Anaemic crime drama Blood

In a shabby, nameless, seaside town the brutal murder of a 12-year-old girl has dark consequences for cop brothers Joe (Paul Bettany) and Chrissie Fairbairn (Stephen Graham).  After finding voyeuristic photos of the victim and other girls in his possession, the brothers quickly identify smirking local kiddie fiddler and religious nut Jason Buleigh (the excellent Ben Crompton) as the main suspect but are forced to release him due to a lack of evidence.

Egged on by their increasingly senile father Lenny (Brian Cox), a brutal retired cop given to fondly reminiscing about the good old days of vigilante justice (when if you couldn’t batter a confession out of the baddies you took them on a one-way ride out to the local estuary), Joe and Chrissie take Buleigh for a drive, intending to put the frighteners on him and fit him up.  However Joe, whose daughter is around the same age as the victim, goes too far and, in a booze-fuelled rage, beats Buleigh to death.

Desperately trying to cover their tracks, like many a noir hero before them the brothers find themselves investigating their own crime.  But when the true killers are caught, Joe and Chrissie are shattered by the realisation they’ve killed an innocent man.  Haunted by the sins of his past and tortured by guilt, Joe becomes increasingly erratic and dependent on alcohol, arousing the suspicions of their dogged, by-the-book colleague Robert (Mark Strong).

Don’t worry if you experience an overwhelming sense of déjà vu while watching director Nick Murphy’s moody, brooding, downbeat Blood.  If you think you’ve seen it all before, that’s because you have.  Based on the Beeb’s 2004 crime drama Conviction, with its dodgy cops, dark deeds and practically Biblical morality Blood is a gloomy rag bag of noir clichés and face-slappingly ludicrous plotting (would two cops really take their doolally dad, who has a habit of blabbing, out a’murdering with them?) that slims down the original 6-hour drama into a malnourished hour-and-a-half yet still manages to feel ponderous, squandering the talents of one of the best British ensembles in years.

In a triumph of casting that’s as head-scratching as the plot, Blood asks us to believe Bettany and Graham are the fraternal progeny of Cox (none of whom share a consistent accent despite being possibly three of the best actors the UK has to offer), a situation that would surely lead the three detectives to immediately deduce that Cox’s dead wife dallied with the milkman.  Similarly, their performances are as all over the shop as their accents with Bettany’s swaggering top cop descending into a twitchy, violent, guilt-wracked bundle of neuroses, Cox chewing the scenery as the old senile liability while the dependable Graham subtly underplays.  As the women in the brothers’ lives Natasha Little and Zoe Tapper are wholly superfluous but there’s strong support from Mark Strong as the cop on their case, a surprisingly good turn from Adrian Edmondson as an anxious agoraphobic witness and the skin-crawling Crompton as the doomed paedophile. 

Ultimately, despite a top-drawer cast and moody atmosphere, Blood is a plod drama that really plods.

David Watson

Directed by:

Nick Murphy

Written by:

Bill Gallagher

Produced by:

Pippa Harris, Nick Laws and Nicola Shindler

Starring:

Mark Strong, Paul Bettany, Brian Cox, Stephen Graham, Ben Crompton, Natasha Little, Zoe Tapper and Nick Murphy

Genre:

Thriller

Language:

English

Runtime:

1 hour 32 mins

Certificate:

15

UK Release Date:

Friday 31^st May 2013

Rating:

2/5

Originally published at http://www.filmjuice.com/blood-review/

The Liability

A swaggering, immature waster and petty criminal, Adam (Jack O’Connell) is the titular ‘liability.’  After crashing his gangster stepfather Peter’s (Peter Mullan) car, Adam is forced to take on a little job to pay for the damage; driving the gruff, taciturn Roy (Tim Roth) on a no-questions-asked mission.

World-weary and efficient, Roy is a professional hit man on his last job.  His daughter’s getting married and he’s lost his taste for killing.  He’s looking forward to retirement but finds the chatty, enthusiastic Adam getting under his skin and, against his better judgement, agrees to show him the ropes.

The easy job becomes complicated however when a beautiful and mysterious woman (Talulah Riley) stumbles across their woodland disposal of their target, a Russian gangster, who they’re in the process of chopping up.  Roy doesn’t like leaving witnesses; the girl has got to go.  But when she escapes with a piece of incriminating evidence, Adam and Roy are forced into a deadly game of cat and mouse as the secrets behind Roy’s last job and Adam’s involvement are revealed.

A tight, blackly comic, little Brit crime thriller with two fantastic central performances from Tim Roth and Jack O'Connell, it’s almost inevitable that Craig Viveiros’ second feature film, The Liability, will be compared to Stephen Frears’ 1984 thriller The Hit in which jaded assassin John Hurt initiated eager young novice Tim Roth in the killing game.  This time round however Roth is the seasoned veteran mentoring the eager young O’Connell and while their partnership is just as deadly, it’s shot through with a dark, witty affection for it’s odd couple pairing that Frears’ po-faced The Hit never managed.   

While the script by John Wrathall holds few surprises, director Viveiros wisely eschews the temptations of Mockernee gangster movies and instead concentrates on the budding relationship between Roth and O’Connell’s mismatched pair.  Roth is as reliably great as ever as the quiet, laconic, business-like hitman Roy while O'Connell is wonderful as the mercurial, irritating Adam.  Always the best thing in whatever he’s in, O’Connell has charisma to burn and makes the brash, cocky chav Adam a likable, vulnerable protagonist.  There’s a genuine warmth and humour to his relationship with Roth, their scenes together really sing, and they're ably supported by Talulah Riley on smouldering, vampish form as the not entirely innocent witness and the monstrous Peter Mullan as possibly the vilest stepfather you’ve seen outside of a Grimm fairytale. 

A fun, violent, freewheeling road/buddy/hit man hybrid movie, The Liability is a quirky, cheerfully amoral antidote to the dodgy geezers having it large and playing Charlie Big Potatoes in your average sub-par Guy Ritchie or Nick Love knock-off.

David Watson

Directed by:

Craig Viveiros

Written by:

John Wrathall

Produced by:

Rupert Jermyn and Richard Johns

Starring:

Tim Roth, Talulah Riley, Jack O'Connell, Peter Mullan, Christopher Hatherall and Kierston Wareing

Genres:

Action, Thriller

Language:

English

Runtime:

1 hour 22 minutes

Certificate:

15

UK Release Date:

Friday 17^th May

Rating:

4/5

Originally published at http://www.filmjuice.com/the-liability/

It shouldn’t happen to a vet… - Upstream Color

Upstream Color

Imagine for a moment gentle reader that you’re on holiday.  You’re on holiday in Switzerland.  You’re having a rare old time; it’s a veritable non-stop orgy of yodelling, fondue and Toblerones. 

Then, deep underground at CERN’s Large Hadron Collider near Geneva, two particles collide, tearing a hole in the fabric of space-time, in the very fabric of reality, sucking you into a parallel universe where Little England’s favourite Sunday night veterinarian, James Herriot, is plying his trade not in Yorkshire but in Texas where America’s Greatest Living Filmmaker, Terrence Malick, hires him to write a paranoid sci-fi love story.  With cute pigs. 

While that’s not the story behind writer/director Shane Carruth’s Upstream Color, the beautiful, mesmerising, meandering follow-up to 2008’s hugely overrated, low-fi sci-fi Primer, it might have been more fun.

Described by Sundance’s publicists as “A man and woman are drawn together, entangled in the life cycle of an ageless organism. Identity becomes an illusion as they struggle to assemble the loose fragments of wrecked lives,” Carruth’s Upstream Color strives for ambiguity with a would-be existential romance that asks all the expected, obvious questions about love, memory, identity and freewill beloved of American Indie filmmakers while stirring in a dash of tasteful Cronenberg-style body horror to keep things fresh.   

An unscrupulous con-man (Thiago Martins) cultivates bizarrely narcotic maggots which he force-feeds to our heroine Kris (Amy Seimetz), drugging and hypnotising her, emptying her bank accounts and causing the loss of her job, leaving her infested with psychotropic, telepathic worms which she tries to cut from her own body before an enigmatic scientist/vet (Andrew Sensening) removes and transplants them into a cute little pig he keeps in an enclosure with her porcine friends.

Trying to rebuild her shattered life, Kris meets and falls in love with Jeff (Shane Carruth), whose body bears similar scars to her own and may just be a victim of the same weird experiments as her.  As their relationship develops, their memories and identities melt and merge, causing them to descend into fear and paranoia and forcing Kris to take drastic action.

Never as clever or fascinating as it thinks it is or as tricky or complex as its rapturous reviews would suggest, Upstream Color is an elliptical, deliberately obtuse, woozily pretty film that, despite its sophomoric pretentiousness, succeeds in intriguing without being anywhere near as involving as it should be. 

Seimetz is as wonderful here as she was in Adam Wingard’s A Horrible Way To Die or her numerous mumblecore outings, her Kris is vulnerable, damaged, hesitant, courageous, while the surprisingly charismatic Carruth acquits himself well as her spiky suitor, the two making an affecting, edgily sweet couple whose hesitant romance you want to see succeed.  Less successful however is Carruth’s sci-fi elements which lend Upstream Color a heavy-handed quasi-religiosity not unlike Malick’s recent films (The Tree Of Life, To The Wonder).  An undeniably hypnotic, technically brilliant (it’s one of the most densely edited films you’ll see this year), aesthetically gorgeous, sensual piece of cinema, Upstream Color also somehow manages to be ponderous, a little too smug, too impressed with itself.  An exercise in cod-profundity. 

Bold, baffling, enthralling, frustrating and ultimately unsatisfying, Upstream Color is a willfully obtuse piece of work that seems determined to make you feel something, anything, despite itself.  And if you don’t fall in love with Seimetz, you’ll definitely fall for those pigs.

David Watson

Written & directed by:

Shane Carruth

Produced by:

Shane Carruth, Casey Gooden, Ben LeClair, Scott Douglass

Starring:

Amy Seimetz, Shane Carruth

Genre:

Sci-fi, Romance, Indie

Language:

English

Runtime:

96 minutes

Rating:

2/5

Originally published at http://www.filmjuice.com/upstream-color/

Star Trek Into Dumbness…

Star Trek Into Darkness 3D

***Spoiler Free***

Before this review boldly goes where few others are likely to go given the near universal wave of critical love the film is currently surfing, it’s important to note that Jar Jar Abrams’ Star Trek Into Darkness is fun.  An enjoyable romp.  A superior Summer Sci-Fi Blockbuster.  But boy, is it dumb!  Gob-smackingly, face-slappingly, oh my God, you’re seriously going there dude, dumb! 

Having managed the impossible just four years ago and delivered a swashbuckling, intelligent reboot of a franchise bordering on religion that felt fresh, original, ambitious and just cheekily reverent enough to keep the Trekkies happy (yes, you’re Trekkies, not Trekkers.  None of you are trekking through the Himalayas or up the Orinoco.  The furthest most of you trek is the toaster to heat a Pop-Tart) while carving out a healthy mainstream audience with his bold take on the voyages of the starship Enterprise, this time around Abrams has played it safe and eased back a little on the wiffle lever, delivering a smoothly mechanical, precision engineered sequel that still thrills but lacks the personality and chutzpah of 2009’s bold Star Trek.

Opening with a scene filched from an Indiana Jones flick as Captain Kirk (Chris Pine) and Dr. McCoy (Karl Urban) are chased from an alien temple by some ooga-booga natives while, nearby, Spock (Zachary Quinto), Uhura (Zoe Saldana) and Sulu (Harold from Harold and Kumar) neutralise a potentially planet-destroying volcano, Star Trek Into Darkness gets off to a thrilling and unintelligible start. 

There’s no real reason for Kirk and McCoy to be running around the planet, they have no real involvement in the mission, but it’s crucial to the plot that the ooga-boogas chase them so they can break that most important piece of Star Trek lore, the Prime Directive, which forbids them from interfering in the development of primitive species.

So the ooga-boogas end up worshipping the Enterprise as a god (after Prometheus, anyone else think Erich Von Daniken’s Chariots Of The Gods may be writer/producer Damon Lindelof’s favourite book?) and Spock and Kirk fall out (Screenwriting 101 – create conflict) over Kirk’s cavalier attitude towards breaking the rules and Spock then grassing him up to Starfleet’s high command causing Kirk to be demoted.  Which is, like, so totally unfair dude, he, like, only did what he did to save his bro’!

But these two crazy kids can’t stay mad at each other forever and they’re forced to kiss and make up when a terrorist attack destroys a secret Starfleet base in London.  The culprit is soon identified as rogue Starfleet operative, the enigmatic ‘John Harrison’ (Benedict Cumberbatch), who’s launched his own private one-man war on Starfleet.  After a second attack on San Francisco takes out key members of the high command, Harrison flees to Kronos, homeworld of the Klingon Empire, where he hides out in a conveniently abandoned and windswept city, waiting for the crew of the Enterprise to run him down and bring him to justice (“Ooooh, chase me…”). 

Capturing the renegade fugitive, Kirk and the crew of the Enterprise discover there’s a lot more to Harrison than meets the eye and that their true enemy may be a lot closer to home as they uncover a galaxy-spanning plot that threatens to turn the Federation’s Cold War with the Klingons into a very hot one indeed…  

Hey, hey, the gang’s all here, the returning cast slipping comfortably into their roles, each having their own little moment to step to the front and shine before slinking back into the ensemble.  And there lies part of the problem with Star Trek Into Darkness; it feels bloated and familiar where the previous film felt fresh and exciting. 

Pine, Quinto et al are all very good and the expansion of Saldana’s Uhura and Simon Pegg’s Scotty feels right even if it is at the expense of Urban’s McCoy or new characters like Alice Eve’s (Trekkie alert!) Dr. Carol Marcus who has little to do other than get down to her photon torpedoes in a scene that serves no purpose other than having a hot girl strip to her undies so the audience and Kirk can have a bit of a lech. 

But there’s just too many characters doing too little.  Would it have killed you J.J. to winnow the chaff a little?  Take a leaf from Joss Whedon’s playbook and pointlessly kill someone’s beloved childhood hero.  Seriously, no-one’s gonna squawk too much if Chekov (Anton Yelchin) takes a phaser blast to the face in the next installment.  Overall the film feels very much like a naked stop gap, a bridge from Star Trek’s triumphant opening chapter to the promised third film when we join the Enterprise crew on that 5-year mission seeking out new life, new civilisations, boldly going blah-de-blah… 

The greatest enemy Kirk and the crew must face however isn’t Harrison or the Klingons but the enemy within; Star Trek Into Darkness is writer and producer Damon Lindelof’s latest salvo in his campaign to singlehandedly dumb down Sci-Fi as a movie genre.  Like Cumberbatch’s Harrison, he’s a man on a mission.  Unlike Harrison who proves to have a superior intellect, Lindelof really couldn’t write “Phaser” on a dusty Venetian blind despite somehow managing to become one of the biggest writers in Hollyweird, something he’s achieved without actually having any grasp of character, dialogue or plot development. 

Having already worked his special brand of magic on the once hotly anticipated Prometheus and Cowboys & Aliens, turning eagerly anticipated silk purses into logic and excitement-defying sow’s ears, not to mention his reportedly disastrous rewrite of the troubled World War Z, Lindelof delivers a Star Trek script that eschews character exploration in favour of setting up each new set-piece, telegraphing each obvious plot twist, papering over the cracks with references the Trekkies will love – “Hey dude, that’s a Tribble and did you see the sweet bat’leths those Klingons were packing!” – and blithely stepping around the gaping holes (Wait! The special photon torpedoes are filled with what?) while recycling dialogue and situations from earlier, classic installments as Kirk is forced to relearn all those lessons about sacrifice, responsibility and leadership that he learnt in the last film but has now conveniently forgotten.  If you’re looking to pick nits, you’ll find a headful. 

Which isn’t to say there’s not a lot here to enjoy.  Abrams keeps things rattling along at a fair old trot, Quinto, Pine and Pegg are obviously enjoying themselves immensely and, for at least the first two thirds, the film delivers kick-ass, if entirely predictable, space opera which edges right up to the edge of going somewhere dark and unexpected that genuinely would be a game changer, allows you a glimpse of what might have been, then immediately retreats, deploying its own equivalent of Doctor Who’s sonic screwdriver (a plot-device that appears in the first 10 minutes of the film purely to make you think “Hmmm!  I wonder if that’ll play an important part in the film’s denouement.  Look, a Tribble!”) before setting everything right again.  The action set-pieces for the most part are exciting with a three-way shoot-out between Harrison, the Klingons and the Enterprise Away Team and aRocketeer-inspired traverse of a debris field between two spaceships, which echoes The Empire Strikes Back and 2001, and anInception-flavoured shifting gravity race-against-time among the most inspired though the film’s final act devolves into empty spectacle with city-trashing crashing spaceships and a frankly thrill-free climactic foot chase and punch up.

The film’s biggest asset however is Benedict Cumberbatch who makes the leap from small to big screen with style.  His mysterious, enigmatic villain is silkily seductive and lends the film a seriousness, a gravitas, it otherwise would have lacked, investing his bad guy with just the right mix of arrogant haughtiness and Shakespearean theatricality that would make the likes ofWilliam Shatner, Ricardo Montalban and Christopher Plummer proud.

A rollicking rollercoaster ride that’s just a little lacking in depth and soul, Star Trek Into Darkness is bang for your buck Saturday night entertainment.  Let’s just hope however that J.J. deletes Damo’s number from the speed-dial when he jumps ship from the Enterprise to the Millennium Falcon…

David Watson

Directed by:

J.J. Abrams

Written by:

Alex Kurtzman, Damon Lindelof, Roberto Orci based on characters created by Gene Roddenberry

Produced by:

J.J. Abrams, Bryan Burk, Alex Kurtzman, Damon Lindelof and Roberto Orci

Starring:

Chris Pine, Zachary Quinto, Zoe Saldana, Anton Yelchin, Simon Pegg, Karl Urban, John Cho, Alice Eve, Peter Weller, Benedict Cumberbatch and Noel Clarke

Genres:

Action, Adventure, Sci-Fi

Language:

English

Runtime:

2 hours 12 minutes

Certificate:

12a

UK Release Date:

Thursday 9th March 2013

Rating:

3/5

Originally published at http://www.filmjuice.com/star-trek-into-darkness-3d/

Eye spy… - Dead Man Down

Slick crime boss Alphonse (Terrence Howard) isn’t having the best of days.  Someone is playing mind games with him, sending him cryptic threats, and now his most trusted men are turning up dead.  During a violent shoot-out with the Jamaican gang he believes is responsible, his life is saved by enforcer Victor (Colin Farrell). 

But Victor is not who he seems; he’s actually a Hungarian immigrant named Lazlo and saving Alphonse’s life is all part of his plan to gain his trust.  Two years earlier, Alphonse and his men were responsible for the murder of Victor’s wife and daughter and he’s spent the time since slowly infiltrating Alphonse’s gang and plotting his elaborate revenge.

As Victor’s best bud Darcy (Dominic Cooper) investigates the source of the threats, Victor is increasingly drawn to his quiet, damaged, scar-faced neighbour, Beatrice (Noomi Rapace).  Beatrice is haunted by her own demons however and wants Victor’s help, blackmailing him into murdering the drunk driver who almost killed her and ended her career as a beautician.  With Darcy getting closer to uncovering his true identity and his complex relationship with Beatrice deepening, Victor is forced to put the final part of his plan in motion…

Disjointed and more fun than it should be, Dead Man Down feels like the not wholly satisfying illegitimate offspring of Rear Window and The Revenger’s Tragedy as Farrell’s Victor strangles and snipes his fellow hitmen while kidnapping a gangster’s brother and feeding him alive to some starving rats in order to set two rival gangs against each other.  As a robust gangster/revenge flick, Dead Man Down just about works thanks to Farrell’s committed, soulful turn (even if his Hungarian accent is more Ballykissangel than Budapest) and the action scenes, particular the confused opening drug den shoot-out and the climactic gun battle, are exciting and thrillingly visceral even if the action man heroics are somewhat at odds with the downbeat, noirish moodiness the film’s worked hard to cultivate. 

Less successful however is the Rear Window plot strand featuring Noomi Rapace’s scarred beauty therapist and voyeur.  Sure, Colin might be drawn to tragedy but you can’t help but think he could definitely do better than Noomi so their romance never really rings true and there’s little chemistry between them.  Truth be told, there’s far more sexual chemistry between Colin and Dominic Cooper’s BFF Darcy (What kinda gangster calls himself Darcy?) than between Farrell and Rapace and it’s mildly disappointing when Victor and Darcy don’t fall into each other’s arms after the final fadeout. 

With workmanlike, unflashy direction by Danish director Niels Arden Oplev (who previously gave us Noomi Rapace as Lesbian Goth Avenger Lisbeth Salander in The Girl With The iPad) and good performances from all concerned, Dead Man Down is a decent, if uneven, slice of hardboiled romantic fun.   

David Watson

Directed by:

Niels Arden Oplev

Written by:

J.H. Wyman

Produced by:

Neal H. Moritz and J.H. Wyman

Starring:

Colin Farrell, Noomi Rapace, Terrence Howard, Dominic Cooper, Isabelle Huppert and Luis Da Silva Jr.

Genres:

Action, Crime, Drama, Thriller

Language:

English

Runtime:

1 hour 58 minutes

Ceryificate:

15

Rating:

3/5

Originally published at http://www.filmjuice.com/dead-man-down/

CSI: Yunnan Province - Dragon

When mild-mannered paper maker Liu Jinxi (Donnie Yen) intervenes during the robbery of the village general store by two notorious bandits he arouses the suspicions of inquisitive detective Xu (Takeshi Kaneshiro) who’s been sent to investigate the case by the local magistrate.

Discovering that one of the dead bandits is in fact one of the most dangerous, wanted men in China, Xu realises that there is more to the shy Liu than meets the eye.  Deducing that his mastery of martial arts marks him out as a member of the notorious criminal clan the 72 Demons, Xu begins to investigate Liu, intending to bring him to justice for a brutal massacre committed years before.  But Xu’s snooping draws the attention of the 72 Demons who have their own score to settle with Liu…

Blending exhilarating martial arts mayhem and the detective story with a plot not dissimilar to A History Of Violence, director Peter Chan’s Dragon, with its analytical protagonist and his intuitive dissection of crime scenes, is closer to Guy Ritchie’s almost Steampunk take on Sherlock Holmes, Xu’s stylish mental recreations of the film’s opening battle reminiscent of Robert Downey Jr.’s Holmes and his visualising of events or Gil Grissom’s reconstructions on CSI.

More mannered and philosophical than your average chop socky flick, Dragon is as much a contemplation of identity, morality, redemption and the sins of the past as it is blistering action film.  Liu’s former bad guy, sickened by the crimes he has committed, has renounced violence and lives anonymously, trying to make amends for his past deeds.  But can he ever really balance the karmic books?  Does he deserve the chance to?  That’s the question that obsesses detective Xu, a man determined to rigidly uphold the law and dispense justice whatever the consequences, who has had to curb his natural empathy after his compassion for a suspect led to tragedy.  By the end of the film both men will have to break their vows and compromise their personal morality to serve a greater good.

An accomplished martial artist, Donnie Yen’s never been the subtlest of actors but here plays to his strengths acquitting himself well as both warrior and humble everyman while Takeshi Kaneshiro’s Xu is a classically brooding detective hero transplanted to rural China.  A major attraction for martial arts fanboys however is the casting of the legendary Jimmy Wang Yu as Liu’s estranged father, the villainous Master of the 72 Demons, a despicably evil boo-hiss bad guy who provides a respectful nod to the classic martial arts films of the Shaw brothers and Golden Harvest.  

With its bone-crunching fight scenes and moody rumination on the nature of morality and redemption, Dragon is both a knowing and sincere celebration of the martial arts genre. 

David Watson

Directed by:

Peter Chan

Written by:

Oi Wah Lam

Produced by:

Peter Chan

Starring:

Wu Jiang, Yu Kang, Wei Tang, Donnie Yen, Takeshi Kaneshiro, Kara Hui and Jimmy Wang Yu

Genres:

Action, Drama

Language:

Mandarin

Runtime:

1 hour 38 minutes

Certificate:

15

Rating:

4/5

Originally published at http://www.filmjuice.com/dragon/

(Re-)Living The High Life - I’m So Excited (Los amantes pasajeros)

Camper than a Thai ladyboy drinking Babycham and watching Priscilla, Queen Of The Desert in the bar at Bognor Regis Butlins and featuring practically every actor he’s ever worked with (barring Victoria Abril and Carmen Maura), how much you enjoy Pedro Almodovar’s frothy I’m So Excited might depend on whether you’ve been waiting 17 years for a feature version of Scottish air steward sit-com The High Life.

Playing like a polari version of Airplane!, I’m So Excited marks a not altogether welcome return for Almodovar to the high camp comedy of Women On The Verge Of a Nervous Breakdown and Tie Me Up! Tie Me Down! after darker fare like Bad Education and The Skin I Live In.  After an accident at take-off which disables the landing gear, things look dark for the passengers and crew of the Peninsula Airways flight to Mexico.  There’s a good chance the plane will break apart and explode on landing and there’s nothing for the three gayest air stewards in the world (Javier Cámara, Raúl Arévalo and Carlos Areces) to do but mix up and dispense there own special cocktail (orange juice, champagne, gin and mescaline) to the Business Class passengers under their care who include a middle aged psychic desperate to lose her virginity (Lola Duenes), an aging dominatrix (Cecilia Roth), a disgraced banker (José Luis Torrijo), a hitman, a honeymooning couple and an actor (Guillermo Toledo) with a complicated love life.  As the passengers relax and come to terms with their impending doom, truths are shared, inhibitions are shed, the Mile High Club is joined and the onboard crew entertain with their own lip-synch homage to Donna Summer.

Whether you choose to see I’m So Excited as a rather heavy-handed metaphor for a rudderless Spain trying to navigate the financial crisis – the doomed plane flying in circles, only the privileged business class matter the stewards having drugged everyone in Economy – or as a light, frothy farce in the style of Almodovar’s films of the late ‘80s and early ‘90s will probably depend on your tolerance for lazy gags about sex and farting but it’s hard not to feel disappointed by the film.  It’s funny but not that funny and the taboo-busting approach to sex and sexuality that made films like Labyrinth Of Passion, Law Of Desire, Matador and Tie Me Up! Tie Me Down! so groundbreaking and exciting now just feels a little superfluous, an excuse for cheerfully vulgar semen jokes and predictably fluid sexual encounters.  It’s a somewhat shrill sex farce with cartoonish rutting and a disappointing lack of nudity or transgression and the scene where a female character straddles and rides to orgasm a sleeping male member (fnar fnar) of Economy feels a little ill-judged.  Is it a comment on Spain’s business class raping the slumbering common man or just a bawdy bad joke?  Probably both but swap the sexes round and you have a much more sinister scene.

I’m So Excited is best viewed as a reunion of Almodovar’s alumni, showcasing the talents of actors like Cecilia Roth, Lola Duendes, Javier Camara and Bianca Suarez with amusing cameos from muses Penelope Cruz and Antonio Banderas and a haunting appearance from Paz Vega.  The actors are clearly enjoying themselves (perhaps more so than the audience) and Camara in particular shines as the alcoholic chief steward juggling disgruntled passengers and an affair with the closeted pilot.

Bawdy, vulgar and merely chucklesome, I’m So Excited feels more like a loving but tired homage to Almodovar than Almodovar himself, a screwball comedy that lacks balls.  It’s an entertaining, fluffy piece of escapism fans of Almodovar will love but anyone who doesn’t find the spectacle of a trio of middle aged queens dancing and lip-synching to Donna Summer’s I’m So Excited pant-wettingly hilarious might find themselves jet-lagged by the end.  “Oh deary me!” as Alan Cumming might say.   

David Watson

Directed by:

Pedro Almodóvar

Written by:

Pedro Almodóvar

Produced by:

Agustín Almodóvar and Esther García

Starring:

Penélope Cruz, Antonio Banderas, Paz Vega, Blanca Suárez, Carlos Areces, Cecilia Roth, Lola Duenes, Raul Arevalo, Hugo Silva and Javier Cámara

Genre:

Comedy

Language:

Spanish

Runtime:

1 hour 30 minutes

Certificate:

15

Rating:

3/5

Originally published at http://www.filmjuice.com/im-so-excited-los-amantes-pasajeros/