Category: Narrative

By Joe Bendel. The savage Charlie Hebdo shootings only just happened on January 7th of this year, but one can already feel complacency re-settling back in, predictably like the turning of the seasons. After all, it was not without recent precedent. The kidnapping and torture of Ilan Halimi was a hate crime that shocked France, but only too briefly. Taking the subsequent book written by Halimi’s mother Ruth as his source material, Alexandre Arcady chronicles the tragic events step-by-chilling-step in 24 Days, which opens this Friday in New York.

Ilan Halimi was a likable young man, who was always close to his mother and sister, but was also rebuilding his somewhat strained relationship with his divorced father in the months leading up to his abduction. Although he simply worked at a cell phone store, a Muslim gang operating in both Paris and Ivory Coast deliberately targeted him because he was Jewish. In their hatred, they assumed all Jews had money. Alas, the Halimis were rather lower middle class with little ready cash on hand. Therefore, they had little choice but to alert the police.

The police’s secret involvement will be both a curse and a blessing. Initially, the negotiator advising Ilan’s father Didier as the family’s chosen representative is somewhat helpful reducing the unrealistic 450,000 Euro ransom. Tragically though, the police’s refusal to acknowledge the anti-Semitic nature of the crime leads to a fundamental misunderstanding of the “Gang of Barbarians,” as the abductors called themselves.

Considering how easy it is to google Ilan Halimi, it is not much of a spoiler to say the case ends quite dreadfully. However, Arcady maintains a great deal of suspense, as the horror and outrage steadily mount. Yet, this is not a propagandistic passion play. Arcady and co-writers Antoine Lacomblez and Emilie Frèche prefer to focus on resulting emotional toll the ordeal takes on the Halimi family. It is not just limited to his nuclear family either. With the police tightly controlling Didier Halimi’s contact with the kidnappers, the Gang of Barbarians expand their game of psychological terrorism, sending unspeakably graphic photos of Ilan to his cousin and rabbi.

Zabou Breitman viscerally expresses the anguish and sorrow of Ruth Halimi, but it is the quieter, more understated work of Pascal Elbé that will truly haunt viewers over time. Likewise, Jacques Gamblin dials it way down as Commandant Delcour, a sort of problematically politically correct version of Harry Baur’s soul-deadened Maigret. Within the large and diverse supporting ensemble, Audrey Giacomini stands out as Halimi’s terrified pseudo-girlfriend (understandably so, since by grabbing Ilan, the kidnappers also had her flat keys).

24 Days will turn your stomach into ice-water. It is a tense, often brutal white-knuckle ride from start to finish. However, it is important to understand, Arcady and his co-writers somewhat water-down the torments inflicted on Halimi, probably because it would be impossible to release anything remotely accurate in mainstream French theaters. Nevertheless, what we do see is profoundly disturbing.

Frankly, this film speaks for itself, if audiences are willing to listen. Unfortunately, French politicians prefer to pander for “multi-cultural” votes rather than really facing the root causes of the precipitous rise of anti-Semitic violence. Sadly, it is probably only a matter of time before another Charlie Hebdo-Ilan Halimi style attack. Very highly recommended as a masterful work of cinema and an impassioned warning for those who value tolerance and the rule of law, 24 Days opens this Friday (4/24) at the Quad Cinema in Manhattan and the Kew Gardens Cinemas in Brooklyn.

LFM GRADE: A

Posted on April 20th, 2015 at 4:41pm.

By Joe Bendel. If you think the burqa is empowering, try wearing one for a week in August. Then try reporting your violent and sexually abusive husband to the local police, despite not speaking the local language. A translator ought to help, especially a woman, but reality will be tragically different for the battered wife in Hamy Ramezan & Rungano Nyoni’s short film Listen, which screens as part of the Interferences programming block during the 2015 Tribeca Film Festival.

She cannot speak Danish and she cannot remove her burqa. She has fled her home, taking only her young son with her, hoping and expecting the Danish police will provide shelter. However, she never anticipated the interpreter would deliberately mistranslate her pleas. The translator is also a woman, but clearly she considers herself an Islamist first and foremost. She duplicitously tells the police the woman is seeking divorce advice, whereas she tries to convince the increasingly desperate woman to trust her imam to resolve her marital troubles.

It takes about five seconds to understand just how isolating and alienating the burqa truly is. Had her face been visible, her expressions and her bruises would have told the cops what the interpreter deliberately mistranslated. Listen is a relatively short thirteen minutes, but Ramezan & Nyoni still patiently take their time, showing the initial police interview from each party’s perspective, to fully establish the tragic significance of the situation.

Although we never see her, Zeinab Rahal’s body language still constitutes a harrowing performance. Just think how good she could be unshackled from the burqa. Likewise, Amira Helene Larsen discomfortingly projects the assurance of a blind believer. Nanna Bottcher also nicely hints at the police woman’s nagging suspicions, but Alexandre Willaume’s knuckle-dragging police man is film’s only real caricature.

As a strong follow-up to Ramezan’s previous solo short film, Keys of Heaven, Listen forcefully announces it is time for the Finnish-Iranian filmmaker to graduate to full features. Its treatment of issues facing Muslim women is both stinging and sensitive. Highly recommended as an eye-opener with serious dramatic chops, Listen screens again as part of Tribeca’s Interferences short film program today (4/20), Friday (4/24), and Saturday (4/25).

LFM GRADE: A

Posted on April 20th, 2015 at 4:39pm.

By Joe Bendel. There is an old saying about no atheists in fox holes. By the same token, a herd of rampaging kaijus ought to make even the most irrational jihadist grateful to see the U.S. Marines. Sadly, that is not the case in this chaotic near future monster bash. The Middle East has become the world’s hottest infection zone, so the American military has come to fight the monsters where they are. Yet, every accidental case of collateral damage becomes grist for Islamist grievance propaganda in Tom Green’s Monsters: Dark Continent, which opens this Friday in New York.

For those keeping score at home, Dark Continent is technically a sequel to Gareth Edwards’ Monsters, but it is probably just as well if prospective viewers are not aware of its lineage, or else they might expect a significantly better film. Ten years after the events of straight Monsters, the Middle East has become the new center of battle. A group of thuggish friends from Detroit (looking even scarier than the terrorist and tentacle ridden desert) have shipped off to Sgt. Noah Frater’s unit, so he will make sure the maggots are in proper fighting condition. They are a stereotypical pack, who hardly deserve names, including the sullen orphan protagonist, his unstable protector, and the buddy whose girlfriend just had a baby. Right, odds are he won’t even make it into the second act.

Edwards’ Monster was a clever DIY calling card that led directly to his Godzilla gig. Unfortunately, even though Green retained the general creature designs, he emphasizes the worst aspects of the previous film. Where Monsters offered a lot of not so subtle immigration commentary, Dark Continent sees itself as an extended critique of American military intervention in the Mid-East. However, the message-making was hardly the reason the prior film was successful. The first time around, Edwards understood his responsibility for providing certain kaiju deliverables. In fact, aspects of the politicized near future worked in tandem with the film’s genre movie conventions. Being stuck on the monster-plagued side of an ultra-fortified border follows right in line with the basic rock-and-a-hard-place tradition.

Bizarrely, Green frequently loses sight of the titular monsters and invites the audience to openly side with the terrorist insurgency against the American military. They are just uneducated thrill seekers who shoot first and ask questions later, whereas the victimized local population understands how to live with the monsters in inter-species harmony. Of course, if any of the monsters were women, they would have to wear a burqa – and if any were homosexual, they would logically be stoned to death.

There is precious little characterization in Dark Continent, except for Frater, whom British thesp Johnny Miller plays as a bulging eyed, anti-social, PTSD head case. Happily, nobody in the film says: “it became necessary to destroy the village in order to save it,” but that probably represents a supreme act of restraint on Green’s part. Shallow as a puddle and clumsily didactic, Monster: Dark Continent is not recommended when it opens this Friday (4/17) in New York, at the Village East.

LFM GRADE: D-

Posted on April 16th, 2015 at 10:03am.

By Joe Bendel. Augie Baccus has a heck of a swing and a solid short game, but he makes Happy Gilmore look like a genius. Unfortunately, he also lacks the popular Adam Sandler character’s toughness. That will become a serious problem when he gets entangled with some dodgy professional gamblers in Terry Jastrow’s The Squeeze, which opens this Friday in select cities.

Baccus is a dirt poor but amiable young kid, going nowhere in rural Texas. However, he can shoot the lights out on a golf course. When the slicker-than-slick gambler known as Riverboat happens to hear his impossibly low scoring amateur tourney victory on the radio while passing through town, he recognizes an opportunity worth taking a detour for. With the backing of his lover-accomplice, “The Bank,” Riverboat convinces Baccus to play for him in a series of high-stakes money games, sort of like Cruise and Newman in The Color of Money, but without the grit.

Of course, Baccus’s girlfriend Natalie is against the arrangement from the start, for moral reasons as well as the waves of bad vibes cascading off Riverboat. Baccus jumps in anyway, hoping to score some money for his battered mother and his beloved little sister. Inconveniently, Natalie’s concerns are soon justified in Las Vegas, where both Riverboat and mobbed-up gambler Jimmy Diamonds put the titular squeeze on Baccus before his million dollar match with the top-ranked youth-amateur.

Tin Cup was such a great golf film because it captured the inviting feeling of a lush green course on a sunny day that is not too hot and has a pleasant breeze blowing. The Squeeze does not do that, but at least it honestly seems to enjoy the game, beyond using it as a plot device.

Reportedly, Jeremy Sumpter was cast as Baccus because of his golf skills, which makes sense, because his bland white-bread screen presence doesn’t do much to move the needle. While the film is ostensibly about Baccus (modeled on the real life Texas Phenom Keith Flatt), it is much more interested in Riverboat’s Cheshire cat grin and Natalie’s legs. As the latter, Jillian Murray (from Cabin Fever: Patient Zero) certainly looks the part and expresses Natalie’s ethical and religious reservations without sounding hopelessly moralistic, which is something.

Nevertheless, Christopher McDonald is the real show. Essentially, he revisits his Shooter McGavin persona from Happy Gilmore, but takes delight in upping the villainous ante. He is consistently fun to watch, but Michael Nouri looks kind of weird as the bleach blond Diamonds. What was that all about?

Jastrow and his wife, co-producer Anne Archer have been dubbed “Super Scientologists” in the media, but it is hard to pick up on any overt references to Overlord Xenu or “Suppressive People” in The Squeeze. Frankly, it is largely rather by-the-numbers stuff, but McDonald makes it worth watching on cable or Netflix streaming. He can slyly turn a witty line and then pull off a goofy bit of physical comedy. Honorary Oscars ought to go to character actor mainstays like him, but instead they are determined by Hollywood popularity contests. Mostly just a harmless time-kill, golf movie fans can safely wait when The Squeeze opens Friday (4/17) in Denver at the AMC Highlands Ranch and Los Angeles at the Laemmle Playhouse.

LFM GRADE: C+

Posted on April 16th, 2015 at 10:03pm.