In Theaters

Even though our mission is to primarily look at movies most people (especially us) haven't seen, we are inevitably tempted to hit the theaters once in a while. Since I personally believe the setting of the movie theater can change the viewing experience, I thought it appropriate to make a special section for the films we see on the big screen.

Drunken Critic Recap

And this is where things get interesting.  So we're not so snobby that we wouldn't watch a bad movie or two.  In fact that's something we love to do.  Just sit down, grab a bunch of that old alcohol, and try to make it through a bad movie, or maybe a movie that's pretty good, but needs a little liquid courage to get to the end.  So our idea is, while reviewing the movies, you know talking about things that might be redeeming about them or why they're absolutely terrible or even why they might actually be hidden gems, we'll have what we call the Beer Scale.  Rated 1 outta 10, it's not to tell you it took us 6 beers to make it through, but rather a 6/10 means I started hitting the strong stuff but I wasn't completely gone yet.  So hopefully this livens up these reviews and gives you a real good look at what's needed to get through some of these flicks.

About Us

Mark and I are the kind of guys who stay in and watch movies by themselves at night, when other people are out being social. When we do venture into the social sphere, our talks about movies old and new are usually so specific or tangential that people will get up and go to the bathroom and never come back. (It's like Ted Striker's monologue in Airplane!, where everyone sitting next to him has to commit suicide just to escape his babbling). And now we're mad as hell and we're not gonna take it anymore!! No, wait, that's not right. We're not mad. We just figured that somewhere out there, perhaps in the most barren, remote section of the universe, there is an intelligent life form that may find what we have to say interesting, or even, dare I say it, entertaining.

We are not here to review your favorite movies, or talk about only what is in theaters. We will try to survey all sorts of movies -- hopefully ones we haven't seen -- in an effort to broaden our own appreciation for film and, if possible, bring something new to readers as well.

Also, I wouldn't be a dutiful blogger if I didn't take this opportunity to advertise my other blog, which I write by myself. It is called Serenity Now, and can be found here. It is mostly my thoughts about TV and movies, with the occasional rant about life. Probably not very original. But feel free to give it a look.

And here are a few uninspired words from my less-inspired partner:

Well I've been caught off guard by my colleague here and I didn't realize he did a good job summing up what we're all about.  You see he didn't tell me, so my little intro, below us, seems quite redundant and ridiculous.  I also sound like a raving lunatic after him.  But I guess that's the point; a little personal taste of who we are.  The well-written and droll humor of Dylan versus the self-deprecating and verbose (and sweary in most cases) of Mark.  Also, you gotta hand it to him, we're trying to start something new, and he's self promoting.  Ever the pragmatist, ever the douche-nozzle.

Me and my colleague, lets call him Dylan, as that is his name, wanted to do something that would allow us to be insufferable about our love of movies to a much wider audience than we normally have, which is no one.  So we decided to start a blog in which we’d watch movies and then discuss them.  Riveting, I know, but hold on to that unbridled joy at the prospect of listening to two nobodies talk about films as if they know something and let me finish.  Instead of doing reviews, because throw a rock at the internet and you’ll probably break your computer, but in a less realistic and more metaphorical way, you’ll find millions of reviewers.  Really, Millions, I looked.  I have spare time.  And we can’t do analysis on film.  Well we could just do that but there are those college edgumacated types who actually studied this.  No, we’re two friends who love to talk about film.  Good or bad.  Well-known or not, we’ll watch it, and tell you whatever comes to mind.  Nothing more, but probably a lot less.

Following

Well, it's been over a week since our last joint post. For that we apologize. Sometimes we forget how desperate the readers are for our movie viewing advice. But we're back now, with a movie called Following. If you watch that show on Fox, this movie is completely unrelated. It is not about a cult following of serial killers or whatever, but rather a writer who looks for inspiration by following strangers. This is Christopher Nolan's (Dark Knight Trilogy, Inception) first feature film. And it was released in 1998.

Netflix: Oh hell yea!
Pick: D-Dog

Mark:  Even now I stand by the fact that the worst anything Nolan's ever done can be considered good by all standards.  And I thought this was interesting, though a bit mindfucking at points.  I had some gripes, but what would I be without my gripes?  Probably less sarcastic.  And you?

Dylan:  Well, everyone knows Christopher Nolan these days. For the Dark Knight Trilogy, Inception, and The Prestige. The only others are Memento, Insomnia, and Following, I think. And I find it interesting to see how quickly the production values of his movies skyrocketed. There is Following, which is like a low-budget indie film with no-name actors. Then Memento, which is a bit more mainstream. Insomnia, with Robin Williams and Al Pacino. And right after that you get Batman Begins. The guy is super talented, and it shows in his storytelling. This movie was pretty awesome, and stylistically it’s very similar to Memento, in that the timeline jumps around and you have to really focus at first to keep things in order. All part of the way Nolan likes to reveal what's up his sleeve and keep you guessing. And best of all, it’s neatly short. A little over an hour. So it’s an interesting mystery that doesn’t require a lot of time or characters to unfold.

Mark: Yeah and I think the time frame is one of it’s greatest strengths.  The fact that the movie is so short means that everything that happens on screen happens for a reason and is not there to pad out time.  And along with the storytelling, things seem like they don’t have a point at first, but as you watch the film unfold, Memento-style, everything clicks into place and you get a real sense of understanding.  Things are revealed early, but it’s not until later do they make sense.  My one complaint is that at first, you can get a bit lost in the time jumps.  But then that adds to the general mystery of the characters and what’s really going on.  And yeah, the production value shows it’s indie origin, but it never really hinders it in any way.

Dylan: What did you think of the black and white? Was that just to set the mood of classic noir? I found it slightly annoying at times, because there were a few somewhat dark scenes. But between the B&W, the cheap camera/sound equipment, and the unrecognizable actors, this movie kind of throws you off your guard. And it definitely helped set the tone for me watching it.

Mark: I thought the B&W worked well for the feeling of noir, being that we’re looking into a darker aspect of the human mind; what people think of while committing crimes.  It also helped, in some cases, to keep the focus squarely on the actors, since nothing else could grab our eyes.  This did also obscure some things, but those moments were rare.  As to why he did it, it’s really because this film wasn’t just cheap, it basically had no budget at all.  It took him a year to complete, as everyone he worked with had full-time jobs and could only work on Saturday.  All the light he used was natural, since he had no equipment beyond a few handheld cameras.  So the black and white was very clearly a financial necessity. But it shows his skills as a director, that he can really overcome these issues and create something this compelling in both the writing and directing.

Dylan: Well that answers my question about who these actors are I guess. Did you recognize them from anything else? Or are they just like Nolan’s college buddies? Anyhow, I thought they all did very well. I mean it was a cast of only four people (five, if you include the police officer at the end). It was almost like a play. And yea, for the money that went into, I think it’s a brilliantly well-done film. Not to say that it itself is brilliant. But talk about making something fairly awesome out of nothing at all. Christopher Nolan is not one of those guys who needs an enormous budget to entertain. He knows exactly how to tell an interesting and unique story. On a side note, I also found the main character’s ‘addiction’ pretty interesting, as well as Cobb's methods of burglary. I kind of want to go follow people now.

Mark: I feel as though nowadays if you end up following someone, you’ll likely end up getting beaten or something.  Unless you go full-ninja on them, then you’d be fine.  But as for the actors, they weren’t actors when Nolan brought them on.  He found Jerry Theobold first, he plays The Young Man (he doesn’t have a name; that’s all he’d credited as) and then Jerry brought on his friends from college who acted in plays with him.  So really it is quite amazing how intriguing the characters are and how you get invested in them now knowing that they didn’t have much of a background in acting.  I found Cobb really interesting.  When they’re in the apartment, and he’s talking about why he does what he does, it’s fascinating.  Also, to add to the budget thing, all the homes belonged to friends of Nolan.  

And can I just say, the one moment when you see on one of the doors a Batman insignia, it’s kinda funny.  Knowing where he goes from here.

Dylan: Hah. Maybe Nolan is like Pixar, where he puts a little clue about his next movie into each one. Who knows? He is kind of a genius (with the exception of Anne Hathaway). But on that same note, don’t you find it strange that Leo Dicaprio’s name in Inception is also Cobb? And he’s a thief of...thoughts or...dreams....or whatever.

Mark: True, it’s not surprising that he’d use something from his past.  But I think the best thing to take away from this is just the fact that it doesn’t matter what Nolan has to work with, he can make do and make something compelling.

Dylan: It's very impressive. I don’t have much else to say. This was a pretty good movie. Definitely a good example of the starting point of a great director. You can’t really say this for many filmmakers, but Nolan started out very good, and has only been pushing the boundaries since.

Mark: He is one of the few directors that when he’s got something new in the making, I’m genuinely excited about it.

Dylan:  Got any trivia?

Mark: Two of the three main actors reappear in another Nolan film, albeit as walk-ons.  Take a guess which film.  

Dylan: Hmm. Well, Memento didn’t have a very large cast either, that I can recall. I don’t know. I’d guess Memento or...Inception (because they are in Europe for a while).

Mark: [buzzer sounds] Batman Begins.  Round two.  Care to guess which were the two characters: Cobb, The Young Man, and/or the Blonde?

Dylan: Ouch. Uh..Cobb and The Young Man.

Mark: Half credit.  The Young Man and the Blonde.

Dylan: Got anything else to say? This is the part where you set me up for a snappy ending.

Mark:  Hmm, I thought that would have set you up well.  But at the end of the day, this was a very well done indie film by a great director at the very beginning of a career most of us know very well.  So it’s definitely worth a viewing.

Dylan: Would it be douchey if I ended it with: “I gotta go. I just got into grad school. I don’t give a shit about this blog anymore. You suck.”

Mark:  Well there you have it folks, our apparently last review as a duo.  Tune in next time for the ramblings of just me.  Same place, same random time.

Dylan: I’ll be cropping myself out of the Twitter profile pic asap.

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That joke about grad school would have made more sense if more of our conversation was up here. I just happened to receive an acceptance letter at the time that Mark and I began our little dialogue, and I threatened to leave. But not to worry, I'll be sticking around for another several months. Not that it matters, since it will be years before anyone actually reads this blog anyway.

In conclusion, we both enjoyed Following. So go watch it. As that guy from The Prestige says, "It's been a long time since I've seen real magic."

Oh and we're not sure about our next film yet. Check our Twitter for updates, @backrowcritics

Outrage

So this will the first of what I’ll assume to be many times my colleague and I will be doing solo reviews.  So for this first time, I’m going to be reviewing a film from one of my favorite directors, Takeshi Kitano.  And for those who know his films, I’m going to throw a curve ball with this and review one of his most recent films, Outrage (2010).  This is, for those who don’t know the course of his directing career, Kitano’s return to the Yakuza underworld after 10 years; his last being the movie Brothers (2000).  And this is the kinda movie that doesn’t requires any knowledge of the Yakuza, well, no more than that they are violent Japanese gangsters.  And what you really need to get set for is that violence, because Kitano doesn’t show you the violence, so much as he makes you completely ingest that violence.  But I’ll get to that soon.

The story is a simple -- and I’m using the word simple in the broadest of terms here -- Yakuza film.  What I mean is that the film focuses on the Chairman of the Sanno-kai, a huge organized crime syndicate controlling the entire Kanto region and the families underneath him.  And from that angle of the story, we watch as the Chairman begins to manipulate the two families, Murase and Ikemoto, into a quasi civil war.  But the intrigue plays into what seems like a convoluted plot; as everyone is trying to backstab everyone, and it becomes hard to follow where the orders are coming from.  But our focus is not on the families or the Chairman; it’s on a group of men under Ikemoto who basically always have to do the dirty work.  What makes them so unique in respect to the other Yakuza is that their leader, Otomo (played with stoic intensity by the director Takeshi Kitano), still clings to the old, honorable ways.  Honorable in the sense that when someone is disrespected, a finger is owed. But nowadays the rest of the families have moved on from that, leaving Otomo and his men in the old, violent past.  The biggest hump to get over when trying to get into this film is figuring out who’s who and who do they belong to.  Unless you are fluent in Japanese, it is difficult to remember everyone’s name and that adds to the confusion.  But then, after about 30 minutes, a curious thing happened: everything clicked.  Not because I remembered people’s names, but rather they become so distinctive within their own families, that you learn who’s who without actually knowing who anyone is.  That right there is confusing, but it’s a testament to the story that everything becomes organic and you get drawn into this very real and brutal world.

Did I say brutal a moment ago?  Let me say it again, BRUTAL!  Kitano is not a director who uses violence to just shock you, or for a fleeting moment to make you shudder.  No, Kitano wants you to know that this world is a violent, dark, and bleak one and we're in it.  There is very little levity throughout the film, only adding to the starkness of the violence.  I keep saying violence, but I can assume you’ve seen a violent film or two?  I can guarantee it was nothing quite like Kitano.  I will spoil one moment for you, feel free to skip this, but I want to elaborate on what I mean.  At one point, Otomo has his men try to convince a drug dealer to stop selling on their turf.  They do this by slamming chopsticks into his ear.  Blood is pouring from his ear, and he is screaming in pain, all while one man is holding the chopsticks in, while the other is repeating that he has to stop dealing.  The camera never moves, it never stops showing the chopsticks and their unfortunate placement.  The point of it and all the other even more violent and brutal scenes is that Kitano wants you to see what this underworld really is.  His shots are long and he lingers on everything, letting you sink into the world, only then to shower you in the violence.  There is one scene towards the end when everything for these families begins to unravel, when one character is killed, when I was generally unnerved.  And Kitano left the camera there for so much longer than I thought he would.  Its a stark and bleak outlook that only further helps to bolster the story and get you invested in the characters.

And a little addition to all this violence, before I finish this deranged rant, is one about the sound.  Not in the characters, since they tend to yell and fly off the handle with each other, but rather with, and I’m really banging on about this, the violence.  The sound of fist on flesh is so much louder than anything I’ve heard before.  You really hear the impact of the fist on the poor recipient.  And the gunshot are loud in the sense of a boom; all attention is drawn onto the shots.  You hear them, and then silence, further emphasizing the finality of the moment.  And that finality sometimes lingers for a while, so you can see the consequences of their actions. Kitano, throughout this whole movie, very rarely moves the camera faster than brisk crawl. The camera will sit and watch people, leaving it up to the tension of the moment and the characters to hold your attention, not any fancy film work. It's a bit jarring, what with most movies nowadays beings about the flash and little substance. While there is flash, especially from a gun or two or a lot, it's subdued, meant to be a sudden jarring moment. But watch the film, and you’ll perfectly understand what I’m blathering on about.

In the end, Outrage is incredibly violent, old fashioned, yakuza/gangster film.  For those who know the earlier films of Kitano, this doesn’t push any boundaries nor create something truly iconic.  But for everyone else, this is a violent look into a very real feeling Yakuza world.  If you can get past the difficulty of understanding who’s who, who’s ordering what, and how did they get a snake into a bathtub, you’ll be rewarded with a very well done, bleak and dark film by one of Japan’s most acclaimed director/writer/actor, Takeshi Kitano.

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So how was that?  Did you miss the back and forth?  The witty banter?  The fact there’s no one keeping me in line when I just begin to blather on about stuff?  Why not tell me in the comments, if you really have to.  But this will probably happen a few more times, when we can’t seem to organize ourselves, or when Netflix decides on canning the movie we were going to do together.  So, yeah, when we do solo reviews again, I’ll probably end up doing more Kitano or something of the like, since my partner isn’t a huge fan of Japanese films, while I, on the other hand, quite enjoy them.  And no, I’m not ending in a quote.  That’s his thing.  So, that’s it.  Go home.  But do remember to come back?  I’ll miss you.  Especially you Doug.  I don’t know if that’s your name or if anyone in this world is actually named Doug (it is such an odd name), but it’s worth it if someone was suddenly taken aback by that.  Sorry, rambling.  Done.

Bronson

Okay, let me explain what's going on. Netflix, our go-to source for most of the movies we want to watch, took Bronson off of their instant viewing list on the very day we were planning on watching it. Since it's not a very easy movie to come by, we decided to do something a little different this time around. I managed to track down a copy at my library and watch it. And so I'll be discussing it, here, right now, on my own. In the future, Mark will find a way to watch it, and then he can add his own thoughts to this post later on. However, just to make sure he stays busy, he has picked a film of his own to watch -- I believe it is called Outrage -- and he will be writing his own solo review on that. So even though we kind of fucked up, the reader is getting two posts for the price of one.

And here's Bronson.

Netflix: REGRETTABLY, NO LONGER

Michael Peterson starts out as your average teenager. Except not really. He likes to fight. He beats up his classmates. He throws desks at his teachers. And when the police come knocking, he's not afraid to leave them with a few bruises either. Naturally, he ends up in prison, where he can hone his skills as a fighter, and become Britain's most famous, violent, and expensive prisoner. Oh, and develop his alter ego, his "fighting name", Charlis Bronson.

How do I even begin to talk about this movie? Well, let's just take a look at the opening lines, read by Tom Hardy, as the title character:

"My name's Charles Bronson. And all my life I wanted to be famous. I knew I was made for better things. Had a calling. I just didn't know what as. Wasn't singing. Can't fuckin' act. Kinda runnin' out of choices, really, aren't we?"

Okay, so I'm not sure how exciting that quote is, out of context. But we know from the very first image -- that of Bronson, bald and muscular, staring at us -- that this is not your average biopic. It is not a story about the life of Michael Peterson. It is a story of the other guy, Charlie Bronson, who has been dormant in the mind and soul of Peterson since his childhood, and is finally able to take control during his years behind bars. Bronson is not a killer. He's not angry. He just wants to fight and to be famous. The film takes place almost entirely in prison, in Bronson's own cell.

Tom Hardy does a truly astounding job of transforming himself into his character. Which is something that British actors seem much more capable of doing than their American counterparts. How does Christian Bale go from his character in The Machinist to Bruce Wayne? Or Michael Fassbender in Hunger to Michael Fassbender in Inglourious Basterds? Here we have Tom Hardy, who can be a handsome, professional Brit in Inception, a tattooed Boston mixed martial artist in Warrior, or a masked mercenary bent on destroying Gotham in The Dark Knight Rises. From the second this movie starts, you don't even see Tom Hardy. You are instantly in the mind of Charlie Bronson.

I would not be the first one to compare this film to Stanley Kubrick's A Clockwork Orange. We have a similar setting: a prison in a dystopian England. In ACO it's a near-future as envisioned during the 1960s, and in Bronson it's the England of the 70's and 80's. Kind of the same thing, apparently. Similar protagonist: a guy who is completely deranged from the get-go, whose hyper-violent nature gets him hauled away.You want to hate him, and yet you are so entranced by his vicious and violent mentality that you simply can't look away. Even the styles are similar: the character that speaks to the audience is the one we see committing all these atrocious acts. He doesn't want us to understand, he's not trying to justify his behavior, he is just telling his story as he sees it. And from this we get a genuine glimpse at the madness simmering behind that deadly stare. And yes, all of this is true for both movies.

I have to wonder if director Nicolas Winding Refn didn't deliberately style his film like ACO. I'm sure a little research would give me the answer, but that's Mark's department. I'll just have to speculate.

In case you're wondering who Nicolas Winding Refn is, he is probably most known these days for Drive, with Ryan Gosling. What I love about his movies (I have only seen Drive, Bronson, and Valhalla Rising) is their unique and instantly memorable style. Bronson is told entirely from the point of view of Charlie Bronson. Even as he narrates about his childhood and how he likes to travel, we see him stealing from his schoolmates' jackets and wailing on his teacher. There are many times when, as you're watching it, you have to ask yourself 'what the hell is going on?' Be it his visit to his Uncle Jack's, his proposal to Alison, or his entire experience at "the funny farm", the movie is filled with strange and awkward moments that can be hilarious, cringe-worthy, or terrifying. And sometimes all three. The movie is violent, bloody, and shocking. Yet somehow endearing and beautiful.

Look, I don't want to go on and on about the film. I'll leave at least a little to the imagination. But please, if you take any movie recommendations away from this blog at all, let it be for Bronson. It has great acting, great direction, memorable dialogue, profound style and cinematography, and is just damn entertaining. If you like Drive and/or A Clockwork Orange, I bet you'll have fun with this one, too.

Oh, and I mentioned in the last post that I imagine this story as sort of an origin story for Bane in The Dark Knight Rises. Let me know what you think about that in the comments. And, since I wouldn't be a good blogger if I didn't do this, here's a link to a post on my own blog, where I talk about Tom Hardy and Bane.

Edge of Darkness

It's hard to say if today's film can be considered mainstream or not. As a Mel Gibson movie you expect something huge. But then again, it came out after he went crazy and told the world to go fuck itself. So I doubt many people saw this one. It is called Edge of Darkness. The main players are Gibson, Ray Winstone, and Danny Huston. If you read our previous post, you know that we deliberately picked this one because it has Ray Winstone in it, and we love him. Interestingly, we also mentioned the movie The Proposition, which stars both Winstone and Huston as somewhat similar roles (quiet and brooding antihero and murderous lunatic, respectively).

Gibson's character Tom Craven is a Boston cop. His daughter comes home, clearly ill and harboring secrets about her job, and then gets violently murdered. Craven investigates and finds that the murder is linked to something much bigger.

(I think from now on, instead of putting in a sentence or two about whether or not the movie can be streamed on Netflix, I'll just do something like this:)

Netflix: NEGATIVE

Some secrets take us to the edge...of darkness...EDGE OF DARKNESS

Dylan: Don't lie, you wanted to watch this one because it's about (read: you get hard for) Boston, right?

Mark: I had a bet with myself on whether or not you’d start this by saying something about the fact it takes place in Boston.

Dylan: Oh yea? And who won?

Mark: The guy in the mirror.  I guess I had more faith in your maturity.  Oh well, what’s his is mine and what’s mine is mine.  So... since I’ve seen this before, I wanna hear your thoughts on it to start.

Dylan: Okay yea, I had never seen this one before. I'd be lying if I said I didn't go into this thing with a little bit of bias. Not because of the Boston thing. But mostly because of Gibson. I just don’t really get that guy anymore, and I was kind of anticipating him ruining it. I mean the guy may have been a good actor once, but now it seems like he's always trying to hard. I think of Signs and The Patrtiot, where there were identical scenes of him doing his super intense coughing/spitting/bulging-eyes/crying thing. I understand his character is going through a lot, but something about it just irritates me. And in this one he was kind of just the same guy, but with an over-the-top Boston accent. And how come no one else really had any accent at all?

Also, why does this movie hate women so much? I think there were two women in the whole movie and both of them died or were violently injured in incredibly brutal, bloody (and deliberately slow-mo) ways. ...your defense?

Mark: While I agree that Gibson did seem to overact with his character, in a way I felt that it was justified when you put it in the context of what has been happening to Craven.  From the start he’s a quieter character, though he lashes out a bit, but it's not too outlandish.  But when things begin to unravel for him, he starts to act more manic, and I thought that the feeling of overacting worked well.  And, maybe to you, no one else had an accent, but the movie did a good job having everyone who actually lives in Boston have an accent in some way.  His daughter does, the cops do, the lawyer, and probably some others in passing.

Dylan: Okay, then I guess Gibson just had his accent on set to full-on Affleck, making the other, more natural ones less noticeable. Frankly, Ray Winstone had the worst Boston accent I have ever heard.

Mark:  Oh definitely, Winstone’s accent came on so fucking strong it sounded British.  And I will admit Gibson had the strongest accent and in some places it felt forced.  Also I enjoyed that the company his daughter worked for was called Northmoor, just so when said you really hear the accent.  But back to Winstone, I thought his character was easily the most interesting. Not only what he was but more so what he said.  Some of his quick responses to people were great, in that they were funny but also poignant.

Dylan: Okay, that reminds me of two things I wanted to comment on. First of all, do the filmmakers hate Massachusetts? On like eight separate occasions they were like “everything is illegal in Massachusetts.” And it even played a role in the story when those two hit men got arrested for having weapons within city limits. And secondly, did Winstone bug Gibson’s house or something? There were times when he would like repeat a line that Gibson said to someone else, in a different scene. Is it just supposed to show that they think so alike they occasionally say, verbatim, the same things? Or was there a more logical reason for why Winstone was quoting him?

Mark: I think the quoting was just left to the viewer and I took it to go with his growing psychosis, and that Winstone’s character seems to always be ahead of everyone.  He’s never out of the loop when things happen and I think just having him quote stuff let's the viewer see that fact.  And the “everything is illegal in Massachusetts” is one of the lines I laughed at.  It’s just poking fun at the strict laws in MA but also that there’s still quite a lot of crime.  I thought the script was pretty solid all the way through.  It was a bare-boned crime mystery.  Most characters who come in are established right there as fairly one note, but they’re used so well and it’s written well enough that that doesn’t hurt it.

Also you brought something up earlier about the women, and I don’t know.  I don’t think it’s deliberate by the filmmakers, but it is apparent, like you said.

Dylan: I will agree that the characters are kind of one-sided. Which works to a degree. But one thing I didn’t like was that Danny Huston was the villain, for no reason except that we are told he is. The other characters said that he was crazy and murderous and so we just assumed he was, and that was it. I mean there was that line he threw at Gibson, "what does it feel like?", that came out of nowhere and made him seem like a real dick. But beyond that...I don't know. I never really got the sense that he was evil. 

Also, I agree that Winstone’s character was probably the most interesting, but it seemed like a lot of his investigating was mostly watching the news, where everyone already seemed to be talking about everything Danny Huston and the government was trying to keep secret. One last point, what was the deal with him going to the doctor and talking about his hallucinations and stuff. I was wondering if they were going to somehow connect that back to the fact that he worked for the government. Like, I don’t know, maybe even his character, the renegade ‘fixer’ is somehow controlled by the shadowy government suits. But I don’t think that ever materialized. Go!

Mark: Well someone had a lot to say.  Jesus.  Danny Huston’s character is almost cartoonishly evil.  He was warned multiple times by people working with him that they should stop hunting Craven or stop with the entire operation, and he’s like “nope, it’s already started and even though we’ve failed a bunch, I’m sure we’ll get him this time.”  He’s almost a Saturday morning villain.  Also, I’m not spoiling anything; if you can’t figure the head of a massive, private nuclear facility is evil, then I’m sorry, there’s nothing we can do to help you.

And the way I figured it, the illness that was effecting Winstone’s character was meant to give him a different way to view what was happening to Craven.  When they talk, it always somehow comes back to whether it’s worse to lose a child or to never have had one.  And I think as this illness progresses, his character begins to view his life and all his actions more from Craven’s point of view, which ultimately leads him to make some drastic choices.

Dylan: Hmm, I see. Then what about that scene where Gibson is handcuffed to a gurney somewhere in Northmoor and those people in biohazard suits are there? Is everyone involved with this place just naturally horror-movie evil? As for Winstone's arc, I just don’t think that part of the plot was really fleshed out enough for me to get behind it. 

Overall, I like the idea of the movie more than the movie itself. Like it was a pretty original and interesting crime thriller, lots of twists and turns that were I admitted did not seem coming. I kind of hated how the violence was extreme and purely for shock value. Like when that girl stepped out of the car at the instant another car was cruising past at like 80 mph. It seemed more like a Final Destination movie.

Mark:  I kinda liked the violence.  Not in a psychotic way, but it served to show how dangerous everything was and how it was getting.  The end gets very violent, but it serves to show how far Craven is willing to go to find that justice for his daughter.  And in that way, I liked it.  It brings us down to a very brutal level, but there is still care in there.  We still feel for Craven and his pain even as it goes along.

And, I don’t want to throw the movie under the bus, but it’s based on a British mini-series.  I’ve never seen it, though I’ve read that it’s an incredible success and acclaimed mini-series.  So the movie seems like it’s probably just the framework of the show, since it’s rather difficult to put it all into 2 hours.

Dylan: I could sort of see it being a series of some kind instead of a movie. The ending shootout was pretty good, I’ll admit. And I appreciated Gibson’s last line to Huston. I guess I don’t have much else to say. It was a so-so movie for me. I can’t really think of anything else to compare it to. Like I said, it was fairly original (though I do not watch a lot of crime thrillers). But I would say the first major improvement would be replacing Gibson with someone else. Like Ray Winstone. It's too bad he was already in the movie as someone else.

So tell me, Mark, how many Oscars did it win?

Mark:  Oh Jesus man, all the fucking Oscars.  It was bathed in Oscar gold.  But really, none.  And I thought it was a pretty solid, straightforward crime thriller.  It didn’t do much to set it apart from so many others in that category, but what it did, it did well.  And I said my bit on Gibson.  So if it comes on and you’ve got nothing to do, give a look. At the very least, you’ll have your daily required dose of Ray Winstone.  

Dylan: It's better than Viagra. ...I've heard.

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No quiz question from Mark this time? For shame. So...Edge of Darkness. You finally get to see what it's like when Mark and I don't necessarily agree on a movie. Our next feature will be a little piece called Bronson. I'm gonna go ahead and call this a Dylan Pick. It is directed by Nicolas Winding Refn, and it stars celebrity Bane impersonator Tom Hardy as a deranged British prison inmate. As far as I'm concerned, it functions as the Bane origin story that Christopher Nolan refused us. And since you've probably never heard of Bronson, it makes this Bane quote all the more applicable: "No one cared who I was until I put on the mask." The only thing it's missing is, of course, Ray Winstone.