Tag Archives: Luc Besson

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This Year’s Model

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Anna

by George Wolf

After films such as La Femme Nikita and Lucy, writer/director Luc Besson is no stranger to the “beautiful killing machine” genre, but it seems the sexual treachery of Red Sparrow and the ass-kickery of Atomic Blonde have inspired him to get back in that familiar saddle.

His Anna is built on the same sexy Russian assassin blueprint, then adds layers of confusing time shifts, obvious fake outs, and misguided feminist ambitions, all wrapped in a constantly leering camera gaze.

Anna (Sasha Luss, back with Besson after Valerian and the City of a Thousand Planets) is plucked from Russian poverty by agent Alex (Luke Evans) and groomed for the spy game by the humorless Olga (Helen Mirren).

Anna’s cover is her job as a high fashion model, and guess what is this season’s hottest accessory?

Big silencers, slowly screwed on big guns that are framed just so against Anna’s lingerie-clad pelvic region. Subtle.

Check that, it really is, next to the roommate (Lera Abova) whose only purpose is to ask Anna for girl on girl action, and the CIA agent (Cillian Murphy) whose code name must be Dog in Heat.

And yet through all the bad writing and contrivance, Anna’s true ambition never wavers. She asks only for a freedom she has never known, freedom from a world that only uses and objectifies her at every turn.

And then pot and kettle lived happily ever after.

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Coasting on Good Looks

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Valerian and the City of a Thousand Planets

by Hope Madden

There is a pleasantly madcap quality to the environments filmmaker Luc Besson creates. His best work combines that untamed world – whether earthbound and criminal or colorfully intergalactic – with unusual characters performing slickly choreographed action.

His lesser efforts don’t. On that note, meet Valerian and the City of a Thousand Planets.

Based on France’s beloved comic series about a pair of time and space-hopping agents, Besson’s film looks pretty cool.

Not as good as Christopher Nolan’s Dunkirk, or Matt Reeves’s War for the Planet of the Apes, or Spider-Man: Homecoming or Baby Driver or about one out of every three movies released so far this summer.

At this point in cinematic history, you have to bring more to the screen than visual flair.

What else you got, Luc?

Because it’s not acting.

Dane DeHaan plays Valerian. Poorly. Wildly miscast as the scoundrel flyboy who might find love with his partner, the often reliable actor cannot make his way through Besson’s stilted, lifeless banter.

DeHaan has a better time of it than Cara Delevingne as Valerian’s strong-willed partner Laureline – perhaps because Delevingne has no discernible talent.

Still, the writing is awful and she’d be in a tough spot even if she did have talent. Just ask Clive Owen. He has talent galore and even he embarrasses himself with this garbage.

To be fair, Valerian is basically a kids’ movie. Except for that extended and utterly needless stripper sequence showcasing Rihanna. But if you cut that out (if only we could – along with at least another 15 minutes, because damn this movie is long!), then you basically have a kids’ movie.

Not a good one. So just don’t set your standards too high. Go in looking for an overly long, addle-brained extra-terrestrial romp that looks great and you’ll be fine.

Unless you really want quality acting. Valerian an’t help you there.

Verdict-2-0-Stars





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She’s a Brainiac..Brainiac!

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Lucy

by George Wolf

 

Nearly ten years ago, Wedding Crashers taught us the best response to “people use only ten percent of our brains” is…”I think we use only ten percent of our hearts.”

Still, writer/director Luc Besson bases his new film Lucy on that old urban legend, and what might happen if someone could suddenly flex four, five or even ten times more grey matter muscle.

A ridiculous premise doesn’t have to sink a film, and this one actually gets off to a solid start as Lucy (Scarlett Johansson) unwillingly becomes a drug mule for ruthless Korean kingpin Mr. Jang (the always fascinating Min-sik Choi).

Jang’s henchman surgically stash a bag of his new product into Lucy’s abdomen, but the pouch breaks when she suffers a beating. In just minutes, the drug settles into Lucy’s bloodstream and begins opening countless new cognitive horizons.

It doesn’t take long to realize how much better this film is because of Johansson. She provides the terror-filled vulnerability to make us care about her character early on, then projects the right amount of wonder and determination as Lucy seeks out a famed brain researcher (Morgan Freeman, straight from Transcendence) to assist in her transformation.

Besson gets busy from the outset, as quick cuts and frenetic action are interspersed with scenes of animals in the wild, reinforcing the changing roles we see between hunter and prey. While not exactly subtle, it is stylish, and downright abstract compared to what Besson brings to the film’s second act.

As his characters begin to lament how we’ve all become more concerned with “having than being,” Besson shamelessly parrots Malick’s Tree of Life and Kubrick’s 2001, apparently believing the film to be an equally eloquent statement on mankind’s past, purpose, and future.

It isn’t, but with about 50 percent less pretension, Lucy could have been a fun guilty pleasure.

 

Verdict-2-5-Stars

 





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There Are Better Ways to Spend Your Days

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3 Days to Kill

by Hope Madden

Remember when the first Charlie’s Angels movie came out, and it was much less terrible than we’d all expected – mostly thanks to Bill Murray? So much so that people marveled? Who’s this McG person, I’m sure someone said of the newcomer director. Look at his loose comic style and action movie flair.

Well, five tired films later, not that many people are still buzzing about McG, and his latest, 3 Days to Kill, isn’t likely to change that.

Kevin Costner stars as Ethan Renner, an aging CIA assassin with a bad doctor’s report who wants to spend what little time he has left in Paris with his estranged family. But a mysterious upper level agent (Amber Heard) offers him an experimental drug in exchange for one last assignment.

Little more than another riff on the old stand-by Luc Besson tale (who produced and co-scripted), the film feels worn out before it even gets started.

Costner’s casually humorous presence gives the movie some heart and McG coordinates some car sequences with a panache reminiscent of his earlier work, but otherwise you can expect a mishmash of every theme, scene, lesson and cliché in Besson’s arsenal.

Heard proves again that she doesn’t have the chops to act her way out of one-dimensional roles or the charisma to leave a mark within them. Hailee Steinfeld, playing combustible teen Zooey, does not use this particular project to live up to the promise of her spectacular performance in True Grit. Connie Nielson is wasted as her mother.

The subplot with a family of squatters in Ethan’s apartment is almost offensively clichéd. (Thanks, you noble clan, for teaching Ethan a thing or two about family!)

A blandly derivative middle age fantasy, 3 Days is about on par with everything else Besson, McG, Heard or Costner has done in the last few years.

Maybe we can still hold out hope for Draft Day?

Verdict-2-0-Stars

 





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De Niro’s Not-So-Secret Admirer

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The Family

by Hope Madden

Think of The Family as Luc Besson’s mash note to Robert De Niro.

The writer/director/Frenchman’s fondness for violence and organized crime in film is well documented. He’s written and/or directed dozens of films on the topic, including La Femme Nikita, The Professional, and Transporter. Rather than follow a single assassin or bag man, this time around Besson wades through more familiar cinematic waters with a full-fledged mafia picture.

De Niro plays Giovanni Manzoni, known to his new neighbors in Normandy, France as Fred Blake. He ratted out his wise guy connections back in Brooklyn, and now the Witness Protection Program shuffles his family around France trying to avoid a retaliatory hit. But the “Blakes” don’t make it easy.

Besson’s screenplay is based on a novel by Tonino Benacquista, who’s penned some great, gritty flicks (The Beat that My Heart Skipped, Read My Lips). The Family is a lighter affair, depicting good natured psychopaths who fail to fit in as another set of psychos descend on a sleepy French town.

The film lacks the action choreography Besson’s audience has come to expect. Instead, its charm lies in the director’s joyous fondness for American gangster flicks in general and De Niro’s work in particular. His odes grow evermore obvious, with callbacks to most of the actor’s greats: Taxi Driver, Goodfellas, The Godfather: Part II, even Cape Fear. Besson’s having some fun, and DeNiro seems to enjoy the affection.

De Niro’s chemistry with Michelle Pfeiffer, playing his wife, gives the film a little heart. It’s great to see these two seasoned veterans share the screen, and Pfeiffer’s displaced and disgruntled Italian American is fun to watch.

The storyline for the couple’s two teens is weaker, and Besson seems almost disinterested in the involvement of the WPP agents, including saggy faced sourpuss Agent Stansfield (Tommy Lee Jones).

It’s an action comedy that’s a little short on action. The comedy is pleasant and fun, but never truly funny. What keeps this light but violent romp entertaining is its own sense of joy and its love of Robert De Niro. Which may not be the best reason to make a film, but there are worse.

 

Verdict-3-0-Stars

 

 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=APfgBoaGdf4