The Krays Story as Comedy

Legend (2015) - Hegeland

The Krays, the notorious twin gangsters in swinging 1960s London are played by Tom Hardy. Ronny is the crazy homosexual one and Reggie is the smooth operator type. I don't know how truthful the Hegeland's script is to the true event, but unlike its gritty, more abstract the 90s predecessor by Peter Medak, simply called The Krays, Legend charts the more conventional narrative and plays out more as a comedy, not as a psychological drama. Even with its sporadic violence, the brothers never come across as scary. With his naturally nasally voice, Reggie resembles a torn down, romantic version of his Bronson performance while his Ronnie, always speaking his indecipherable, I-have-pebbles-in-my-mouth mumble is close to his Bane. Considering that they were identical twins, Hardy/Hegeland's decision to portray them completely separate is an odd choice. But it's always fun to watch Hardy. Legend comes down to Reggie being a faithful brother's keeper, even if that causes their eventual doom.

It gets more and more tiresome to watch films by so called Hollywood screenwriters. Hegeland has nothing much to offer other than relying heavily on Hardy's charm, so he insists upon meaningless/completely unnecessary voice over device by Reggie's young wife (Emily Browning). But all in all, it's a well crafted Hollywood movie with a lot of good British actors.

Back from the Dead

The Revenant (2015) - Iñárritu

In the tradition of ambitious, bravura, excessive filmmaking, Alejandro G. Iñárritu goes there with The Revenant and achieves Apocalypse Now and Fitzcarraldo worthy greatness. It's an unsentimental, relentlessly brutal, macho filmmaking that will undoubtedly turn a lot of viewers off. But I loved it. It concerns fur trapper/guide Glass (Leonardo DiCaprio) leading a cavalry of men in felt business to safety through the snowy and hostile western territory in 1800s. Because Glass has a half-breed, teenage Pawnee Indian son named Hawk and the group reeling after a vicious large scale Indian attack, the tension rises among the crew, especially from Fitzerald (Tom Hardy) an unsavory character who'd fuck over anyone standing in his way and his share of the profit. After the horrendous bear attack that leaves Glass almost dead, the captain of the cavalry (Domhnal Gleeson) orders (with the promise of large rewards) Fitzerald and young Bridger (Will Poulter) to care for Glass and Hawk and give Glass a proper Christian burial when the time comes, and leaves them behind to catch up later.

For the next two hours, The Revenant becomes a harrowing tale of survival and a revenge story. It's an amazing feat for DiCaprio, finally shedding all remnants of youth for the first time in my eyes, crawls the snowy earth, then dove right into the freezing roiling water, eats raw meat and fish, trek and climb the snowy Rockies with his bare hands. He is a live-action Wiley Coyote - he gets mauled, buried alive, almost drowned, thrown off the cliff, and so on and so on. He even uses a dead horse as a shelter, Empire Strikes Back style. Tom Hardy is perfect as a villain with his shifty gaze and mumbling.

Emmanuel Lubezki's only natural lit cinematography doesn't really chart anything new here, but the look and feel of The Revenant is polar opposite from Malick's The New World. And I am very glad that I decided to see the film in theaters. There are some blissfully beautiful shots in Glass's flashbacks/dreams of his dead Indian wife floating over him, but most of the time, the film is all dirt, mud, snot, wet felt and blood. And in its own way, it's spectacularly beautiful.

George Miller is a Miracle Worker

Mad Max: Fury Road (2015) - Miller

Full of smashing metals, grit but short on dialog, Mad Max: Fury Road is just the antidote we've been hoping for in yet another slumming Hollywood superhero movies season of tight costumes and heroic speechifying in front of green screen backdrop. From beginning to end, Mad Max is first and foremost, just like its predecessor, Road Warrior, a chase movie. Max hisself is, as he always ever were, a loner whose only concern is his own survival in a dusty, dog eat dog world of the future. He is not as cunning as Yojimbo, nor as cynical as man with no name in Leone's Spaghetti Westerns. He just wants to be left alone. He was a good man once and there is a remnants of that man still alive inside that rugged exterior and hidden in that indecipherable grunts.

Miller at 70, who still has a vastly different ideas and aesthetics on how to make an action movie (thank god for that), concocts a movie that is so impossibly refreshing, you just have to sit back and admire his singularity. Whoever decided to give him millions of dollars- that blind faith, just like they did with Peter Jackson some time ago, needs to get credit for its success.

The movie's real hero is Furiosa (Charlize Theron), a one-armed, dusted, chiseled, smeared tanker driving megababe who turns her back on whatever the hideous bad man's name is (and it's not important) and decides to save a handful of teen supermodels who are kept wives of that hideous man. And if this sounds extremely sexist a la Reagan era 80s, you just wait, for there are a bandit of kick ass grannies living in the desert! (I mean, Miller must be channeling some Ursula K. Le Guin fan fiction here, jesus christ) And it works! Miraculously! I love this movie and am going to see it again in theaters soon!

Showboating

Bronson (2008) - Refn





Perhaps I enjoyed this way too much than I should've, but I can't deny the fact that I was dazzled by it. Refn is no fluke. His unabashed operatic, Kubrick-esque stylings and Tom Hardy's showboating, over-the-top performance are totally magnetic. I loved all the unmotivated angles and dolly shots. A great soundtrack too: it has the best use of a Pet Shop Boys song ever. A blast!