Zatoichi

(Kitano, 2003)

The blind swordsman Zatoichi – central character in some 26 films and over a hundred episodes of an eponymous television series – is highly iconic in his native Japan. Almost 15 years after his initial run of popularity came to an end, Zatoichi was reborn in this, an artful period piece by acclaimed director “Beat” Takeshi Kitano.

Loaded with breathtaking imagery, superbly choreographed fight sequences and a heaping dose of the director’s characteristically slapstick humour, Zatoichi is a rare modern treat for fans of samurai films. There are shades of Yojimbo and other Kurosawa classics here, but the style and tone of this film belong steadfastly to Kitano.

The character Zatoichi is played by the director himself, who opted to give the sightless samurai a unique platinum blonde mop and a strikingly blood-red cane sword. He cuts a reticent, if mischievous figure as he wanders into a poor, rural village being fought over by three violent criminal gangs, seemingly interested in nothing more than the local sake and a spot of gambling to pass the time. Soon enough the local balance of power is upset and it falls to Zatoichi and an eclectic, unlikely set of allies to set things right.

Like many of Kitano’s films, Zatoichi consists of extended periods of subtle, clever dialogue and character development that are liberally peppered with cheeky humour and roughly punctuated with sudden and extreme acts of violence that often appear from nowhere.

Words like good and evil do not really belong in a story such as this. The usual rich vs. poor dynamic is present here, but characters working both with and against Zatoichi are driven to violence by their own peculiar backstories, and Zatoichi himself is not averse to dispensing a bloody coup de grâce to a misguided soul that in another lifetime may have called him an ally.

Kitano always seems to be having great fun making films, and one can only imagine the frenetic on-set scene transitions where the director-star was rushing around between centre stage and the director’s chair.

Watching films like this is a joyful experience. It combines moments of quiet beauty with sudden bursts of energetic action, but no matter what is happening you are liable to burst into laughter without warning. With Zatoichi, Kitano has taken an established franchise and given it his own unmistakeable flourish.

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tl;dr: A masterfully-woven tapestry of great beauty, tragedy, violence and comedy, Zatoichi is a unique take on the samurai formula that will surprise, fascinate and enchant you. It is impossible not to like Kitano’s blind swordsman, and the story will scoop you up and take you on a wild, wildly entertaining ride.

The Hurt Locker

(Bigelow, 2008)

War, we are often told, is hell. No matter the field of battle, war distills the least savoury parts of mankind’s character into a vicious, hard to swallow soup. War films, by their very nature, are going to have a tough time uplifting us. Even the borderline propaganda we are occasionally subjected to leaves a niggling feeling in the mind of anyone in possession of a shred of sanity that nobody would choose to go to war if they didn’t feel they had to; fewer still would want to go back after they made it home the first time. But war, it is also said, is a drug, one which affects those who experience it in strange and profound ways.

The principal character in The Hurt Locker is one Sergeant First Class William James (Jeremy Renner), a bomb disposal expert with many years of field experience. James is drafted as the squad leader of Bravo Company in a U.S. Army bomb clearup unit based in Baghdad, Iraq. His squadmates are a straight-laced Sergeant and a young Specialist who is troubled by the things he has seen in the line of duty.

Sergeant James’ lax attitude to protocol borders on suicidal, which causes considerable friction between him and his new squad. Much of the film is spent on the relationship between the Bravo squad mates who, despite the tensions, work exceedingly well as a unit. The men are placed in considerable danger on an almost daily basis, and as the weeks count down before the squad is rotated they find themselves relying on one another, with every other person in the vicinity either actively trying to kill them, or merely content to look on with indifference.

The Hurt Locker is an extremely taut film, with the threat of hidden danger ever present. The action is shot largely in close-ups with lurching, shaky camerawork driving up the tension and capturing the blistering heat and dry, hostile working conditions Bravo Squad endure as they go about their invariably stressful day. It’s nerve-shredding stuff and pulls no punches, unapologetically helping to illustrate that the good guys don’t always win.

Renner is exceptional in this, playing the gung-ho explosives specialist with a fearsome abandon. Kathryn Bigelow handles the tender subject matter with great respect, not once betraying an action movie cliché or a veiled political sideswipe. This is a film which combines powerful, natural performances with beautiful cinematography and an unbiased perspective of the brutality and senselessness of warfare, no matter how modern it gets.

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tl;dr: Though it forgoes a conventional story in favour of taut, often shocking set pieces, as a piece of cinematic art The Hurt Locker is stupendous. There are a couple of times where the story wills the suspension of your disbelief, but even these weaker moments can’t detract from an otherwise superlative piece of film.

The Mask

(Russell, 1994)

Back when Jim Carrey looked like he might turn daft facial expressions and leftover stand-up routines into a long-lasting film career, “Wacky” was the name of the game. 1994 was Carrey’s break-out year, with the first Ace Ventura flick and Dumb and Dumber sandwiching The Mask, in which the man making a name for himself as a living cartoon character got to play his wildest, most cartoonish role yet.

The Mask is the story of Stanley Ipkiss. Under-appreciated bank clerk and doormat by day, dog-loving, cartoon-obsessive man-child by night. One day, following a series of calamities that see him lose the girl, get in trouble once again at work, and have his car held for ransom by cowboy mechanics, Stanley happens upon a discarded wooden mask. When he puts the mask on, he finds himself transformed into a manic embodiment of his innermost desires, stripped of his inhibitions and blessed with superhuman strength, speed and invulnerability.

The mask’s form is defined by whoever puts it on, so Ipkiss – who is a fundamentally nice guy at heart – is mischievous, playful but ultimately harmless. All he’s interested in is getting dressed up and partying, but in doing so he manages to attract the attention of local mobsters, whose activities are hampered by the scattershot antics of Stanley’s alter ego. To complicate things further, the local police are on the hunt for the “masked menace”, and Stanley’s bumbling protests of innocence will only protect him for so long.

This is neither a children’s film nor one strictly for grown-ups, although it does possess qualities of both. The mix of live action and cartoon-like CGI, together with Carrey’s arsenal of silly noises (for the kids) and celebrity impressions (which will sail over the heads of younger audiences) give this film a broad appeal that has stood up remarkably well over time. There are a couple of darker or more risque moments, but nothing that’ll make protective parents reach over and cover their kids’ ears and eyes.

The cast are all very entertaining, from Carrey himself to Richard Jeni’s comical best friend, as well as Peter Greene’s power-hungry mob lieutenant and Cameron Diaz (in her debut) as the busty, husky femme fatale. The story is fairly rudimentary and the humour doesn’t always quite click, but since this is essentially a feature-length cartoon it can be forgiven the odd descent into farce. As star vehicles go, this one was made for Carrey, and no other man alive could have pulled it off.

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tl;dr: A good bet for both the young and the young at heart, The Mask is a living comic; an entertaining blend of romance, comedy and crime drama with over-the-top special effects and up-tempo theme music inspired by the classic cartoons of the 40s and 50s. Frantic, inoffensive and fun.

Cyborg

(Pyun, 1989)

For many people, the thought of 80s action films brings to mind images of poorly-acted gun-fests featuring paper-thin plots and ludicrously poor special effects. These associations are not entirely fair, since the 80s did produce a decent number of watchable, even entertaining blast-a-thons with the occasional classic still looks good a few decades after its release.

That said, the 80s did give us a staggering volume of complete dreck, and sadly Cyborg falls squarely into this category. An early outing for Jean-Claude Van Damme, this film sees J-C cast as a moody, quiet loner in a world devastated by plague, anarchy and war. Gangs of murderous thugs prowl the land, killing and stealing as they see fit.

Gibson Rickenbacker (Van Damme, whose inexplicable monicker follows a similar musical theme to the rest of the cast) is a mercenary who protects regular folk from the raiders, and who has a personal grudge with Fender, one of the most ruthless and feared pirate leaders of them all. Rickenbacker encounters a lone woman fleeing from Fender’s men, who informs him she is a cyborg in possession of data that could be crucial for the eventual rebuilding of human society. Gibson is not interested in her magnanimous goals, but is nonetheless glad of the opportunity to interfere with the plans of his brutal nemesis.

What follows is a series of battles that mostly consist of Van Damme taking on numerous two-dimensional thug archetypes in hand-to-hand combat, sometimes several of them at once. Due to sloppy editing to remove the more gruesome death scenes, many of the fights stutter confusingly, with one unlucky combatant beaten so utterly that he appears to completely vanish mid-fight.

Despite the film’s title referring to a single character who barely has 15 minutes camera time, and who spends the time she has doing little but complain, you would be forgiven for thinking Van Damme’s character and his hulking arch-rival were both some kind of machine, given the grievous wounds each of them repeatedly suffer through and survive.

Far more heinous than the fight scenes are the supposedly emotional flashback sequences that attempt to explain Rickenbacker’s maudlin outlook and unrelenting desire for vengeance. These scenes are over-long, cringe-worthy and largely detract from any momentum the film might have been trying to build.

Cyborg was the result of a studio wanting to use the costumes and sets originally created for a binned sequel to the disastrous Masters Of The Universe film. It was even subtly marketed in some places as though it were a sequel. In all honesty, the two films deserve one another.

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tl;dr: Low budget, weak action mess. Van Damme is better utilised when he doesn’t spend half a film trying to look pained and emotional, or propping up a flimsy plot. He barely spoke a word of English when he first arrived in the U.S, and yet he manages a respectable finish in the intelligibility stakes here. Awful.