The Girl on the Train

Tate Taylor’s The Girl on the Train, based on Paula Hawkin’s best selling novel of the same name, has been one of the most talked about and hyped releases of the year. With an all-star cast lead by Emily Blunt, it certainly has a lot to live up to.

Divorcee Rachel Watson (Emily Blunt) is an alcoholic, she has been for a long time, with alcohol-induced blackouts littering memories of her marriage. It all fell apart for Rachel when she caught her husband Tom (Justin Theroux) cheating on her with their estate agent Anna Boyd (Rebecca Ferguson). Every day, Rachel catches the train past her old neighbourhood, glancing into her old house and the surroundings. She becomes fixated on Tom’s neighbours, Scott (Luke Evans) and Megan Hipwell (Hayley Bennett), the archetypal relationship that Rachel desires. After a series of far from lucid moments, Rachel wakes up injured in her apartment. She can’t remember anything from the night before and finds out that Megan is missing.

It’s taken me nearly a week to get my notes together after watching this mess of a film. There was a tremendous amount of hype for The Girl on the Train leading up to release, with many heralding it as another potential Gone Girl, and the comparisons to that are important because technically and thematically it’s obvious that Taylor draws inspiration from Fincher’s film (or rips it off as some may view it). Full disclosure, I wasn’t as enamoured with Gone Girl as many others were, but to compare these two is just insulting.

The first issue comes with the mystery. Judging from the marketing, The Girl on the Train promised to be a dark and gritty mix of procedural crime and psychological thriller. What we get is barely a flash of the crime element until the denouement when all the puzzle pieces are revealed at once, well-and-truly together and not particularly intriguing, engaging or even intelligent. The rest of the film is composed of horrendous editing, a very ugly use of low-framerate photography and a thinly laid psychological pastiche that does very little to enchant the audience.

People are praising Emily Blunt’s performance as the one saving grace this film has, but I can’t even agree with that. She spends most of her time pretending to be intoxicated and stumbling around helplessly in a role that certainly might trump the other performances on-show but is still not worthy of the kudos that it has received. There’s no real downfall for Rachel because she’s already spun-out of control by the time we meet her. The material is just so poor that even such an able cast can’t dredge a solid character out of Erin Cressida Wilson’s script.

Allison Janney's character is probably the only half-enjoyable one, solely because she goes around somehow knowing everything about everyone and being a hilariously smug detective. It’s as annoying as it sounds but hey, at least she’s not sulking around with all the other depressed, dopey characters, whose sole-interactions with the world seem to be abusing each other and engaging in ridiculous love triangles. There’s one particularly absurd scene towards the end that just about sums up The Girl on the Train, with the audience's reaction a mix of 10% genuine shock, 80% belittling laughter, and 10% heading for the exit.

The Girl on the Train is a poorly acted, poorly written, frustrating, tedious, ugly lump of a film, which squanders all its energy on its meandering plot. I couldn’t honestly recommend that anybody spend money on this total misfire, but given the book’s performance, I know that they will.

Sicario

Denis Villeneuve has made some great thrillers over the years, most notably Enemy and Prisoners in recent times, and before he gets started on Blade Runner II, he's going down that same road again with the crime-thriller Sicario, starring Emily Blunt, Josh Brolin and Benicio Del Toro.

The widespread influence of the drug trade is seeping over the Mexican border into the United States. FBI Agent Kate Macer (Emily Blunt) is part of a raid that makes a gruesome discovery in a house linked to the Cartel. Shortly afterwards, she's invited to join an inter-agency task-force to track down a drug lord linked to the various incidents. The force is led by Matt (Josh Brolin) and assisted by mysterious operative Alejandro (Benicio Del Toro). Although soon it becomes clear to Kate that the task force is entering murky ethical and legal waters as it strays across the border into Mexico, and she is left with a moral dilemma. 

Sicario opens with a brutal discovery which sets the tone for a dark gritty film. This is a story that can be at times confusing to follow, but which you're happy enough for Villeneuve to take you along with. It pulls no punches when it comes to confronting images of violent areas on the Mexican border (although this is more a result of our desensitized viewing habits) and actually manages to avoid the Hoo-rah 'Merica tone you might expect from the film. Sicario occasionally offers some sort of visual representation of good and evil, but what we really get is a dirty concoction of different shades of gray. Some of the characters arrogantly excuse their actions as a form of justice, but it's just an illusion. It's a film that lathers itself in moral and emotional ambivalence, which makes for some great plot development and suspense but at time it feels like it lacks direction.

This is another in a line of films similar to Zero Dark Thirty which puts a female lead into a war-like situation. The common link between these films is that the women are portrayed as having a hard outer shell which covers an emotionally-vulnerable interior. It's important to note that many other good war-films do the same for their male leads, however in films like Sicario and Zero Dark Thirty, the male counter-parts don't show any signs of fragility. Read into this what you will, the effect on the audience is the same; we see her as somebody who shouldn't be in that situation. It would be nice to see a more balanced approach to character development in these situations, simply because it can appear misogynistic, whether that was the intention or not.

Unsurprisingly with Roger Deakins at the helm, Sicario's imagery is absolutely stunning. The sweeping landscape shots give the impression of a living breathing landscape, despite being set on the dusty border of Mexico. The last act involves thermal cameras and night vision, which are handled surprisingly well, although the sequence itself does play out like a scene  out of Call of Duty. The sound design is also extremely well-developed. Low booming tones frequently vibrate through the soundscape, an audio-motif that builds upon the film's bleak identity. The overall presentation of Sicario is relentless, repulsive and somehow beautiful.

It's interesting how a couple of years ago, before Edge of Tomorrow or even possibly Looper, you couldn't have imagined Emily Blunt in this sort of role, and whilst I still hold some reservations about her character, it's difficult to find any flaws in her performance. Josh Brolin is more difficult to judge. I reviewed him last week in Everest and in both instances his character was "that guy played by Josh Brolin". He's an exceptionally good actor but for me it's difficult to tell many of his roles apart. Del Toro's Alejandro on the other hand, is almost as enigmatic as the film itself. Whilst you can piece together his story by the end, he's still a character clouded in mystery. I'd like to think that this was an artistic decision, but sadly I know it's because Lionsgate already have plans for a sequel.

The ambivalent emotional direction of Sicario leaves you both strangely satisfied, and at the same time unsure about how to feel towards the events, the characters or the movie itself. It's a gritty, gripping, beautifully presented but confusing story that is perhaps not as radical or unique as it could have been.

Into The Woods

Stephen Sondheim's award-winning Broadway musical seems like it would be perfect for a big screen adaptation. The scope of the stage production with it's big sets, many characters and magical elements would make a stage feel packed, like there was too much action going. But somehow, on the screen this story seems like it's spread a little too thin.

The story combines all of the most famous fairy tales into one big adventure and gives origin to some of the more popular ones. A childless baker (James Corden) and his wife (Emily Blunt) want to have a family, but are unable to do so due to a curse laid upon the house by the witch (Meryl Streep), who lives next door. She is willing to reverse the curse if they retrieve four items for her; a milky white cow, a blood red cape, a golden slipper and some blonde hair. These of course are all items belong to Jack (Daniel Huddlestone), Little Red Riding Hood (Lilla Crawford), Cinderella (Anna Kendrick) and Rapunzel (MacKenzie Mauzy).

With this being a musical, there is more singing than actual dialogue. However, most of these songs are mostly forgettable besides from a couple. The Wolf (played by Johnny Depp) sings an incredibly predatory song to Little Red Riding Hood, which implies that he wishes to do something entirely than eating her. The Charming princes (Chris Pine and Billy Magnusson) have a rather humourous song where they try to one-up each other in the pain that they feel by not having their respective fairytale romances. Chris Pine has another fun song where he seduces Emily Blunt. Sadly, three songs do not make up for the number of songs that I don't even remember.

The majority of the leads give solid performances. James Corden's singing experience carries him along nicely and Emily Blunt is a partner in their duets. Anna Kendrick also brings her experience from the Pitch Perfect movies. Both Daniel Huddlestone and Lilla Crawford are great young actors who will go places. Chris Pine offers some much needed comic relief. It is with Meryl Streep that I have the most problems. Her character isn't seen too much (thankfully) and when she is on the screen, she tries to steal the scenes from the other actors, all who are much more capable than her.

Verdict: While it has it's charms, Into The Woods proves to be forgettable in the department it will rely most heavily upon: it's music.

Edge of Tomorrow

It seems to me that this is a pretty equal opportunity Tom Cruise movie. By that I mean that rather than having an overabundance of DON'T YOU FORGET THIS IS A TOM CRUISE MOVIE, we get a movie where we get to see some actual acting from good actors and a hint of what Tom Cruise can be capable of when he wants to try.

The sci-fi concepts in the movie aren't shoved down your throat from the get go either. Instead the concepts are introduced gradually. First the alien invasion is presented to us in the form of news reports, which at the same time introduces the main character William Cage (Tom Cruise). He is a PR officer for the United Defence Force and gets conned by General Brigham (Brendan Gleeson) to be a frontline troop in an invasion that directly mirrors the D-Day landings that happened 70 years ago.

The origin of the aliens, or mimics, is never revealed. Nor is the type of being which they are. This is a detail that is irrelevant, however. All we need to know is what they look like and that they are bad news. They tear through soldiers like tissue paper, but they can be killed, as Cage finds out soon enough. Only the one he kills, ends up killing him too.

It's at this point that Cage wakes up the day before the invasion. In killing a particular type of mimic, he now has the ability to reset the day after dying. He does this time after time until meeting Sergeant Rita Vrataski (Emily Blunt), a war hero who once killed a thousand mimics. It soon turns out that she too once had the ability to reset the day. Once Cage awakes another time, he sets out to find Rita, who can help him find a way to stop the mimics.

In recent years there seems to be a push to turn Emily Blunt into some kind of sci-fi star. She played a telekinetic in Looper and had a part in the trippy sci-fi The Adjustment Bureau. However, Blunt has some real acting talent and is much better suited for drama films. I would really recommend everyone checks out The Five Year Engagement. Whilst it's a long film, she really showcases how good she can be in a film.

There are two fantastic cameos from Bill Paxton (Aliens), as a drill sergeant, and Noah Taylor (The Life Aquatic) as the seemingly crackpot scientist.

Verdict: A decent sci-fi flick that melds Groundhog Day, Starship Troopers and the D-Day landings.