Tag: Mark Wahlberg

Mile 22

Rated: MA15+Mile 22

Directed by: Peter Berg

Screenplay by: Lea Carpenter

Story by: Lea Carpenter and Graham Roland

Produced by: Mark Wahlberg, p.g.a. Stephen Levinson, p.g.a, Peter Berg, p.g.a

Starring: Mark Wahlberg, Lauren Cohan, Iko Uwais, John Malkovich, Ronda Rousey, Carlo Albán, Natasha Goubskaya, Chae Rin Lee, Sam Medina, Keith Arthur Bolden, Jenique Hendrix, Billy Smith, Myke Holmes, Emily Skeggs, Terry Kinney, Brandon Scales, Poorna Jagannathan, Peter Berg, Elle Graham and Nikolai Nikolaeff.

There’s no holding back in this action packed, political spy-thriller.

With blood and high-tech computer-based espionage shown through images captured by drones circling the sky and hand-held cam shots up close to see the visceral, at times, cringe worthy throat-cutting on gagged windows action (yeah, ouch!) – I was completely enthralled with this intelligent and believable military operation.

Based on the paramilitary unit within the CIA’s Special Activity Division, Ground Branch, James Silva (Mark Wahlberg) is team leader of Overwatch, a quick reaction force activated by ranking officer, Bishop (John Malkovich) when radioactive powder disks used to make dirty bombs go missing.

When a double agent forces his way to the American Embassy in South East Asia (fictional country of Indocarr) claiming to have intel on where the powder is located, the team must get Li Noor (Iko Uwais) to the airstrip for safe evacuation before he’ll give up the codes to access the intel, all while enemies stop at nothing to take the team down.

Although an action movie, there’s a lot of focus on character.

Opening on with Jimmy’s, (James Silva) background as an orphaned gifted-child, the film paces through his history like flicking through a deck of playing cards.

And the whole movie flies, each scene getting more bloody as the plot adds layer upon layer while Child 1, AKA Silva throws out statements like, ‘No birthday cake!’ while constantly flicking an elastic band on his wrist, the shock of pain supposed to keep his temper in check, but mostly adding a disturbing smack to his words – an indication of explosive violence barely held in check: brilliant.

Director Peter Berg loves his action thrillers his last three based on true stories (think: Patriots Day, Lone Survivor, Deepwater).  Here he returns once again collaborating with Wahlberg, this time making a film from fiction from first time screenwriter, Lea Carpenter.

I’d love to see more writing from Carpenter.  And seeing Wahlberg as an arse hole was gold: he’s so nasty it’s funny.

All the characters here were bad-arse, with Alice (Lauren Cohan) as a mother dealing with her ‘fuck wit’ ex as tough as the rest, the threat of I’ll go get, ‘a sledgehammer and ice axe and fuck you up’, a believable statement.

Violent, hard-arsed characters in action flicks can feel try-hard but not here.

And Indonesian actor Iko Uwais as the double agent on the road to betray his country was a pleasure to watch as his martial art fighting style erupts in stark contrast to his finger tapping meditation technique used to keep calm and get the job done.

There’s biometrics, drones, shots from car windshields, explosions – Doug Fox, who pulls double duty as both prop master and lead armorer says, “For this movie, we’re in the neighborhood of 50 weapons […]. That includes machine guns, M-4’s, AK’s, and Uzis; we also have to ship 40,000 rounds of blank ammo.” Just to give an idea of the amount of carnage.

And there’re flash forwards with Jimmy explaining in post-operation interview the unravelling of events as the four operatives transfer the Asset, 22 Miles in 38 minutes.

A simple concept, with many layers, so believable and so very violent – loved it.

All The Money In The World

Rated: MA15+All The Money In The World

Directed by:  Ridley Scott

 Written by:  David Scarpa based on the book by John Pearson          

Produced by: Dan Friedkin, Bradley Thomas, Quentin Curtis, Chris Clark, Ridley Scott, Mark Huffam and Kevin J. Walsh

Starring:  Michelle Williams, Christopher Plummer and Mark Wahlberg. 

When a movie such as this is labelled ‘Inspired by True Events’ I can’t stop my mind constantly evaluating which of the events portrayed are true and which are pure speculation.

In this case the basic facts are that Jean Paul Getty (Christopher Plummer) is an American-born British industrialist who negotiated a series of lucrative oil leases with Saudi Arabia and Kuwait and was declared the richest American in 1957.

On 10th July 1973, Paul, his grandson, (Charlie Plummer- no relation), then age 16, was kidnapped off the streets of Rome. Paul’s mother, Gail (Michelle Williams) spends the rest of the film negotiating with a grandfather reluctant to pay the demanded ransom.

The film is based on a book on the Gettys written by John Pearson and this adaption from book to film does cause some narrative problems.

Although the kidnapping occurs very early in the film, a series of flashbacks quickly follow in succession, each dated to supply the necessary biographical information about the family’s background. I found this constant interruption of the main narrative quite disconcerting.

This is a film that moves slowly despite the potential for drama of a kidnapping. The tension is muted, crisscrossing between scenes of Paul and the kidnappers and his mother’s increasingly frustrated attempts to convince his grandfather to ‘pay up.’ It is only in the last half hour that the adrenalin really starts pumping.

Christopher Plummer and Michelle Williams give solid if somewhat pallid performances with Williams reprising the mood of her role as Alma, wife of Ennis Del Mar, in Brokeback Mountain – all stoic endurance.

Surprisingly, moments of emotion are few and far between and unexpectedly more often between the young Paul and Cinquanta, one of the Calabrian captors (played convincingly by Romain Duris), who does what he can to make the captivity endurable.

What intrigued David Scarpa, the scriptwriter, about the story were the psychological aspects, how “the obstacle wasn’t paying the ransom and rescuing his grandson – the obstacle was psychological, he just couldn’t bear to part with his money.”

This is a visually beautiful film from Dariusz Wolski, (Director of Photography) renowned for each of the first four films in the record-breaking Pirates of the Caribbean franchise.

The Italian landscapes fairly hum with an erotic energy and the lush interiors of the Getty mansions with their shadowy corners and opulent décor are more like scenes captured from the Old Masters that hang on the Getty walls.

The film however, exists in the shadow of that space where art and life often collide. Originally, Kevin Spacey, transformed by elaborate make-up and prosthetics, played the iconic tycoon. But when many men came forward alleging that the actor had sexually abused them, Christopher Plummer was hastily signed on as the replacement.

Many scenes had to be re-shot and interestingly Michelle Williams re-shot all her scenes with Plummer, refusing to accept recompense in solidarity with all those who had allegedly been abused by show business luminaries.

Perhaps this unfortunate interruption of reality goes part way to explain some of the film’s deficiencies and its rushed feeling. Sometimes the action verges on melodrama, especially in the several scenes where paparazzi on steroids surge like locusts around the Getty entourage or the one thousand newspapers delivered by Gail to Getty senior to capture his attention, swirl about him like snow. Nothing subtle here.

In the end Getty senior is a somewhat clichéd portrayal, the lonely old rich tycoon without no attempt to understand the causes of his rigid personality. There’s a deeper story here somewhere but unfortunately it’s tricky to find, much like the Getty ransom.

[amazon_link asins=’0008292043,0008281521′ template=’ProductGrid’ store=’gomoviereview-20′ marketplace=’US’ link_id=’2aaa13c1-f4fa-11e7-8ea2-cdeec648ecd0′]

Patriots Day

Rated: MPatriots Day

Director: Peter Berg

Producers: Scott Stuber, Dylan Clark, Mark Wahlberg, Stephen Levinson, Hutch Parker, Dorothy Aufiero and Michael Radutzky

Screenplay by: Peter Berg, Matt Cook and Joshua Zetumer

Based on the book: ‘Boston Strong’ by Casey Sherman and Dave Wedge

Soundtrack: Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross

Starring: Mark Wahlberg, John Goodman, Kevin Bacon, J. K. Simmons, Michelle Monaghan

Based on true events surrounding the 2013 Boston Marathon bombings, Patriots Day details the hours leading up to, during and immediately following the attack which killed three people and seriously injured over 270 bystanders, sixteen of whom lost limbs.

Director Peter Berg and star Mark Wahlberg previously collaborated on the disaster flick Deepwater Horizon (2016), and their combined talents have enabled them to effectively recreate the Boston Marathon bombings with gritty realism.

Shot in a semi-documentary style, using hand-held cameras to capture the raw immediacy of events, the film effectively incorporates archival footage from the 2013 marathon. I think of this style as “shaky cam” and by the three-quarter mark of this 133-minute feature I was feeling very queasy, so if you prefer smoother camera work it might be best to sit far back from the screen. The synthesizer soundtrack music became repetitive and intrusive at times and a bit distancing, where silence might have worked better.

The actual bombing sequence wasn’t a surprise because most people know it happened, so the first half of the film focussed on establishing who would be directly affected by the bombings and allowed the audience to become attached to these people. The explosions were effectively staged and edited, and quite graphic without dwelling too much on the gruesome severed limbs.

After a slow patch the tension increased during the second half when the police and FBI manhunt turned to identifying and tracking down the perpetrators of the bombings.

Star Mark Wahlberg portrayed a fictional police officer, an amalgamation of several actual officers, and I felt he was the weakest link because he wasn’t based on a real person and his backstory was largely irrelevant. The sequence where the FBI call on his extensive knowledge of Boston streets to retrace the two bombers’ steps with technicians who then scroll through CCTV footage to find the culprits, really challenged credibility. Surely there would be effective IT software to achieve this without relying on the memory of one sleep-deprived man!

The home-grown terrorists (brothers) were not given much obvious motivation for their actions, aside from a short conversation with the owner of a hijacked car. The first shoot-out with the two terrorists when one of them was critically injured and captured seemed quite over the top with extensive gun fire, home-made bombs exploding and general mayhem ensuing, but a check of the facts indicates it really happened this way.

Boston and its people came across as the real heroes of this inspiring film, with the term “Boston Strong” becoming a rallying cry of hope and love in the face of horror.

What really got to me, however, was not the capture of the remaining terrorist but the photos of the three victims who had died at the scene, particularly the eight-year-old boy, whose sheet-covered body had to be left in situ until all crime-scene forensics had been completed.

That heart-rending photo of innocence really brought home the sheer waste and tragedy of this horrific event.

 

Deepwater Horizon

Action/Drama           Rated: MDeepwater Horizon

Director: Peter Berg

Screenplay: Matthew Michael Carnahan and Matthew Sand

Screen Story: Matthew Sand

Starring: Mark Wahlberg, Kurt Russell, John Malkovich, Gina Rodriguez, Dylan O’Brien and Kate Hudson.

Based on the article written by David Barstow, David Rohde and Stephani Saul: ‘Deepwater Horizon’s Final Hours’, Deepwater Horizon is about one of the largest man-made disasters to have ever occurred.

Ultra-deep-water drilling off the coast of Louisiana, the rig suffered a massive blowout after pressure caused oil to explode up the pipeline.  The oil then caught fire destroying the rig.  The disaster killed 11 people and leaked 50,000 barrels of oil into the ocean for 87 days.

Deepwater Horizon is about putting the audience in the midst of the disaster, about pressure from the depths hard to fathom.  In fact, the whole scenario is difficult to get my head around because I’m not an engineer nor a deep sea drilling technician that understands drilling and pressure and the forces of rotting dinosaurs from a previous millennia.  And there isn’t a requirement to have this knowledge as the film shows the staff, doing what they do, without dumbing it down for the audience.

The story is shown in a way where you get it.  That the mud is used to contain the pressure of the oil, so that if it’s oozing up the pipes onto the rig, that’s a bad thing: the mud isn’t stopping the pressure.  And if that dial goes to a psi in the red area of the dial, that’s a very bad thing.

That’s what I liked about the film.  Being right there with the people working on this monstrous rig.

Mark Wahlberg as the Transocean chief electronics technician, Mike Williams, gives a great performance as an everyday guy doing his job.  And Kate Hudson as the wife waiting at home keeps the cheese to a minimum – it’s all about down-to-earth folk just dealing with it.

Wahlberg and director, Peter Berg, have worked together previously in the film, Lone Survivor.  Another survival story about making tough decisions. Berg doesn’t use cheap tricks to tug the heart strings, he just tells a tale with an authentic flavour and Wahlberg plays the no-nonsense hero well.  And the simplicity and straight forward telling of Deepwater Horizon gave the story more impact and power.  It was left to the audience to feel the emotion.

I love a good techy film and Deepwater Horizon filled the bill with great camera work to show the scale undertaken to drill into the depths of the ocean; and the explosion and visual spectacle of the disaster was totally believable on screen.

There was a glossing over of the politics of dealing with BP, but covered by the interaction between Donald Vidrine, the BP company man played by John Malkovich (he plays a villain just so well) and Kurt Russell as Mr. Jimmy who was the offshore installation manager.

Rather than the politics or emotional drama, Deepwater Horizon was more about the confrontation of the disaster itself.  And I liked that.

Subscribe to GoMovieReviews
Enter your email address for notification of new reviews - it's free!

 

Subscribe!