The Drop

The film industry is certainly in love with crime...uh, crime movies that is, with far too many gritty scripts launching themselves at the genre from all angles, yet never really differentiating themselves from the last. So how about the latest instalment, Michaël R. Roskam's The Drop? With the late James Gandolfini in a lead role, displaying his criminal-acting prowess for the last time, I was certainly keen to find out.

Bob Saginowski (Tom Hardy) works as a bartender in his cousin Marv's (James Gandolfini) bar. Once owned by Marv, but purchased by Chechen criminals, the bar operates as a front for money-laundering, having packages dropped off regularly. Whilst Bob and Marv try to stay out of the underhand business, the bar proves to be trouble for the cousins, beginning with an armed robbery that leaves the pair in debt to their Chechen employers.

Meanwhile, whilst walking home one evening, Bob finds an injured pit-bull abandoned in a bin and is helped by Nadia (Noomi Rapace), who owns the house, to nurse it back to health. Bob agrees to take the dog and names it Rocco, which is fine, until the dogs owner comes looking for Bob.

I have to admit, I became rapidly disinterested with this rather simple, yet still somewhat far-fetched plot. It's not like The Drop is particularly similar to most crime films, but it doesn't really bring much new to the genre either. There were some funny moments here and there, but generally I found that it just progressed a bit too slowly for my liking.

Tom Hardy continues to prove that he's an adept and talented actor, especially with his previous film Locke, and he's certainly great here too, albeit with a sometimes questionable Brooklyn accent. James Gandolfini also gives a strong final performance, though I found it difficult to imagine him as anybody other than Tony Soprano. Rapace wasn't bad as Nadia, though she could have probably been developed more as a character, and other than that, almost all of the supporting roles play idiots.

Continuing the trend of dark, gritty crime films, The Drop has a dull colour pallet, that envisages Brooklyn as one of the most dreary places on earth. The interesting use of camera angles and tracking shots in some of the montage sequences were refreshing, but generally The Drop doesn't have anything new to offer in the image department.

With strong performances from Hardy and Gandolfini, and some visually compelling sequences, The Drop is far from a bad film. There are plenty of interesting plot elements that differentiate it from the average crime feature, but its slow pace failed to keep me particularly interested.

The Incredible Burt Wonderstone

I'm the kind of guy who loves magic. I can really buy into the illusion (thank you to Gob Bluth for teaching me that), so I was expecting to go into this movie and be blown away with a magical comedy. Don't be fooled. Just because you see Steve Carrell on the poster, don't think, he's funny, I'll go see that. Really think about it, is there something else better showing? Maybe you'd like that more.

This movie is, for the most part, largely unfunny. If it had of been a drama about an older Vegas magician who had to compete with the younger generation of magicians and was forced to return to his roots to find his passion for his craft again, I would definitely go see that. Instead we get a comedic version of just that.

Burt Wonderstone (Steve Carrell) is a 40 year old magician, who has been performing in Vegas for the last decade with his partner Anton Marvelton (Steve Buscemi). This pair is an obvious reference to the stage magicians Siegfried and Roy (there are multiple references to them throughout the film). Wonderstone's passion for magic has dwindled and he is constantly fighting with Anton when they are offstage. The only thing he uses his act for is sleeping with impressionable young women, rather than entertaining people.

One afternoon, Burt and Anton come across street magician Steve Gray (Jim Carrey), as he films an episode of his show Brain Rapist. This is undoubtably a nod to illusionist Criss Angel. Upon seeing this new act, Burt's boss, Doug (James Gandolfini) gets Burt and Anton to come up with a similar sort of life threatening stunt. Anton comes up with the idea of being suspended in plexiglass box for a week.

This act ultimately fails and the two go their separate ways. Burt ends up getting a job entertaining seniors at a retirement village, where he connects with retired magician Rance Holloway (Alan Arkin). Holloway rekindles Burt's love for magic, which is perfect timing because Doug is opening a new hotel and casino, where he is auditioning magicians for the headlining act. Cue predictability.

Steve Carrell has created a very unlikeable character. I wasn't sure if he was supposed to become likeable at the end, but I didn't find him so. I wish I could say more about Steve Buscemi, but he doesn't have a lot of time for character development.

The saving grace of this film are performances by Jim Carrey and Alan Arkin. It was very funny to see Carrey channel the new type of magician that has come about in the last decade. Alan Arkin is also a great comedian, but an actor of his calibre shouldn't be drawn into the likes of this film.

Wonderstone's love interest is wannabe magician Jane (Olivia Wilde). I think I would have found their relationship more believable if it had remained platonic. The chemistry between the two wasn't really working even though Wilde is an actress of incredible range. Likewise, the relationship between Burt and Holloway was lacking, although there was great potential given the two actor's track record with each other (Little Miss Sunshine). One cameo that did make me smile was Jay Mohr as a magician struggling to get shows.

Verdict: Ultimately this comedy failed because of a dodgy plot and the fact that it tried to walk a line between a family comedy and trying to be edgy.

Zero Dark Thirty

First off, this is not a propaganda movie for the US, glorifying their operation to kill Osama bin Laden. It does tell the story, but it also shows the pain felt by both sides and that it wasn't just some clean in and out operation.

The story picks up two years after 9/11, with a young CIA operative (Jessica Chastain) is witnessing her first interrogation of a detainee at the hands of her new colleague Dan (Jason Clarke). Her character, Maya, has just been transferred to the US embassy in Pakistan, tasked with finding information about top al-Qaeda personnel. The detainee that they are interrogating has links to Saudi terrorists. They soon trick him into divulging information about Abu Ahmed, an old acquaintance, who, through information they can piece together from other detainees, is the courier between bin Laden and Abu Farraj al-Libbi, a ranking officer within al-Qaeda.

Many years later, Maya is able to set up a meet with the detained Abu Farraj, only to find that he is hiding the existence of Ahmed, which Maya interprets as Ahmed being a person of extreme interest. Her senior officer at the embassy (Kyle Chandler), believes Maya should focusing on bringing in known terrorists and be trying to find out where the next global attack will be, so that they can protect the homeland.

Over the next couple of years a lot of things happen in Maya's life. She survives a bombing at the Islamabad Marriott Hotel, her friend Dan is reassigned to Washington and her friend and co-worker Jessica is killed in a botched attempt to try and bring in one of bin Laden's inner circle that she had been spearheading. Whilst trying to find any information on Abu Ahmed, Maya comes across an interview with a detainee who says that he personally buried the man they know as Ahmed, his real name being Habib Sayeed, all the way back in 2001. This seems to have defeated Maya, until a junior officer in her office finds information from the Moroccan intelligence community saying that that man that was buried was actually the brother of the courier. His name is Ibrihim Sayeed and they are able to trace his phone number with the help of Dan. Before Maya can go anywhere with this information, she is attacked coming out of her home by insurgents and subsequently sent back to Washington.

Once they find Sayeed, the operatives are able to trace him to a compound in Abbotabad in Pakistan. Through continued surveillance, Maya soon believes that bin Laden himself is residing within the compound. This belief is not shared by her seniors, who deliberate on the risk of sending in a team to take out the occupants. The CIA chief (James Gandolfini) soon decides that sending in a team to the compound would be beneficial, as whoever this mystery man is, it would be a good idea to take him out.

So Maya is sent to Afghanistan, where she is to oversee the mission to the compound. A SEAL team is put together and with the latest in stealth helicopter technology, they fly into Abbotabad to assault the compound. One of the helicopters loses power and crash lands within the walls of the compound. The team goes in and obliterates the three men who are in there, including Osama bin Laden, whose body they take with them. They also take any hard drives and intel that they can get their hands on. Once they are back at base, the team is welcomed with open arms by everyone, whilst Maya is left to contemplate what she is to do with her life now that her goal that she has been working on for a decade is completed.

Katheryn Bigelow has put together a movie that pulls no punches. Whilst it's hard to tell what actually happened in the events leading up to the operation at the end of the movie, most of the events revolve around real bombings and the detaining of real life individuals. The casting of the movie is amazing.  None of the actors have huge star power, so they are believable in the roles that they play. Jessica Chastain is brilliant as Maya and you can really see that following through with this mission means everything to her. Jennifer Ehle is great as Maya's friend Jessica who really wants to show her friend that she wants to do her best on this mission. Mark Strong plays Maya's boss in Washington and really wants to believe that bin Laden is in Pakistan.

I found the torture scenes at the beginning to be confronting, but that is how matters were handled and it is a brutal and honest truth. The water-boarding scenes, in particular, were pretty full on. The mission at the end is shown to be a far from clean mission, resulting in the loss of a state of the art helicopter and civilian casualties that should have been avoided.

The film opens with a black screen where we hear the various radio chatter that happen on 9/11, including one iconic 911 call from one of the towers. The film also has news footage from various attacks throughout the decade, as well as press conferences from both George W. Bush and Barack Obama. These give insight into the world that was happening around the events of the film.

Verdict: Spanning almost a decade, this film shows that the events leading up to the death of Osama bin Laden were not as easy as some might of thought. Although I was not a huge fan of The Hurt Locker, I think Katheryn Bigelow has done a much better job this time around.