Sanctum (2011)

Director: Alister Grierson
Rating: **

It made marketing sense to sell the movie as ‘James Cameron’s Sanctum’, but it’s really directed by Alister Grierson and written by Andrew Wight (the film is a much-exaggerated version of their so-called true story). Cameron's role as executive producer simply delivers the high-quality 3D that you either loved in Avatar, or that gave you a headache. Sadly, clearer images and a big name do little to save what is essentially uninspired, one-dimensional storytelling.

The film begins with a spectacular five-minute helicopter ride, the primary purpose of which seems to be to show off Cameron's 3D technology and the stunning location, the Esa-ala caves in Papua New Guinea. The rest of the film is shot in dark caves, with water gushing in from all sides. It's reminiscent of sequences from Titanic, except it’s a cyclone and the cave didn’t get punctured by an iceberg.

Absurd plot points abound, though, as the trapped divers (including the boss’ girlfriend, who inexplicably, has no diving experience) must now find a way out. But don't hope for a gritty story of human survival: Sanctum is the rehashed formula of a predictable thriller, where the characters are killed off one by one with little significance.

Frank (Richard Roxburgh) is the leader of the gang; a father who repairs his relationship with his son Josh (Rhys Wakefield) amid the mix of murky waters, mercy killings and a loosely relevant Coleridge poem. Carl (Ioan Gruffudd) is the rich sponsor, and the only man who seems to have any character transformation in the face of a crisis. Struggling to cope with loss and imminent death, he reacts like a madman - although that also fizzles out with a fistfight and, of course, another unnecessary death.

Thanks to the endless sequence of caves, the audience is left just as lost and disoriented as the film’s characters. There are spectacular shots, assisted by 3D, that deserve credit. But far from the imaginary world of Pandora, even the scope for dazzling VFX is restricted in a cramped space.

You hope for the salvation of a climax, but that too plays out predictably. The final audience connect is unintentionally ironic — the gladness of having survived the ordeal.

- Sarit Ray

This review was originally written for gqindia.com (Click here to see...)

Review: 127 Hours

Director: Danny Boyle
Cast: James Franco
Rating: ****

Perhaps the only thing more astonishing than Danny Boyle’s telling of this story is the fact that it’s true. Aron Ralston (James Franco) is an engineer who sets off alone on a hiking trip to Blue John Canyon without informing anyone. But things don’t go as planned when, after an accident, he finds one arm bizarrely trapped under a boulder.

The story is well-known, told in several TV interviews and an autobiography, Between a Rock and a Hard Place. It makes the director’s job harder. There’s no climactic suspense to work towards. No shock to evoke at the moment Ralston decides to hack off his arm to save himself after a five-day ordeal. If anything, there’s an uneasy anticipation throughout of that very moment. Yet, 127 Hours doesn’t just document the pain, the sense of impending death and the desperation of a truly brave man. It also manages to entertain.

Most of the film is shot in one cramped location. Boyle breaks it up with occasional flashbacks and expansive shots of the canyon. For the most part though, it’s just Ralston looking into the camera and talking. It doesn’t sound exciting, but Franco brings to the role an amazing ability to emote using just facial expressions.

Ralston, we learn, is a practical man. After chipping at the rock for a while, he realises it’s causing it to settle even more, so he abandons it. His understanding of inevitable death isn’t dramatic either. He simply records his struggle on a handycam, leaving his parents a memoir. His calculated effort to document things borders on the obsessive. So after five days, when he does manage to sever his arm, after breaking the bone deliberately, and sawing it off using a ‘made in China’ multi-tool, he has the presence of mind to take a picture. If we had been witnessing fiction, we would have blamed the director for going overboard here. But Aron Ralston exists. And he still treks.

It’s the incredible story of an incredible man. And it’s told skilfully. Boyle is far from the mad, crowded world ofSlumdog. Yet he is in his zone, capturing pain, suffering and the fundamental human instinct of survival. You feel Ralston’s loneliness, his desperation, you laugh with him as he displays a sense of humour under ironic circumstances, comparing his urine (that he will have to consume after water runs out) to Sauvignon Blanc. What you don’t possibly feel is his pain; but yet you grimace with him.

And when you walk out, you feel happy to be alive; for once, you don’t mind the crowded streets of Mumbai, even if the people around are strangers. Rarely does a film manage to do that.

- Sarit Ray

This review was originally written for gqindia.com (Click here to see...)

Review: The Green Hornet (2011)

Director: Michel Gondry
Cast: Seth Rogen, Jay Chou, Christopher Waltz, Cameron Diaz
Rating: *

The shortest review of The Green Hornet would simply have to read: rather random. The comic superhero genre in Hollywood is becoming a bit like the ‘90s Bollywood formula film (with better costumes and no Govinda, of course). It sells, so everyone wants to make one. Alas, Michel Gondry (the man who directed the sublime Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, and the hilarious Be Kind Rewind), we discover, is no Christopher Nolan. And I’d be really surprised to see The Green Hornet get a sequel.

You’ve come to expect any movie with Seth Rogen to be funny. What you don’t expect it to be is tedious. The Green Hornet lines up all the set pieces of a classic superhero movie and tries to run them down with a bowling ball. You have a self-serious-superhero-meets-frat-boy in Britt Reid (Rogen); a role reversal between the bumbling front man and the punching-kicking-weapons-building Man Friday/side-kick (Jay Chou as Kato); even a mockery of the homoerotic bromance between the two (“He is my platonic friend,” says Reid). It works till a point. Before it degenerates into CGI sequences and randomly picked fights where a lot of glass is broken and entire labs and archaic press offices (Who has a printing press at the office anymore?) are trashed.

The source material is from a 1930s radio show that was adapted into a TV show that ran for a single season in the ’50s. The highlight of that show was Bruce Lee’s introduction to Western audiences as Kato. He became so popular that it was marketed as The Kato Show in Hong Kong. Gondry’s version gives Kato no such scope. Sure, he dominates every fight sequence, beats the hell out of Reid in a scene and rides a custom V-Rod Harley. But he is short-changed by Reid’s histrionics, long dialogues and general buffoonery. Cameron Diaz as the on-off secretary Lenore Case is nothing more than a cameo. The funniest act is by Christopher Waltz as the villain with a funny Russian name (of course), a bad sense of style and a worse sense of humour. He totes a double-barrel pistol and delivers corny lines with a straight face.

Some things in the film are cool, but are as insignificant as the leaf Kato manages to shape on the cappuccino foam, or the door-mounted gun on the classic superhero car.

Overall, it’s half-baked-slapstick-meets-masked-vigilante-exploits. And while the 3D doesn’t give you a headache, it doesn’t add value either. In the end, you’re left wishing you actually were Rogen in The Green Hornet (with his garage full of cool cars and gadgets). That way, you’d at least have had some fun.

- Sarit Ray

This review was originally written for gqindia.com (Click here to see...)

Review: Tron Legacy (2010)

Director: Joseph Kosinski
Cast: Jeff Bridges, Garrett Hedlund, Olivia Wilde
Rating: **

You can tell the source material is from the Eighties. There’s a young Jeff Bridges (as Kevin Flynn), for starters, looking like an uncanny EA Sports avatar of the real thing. There are identity disks stuck to everyone’s back (understandable, as an outdated program developed before SD cards). And then, there’s an obsession with bikes as the ultimate definition of cool (in the real and virtual world), and a neon-sign gaming arcade wherein lies the portal to the virtual world.

As purely a CGI show, Tron: Legacy is a landmark. The 3D is top notch (though you may want to remove your glasses for a brighter first half hour that’s shot in 2D), the deadly-trail-spewing light cycles and the world of the ‘Grid’ look pretty darn impressive. But that apart, itplays out with the plot predictability of a video game that’s picked up some Hollywood set pieces. Without a parent to watch over him, the young Sam Flynn (Garett Hedlund) grows up to be a rebel (think John Connor in Judgment Day) with a healthy disregard for money and work (Bruce Wayne). That’s until he finds purpose, albeit in a digital world. There he kicks some ass on a light cycle, meets his dad [the older Jeff Bridges as Sam Flynn], falls for a hot programme called Quorra (Olivia Wilde), and eventually escapes the evil programme Clu (also Jeff Bridges) and gets out alive. In that order.

But the problem is perhaps not that Tron: Legacy feels like a video game. The problem is that the two-hour film doesn’t have enough high-adrenaline gaming moments. The tournament-format fight sequence and the light cycle chase are promising, but you wish there was more. The ‘vintage’ space cycle begging for another action sequence is wasted, and the once Ducati-riding cool programmer Sam Flynn has lapsed into inaction. You almost feel sad for the man who doesn’t know Wi-Fi. Tron, the character after whom the movie is named, has no role to play, and the weird digital-world nightclub owner Zuse (Michael Sheen) belongs in Total Recall.

The 1982 Tron was supposedly ahead of its times in terms of CGI, but wasn’t much of a film. The belated legacy might go down the same path—a cult favourite perhaps that’ll sell merchandise, and eventually get made into a game.

For a convincing parallel universe of the imagination, Avatar is cooler. And that’s saying something.

- Sarit Ray

This review was originally written for gqindia.com (Click here to see...)

Review: Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part 1

Director: David Yates
Rating: ***

How do we keep it going? Split it in two. The idea that Rowling’s Deathly Hallows is such a dense story, only two films can do justice to it works as a marketing strategy. As a standalone film, I’m not so sure.

It has the sharp, impactful start you’ve come to expect of theHarry Potter franchise, so get there in time, guys. If you miss the first 10 minutes, you might as well go home and catch the next show. The pace slackens as the trio of Harry, Ron and Hermione go on their Lord-Of-The-Rings-ish must-destroy-horcrux mission. And then, it just ends, without the salvation of a climax.

This is a movie for fans — you see it because you’ve seen the other six, you’ve read (and re-read last week) the book, and you’ve been on YouTube checking out the trailer a month ago. For those uninitiated to the world of spells, Voldemort, Death Eaters and romantic angles, you might at least want to read up on Wikipedia.

This is no longer children’s fiction. A meeting of the Death Eaters sees Voldemort use the killing curse on a Hogwarts teacher and feed her to Nagini. The familiar corridors of Hogwarts and the assuring presence of Dumbledore are gone, and the trio are out in the real world, traversing spectacular locations and CGI-created scenery. These are dark times, and the mood is literally maintained with dark settings; even the mornings are consistently smoggy. A storytelling session of the legend of the Deathly Hallows allows for a brilliant five minutes of animation.

But this movie is as much about magic as it is about raging teenage hormones. We’re not just talking sedate kisses between Harry and Ginny. The now-gorgeous Emma Watson makes for a stunning Hermione, and neither Harry, Ron, nor director David Yates can ignore that. There’s overt chemistry between Harry and Hermione, and that makes Ron jealous. That along with the classic tired-of-being-the-sidekick syndrome makes him desert the duo temporarily. His apparition also shows the two making out. It’s not real, says Harry, hardcore Potter fans might agree, but we’re not complaining. Hermione’s magically expanding bag also allows her to pack by far the best wardrobe — Burberry trenches included.

It’s the second horcrux down at the end, and Voldemort has just acquired something powerful. We’re seeking the same answer we sought at the end of Half Blood Prince—how does it end? For me, this one was an incomplete film. But does it work as a two-and-a-half-hour lead up to a climax? Hell yes.

- Sarit Ray

This review was originally written for gqindia.com (Click here to see...)

Review: Resident Evil: Afterlife (2010)

Director: Paul WS Anderson
Cast: Milla Jovovich, Ali Larter
Rating: **

In a game, you don’t ask questions. Just pick up your weapon and start shooting any goddamn thing that looks bad. The Resident Evil film franchise, now in its fourth installment with Afterlife, clearly borrows its logic (or the lack of it) from its game equivalent. There’s all the blood and gore you expect, state-of-the-art graphics, and slow-mo fight sequences.

For once, here’s a movie you’re glad is in 3D, even if the pictures are still darker than ideal and the heavy fibre glasses (better than the paper ones though) are heavy as hell.

High points: Milla Jovovich (as Project Alice) and her new zombie-slaying partner, Ali Larter (as Claire Redfield). Jovovich has a standard menacing expression throughout, apt perhaps for the last hero in a post-apocalyptic world. Larter has the expressions of a plastic doll. But who cares, when you can kick butt looking as hot as she does? Leather-wearing, gun and sword wielding, the two of them could have had not one word to say, and still been enough reason (perhaps the only reason) to watch the movie.

Predictably, there’s not much effort at storytelling. Alice seeks revenge against Umbrella Corporation and Albert Wesker (yeah, that dude in the dark glasses) who are responsible for the deadly T-Cell experiment that made zombies and led to the present apocalypse. But early in the film, Alice loses her superpowers and becomes human again. The only difference is that there’s just one Jovovich for the rest of the film and not the dozen who appear in the first fight sequence. She can still walk away unscathed from a plane bursting into flames (leather suit, hair and make-up intact), jump off buildings and shoot through a field full of killer zombies.

If you’re asking why such films are made, you’re asking the wrong question. Sit back, enjoy the effects, enjoy the fact that Jovovich and Larter make guns sexier than Schwarzenegger ever could. Think of it as a video game and you might just like it. If you still don’t like it, go play Farmville instead.

- Sarit Ray