Film Review: The Retrieval (2013)

Copyright: Variance Films

There is no doubt about it - this film presents a harrowing experience. It is set in a horrible time, when the American Civil war entered its last, but still very bloody phase. More importantly, it examines a horrible relationship of slave masters and their slave controlled by fear which wasn’t often presented in films.

Its story revolves around two slaves by the names of Will and Marcus, who are commanded by a slave bounty hunter Burrell to enter the area behind Union lines. There, their mission is to somehow lure an old runaway slave, and now a free man called Nate, back to the Confederate-held territory. There, Burrell simply plans to kill him.

This small drama was masterfully directed by Chris Eska using only talented actors, a great script, and the great outdoors. Eska superbly used the natural environment as the stage for this hard tale of the past, creating a road movie where the main engine of travel is the protagonist’s feet. Nate, Will and Marcus are a strange traveling band, and all three have completely different outlooks on life. Marcus is deceiving and treacherous, but fueled by the desire to keep him and Will alive. At first, Nate seems like his complete opposite, but in times of slavery and war, the film tells us, being pure and innocent was a lot harder than anyone could imagine.

Finally, Will is a young teenage, caught in the grips of a life where starvation, fear of death and random killings are just the way things are. His perspective, still somehow filled with hope and questions about the righteousness of this decision, is the focal point of the film. In his young, frightened and inquisitive mind, the true battle for the future of that land is being fought, and Eska definitely managed to transport these difficult ideas to a very clear work of art.

The Retrieval is undoubtedly full of great actors, but two names stand apart. First one is Bill Oberst Jr. who created the character of Burrell so effectively and free of any tropes that he is chilling to watch. Oberst body language, combined with a totally unreadable ideals or agenda, produced a brilliant ending to this fine film. In Burrell, the entire way of Confederate life is seen as a somber, cruel snapshot, just before it gets consumed by its own internal flame.

The other actor is Tishuan Scott, who played Nate. Scott offered an imposing, steadfast man, secure in his way while all other fall or stumble in the dark. But, as the story progresses, so does Nate gradually turn into a deep and flawed human being, which Scott successfully presented.

Watch the Retrieval and witness how it tells a sad and harsh tale about hope and freedom in a very unique and beautiful way.

Film Review: The Monuments Men

Copyright: 20th Century Fox

This wasn't the way to make a war film, or any other kind of film. The Monuments Men just doesn’t know how to connect the audience with its characters or its topic, although George Clooney tries desperately to do this. But, he does it by the old Hollywood playbook, first by introducing a merry band of men that are to form an Allied unit in the last stage of the 2.

World war, tasked with the protection of cultural treasures of Western Europe. Then Clooney, playing the lead character and directing at the same time (when you’re good looking you can do anything), further develops his Dirty Dozen Artists and Museum Curators, giving us the French guy, the Matt Damon guy, the Funny guy and the Cynical guy to somehow bind us to them.

This doesn’t work. There are too many of them, and it doesn’t matter that Bill Murray and John Goodman play them, they aren’t relevant enough to become important. Even worse, Clooney sends some of them to a secret mission in the German occupied France, and naturally this adds to the incoherence of the film.

Throughout the movie there is this sense of following the real history (Monuments Men did really exist in the WW2), and using things that belong in a mediocre war film from the seventies. The soundtrack includes a lot of whistling, everybody is more than enthusiastic to go into the front lines (even those who are fat and/or old) and the Soviets seem a little bit like Nazis 2.0.

Also, I have a feeling that at a three-man team took care of Clooney’s mustache, and that this part of the superstar’s facial hair probably had a nickname like The Champ. Small adventures, some tragic, other heartwarming or funny, continue while the Monuments Men are on the trail of a big art loot that was taken by the retreating Germans.

The film drags on in this fashion. The script wasn’t convincing enough to make me truly care about any of the art that is present in the film. Instead of focusing on one piece, things like the Ghent Altarpiece or Madonna of Bruges get thrown in, and soon the number of art pieces is as big as the cast. Add to this the idea that millions were killed in the same time, and it’s pretty hard to be emotionally invested in paintings, even with a powerful speech on this topic delivered by Clooney and his spectacular mustache in the beginning of the film.

The whole topic was better suited for a documentary film. Instead, the result is a dramatization on a large budget that produces almost no emotional investment. Let’s just hope that Clooney doesn’t shave off his glorious mustache, because in that case, the whole Monuments Men project would be in vain.

Film Review: Hammer of the Gods

 Copyright: Magnet Releasing

To be honest, I didn’t expect much from this film. The trailer I saw a few months back looked like something I saw many times, starting with The 13th Warrior, and right up to the History Channel’s Vikings. But, Hammer of the Gods managed to sunrise me. It’s a low budget movie, it’s all action and adventure, but done in a very smooth manner.

It looks to me that Farren Blackburn, the director, alongside Matthew Read who wrote this movie, did a lot of research on the subject of modern depiction of the Viking culture. They made a simple plot, in which a young Nordic prince named Steinar arrives in England in 871, as a vanguard of a relief army, sent to help his embattled father, king Bagsecg. Steinar finds his ruler and parent on his death bed. Mortally wounded, the king orders his son to find his long banished older brother, and thus, find the new king.

His men urge him to stay in camp and fight for the right of kingship, but Steinar chooses to follow his father’s wishes. He, accompanied by a small band of soldiers, begins his journey into lawless lands full of Saxon enemies and possibly something worse. There, somewhere, his feared brother lives in exile.

Blackburn and Read condensed into the plot a lot of the things that marked the most memorable Viking films and TV shows in recent years. The cinematography, as well as the unchained violence, reminded me of Valhalla Rising. Barren hills, misty meadows and stone caverns were captured in the same bleak, but rich style as the ones that can be seen in the film Nicolas Winding Refn directed.

The other strong suit of the film is its attempt to be as historically accurate. Real historical figures like Ivar the Boneless are present in the film. One of the members of Steinar’s band is an improvised scholar of Nordic belief systems, and often talks about runes, the light of the Moon and other ideas that were relevant to the common man in that part of the world. Also, when Steinar is briefed about the state of his father’s wounds, his brother informs him that his abdomen was hurt, and that they tested the state of him by giving him strongly flavored foods to eat. Later that day, his belly began to smell of garlic, and the other prince declares that there is no chance of recovery if his guts are pierced - talk about dark ages abdominal diagnostics!

Small touches like this one add a lot to the believability of Blackburn’s world of Nordic marauders in England, and shows how seriously they took their job while writing and building the movie. Because of them I was a lot more lenient on the action scenes, which aren’t exactly top notch, but aren’t either silly or unintentionally funny. A lot of characters are standard people we see in action films, especially those that involve Steinar’s band of warriors. Here, we also see a guy that fights with a war hammer, one that fights with two curved blades, and etc.

For me, all action/adventure shortcomings were absolved in the final part of the film. Steinars contact with his brother Hakan for me was very unexpected, and interesting, both narratively and in terms of visual style. The renegade prince is played by Elliot Cowan, and in his fifteen minutes on the screen he brings just the right amount of impressiveness, mystery and oddness. Through him and his interaction with Steinar, who is already in that point well known and understood by the audience, the movie successfully wrapped everything up, adding to it some of the Refn’s weirdness. By it, Blackburn showed that he didn’t imagine this film as just another cheap and forgettable action flick.

Hammer of the Gods is an entertaining film with two things that often may seem irreconcilable: Viking bloodshed and a clever story.