful. Not in a good way though. It’s clear that Jesse Eisenberg didn’t want to play this as Mark Zuckerberg: Super Villain and that’s respectable. He’s gone quirky though. WAY too quirky. His presence on screen isn’t one that you’ll relish and enjoy. You’ll want to rip his voice box out and gaffer tape his mouth shut, just to make sure that little girlish giggle can never be audible again. There are other villains, but they’re either bland terrorists or smashy screamy monster types, undeserving of further mention.

Yet despite these issues, there’s still something that keeps the film ticking along. The idea of these two characters together for the first time should feel more massive than it does, but it does still hold some weight. To me, this feels much more important than any combination Marvel can offer us…

…though Justice League will likely feel like Avengers-lite, particularly given the moderately ham-fisted way in which they’re going about introducing other characters. For fear of spoilers, I’ll say no more than that.

By the end of it all though, Batman V Superman: Dawn Of Justice leaves me with a quandary. It’s good enough to get a positive score and yet it’s still a failure. People were so dead set against this film from the get go that anything less than Dark Knight quality was going to result in the naysayers declaring themselves right all along (you weren’t right, kindly never speak again). In fact, here’s categorical proof of how not bad this film is. If you want to, go ahead and tell me that this film is awful. Now watch Catwoman. Tell me again that this film is awful.

SIX out of 10

I’ve just realised that’s the same score I gave Fantastic Four. May have over-scored that one.

Triple 9

Somebody's been watching Heat. Apparently, they've also been watching The Wire, but I've never seen that, so I can't comment, which usually garners a similar reaction to saying you haven't watched Breaking Bad. I haven't watched that either.

So, can someone explain to me what people see in Aaron Paul? Between this, Need For Speed and anything else I've seen him in, it's safe to say I just don't get it.

The Partially Educated Review

Because sometimes life just isn't quite miserable enough

In 50 Words or Less: It's not the unrelentingly bleak tone of the film that's the problem. It's that it's got that tone with absolutely no one to get behind. A cast this noteworthy should give us performances that are more than satisfactory. They don't. Ultimately, the film's own influences show themselves as preferable viewing.

In Detail: John Hillcoat isn't a household name. I don't think he's ever going to be one either because his films are all so unrelentingly bleak. When your most cheerful output to date has been the film Lawless, you're not exactly gunning for the feels. Triple 9 is no exception to this rule. The moment Kate Winslet presents a bag of severed fingers to the people from whom the fingers were taken, it becomes very apparent that she's not occupying the same territory as The Holiday. It doesn't get any nicer from there though, moving it's characters further into a life so dark that death may be their only way to a happy ending.

The film's plot revolves around crooked cops trying to stage a (wait for it) Triple 9; an event which results in the calling of all available police officers to the scene. This in turn will then take attention away from an upcoming robbery that they are forced into by Winslet's Russian gangster. Instead of the mechanics of the robbery itself, this is more bothered with the characters own internal conflicts, though most of the time they just need someone to tell them one thing.

Ordinarily, when a film's like that, it falls flat under the weight of it's own misery. Hillcoat has, however, made persistent depression work for his audience in the past, with The Proposition and (particularly) The Road showing us how you can still engage an audience despite an uncompromising nature. Much like Lawless though, he seems to have forgotten the essential mechanic in achieving that; there has to be someone to root for. For the most part, Triple 9's characters are either scumbags or conflicted scumbags, meaning that every time one of them holds a gun to the other, you couldn't care less if a small explosive device wiped the both of them out. As this sort of conflict makes a frequent appearance, that lack of someone to get behind is a real problem.

There's a couple of exceptions to the scumbag rule, but Casey Affleck's noble detective is duller than a greyscale painting of an empty goldfish bowl and Woody Harrelson is uncommonly dreadful as the cop with a drink problem. There are some solid enough performances here and there, but none of them are really noteworthy enough to warrant separating from the crowd. Perhaps Winslet would have been a saving grace, as her undeniable presence is there to be seen, but her performance keeps being off-railed by an accent that seems like she's taken John Malkovich in Rounders as an inspiration.

Triple 9 is a thriller by appearance only, distinctly lacking in the pluralized first syllable of that word. It's forgettability is apparent by the fact every time an offscreen character is referred to, you need some time to remind yourself which one that is. In the weeks to come, this will leave cinemas and make a fairly quiet home viewing release, only to become a footnote in the careers of everyone involved. Taking prior form into account, Hillcoat is still a director whose films are worth anticipating, but this, combined with Lawless, could suggest a downward slide has begun. Though hopefully not.

FOUR out of 10