cross betWeen Eddie Izzard and Bill Gates He's assrsted by 63in and hideously (,llleted assassni Yassen GregoroVich (Damian Lewis).
The film's main problem lies in its tone. The series of books which inspired the film have a healthy, anti- Harry Potter vibe: dark Bond-esdue tales that don't bother leavuig the lights on for their child readers. Author Anthony Horown/ might be on screenwntirig duty, but some idiot wavuig a cheque-book was ObVIously looking over his shoulder. encouraging him to bring in sub-Austin Powers humour, horses for the girlies and excessive use of the phrase. 'What the heck?‘
There's some redemption in the form of callous MIS boss Bill Nighy and a O- ster cameo from Stephen Fry. There are a few passable action sequences. too -~ our hero almost getting scrunched in a car- masher is pretty exciting. But the film IS never anything more than a desperate wannabe.
(Ian Winterton) I General release from 2] July. See Profile, page 4 7.
NOIR CLASSIC KISS ME DEADLY (12A) 105min 00000
19554 was one hell of a year. For the first time, many of the American people got to hear their president (Eisenhower) moot and then dismiss involvement in a little country called Vietnam. there were more nuclear tests in Bikini Atoll, Ellis Island immigration port finally closed its doors. the last ever episode of The Lone Ranger was on US TV and in December the Senate voted 67 to 22 to condemn Joseph McCarthy lOr 'conduct that tends to bring the Senate into dishonor and disrepute.’ With the ClVIl rights movement also gathering pace in the south of the comtry. yOur average white American was chainsmoking, wounded and not a little paranOId. The following year Robert Aldrich delivered up Kiss Me Dead/y, a film every bit as psychotic and bewrldered.
Seen at this resene Kiss Me Dead/y is remarkable. Brutish deranged and devious the film can be seen as both a segue frOrn the private dick movies of the 1930s and «10s lthe world of Hammett and Chandleri into something much darker and a withering critique of cold war paranoia.
Dumb lug of a low rent private eye Mike Hammer (Ralph Meeker) picks up a girl on a motorway. only to cOme around sometime later With her dead and him on a guest into the unknown and in search of ‘the great whatsit'. Hammer is a relentless brute on the tail of obsesswes. Beautifully acted by a group of actors who never really got their due in Tinseltown (on top of Brando understudy Meeker. actresses Gaby Rogers. Cloris Leachman, Maxme Cooper are all fantastici. Also author and reluctant screenwriter Al Bezzerides script (adapted from Spillane's novel) has a kind of disparity and desperation in its meter that was at least ten years ahead of its time. On top of that Kiss Me Dead/y lS superny if deconstructively shot (in film now terms) by Ernest Laszlo. This is a near revolutionary work whose influence resonated from Boorman's Pornt Blank through Siegel's The Killers to Tarantino's Pulp Fiction and beyond. (Paul Dale)
I Fr/mhouse, Edinburgh from Fri 27—Thu 27 Jul.
COMEDY/DRAMA THE BREAK UP (12A) 105min O.
Break-Up as an ‘anti-romantic comedy' it comes as something of a surprise to find that this Vince Vaughn/Jennifer Aniston co-starrer is neither very funny nor particularly romantic. What starts out threatening to be another brash comedy along the lines of Vaughn's inexplicable hit, The Wedding Crashers. proves to be a bittersweet drama that picks through the unpleasant separation process. Here, Vaughn's city tour guide Gary and Aniston's art gallery assistant Brooke have had enough of each other after two years of marriage. but can't bring themselves to give up their coveted Chicago condo.
The problem With the film, ‘originated' by Vaughn in collaboration With a pair of hired scriptwriters, is that it can’t settle on a genre. As a conseQuence the tone veers wildly between comedy. drama and romance. The problem is compounded by the lack of chemistry between Vaughn and Aniston, not so much a romantic rapport (they are playing a c0uple who have fallen out of love) as a lack of comic chemistry. The restrained comic style that Aniston refined during her tenure on Friends just doesn't iell with Vaughn's freewheeling and heavily improvised
brand. Thus. its left to the supporting cast to provrde the laughs. Judy DaVIS is wrckedly funny as Brooke‘s bitchy boss, Michael Higgins excruCiatingly camp as Aniston's all-singing brother and Jon Favreau steals the show as Gary's empathically challenged best buddy. Johnny 0.
INTERVIEW
STASH TIME
Rowan Woods, the director of Little Fish, talks drugs, mothers and Cate Blanchett.
‘When I first read my wife Jacqueline Perske’s script for Little Fish, I was amazed. Here was a female-centric story, and all the unusual and particularly female aspects of the frustration felt by the central character Tracey Heart (played by Cate Blanchett) were on the page. I was fascinated that Jacqueline had identified an uncool part of peoples' lives. In most cinema stories about addiction, we get the crazy taking of drugs and the inevitable downward spiral that follows. She had focussed on something which was much more relevant to me as a parent, which was about the hard yards - not just staying off drugs, but winning the battle and growing up. In Tracey’s case she has to realign and re-apprentice herself to her own mother when she’s in her 303, and through that tag-team relationship she has to fight through things and situations, both big and small, so that she can move on in her life. I also liked the fact that, while a lot of drug stories in the cinema do end badly, here you traverse a whole lot of dark territory, and emerge with something hopeful.
‘In terms of casting Little Fish, once we'd got Cate on board it became surprisingly simple to get actors like Sam Neill, Hugo Weaving and Martin Henderson. What I like doing in using stars is to tear down their personas, and to mess with what audiences expect them to be. Cate was nervous beforehand - Tracy was her first Australian character for a long time, and she was playing a contemporary woman her own age, and not relying on hair and make-up and accent to transform her. She had to convey the raw, exposed psyche of a woman who’s borderline dislikeable and who fears that letting love into her life would somehow bring her down, and I think her performance really emotionally affects female spectators. People who know Cate in real life have seen the film and cried. They’ve told me that they’ve seen an aspect of the Cate they know, as opposed to being impressed and amazed by the way she has transformed herself in previous roles.
‘As a director, I’m very controlled about using colour, design, lenses, camera movement and sound to underscore the experience of the film. For me it’s about surreptitiously tightening the sphincter of the audience, as you’re leading them down into the character’s heart of darkness. Hopefully I disguise these techniques, so that you're not aware of them till the movie is over, and you start to analyse what’s been going on.’ (Interview by Tom Dawson)
I Little Fish is on selected release from Fri 27 Jul. See revrew, page 46.
Ultimately though. The Break Up becomes mired in its unremarkable domestic shenanigans, which offer :1 Curious CCUHIEJTLOITII to the gossip- fuelled glamour of Vaughn and Aniston's real-life rorrarice. iMiles Fielder;
I General release from Fri 27 Jul
20 Jul—’1 rm; 27/. me LIST 45