By Jason Apuzzo. This movie cannot come out soon enough. Of course, here at Libertas we’ve already seen it.
Posted on April 25th, 2011 at 6:06pm.
Category: Narrative
FRANCE EATS HOLLYWOOD’S LUNCH: LFM Reviews the New French Anti-Terrorism Thriller The Assault @ Tribeca 2011
By Joe Bendel. It was France’s Entebbe. In what is often referred to as “the most successful anti-terrorist operation in history” (at least among those not involving the Israelis), French commandos stormed an airliner hijacked by Algerian Islamist terrorists on Christmas Eve. The hijackers had no intention of negotiating. Their plan was to crash Air France 8969 into the Eifel Tower. The year was 1994. The missed lessons are painfully obvious. In a case of France eating Hollywood’s lunch, Julien Leclercq vividly dramatizes the historic raid in The Assault (French trailer above), which screens at the 2011 Tribeca Film Festival.
The Algerian terrorists were Islamic and they never let their captives forget it. As soon as they secured the plane, Abdul Abdullah Yahia and his accomplices forced all the women to cover-up with makeshift head scarves. The French being French, they first tried to appease GIA terrorists. Not surprisingly, the Islamist GIA was not interested in a payoff. They were hoping to make a big statement instead. Fortunately, they were delayed so long in Algiers (where the Algerians refused to remove the gangway stairs from the airliners, yet perversely denied permission for the French GIGN SWAT team to operate in-country), Flight 8969 was forced to stop for refueling in Marseilles.
Considering the film is called The Assault, it is not much of a spoiler to say the GIGN eventually board the plane. However, there is nothing video game-like about the film’s centerpiece action sequence. This is close-quarters combat, vividly depicted as a distinctly violent, claustrophobic, confusing, and messy proposition. Tense and scrupulously realistic, these scenes are unlike anything peddled by recent antiseptic Hollywood action movies.
Reportedly the terrorists were even more sadistic than they’re portrayed as being in Assault. Of course, there are understandable limits to what a commercial release can bear (particularly in France). To his credit, Leclercq and co-screenwriter Simon Moutairou never try to ameliorate the terrorists’ crimes with sympathetic back-stories. Instead they show them executing hostages in cold blood. Frankly, the GIA as seen in Assault can only be described as hateful savages.
Assault’s one weakness is the rather cookie-cutter characterization of the GIGN officers. Viewers only glimpse the private life of Thierry, a family man wrestling with his conscience after his previous assignment. The rest are essentially interchangeable. However, Mélanie Bernier makes a strong impression as Carole Jeanton, an ambitious Interior Ministry bureaucrat, who goes from Chamberlain-esque appeaser to a Churchillian advocate for an armed response to terror in about thirty seconds flat. Maybe it was the guns pointed at her.
The Assault is the sort of action film Hollywood ought to be producing at regular clip, but refuses to do so for petty ideological reasons. Still, though the GIGN emerges as the film’s heroes, the French government takes quite a few lumps. Recreating an important historical incident with grit and tick-tock precision, Leclercq’s Assault is easily one of the best selections at this year’s Tribeca. It screens Thursday (4/28).
Posted on April 25th, 2011 at 9:00am.
LFM Review: Romantics Anonymous @ Tribeca 2011
By Joe Bendel. Chocolate is the food of romance and indulgence. Two social misfits still love it anyway. They might just love each other too, if they can psyche themselves up enough to take a chance. That would be a very big “if” in Jean-Pierre Améris’ Romantics Anonymous (trailer above), which screens during the 2011 Tribeca Film Festival.
Angélique Delange is a gifted chocolatier, but she is paralyzed with shyness. Through sheer force of will, she manages to apply for a job at a down-market chocolate company, run by the gruff but ragingly insecure Jean-René Van Den Hugde. Sensing a fellow chocolate devotee, Van Den Hudge hires her on the spot. Unfortunately, it is for a sales position she is spectacularly unsuited for. Having accepted already, Delange tries to timidly carry on as best she can. Eventually though, Delange realizes she must use her true talents to save the floundering company.
Working under a veil of secrecy, Delange once made confections that delighted French gourmets. However, when her protective boss died, the secret of his chocolatier “hermit” died with him. Yet, resurrecting the old hermit cover proves relatively easy. Going on a date with the boss is devilishly difficult, for both of them.
Like chocolate, Anonymous is a sweet film with a hint of bitterness to make it real. While everyone plays it for laughs, Améris and co-writer Philippe Blasband never minimize the challenges of the would-be couples’ extreme social awkwardness. They are not portrayed as freaks or loons, but as people who need a little more encouragement to come out of their shells (granted though, Van Den Hugde certainly has his eccentricities). Continue reading LFM Review: Romantics Anonymous @ Tribeca 2011
LFM Review: My Piece of the Pie @ Tribeca 2011
By Joe Bendel. Steve Delarue is a financial shark. France Leroi is a single mother, who is laid-off when her factory abruptly closes (but what a name she has). The former is so obviously the villain and the latter is so clearly the victim, we can surely put our brains on auto-pilot. Yet, Cédric Klapisch’s latest film is surprisingly more interesting than that (perhaps unintentionally so, but it still counts). Drawing on three year-old headlines, Klapisch tells a messy morality tale in My Piece of the Pie, which screens during the 2011 Tribeca Film Festival.
France Leroi is indeed a victim. That is not a subjective judgment; it is the essence of her identity. A union worker thrown out of work by her factory’s financial collapse, she attempts suicide during a birthday party, with her home filled with children. Fortunately she soon recovers, leaving Dunkirk to seek employment in Paris. Through a friend of a friend, she lands a gig working as the cleaning lady for Steve Delarue, a Bonfire of the Vanities style Master of the Universe recently returned to France the country after a long stint in London. Delarue is the kind of guy who administers the death knell to struggling enterprises, like Leroi’s former employer. In fact, unbeknownst to Leroi, he was exactly that guy.
Delarue dates supermodels, but treats them little better than servants like Leroi. Not surprisingly, he’s terrible father material, but fortunately Leroi is there when Delarue’s three year-old son Alban is dumped in his lap. In fact, as she assumes the duties of a nanny, employer and employee start to warm toward each other. However, a perceived betrayal launches Leroi on a reckless course of action. Continue reading LFM Review: My Piece of the Pie @ Tribeca 2011
New 12-minute Battlefield 3 Trailer Shows Marines Fighting Iran-backed Insurgents in Iraq
By Jason Apuzzo. EA has released a new 12-minute trailer (featuring extensive game play) for Battlefield 3, depicting U.S. Marines involved in intense urban warfare in Sulaymaniyah, Iraq against Iranian-backed insurgents along the Iran/Iraq border (the game is set in 2014). See the full 12-minute trailer above. The trailer is gripping and intense, and astonishingly realistic in its imagery. NOTE: THIS NSFW TRAILER FEATURES VIOLENCE AND STRONG LANGUAGE. The trailer was posted at YouTube on Thursday, and as of the writing of this post already has over 1.3 millions views.
Battlefield 3 is a first-person shooter game, and a follow-up to EA’s popular Battlefield series. The game is set to debut on November 2nd, and will apparently feature battlefields in Sulaymaniyah, Tehran, Paris and New York.
Watching the trailer, I’m left with the usual questions: namely, why can’t Hollywood do something like this? I mean, fighting space aliens in downtown Los Angeles is great, but why must stories about these real world, epochal military conflicts of ours be relegated to the (admittedly large) ghetto of video gaming? The imagery in this trailer is astonishing in its detail and subtlety, and thoroughly ‘cinematic’ in its execution – to the point that I actually felt like I was watching a war documentary for much of it. And yet a full eight years after the invasion of Iraq, we’re still waiting on any sort of large-scale Hollywood effort to depict the war, while the gaming industry proves each year that there is a massive market for this kind of material.
Does EA have a movie division? They might want to consider starting one.
Posted on April 18th, 2011 at 11:55am.
New Clip from The Devil’s Double at The Berlin Film Festival; Film Opens in U.S. on July 29th
By Jason Apuzzo. Scenes from the Sundance hit The Devil’s Double, the new film about the mobster-like lifestyle of Saddam Hussein’s son Uday, are slowly starting to trickle out onto the internet. The Devil’s Double just played last month at The Berlin Film Festival, and Lionsgate will be releasing the film here in the States on July 29th. Libertas’ Joe Bendel reviewed the film at Sundance in January and absolutely loved it (see his review here).
The scene above features Dominic Cooper as Uday Hussein’s body double Latif Yahia, as he practices his performance as ‘Uday’ in the mirror in the midst of an aerial bombardment during the first Gulf War. He’s soon joined by Uday’s mistress Sarrab, played by French actress Ludivine Sagnier. [Can anyone play mistresses better than French actresses?] Check out the scene to get a flavor of the film. Afterward, you can catch a bit of the film’s Berlin Film Festival press conference.
Based on what I’ve been seeing, the film looks like a total hoot – saucy, brutal and very entertaining. And also bold as hell. Note Sarrab’s wicked line about the Iraqi people not believe Saddam’s “crap.”
We’ll certainly be keeping an eye on the film in coming days …
Posted on April 12th, 2011 at 2:02pm.