www.list.co.uk/film
THRILLER ELITE SQUAD (18) 114mm 9000
Between the wars the French anti-democrat, arch monarchist and writer Georges Bernanos wrote that: ‘The first sign of corruption in a society that is still alive is that the end justifies the means.“ Foreseeing France's defeat in 1940 Bernanos emigrated to Brazil in 1938 where he sat out World War Two managing a farm. Though written about his country of birth and not his adopted homeland. Bernanos' contentious writings on societal solecism waft around Jose Bus 774
Padilha’s excellent favela policier like bad slum air.
It's 1997 in Rio de Janeiro, months before a visit from Pope John Paul ll. The rundown housing schemes of Rio de Janeiro are mired in drugs. violence and police corruption. It is time for the city's ultra-violent BOPE, the city‘s militarily trained elite police squad to step up their game. Meanwhile Captain Nascimento (Wagner Moura) is having a hard time finding a successor as unimpeachable as he is.
Padilha started this film as a documentary but was unable to get any member of the highly secretive BOPE to go on camera. 80 instead he fashioned this compelling thriller from the material he had. each event in the film is, he claims, based on a real event. The result is electrifying: this is powerful. mature filmmaking styled with a brutal clarity. With its fast edits. wanton naturalism. Brechtian alienation techniques and awkward structure (that brings to mind Kubrick's Full Metal Jacket), Elite Squad is by turns enthralling and heart stopping. It is the work of a clearly gifted filmmaker and one that more than echoes the dictum that ‘Corruption is authority plus monopoly minus transparency.‘ (Paul Dale)
I Selected release from Fri 8 Aug. See interview, page 27.
DRAMA/ROMANCE LEGY (15) 112min 0000
Philip Roth, arguably America’s greatest living writers (and certainly one of the major chroniclers of middle class ennui), hasn’t been well served by adaptations. Goodbye, Columbus (1969), Portnoy’s Complaint (1972) and The Human Stain have all been badly mistreated by adequate, forgettable adaptations, leaving the prolific Roth looking like one of the more unfilmable novelists. Gladly, Isabel My Life Without Me Coixet’s take on Roth’s novella The Dying Animal is a fine and delicate adaptation of this decidedly masculine, even, some believe, misogynist writer’s work.
As he has done many times before, ageing college professor and womaniser David Kepesh (Ben Kingsley) plucks a young woman, Consuela (Penelope Cruz) out of his literature class and embarks on what usually turns out to be a short-term affair, this one, however, seems different. It isn’t especially that she is young and beautiful (she’s actually a mature student); it is more that she is the biggest hint his life has yet had of intimations of mortality. As he falls in love he wonders how it can work when there are 30 plus years between them. Where with his previous relationships - and particularly the one with his sometime lover Carolyn (Patricia Clarkson) - the lack of commitment allowed him to live in the present, does a deep love force him to confront his own future and impending old age?
Out of such a question Kingsley - a master of ambivalent yet assertive emotion in Betrayal, Death and the Maiden and Sexy Beast - fashions a sympathetic portrayal of an unsympathetic man. As he lets Consuela down at a key moment in the film, we understand the reasons while abhorring the action.
Elegy could easily be damned with the faint praise of being an intelligent adaptation, but when so many great novels are eviscerated and ransacked for little more than plot points and main characters, apparent faint praise can be high praise indeed. Elegy might even be described by the ill-advised use of an oxymoron, for it is, more than anything, a commendable example of an intellectual weepie. (Tony McKibbin)
I General release from Fri 8 Aug.
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The Mummy: Tomb of the Dragon Emperor (12A) 111min O Chunky, old- fashioned explorer Rick O'Connell returns, and this time he's off to check out the catacombs of ancient China. Joined by his son Alex (newcomer Luke Ford). wife Evelyn (Maria Bello) and her brother Jonathan (John Hannah), O'Connell and his family find themselves in trouble again when Alex accidentally awakens the mummified Dragon Emperor (Jet Li) and his 10,000 strong, silent terra cotta army. Unfortunately for them the Emperor has plans of world domination and only the thick-necked explorer and his brood stand between him and his dreams.
This risible third installment of the hearty adventure franchise is awash with bad CGl effects. infantile humour and sloppy performances. This is pure cheeseball. Unless you've had a lobotomy avoid. Rob The Fast and the Furious Cohen directs with all the subtlety of a mallet wielding child and Michelle Yeoh flounders around as an evil sorceress. It looks like Rachel Weisz bailed out at the right time. General release from Fri 8 Aug. Make It Happen (PG) 90min .0 Indiana country girl Lauryn (Mary Elizabeth Winstead) comes to Chicago to study dance. but when she fails the college audition she gets work in a mildly saucy nightclub instead. Rubbish rites-of- passage drama — think Coyote Ugly meets Step Up — this tosh was written, unsurprisingly, by Duane Adler. the man who brought you Save the Last Dance parts 7 and 2 and. oh yes. Step Up 7 and 2. General release from Fri 8 Aug.
7-14 Aug 2008 THE LIST 23