"The Two Faces of January" felt like a deja vu from the first 10 minutes, and it didn't take long to figure out the reason behind that is "The Talented Mr. Ripley". After all, both movies are based on novels written by the same Patricia Highsmith. I didn't read any of the two, but the character construction seemed similar, as well as the type of action, the time setting, even the chosen locations although in one we're set in Greece and in the other in Italy - both cases are of sunny areas on the Mediterranean shore.
Since "The Talented Mr. Ripley" is not exactly among my favorite movies, neither "The Two Faces of January" felt much better. All the action revolves around a couple visiting Greece, Chester and Colette, where he's an ex broker from New York who fled with his investors money. Found by a private investigator, who dies following a short quarrel, Chester is forced to find an escape route and employs a young American guide to help him with that, Rydal, who's nothing but a small crook. So, we have sort of love triangle forming, where you know from start that the story won't end very well.
I have to admit that I don't remember very well "The Talented Mr. Ripley", but as I said the deja-vu feeling was there. Still, at the moment I watched that, it felt more credible than what we have here, which looks more like a B version of the same genre. The only part that I remember quite clearly in "The Talented Mr. Ripley" was the sudden unexpected stop after the final scene. For this I have to give credit to the current movie which has a decent closure. That's pretty much all about it.
I'll stick this week too to an old movie, same age as the one of last time. There's nothing else I've had time to watch since then. "The Verdict" is part of a narrow niche, somehow close to John Grisham's "legal thrillers", but more of a "legal drama" and less thriller.
Frank Galvin (in an exceptional performance of Paul Newman) is a lawyer, who after a case suspected of jury tampering, is almost expelled from the bar, his wife leaves him, and he becomes an alcoholic, not able to get more than four cases in three years, all lost. A chance to change things appears with a medical malpractice case, where the victim is in a vegetative state for some years, and her sister and brother-in-law want to get a financial compensation to continue paying for the treatment and also to move out of town. The diocese that owns the hospital agrees to settle for some amount to avoid the trial. The solution seems convenient for everybody, and would also save Galvin's bankruptcy, but the guy is suddenly struck by his moral values... which say that there's no justice for the victim if the doctors are still allowed to practice.
So, against all advice, Galvin decides alone that he has enough advantage to start a trial. What follows is a tough legal war with the law firm hired by the other side, experienced enough to remove all that seemed to be in favor of winning the case. Let's not spoil more of it.
The movie runs almost like a theatrical representation (it might be actually possible to stage it as such). After all, David Mamet, who signed the script is also known as playwright. Despite my generic hostility of transposing a play into a movie - in the sense of feeling that the final output is stripped of certain cinematic elements - what we have here is actually a really good play. Obviously it doesn't excel technically, and you can feel the age, but it compensates enough through acting and the action that ends with some twists that make it worth your time.
There aren't many titles I didn't see that would fit in the "epic movie" category, which were released in the sound era of the the cinema. It's not such a large set anyway. "Spartacus" might be an exception that I missed, although I might have seen it when I was too young to remember it. "Kundun" and "Gandhi" were two others. I always had my doubts about the first, which got more doubtful after "Silence" directed by the same Scorsese. For the second one, the three hours it spans made just too complicated to grant it the needed time. This week I finally decided to break it in pieces and remove it from my "to watch" list.
I'll try to discuss "Gandhi" in brief, and mainly from the cinematic perspective. Any movie has a story and a story has a morale, but especially when the story is a real one the comments made on the morale slip to easily beyond the border of the social, political, etc, and often forget about evaluating the movie as a movie. And this is a movie blog and I'll try to keep it that way. Even though in this case is quite hard because "Gandhi" is mainly a movie with a political message. But it's late anyway, and I'm not really in the mood for writing :) ...
Obviously "Gandhi" is a biography of Mahatma Gandhi, starting with the end, returning to the activity towards gaining rights for the Hindu minority in South Africa, passing over to the period of peaceful fight for the Indian independence and finishing again with the end. Which was a senseless assassination of an old man already on the dusk of his life, coming as a bitter irony after a series of almost suicidal fasts, a main weapon Gandhi used during his life to solve various conflicts.
I didn't watch all movies directed by Richard Attenborough, but out of what I watched I think "Gandhi" shows the most powerful influence of David Lean. If you wouldn't know the director, you probably could align the movie with "The Bridge on the River Kwai" or with "Lawrence of Arabia". That's both good and bad.
On the positive side we have the attention to the details, the importance given to the actors (practically "Gandhi" made Ben Kingsley a star), the way to build a key scene, and an almost documentary-like flow that doesn't seem to lose anything. On the negative side we have the "lengths". Even if you see the movie in three parts as I did, and you'll notice these less, they are present. As in Lean's case there are moments where it just drags. Also on the negative, the sound is fine, but definitely not the best part of the movie, but this is somehow specific to the pre '90s period when the sound was much more discreet than now. However, this is a contributing factor to an aging feeling about the movie, aging that's not so obvious in other titles of the '80s such as Bertolucci's "The Last Emperor" (true, that's 5 years younger than "Gandhi").
"Gandhi" is still a movie to watch, even only for your general knowledge or for the pacifist message which would summarize to something like "there's no good & evil, just two sides that should come together", but I said I won't delve into comments, although this seems still valid at a global level during current times, unfortunately a bit hard to grasp both for the "good" side, as well as for the "evil" side, whichever these might be.
Set in the Victorian London of the 19th century, "The Limehouse Golem" fits in the crime mystery genre, somewhere between Agatha Christie and Arthur Conan Doyle, maybe more close to the latter and his Sherlock Holmes.
The movie follows the investigation conducted by inspector Kildare of Scotland Yard concerning a series of murders in Limehouse, one of London's bad neighborhoods in the 1800s. The subject, adaptation of a book, has similarities with the case of Jack the Ripper, which is an obvious inspiration - from the setting up to the investigator and suspects, some picked out from the real figures of the time. The action thread intersects with a parallel case of poisoning a writer, and of his accused wife, this becoming basically the main lead in the investigation, both cases revolving around the same people.
I can't say that I liked the movie, but I have to give it credit for some aspects. The subject is convoluted enough to keep the mystery alive until the end, although you can reduce the number of suspects relatively fast. The director's approach is interesting and seems to put more weight on the artistic side (visuals, set decoration, etc) than on the concrete story. Sometimes, however, it feels rushed, and you lose track of what's going on. And if I got to the negative parts, there's a bit too much red paint in it. The grim scenes bring a strong contrast to the rest, but it doesn't feel really useful in the sense it's probably intended = to strengthen the same contrast between the personality of the murderer and the real image of the character ( no more spoilers :) ). As last remark for this entry, Bill Nighy seemed rather tired for the lead role, although again, maybe that's what was intended for the character to look like. Bottom line...
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