BREAKING BAD S05E10

 

"BURIED"

Breaking Bad sure is committed to its almost scientifically precise dramatic arcs. For instance, if last week's episode, "Blood Money", was all about the chemistry then this week's is pure physics.

In the teaser a trail of discarded money leads a skinny old guy to an abandoned car and a zonked-out Jesse spinning on a merry-go-round. Just as that trail leads him - and us - to Jesse, so a personalized copy of Leaves of Grass has brought Hank, at least, to Walt's door. We watch as Walt leaves the garage immediately after their confrontation - his brow is still bleeding from Hank's sucker punch; his words of warning to Hank - "Tread lightly" - still ringing in the DEA agent's ears. As they face off silently face off, the low-angle tilts or shots framed by their hands, twitching for action, the scene is reminiscent of two weary gunslingers facing off. The rivalry between Hank and Walt has only very recently been brought to the fore of the show, but the implication is clear: only one man will be left standing.

Despite being, in Western terms, the black hat, Walt refuses to, in Saul's parlance, "Send him to Belize". He might be a loose end and a threat, but Hank is still family. His snide retort that he ought to send Saul to Belize seems less in character for the Walt we saw in Season 1 than for, say, Tony Soprano. It's indicative of Walt's warped sense of his own identity: for all he's done, Walt still believes he has integrity; he's offended that Saul would even suggest that he off a member of family! Much of Breaking Bad's power continues to be in how much it can say through implication. The moment in which Walt places a phone call to Skyler while pulling away from Hank's drive only to discover that Skyler's already taking a call, Walt's desperation and anger at discovering, his demand to get her on the line, shows how everything is already beginning to unravel for the master manipulator.

"Buried", though, is almost in equal measure Skyler's episode as Walt's. From her tentative meeting with Hank in a restaurant diner to the intervention of Marie, Anna Gunn gets a chance to display a more vulnerable side to the increasingly implacable matriarch of the White clan. Hank may misjudge their initial meeting - from the forced hug to the assertion of Skyler's victimhood - but it's hard to believe he could have gone about it any other way or that Skyler might have responded differently, even if Hank hadn't prematurely broken out the digital voice recorder. His desire to turn Skyler into an asset fails to take into account Skyler's complicity in Walt's crimes, her need for reassurance, for a lawyer even. Having already had to contend with so much, it's understandable the thought of getting it all out there could bring Skyler to near hysteria.

Having been so unsuccessful himself, it shows how far Hank is willing to go that he effectively uses Marie as an attack dog, setting her on Skyler for maximum emotional damage. Marie, so often an object of comedy for the show, goes from sympathetic to outraged as the depth - indeed duration - of Skyler's involvement becomes clear to her - "Hank said when you walked into the pool, that's when you knew... But not then, before that...". Skyler's tearful lack of response damns her as it draws Marie inexorably to the conclusion that Skyler knew "before Hank had his accident". Skyler's unspoken culpability for Hank's near death unleashes from Marie a resounding slap, a slap followed by an attempt to rescue Skyler's infant. After family having so long served as an excuse for terrible deeds, it's nice to see someone taking a genuine interest in Holly's safety, even if it does come from a place of recrimination. 

Walt, meanwhile, is taking care of business at Saul's office. Saul's henchmen, Kuby and Huell, recover Walt's stack of money from the storage garage, but not before taking a moment to act out a Scrooge McDuck family (after all, when else are you going to get the opportunity?). It's a nice little bit of wish fulfillment given that Walt is too uptight to ever indulge in something so goofy. After all, he is the man who coordinated the deaths of ten prison snitches within a two-minute window; whimsical's not exactly within his ballpark. In order to preserve his cache, Walt takes his cache - all $80 or so million of it - and single-handedly buries it in the desert. Despite being built into the premise of the show, Walt's making money has almost always been abstract to us - you never exactly see him pick up a pay check; even now, stuffed into unmarked drums, it almost seems unreal.

That being said, "Buried" is the first episode in a while to address Walt's supposed motivation behind, well, everything. From him sweating away in the desert, sun beating down, framed beautifully by the surrounding rock formations, to his offer to Skyler to turn himself in as long as she promises never to give up the money, we understand that, for all his ego and empire building, the money means something to him. With the coordinates of the bury site pinned to the fridge in the form of lottery numbers, however, it's easy to believe that something may yet go awry on that front: Walt is the only one who knows roughly where the money is and to anyone else those lottery tickets are just scraps of paper. For all it supposed importance to Walt and to the plot, might those riches yet be lost in the depths of the Chihuahuan Desert. With its emphasis on family and lucre, perhaps Episode 10 might better have been called "Blood Money".

Talking of both those things, Lydia's problems with running Walt's empire in his absence resolve themselves (most likely temporarily) with a bloodbath in a desolate scrap metal yard. The men who've taken over cooking operations just aren't up to scratch - their underground desert lab, however nifty, can't rival Gus' super-lab or even the RV. Lydia, like Walt so concerned with the grime and lack of professionalism, is, unlike Walt, unwilling to get her hands dirty. While he slaves away to bury heavy drums out in the desert, donning an unflattering Gumby handkerchief hat, Lydia takes refuge in the meth lab/bunker in thousand dollar stilettos as, in the scrapyard above, a gang of armed killers take out the cooks. When Todd - goddamn Todd - pops the hatch and offers her a hand up, she can't even bring herself to look at the carnage she's wrought: Lydia has to be led through the crime scene, eyes closed lest she espy the slaughter.

Todd, meanwhile, remains a strangely compelling character. Though not as good a chemist as either Walt or Jesse, his matter-of-fact willingness to commit whatever atrocity he deems necessary could make him the most immediate physical threat that Walt's currently facing. A sense of scope dictates that Walt, in those flash-forward sequences, is taking that M60 to wreak his revenge on the likes of Hank, or maybe Jesse, but what if its the callow, quiet Todd, a character who, like no other, embodies the banality of evil? With Jesse a zombie and in police custody, Hank on the warpath, and Skyler under pressure, it's impossible to predict exactly how this will play out. Jesse's aimless spinning on the roundabout highlights his lack of direction, his metaphysical turning, turning - might Hank be the one to give him a purpose and bring him out of that spin?

As Skyler dabs Walt's brow as he lies unconscious in the bathroom, we remember that, at the heart of it, she still loves him, and looking at Walt, wrinkled and sunburned, admit to having screwed up, we may recall that, once upon a time, this was a character we could root for. When Skyler urges caution, that Hank can't prove anything, we can almost believe that, chastened as he is, Walt might just listen. Still, with so many wheels set in motions, there's no way for Walt to truly delay his downfall. The show continues to gather momentum, heading into the final stretch, as things that are long since buried - Walt's cancer and, perhaps, some small degree of humility; the lies he's told - begin to rise, breaking free of his control. Terminal velocity has been reached, the final destination approaches just six episodes hence; wherever Walter and his loved ones are headed, it's nowhere good.

As Breaking Bad ticks over into the next week, we know, as sure as gravity, Walt's sins will find him out. The next episode is tellingly (excuse the pun) called "Confessions". Till the episode airs and the exact nature of those confessions are revealed, we'll just have to contend with the promo:

KICK-ASS 2

 

Here's my review of Kick-Ass 2: http://ap2hyc.com/?p=7354

ONLY GOD FORGIVES

 

It'd be easy to dismiss Only God Forgives as Drive in Bangkok: as in his previous collaboration with director Nicholas Winding Refn, Ryan Gosling stars as a laconic, almost too-cool protagonist amidst neon lights and bursts of shocking violence. That's not the reason you should dismiss Only God Forgives, however; the reason is that it's simply not very good.

Substituting an eerie red glow for Drive's softer palette, the film takes place more or less unambiguously in hell or at very least some form of purgatory. It's a purgatory where Gosling's now too-silent, supposedly tormented Julian stalks corridors perpetrating acts of sudden, matter-of-fact brutality for no ostensible reason. His child murdering rapist brother is dead and his callous, entitled mother, Crystal - Kristin Scott Thomas in peroxide hair and leopard print - makes an appearance to demand revenge. Vithaya Pansringarm's Chang governs the lawless streets as a karaoke-singing, katana-wielding Angel of Death. Blood glistens and sprays, and still Only God Forgives feels strangely anemic.

Freudian subtext abounds, covert - Crystal coiled around Julian's waist - and not so - Julian, we are told, fled the states after murdering his father. She smokes on balconies calling for reprisals like Lady Macbeth, he watches skin shows and stares angst-ridden at his hands; only Chang acts, bloodily extracting justice amidst Orientalist fantasia: there are no complex, empathisable characters, only archetypes. Only God Forgives is all about the symbolism, but in replacing the moral ambiguity of Drive with a simple binary of good and evil, it feels shallow, almost parodic. Though cinematographer Larry Smith experiments alluringly with lumination - it's 20 minutes before we see natural light - it feels sedate, lacking in internal life. Even Cliff Martinez's electronic score, such a crucial part of the earlier film, feels overdone, like it's imitating itself.

Refn's ability to frame a shot is magnificent - the film is nothing if not beautiful - but, despite the clear influence of auteurs like David Lynch and Gaspar Noe, Only God Forgives is a definite case of diminishing returns. Inscrutable and elliptical in equal measure, full of dream sequences and a sense of dislocation, Refn's self-professed investigation into the mystic comes across as simply mystifying; worst of all, it's difficult to care. While the film may not elicit the boos it received at Cannes, when all is said and done, it slips away like an insubstantial dream. 

Only God Forgives is Drive lite: 3/10.

BREAKING BAD

  Looks like I'm going to need a new title for the site.

S05E09: BLOOD MONEY

AN IN-DEPTH ANALYSIS

To compare Breaking Bad to a chemical reaction, as seems appropriate given the protagonist's forte and the changes he undergoes, it would have to be a gas explosion. It can seen that there's not much going on - Walt and Skyler work the car wash, Jesse zones out with his druggie mates - even as the show subtly builds tension - with glances, inferences, words unsaid - till it reaches saturation point. All it takes then is a single spark to unleash a reservoir of destruction. Like a gas explosion, too, you might know its coming but you can never predict the moment of its arrival or what might set it off.

Picking up on the cold open that started the season - a scrawny Walter White with a full head of hair purchases an M60 machinegun in the bathroom of a diner while under the alias of Lambert, Skyler's maiden name - we now see that journey take him to 308 Negro Arroyo Lane, the White family home. Except it no longer is. From the skaters shredding in the dried-out swimming pool - the image of which kicks the episode off - to the single word 'HEISENBERG' graffiti'd across the kitchen wall, its clear that something terrible has happened. 

Walt recovers the vial of Chekhov's ricin hidden in a plug socket in the master bedroom, concocted midway through Season 4 to vanquish the now long-dead Gus, only adding, it seems, to his already formidable arsenal. Might the poison be for him after he's accomplished this one final deed? In any case, given the dilapidated house and the terrified reaction of his neighbor Carol to his presence on the driveway, it seems Walt has achieved the fame or notoriety he secretly longed for. 

Which is strange when you consider the opening act of 'Blood Money' goes out of its way to establish Walt's effort to live a (semi-)normal life, micromanaging the car wash and suggesting to Skylar that they consider buying another: modest ambitions for a man who recently declared he was in the empire business. Still, though he appears content to fade into the background in wishing his customer's "an A1 day!", Mike's alter-ego coldly reasserts itself, refusing to help the hapless Lydia with her now-failing meth exportation business.

Though she implores him, offering him money and a return to the kingpin lifestyle, Walt, it seems, has no interest in returning to the drug trade. He has made his decision, and, as always, presents himself as a man in control of his own destiny. The tragedy of Walt, however, as we all know, is that he isn't, he never has been: we've watched over five seasons as a desperate scheme to cook up illicit substances to provide for his family in the wake of his it-seemed-then inevitable death has spiraled into murder and megalomania all because of Walt's ego, his sense of thwarted ambition.

On the other side of the toilet door, Hank finds himself confronted in hardback form by the likelihood of his brother-in-law's crimes. There's an extended track-in on said door and before it opens Hank has become a changed man. He can't stomach dinner with the family, making hurried excuses as to illness, let alone look Walter in the eye. His disorientation spins off into a full-blown panic attack while driving, which Dean Norris, one of the cast's less-praised members, sells completely. We buy his determined sense of industry as he sorts through the Heisenberg case file. 

Instead of Breaking Bad's usual time-lapse style of montage, this sequence - set to Jim White's Wordmule - takes place in "real time", capturing every moment of Hank's reinvestigation as inspects documents and photographs through wiser, more focused eyes. A blurry CCTV capture of Walt and Jesse stealing the barrel of methylamine all the way back in the finale of Season 1 coheres so that we can almost imagine that Hank could almost recognize his ski-masked brother-in-law. As if a handwriting analysis with Gale's notebook hadn't already confirmed Walt's connection to Gale's "other favorite" W.W. Hank is through the looking-glass now and cannot choose to look away.

After so much of a slow burn - five seasons, fifty-four episodes to uncover the truth - that Walt precipitates the conflict is a testament to his that same tragic flaw, but also to the tremendous ability of the whole writing team, in this case Peter Gould, that it could seem so shocking and yet so inevitable. 

Before 'Blood Money' gets to that point, however, there remains the small matter of Jesse Pinkman. For Walt, self-awareness remains ever elusive - or indeed, illusive: in the bedroom mirror of his trashed family home, his reflection is refracted, as though, after everything, he still can't quite see himself for who he really is. For Jesse, however, his understanding of and sense of accountability for the sins he has committed is all-too real. 

As such, we find Jesse in a similar place physically as many times before, hanging out with Skinny Pete and Badger in his pad. Though Jesse may be "present" for Badger's telling of a hilariously cheesy and unexpectedly gory piece of Star Trek fan fiction, as well as Skinny Pete's technically accurate explanation of the transport system - "It's science, bitch!" - safe to say that Jesse is not all there. That is till Walt makes an unexpected appearance.

Summoned by Jesse's attempt to offload his meth riches to worthy causes, including the family of the murdered kid from "Dead Freight", via Saul Goodman (Bob Odenkirk on cheerfully immoral form, though lamenting the death of a lawyer in Walt's murder spree in the mid-season finale), Walt confronts him with supposed understanding. Through transparent lies about Mike's well-being and generally unwanted logic, Pinkman can do nothing but sit in disgust and self-loathing and play along. 

 

Walt's hollow plea for trust shows how lost his former protege is to him: after all, as Walt himself once said in a fit of pique, the meth money is blood money and with it comes guilt over all those who shed that blood. Jesse's ridding himself off that money, tossing it in bundles from a moving vehicle, shows his desperate need to be free of it all. As the saying goes, Jesse is in blood stepp'd in so far, that should he wade no more... In short, he's trapped, haunted and unraveling. 

In Jesse's puffy, bleary-eyed face, however, I thought I saw a glimpse of the same weary contempt that Mike once embodied. For the distinct threat to Walt's security that Hank's become, the possibility of danger from the direction of Lydia and her dissatisfied clients, could Walt's downfall lie in his student who paid for his education with his piece of mind and perhaps his very soul?

The whole episode builds to a head when Walt casually approaches Hank with the tracking device Walt found attached to his car, which he recognizes as Hank's from their joint stake out of Gus Fring. Having paid a friendly visit to the ostensibly ill Hank - the DEA agent could hardly reveal the real reason for his car accident - Walt's pride will not let him let it lie. 

Walt's need to impress with his own canniness, his intractability could be mistaken for a panicked gambit - after all, he has reason to believe Hank has discovered that incriminating copy of Leaves of Grass, so arrogantly left as bathroom reading - but Bryan Cranston's calculated performance makes his motives perfectly clear. He’s halfway out the garage door and you can see the wheels turning in his head when he turns and asks the question. After all he's been through, perhaps more so since his abrupt exit from the empire business, Walt has to be seen as the cleverest man in the room.

Then the long-awaited yet strangely unexpected explosion arrives: Hank hits him, hits Walt, the man he once so fondly referred to as a brainiac, a geek. Always a fragile, impossible state of affairs, it's a miracle Walt's deception lasted as long as it did, but Hank has paid for it. "Heisenberg? Heisenberg. You lying, two-faced sack of shit", he practically snarls at Walt, gripping him by the collar. Walt delicately fends him off, playing the conciliator, warning him about the harm he could cause with "wild accusations". 

Even having shown his true colors, Walt remains unpredictable, moving briskly from eliciting sympathy - his cancer's back, he's on chemo, he's fighting like hell - to bald rationalizations - even if Hank could convince anyone, Walt'll be dead before he can be jailed. Recriminatory yet strangely resigned, Hank makes a gesture - "Have Skyler bring the kids here then we'll talk" - at which point Walt reveals that other face: the cold, almost serpentine gaze of Heisenberg. "That's not going to happen."

Hank's "I don't even know who you are" is heartbreaking, the realization that this man whom he has cared for and supported is a monster - a monster who drove into oncoming traffic to keep them away from Gus' lab; Walt's response, that perhaps Hank should "tread lightly" says it all. Walt has gone from a man intimidated by Hank's firearm to one willing, albeit implicitly, to threaten his brother-in-law's life. Would Walt kill Hank? We don't know - anything is terrifyingly possible with the almost outright villain Walt's become.

As such, the return of Walt’s cancer feels inevitable, less divine punishment than an almost Nietzschean feeling of “this is how life goes”. Ironic, perhaps, that the thing that consumed him, physically and psychologically, in the first season, that provided the impetus for the whole show, has now almost been pinched out of the plot: a spate of vomiting may have uncovered the loss of Gale's gift, but - given his hair has returned by the time of the cold open - we cannot honestly believe that it's cancer that will ultimately bring Walt's machinations to an end. 

Still, even as Walt tries to weasel out of paying his dues, we finds ourselves strangely back where we began: Jesse, the self-loathing addict (ultimately, to what is Jesse addicted if not guilt?"; Skyler, the self-possessed matriarch of the White household; and though Walt may have millions at his disposal, how can he lavish himself while laundering his money at $14.95 a pop? He may have spoken in self-preservation, but Walt's words rings true: for now he is just a dying man running a car wash. Nothing has changed yet, of course, everything has: Walt's cancer diagnosis may, we suppose, have curtailed his dream of running an empire, but the desire remains untouched. The nebbish has become a supervillain and there's no going back. 

There are no moral forces at play here, just chemistry: the change has occurred and cannot be undone. All of the incidents we've seen so far - Gus' removal, the deaths of twelve would-be informants, the skirmish with Hank - are all just gas pockets en route to the final cataclysm: these are all just small parts of what Breaking Bad is truly about. Mr. Chips may not have become Scarface as showrunner Vince Gilligan promised - not quite yet at least - but Walt has a bloody big gun and the world that once, however briefly was his, is coming for him. 

One thing's for certain: his name will be remembered.

Seven episodes to go. Here's the promo for the next:

ALAN PARTRIDGE: ALPHA PAPA

 

Note: I was going to do another long review exploring this film in relation to RED 2, which I reviewed earlier today. Alpha Papa is a spoof of action films but it also mocks British parochialism (much of the humor comes from meeting the diminished expectations of a police stand-off taking place at a Norfolk radio station). Instead, I've decided to do one of those when I try and confine myself to a word count. Sorry to those of you looking for something a little more substantial - most people, who just want to found out about the bloody film, will probably be relieved. So: 

A REVIEW IN 500 WORDS OR LESS (HOPEFULLY)

The thing about lowering expectations is that after a certain point they cease to be worth meeting.

After almost two decades on and off the TV, Alan Partridge, Steve Coogan's most popular creation, has made his way to the big screen. Less outrageous than any of Sacha Baron Cohen alter-egos, Partridge is the perfect encapsulation of British small-mindedness: a smug, middle-class Daily Mail reader with a stagnant career as a radio DJ, the character's inherent humor comes from his utter mundanity. As such, when a disgruntled former employee Pat Farrell (Colm Meaney) takes hostages at the newly rebranded station and Alan finds himself in the role of unlikely mediator, the race is on to inconspicuously subvert as many American actioner cliches as possible. 

Explosions? None (well, a few, small ones, if you count the firing of a shotgun). Sex? Just about, if you count copping off with the bird who played Rose West in Appropriate Adults in a disabled toilet. Car chases? Yes! Albeit in a yellow broadcasting van with a squadron of police cars keeping leisurely pace behind it. What you get out of Alpha Papa (even the title mocks the ostentatiousness of our Yankee brethren) will obviously very much depend on how funny you find Alan. With his habit of making unguarded and unsolicited confessions on such topics as his aggressive athletes foot, Alan is endearing in much the way that Ricky Gervais' David Brent is in that, for all his ego and posturing, he's just a bit of a pillock, and, as with most modern British comedies, character-propelled awkwardness is the order of the day. 

Armando Iannui, the man behind both radio programme On the Hour, which introduced Partridge to the airwaves, and The Thick of It was involved in writing the film. Unfortunately, Alpha Papa is no In The Loop: without the imaginative invective to leaven it - my personal favorite involved referring to an unfortunate MP as a "Nazi Julie Andrews" - it all feels a bit, well... flat. Scenes of Alan vamping in the car to Roachford or panickedly yelling, "It's a shooter!" are entertaining, but the whole things feel like a TV special rather than an out-and-out cinematic adventure. Sorry to count pennies, but on a budget of around £4 million, it just feels there should have been more.

Knowingness is not a substitute for genuine drama, and, though the film does achieve the occasional moment of genuine tension based around exactly how nuts Farrell is/might, but overall Alpha Papa lacks in ambition. The lack of something is not a substitute for the thing itself - not blowing a bus up only matters if it feels like there was ever a threat of you doing it in the first place. Brought down by its own self-depreciation, the film ends on a bit of a cop out: Alan can't change, so there's no sense of closure, and the film can't compete with the likes of RED 2 and ever become a full-on satire of anything. It's okay to dream small, but when it’s this low-key it becomes a bit depressing. 

More A Field in England than Dog Day Afternoon, for some wry social examination and a few good gags, Alpha Papa gets a 6.5/10.

RED 2

SPOILERS

Self-indulgent editorial note: I recently read a news piece on The Lone Ranger in which Armie Hammer, Johnny Depp et al blamed critics for the film's enormous failure. Whilst the film is, by most accounts, pretty terrible (I will nevertheless review it as soon as it's released in the UK), I feel a bit guilty for laying into it based on the trailer and my presumptions alone. I'm gonna try to focus a little less on budgets and hype in forthcoming reviews and generally try and be that bit nicer - I don't think I have any power whatsoever to effect a film's success or failure, let alone one as high-profile and summarily doomed as The Lone Ranger, but I appreciate all the time, money and commitment that goes into making even the biggest turkey. No apologies for the contextualizing, though: film's cant exist in a vacuum and I've found to most effective way to describe a film is by comparison.

Do you remember my review of A Good Day to Die Hard, all the way back in the mists of time. There's no reason for you to, but in it I aired my complaints with what has become of the series that gave Bruce Willis a career beyond Moonlighting, namely that it forgot what made the first three so unique: an ordinary New York cop who - in the wrong place at the wrong time - battles against the odds armed with nothing more than mordant humor (and perhaps a machine gun... ho ho ho). As such, i's strange that an ensemble piece about a team of jet-setting geriatric secret agents feels like the truest Die Hard film since With A Vengeance was released back in 1995.

That might be partly because of RED 2's sense of its own identity - unlike, for instance, a film that ends with John McClane taking on generic Russian baddies amidst the ruins of Chernobyl - as well as the best use of Willis in a comedy-actioner since The Last Boy Scout. It may be lacking in jeopardy, but it at least has something acceptable to substitute: talented older actors blowing s**t up, kicking arse, and generally embracing the absurdity of the whole premise. Think The Expendables but with wit and class (sorry - old habits). RED 2 is also a star vehicle, albeit one populated by a cast who between them have something like 2 Oscars (8 nominations), 3 Golden Globes (13 noms), 6 BAFTAs (8 noms), 8 Emmys (14 noms), 1 Tony (4 noms) and 1 Olivier (3 noms).*

What this goodie bag of awards adds up to is that RED 2 is more than just some lumbering beast relying on 80s nostalgia, a relic and a dinosaur. It's a living, breathing installment in what's well on the way to becoming a decent franchise. Its roots in the Warren Ellis and Cully Hammer comic series may be more or less moot at this point - though the film tries to evoke them in unnecessary stylized scene transitions reminiscent of Ang Lee's Hulk or perhaps 2010's The Losers. Dean Parisot's direction is competent, unshowy, with the occasional flourish that suggests Timur Bekmambetov, particularly Wanted. A moment in which Catherine Zeta Jones' Russian agent performs a handbrake turn in a Camaro, swinging the passenger-side door open with one gracefully stockinged leg to allow Willis' Moses access to the still-moving vehicle, is an inversion of a moment from the previous film in which he exited a similarly still-moving vehicle.

Pedantic geekery aside (seriously, though, when is it ever?), the action is solid if not spectacular and all the obligatory set piece are in place - breaking in and out of an institute for the criminally insane, breaking into and out of the Kremlin. There's even some attempt at an arc: RED 2 opens with Frank Moses attempting to settle into suburban normalcy with Sarah Ross (Mary-Louise Parker), his former-pension-agent-turned-romantic-interest from the previous film. Already, though, things are growing stale, and when the deeply paranoid Frank Boggs (John Malkovich) interrupts them on a trip to the store, Sarah is more eager than Frank to make a return to the life of adventure he once led. Soon enough, all three of them are on the run from the US government and crossing paths with the likes of MI6's Victoria (Helen Mirren), freelance killer Han Cho-Bai (Byung-hun Lee) and Zeta-Jones Katya, all of which eventually brings them to the (cell) door of one Dr. Edward Bailey (Anthony Hopkins), incarcerated rock star of conceptual mass killing.

You see, there's an advanced nuclear device somewhere in Moscow of Moscow and the authorities erroneously believe that Moses et al know where it is. Along with their covert break-in to the former heart of Soviet power, you'd be forgiven for thinking this sounds an awful lot like Mission: Impossible - Ghost Protocol, the most recent and most forgettable in the series. However, whereas M:I is all about the dubious technology - Cruise's Ethan Hunt is just a blank slate onto which to project a mission statement - RED 2 is all about the personalities. How they gel or spark off each other is the film's primary delight and, as you might have guessed, selling point.

Though Willis is the de facto protagonist, the character he plays is one of the film's least distinctive components. Willis can play the exasperated/deadpan bad-ass in his sleep - Hudson Hawk, The Fifth Element, Mercury Rising, Armageddon, The Whole Nine Yards, The Whole Ten Yards, Bandits, Hostage, Sin City, Lucky Number Slevin, Surrogates, Cop Out, The Cold Light of Day, and G.I. Joe: Retaliation, to name a few - and Frank Moses is very much in that vein. Even so, a scene in which he lures a special ops team into a storage room and takes them out - unarmed to machine gun, grenade, etc., etc., very John McClane - or one in which Moses lies paralyzed on a couch, his eyes rolling helplessly, as Sarah cheerfully and vengefully slaps the hell out of him, both showcase the blend of action and roguish charm that's kept him in work since the late 80s.

The MVP award, though, goes to Malkovich as Boggs: of all the cast members, he's given the least to do - probably because the writers, Jon and Erich Hoeber, realized he could pretty much take care of himself  - but manages to if not steal then set the tempo for moment he's onscreen. With his innumerable tics, flickering expressions, and shifty eyes, Malkovich fits Boggs down to a tee. As a retired CIA agent who was secretly dosed with LSD on a daily basis for eleven years, apart from a few plot crucial moments, Boggs is more or less a comedy prop but Malkovich - who arguably played a slightly more well-balanced version of the type back in the Coen Brothers' Burn After Reading - manages to make something of the part on the basis of sheer and simple watchability.

Helen Mirren, too, is great as the wry, sophisticated Victoria - administering relationship advice over the phone while disposing of bodies in an acid bath, wearing an elegant evening dress. The other Oscar-winning member of the cast, Anthony Hopkins, doesn't initially come off quite so well: on his initial appearance, he's expected to play manic, rambling, as the genius who's been locked up for thirty years. Hopkins' gravitas prevents this from ever being irritating, but it comes across as slightly "bleh": gesticulating crazy people - been there, done that (and this isn't exactly Brad Pitt in Twelve Monkeys). In any case, Hopkins redeems the role after the immediate histrionics, settling down into more comfortable Hannibal Lecter territory - love him though I do in Remains of the Day or Amistad, I feel he's at his best when he's allowed a malicious glint in his eye.

Of the primary characters, Mary-Louise Parker and Byung-hun Lee are worst served by RED 2. Parker is endearingly chipper as Sarah - not to mention how unbelievable she looks given she's pushing fifty! - but the role, which should be empowering (if Dame Helen can do this, so can I!), basically places her in the position of unlikely savior/likely hostage and revolves around shopping, scowling, and a repeated snogging joke. Lee, meanwhile, plays the stereotype of deadly Oriental assassin - the first time we see him he's dressed (ironically) in a kimono - and, though "Han" apparently has a history of grievances with Willis' Moses, is mostly required to kick ass (which he does repeatedly, at one point while handcuffed to a fridge door) and widen his eyes in fury. At least his character's allowed the luxurious subversion of an (almost) American accent.

In support, we've got Zeta-Jones as Moses' former flame, his kryptonite. The part is fairly slight and somewhat severe, her motivation alternating between "I love Frank/want to show him up" and "duty to Mother Russia". Moses seems at no point in danger of choosing her over Sarah, which makes any frission between them - of which there is remarkably little - a moot point. Brian Cox returns in an extended cameo as Ivan, the avuncular Russian oligarch from the first film, and David Thewlis - known to most as Lupin in the Harry Potter films - the horn-rimmed Frog, leading the team on a motorbike/Camaro/VW Beetle chase through central Paris (the actor's first action-oriented/plot device role I can think of, though he was, of course, the evil king in Dragonheart).**

Throw in blue-eyed Neal McDonough as quirky lead henchmen (think Robert Quarles in Justified) and you have a film that's willing to get some top-level talent onboard in order to service what could, admittedly, otherwise be a fairly hackneyed premise. One of things I like most about RED 2 is that it doesn't patronize: it's cast may be mostly older than the median to appear in a summer tentpole actioner but the film doesn't feel the need to keep reminding you. Bruce Willis may be 58; John Malkovich, 59; Helen Mirren, 68, but, while they may be "Retired", RED 2 is all about the "Extremely Dangerous". Besides from Victoria beating down an impertinent field agent who commented that her tenure must have been before his time (in all fairness, he was about to garotte her) and Marvin taking a moment to ask Moses if he feels old (he doesn't), Parisot and Co. are content to just let them get on with it. It's refreshing.

RED 2 is full of panache and brio (and other words that sound like they should be food). It's lightweight and throwaway but highly entertaining. Despite my "teatime of the soul" editorial that opened this review, if a film can give me a reason to like it, I usually will - they can't all be gems, but if there's even one facet to admire then it's probably worth a look  - and RED 2 provides at least half a dozen. With its Mr. and Mrs. Smith approach to emotional longevity (a couple that commits covert ops together stays together) and Bekmambetovian (that is now a word) approach to action, RED 2 doesn't do much its predecessor didn't and it'll probably be forgotten come October. Even so, for giving me more Willis/Malkovich/Mirren/Hopkins/etc./etc. in my life, for the performances alone, RED 2 deserves a solid B-.*** There's a lot to yipee-ki-yay about; maybe you can't teach an old dog new tricks, but sometimes you don't have to; one good turn deserves another. Done.

* It's almost certainly more than this - I lost track on Dame Helen's separate Wikipedia page for all the accolades she's received. The film's apparently more than aware of this given the Queen Elizabeth joke it gets in at her expense.
** I really do have to mention Naked and London Boulevard because Thewlis is remarkable in both. I just didn't feel comfortable inserting a digression into a digression in the above review. Anyway, I digress...
*** I know my marking scheme has been almost comically inconsistent, but my review RED 2 mostly felt like a report card for the performances and it's all subjective anyway, right. :-p

FRANCES HA

Based on the trailer for Frances Ha, you'd be forgiven for thinking it looked a bit, well, kooky. It definitely displays all the classic tropes of those chirpy feelgood dramedies where Manic Pixie Dream Girls say crazy, impulsive things and dream their days away while you watch and feel mildly ill, all the while secretly wishing you could be doing the same thing (... or is that just me?). In any case, Frances Ha offers a lot more.

The story of Frances and her best friend Sophie - as two women in New York in their late twenties - sees Sophie entering into a serious relationship, which jeopardizes the girl's friendship by forcing them to spend less time together. This in itself seems childish, but when you see the extent to which they care for each other, deeply and movingly, you can see why spending every waking minute together could seem an essential part of life.

This is director Noah Baumbach's "Woody Allen" film: having been working solely on the West Coast, he's finally chosen to shoot in New York for his latest endeavor. There are definitely hints of Allen in his writing, though Baumbach's does, in some cases, come across all the more authentically (the only real exception being the line "Tell me the story of us", which sent shivers of distress down my spine). The dialogue flows majestically, seeming all the more effusive when compared with Breathe In's no less effective sparseness.

Some of this is definitely due to title actor Gerta Gerwig's role as co-writer on the project, managing to create a wonderful feeling of spontaneity; my favorite such moment being when one of the male character touches Frances on the shoulder and receives in return a noise like a startled cat. Frances Ha could easily have fallen into the territory of quirky indie film - the fact it's shot in black and white pushes it even further into the oeuvre - and yet it retains a vibrant personality of its own.

All the characters in Frances Ha feel like real, lived-in human beings, Frances in particular: the times when she's with her family, for instance, show another side to her the balances out the quirkiness and makes it feel justified and endearing. It's hard not to fall in love with Gerwig's jubilant, child-like way of being and the ending - which I won't spoil - had me leaving the screening with a smile on my face, not least because of the amazing use of Bowie's Modern Love.

4 / 5