Film of the Week: The Raid: Redemption

There's a lot of beauty to be found in simplicity. As fun as it is to watch a filmmaker approach a complicated concept or idea and pull it off, it can be equally entertaining to watch a filmmaker approach a simple premise and absolutely knock it out of the park, using the simplicity to really hone the craft into something special. The Raid: Redemption, Gareth Evans's 2012 genre-redefining action film, is a perfect example of this philosophy. It's premise, a botched raid leads to a group of cops trapped in an apartment complex full of murderous criminals, is on the paper fairly simple, it's characters often boiled down to basic traits and motivations, and, save for a compelling emotional hook, it's story hums along with a quiet, unsurprising efficiency. But, we're not here for the story beats, we're here for the bone-breaking, beautifully choreographed action and impressive feats of tension of which very few films since have managed to match. 

From it's opening moments, The Raid feels lived in, delightfully grimy and worn-down in it's establishing moments of the complex that makes up nearly the entirety of the film's runtime. Cracks in the unpainted walls, dried blood still on the concrete, and visible signs of decay litter every scene, and even the streets outside are barren and abandoned, giving the film a near-dystopian quality. It truly feels like the raid team, a collection of supposedly elite police officers, are walking into completely hostile territory, and the brief moments of characterization we get with the team, like the quiet, dedicated Rama (Iko Uwais) to the fiery Bowo (Tegar Satrya) to the ambitious, sleazy Wahyu, call to mind the introduction of the Colonial Marines in Aliens. In their simple interactions, from the efficient elimination of a guard or Rama's heated debate with Bowo over what to do with a civilian trying to get back to his wife, we're given enough of an idea of the personalities and dynamics of the roster that the near-immediate collapse of the plan hits with a suitable amount of impact. 

And what an impact it is. Famously talked about as the very best of modern action fare, The Raid's action scenes are brutal and chaotic, brawls and shootouts with real impact where the hits hurt and every victory feels agonizingly earned. Evans, alongside excellent work from choreographers like Uwais, films these with a real weight behind them. Rooms are destroyed, wounds are inflicted and play major roles in fights, and the knock-down, drag-out fights often end with everyone involved winded and limping away. It's a film that, every time I revisit, I tend to come away from with a new favorite fight scene. While the initial ambush, an overwhelming fighting retreat that sees our protagonists literally tearing apart the rooms of the complex to escape a seemingly endless horde, is brilliant in it's flow, the duel between Jaka (Joe Taslim) and Mad Dog (Yayan Ruhian, playing one of the all time great movie henchmen) always stands out, a vicious struggle that tells a story entirely in it's physicality as Mad Dog, an adrenaline junkie sadist, breaks down the defiant, stoic Jaka, culminating in a sad, futile struggle against a neck snap that leaves you feeling like the adrenaline got sucked from your body. 

While the action is exceptional, this would be a worse film overall should the rest of the film just feel like a loading screen between them, and it's the quieter moments that really sell those set-pieces. From the instant the initial ambush is over, we find our heroes in a much scrappier position, forced to hide and flee from the overwhelming numbers of the enemy. In one stellar moment, Rama and Bowo hide in the crawl space of the aforementioned civilians wall. Evans plays up the claustrophobia for all it's wall, practically shoving the camera into the wall as we see Rama strain himself, groaning in pain, just to turn his body a few inches. The tension escalates again and again, from Bowo fighting the pain of a missing ear to Rama having to gently wipe blood from a machete as it pierces the wall and slashes his cheek. There's a perpetual undercurrent of violence and danger in these quieter moments, that pursuers could burst in at any moment and force a losing fight, and when they do, it's often cathartic and punishing for everyone involved. 

Even the film's emotional beats, which the late, great Roger Ebert criticized as mindless and cheap as a great example of how even our best can miss from time to time, work in conveying exactly how much information is needed for us to care. What exactly drove crime lieutenant Andi (Donny Alamsyah) away from his family and into a life of crime, forcing his brother Rama to try and rescue him from the complex? It doesn't really matter, because all we need is that connection, played by Iwais, tragically squandered by Hollywood again and again, and Alamsyah in a mixture of bitterness and quiet affection. The connection feels real and sad, two men fighting over whether or not they can reconnect after finding themselves at a crossroad, and the emotional catharsis of them reuniting in a two on one brawl against Mad Dog makes for an incredibly effective, suitably gnarly climax. 

It's honestly difficult to find ways to praise The Raid that don't just feel like retreading old ground. It is, after all, a film that's influence can be found on everything from Daredevil to John Wick to Mission Impossible, effectively turning the page on the way a lot of modern action cinema presents itself. But, even with all that, it still stands head and shoulders above it's imitators as a triumph of the genre. It's a nonstop rush, scrappy and nasty but with an undeniable heart, and now with a glorious 4K remaster, you have no excuse to check it out if you somehow haven't. 

Film of the Week: Miami Vice

Miami Vice, Michael Mann's 2006 adaptation of the TV series of the same name of which he was also a major creative figure, opens and closes abruptly. In the film's opening minutes, we see our duo of Sonny Crockett (Colin Farrell) and Ricardo "Rico" Tubbs (Jamie Foxx) already on assignment, in the midst of an undercover sting on a high-profile pimp, while the film's closing is Crockett en-route to the hospital, checking on a member of the team (and Tubbs's wife) as she awakens from a coma, much of the film's major conflicts seemingly unresolved. It's somewhat jarring, but rather than feeling as though the story is to a degree incomplete, it almost feels, fittingly, episodic. Rather than a sweeping, loud shoot-em-up, the film instead feels strangely intimate, a peek into the lives of our troubled heroes for just a little while. It's that emphasis on the human connection that helps Miami Vice, a reevaluated cult classic of 2000s cinema, stand out so beautifully.

While the focus of this review will largely be on the film's strangely human elements, it is worth mentioning that as an action-thriller police procedural, Miami Vice absolutely whips. Michael Mann, aided by Collateral, shoots the film in a unique mix of digital cinematography and close-up, shaky shots, giving it an often dreamlike energy as we seemingly exist as a third party observer to the action. The story, an undercover mission featuring the two detectives enrolled in an elaborate international conspiracy, is suitably tense, with a particular highlight being Crockett and Tubbs's sit-down with a cartel intelligence officer. What is on paper a basic conversation feels suitably tense as Mann highlights the sheer number of criminals surrounding the duo, it's escalation naturally fitting while it's resolution, Crockett pulling a grenade and channeling his best loose cannon, is effectively thrilling. Mann knows how to shoot a set-piece, and the film gives him ample opportunity, from car chases to stand-offs to warehouse raids, in his classic coldly clinical style.The final shootout in particular is vicious and to-the-point. There's no surprise ambushes, no last words, and no last-chance second winds. If you're hit, you're dead, and we regularly watch as both cartel goons and cops are ripped to shreds without mercy or exception.

Where the film truly sings is in it's quiet moments. Miami Vice is often fascinated by the personal lives and mindsets of it's subjects, and the humanity with which Mann treats them makes the film as a whole feel tenser and nastier when violence rears it's head. The film's establishing moment is truly when criminal informant Alonzo Stevens (John Hawkes) discovers that his wife, a hostage of the cartel taken to force him to give up information, has been killed. The depiction of the wife's death, her body sprawled in the background as a white supremacist hitman roots through her fridge, is chilling, and Hawkes absolutely kills what is ultimately a very minor role, and we see him go through a whirlwind of terror, desperation, and cold desperation in a matter of minutes as Stevens realizes she's gone before taking his own life. It's a sobering moment that makes the film's stakes feel very real.

These stakes hang over Crockett and Tubbs in every moment, especially as their own personal lives become dangerously intertwined. The portrayal of these personal lives do somewhat fall into a pitfall of Mann's, his tendency to make women accessory to his protagonists, but the quiet moments, like Tubbs taking a shower with his wife, are strangely moving. There's a feeling of quiet familiarity to it, of people who've known each other for so long that words just aren't needed to convey it, and it goes a long way to making these feel like real, established relationships. A particularly beautiful moment is Crockett taking Isabella (Gong Li), financial adviser and wife to cartel head Arcángel de Jesús Montoya (Luis Tosar), dancing, a first step in an apparent plan to earn her trust that rapidly evolves into something much more real. Crockett and Isabella talk about their lives and relationship with the world of crime, but when they're on the floor, no words are spoken, their bodies moving in motion with a mixture of mambo and, surprisingly. The chemistry between Li and Farrell is simmering, quietly erotic and seemingly evolving before the audiences eyes, and you genuinely come away feeling the two's connection, even as it explodes into tragedy.

This fascination with humanity even extends to Montoya, the film's ultimate villain. Rather than a generic, menacing cartel bad guy, Tosar injects a strangely affable nature to Montoya, who speaks calmly and plainly in his various interactions. The one peek we get into his relationship with Isabella, a calm discussion about her evaluation of Crockett and Tubbs, is not a fight or a husband exerting authority, but a simple, trusting conversation. Rather than defang the villain, it makes him intriguing and often unnervingly reasonable. Montoya is no ruthless gangster, he's a businessman willing to tolerate our heroes so long as they don't affect the bottom line, and it's the moment he, manipulated by the embittered intelligence officer with eyes for Isabella, betrays this idea that you instantly feel the noose tighten. 

I watched Miami Vice largely just to chip in on the inexplicable Twitter discourse surrounding it, and I'm delighted to confirm that it's supremely my shit. A beautiful, emotionally-driven action movie exactly within the wheelhouse of it's auteur director, full of thrills and ending on a perfect melancholy note. I guess you could say I'm a fiend for this type of stuff. 

Film of the Week: Secret Honor

 

The first thing you see in Secret Honor, Robert Altman's adaptation of Donald Freed and Arnold Stone's play of the same name, is the reassurance that the events depicted are entirely fictional, and that the Richard Nixon (Phillip Baker Hall) we see is simply a character rather than a true depiction of the former president. It makes sense, of course, given that the disgraced former president was very much still alive at the time, but it plays well with the film's general idea of the truth and how we communicate it even when we're by ourselves. Can someone as monstrous as Nixon, one of the most cynical and deluded men to ever hold the office, be honest with himself as he debates the severity of his actions and what got him to that point? Should he even attempt to? Secret Honor is a fascinating one man show, an electrifying portrayal of a man fighting against his own and conscience as he rages at a world that he feels didn't give him what he deserved. 

Adapting a source material as low-key as this, a one man show set entirely in a different room, is a fascinating challenge, one that Altman, a director whose work I'm ashamed to admit I'm not massively familiar with, handles very effectively. Nixon's office, where he records his memoirs amidst other rambling, mundane plans such as buying a sympathy gift of his gardener's wife, is shot to feel claustrophobic, a gilded cage for the man who once was able to kill thousands with a phone call. In one sequence, Nixon cowers by his security monitor, white-knuckling a revolver as he tries to get his cameras to work, convinced would-be assassins are right around the corner.  As Nixon paces across the office, we truly feel every small detail of it and it's significance to him, from his beloved mother's piano to the revolver sitting on his desk to the looming, seemingly judging portraits of past presidents on the walls, and by the end we feel just as trapped as he does. 

Nixon himself makes for a fascinating character, a toxic mix of self-loathing, righteous cruelty, and lust for power. Twitchy, bitter, and boiling with barely hidden resentment, Hall makes someone so odious into someone almost pitiful, as more and more layers of the former Commander-in-Chief are peeled away. His little tics betray his true psyche, from his tendency to let slurs fly as he gets more agitated in describing the American people turning on him to him interrupting a dialogue about JFK to talk about his brother, who he insists was the true favorite of his family. His memoir is less an organized biography and more of an extended airing of grievances, both real and imagined, and he often swings wildly between raging at his "superiors" and the dregs of society. JFK, his own mother, the mysterious "Committee of 100", even everyday American citizens, all are complicit in the betrayal of Nixon. It's this violent refusal to accept the culpability in his own actions that drives much of Secret Honor, even as it swings from mundane to sinister. 

The conspiracy element, an often underdiscussed element in conversations around Nixon's downfall, adds to his paranoia, as he rambles about the "Committee of 100", a collection of influential men who effectively groomed Nixon for power before he had even started his run for Congress. It is, effectively, a deal with the devil, with the power-hungry Nixon getting everything he thought he wanted in return for advancing the various pet projects of the Committee. The film, wisely, keeps Nixon's interactions with this Committee, and whether they even really exist to the level he claims they do, largely ambiguous. Perhaps Nixon is correct and that everything, from his bombing of Cambodia to his disgrace and resignation over Watergate, was the work of the Committee, or perhaps they're just another enemy, another thing in his life that used and discarded him when he wasn't up to snuff? The Committee, with it's schemes to prolong Vietnam and discard the Constitution, allow Nixon, racebaiter, war criminal, and the beginning of the end of the New Deal era of American society, to play the hero. His peace deals, Watergate, even his secret meetings with Kissinger, a Judas-esque figure whose portrait literally hangs over Nixon for the entirety of the film, were all in service to stopping a worst fate for the American people. Is he being honest, is he lying, does it matter?

Secret Honor is, despite it's minimalist appearance, a lot of things. Conspiracy thriller, political biopic, theatrical adaptation, but most crucially, it's a character study of a deeply damaged man, desperate for power and the acclaim he's always desired, and the depths he was willing to sink just to conquer the demons that plagued him. It's a fascinating, brutally grim portrayal of one of history's most fascinating figures that leaves you to draw your own conclusions, with nothing but the word of a serial liar as your evidence.