Noomi Rapace Underutilized In Dead Man Down

Dead Man Down is one of those movies shot for the big screen, but could be perceived as a made-for-TV crime drama. Danish director Niels Arden Oplev, best known for his Swedish movie The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo, built his career from the production of a series of TV movies. The 2009 Swedish thriller - the first in a trilogy - made such an impact internationally that it not only made Oplev famous, but also generated worldwide attention to its leading actress Noomi Rapace as well.

When comparing the Hollywood version of The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo with its Swedish counterpart, the latter is definitely stronger and more impactful. But that's why, perhaps, Dead Man Down is disappointing since I expected Oplev's American theatrical debut to have a bigger 'wow' impact. It's entertaining and suspenseful if you like thrillers and action movies, but the plot is too weak to be credible. The story tries to paint revenge as the biggest priority for crime kingpins and assassins, but the attempt to add a good conscience to the underworld characters is just not convincing enough. Unlike Quentin Tarentino whose movies are very often about revenge as well, this flick lacks depth and poetry.

But the weakest link in the entire film is that Noomi Rapace's talents are very underutilized. Rapace's performance as Lisabeth Salander in the Millennium Trilogy was breathtakingly excellent and will, probably, continue to haunt audiences around the world for a long time to come. But her accolades throughout her career - from her stellar stage-performing record to her Best Actress award at Sweden's prestigious Guldbagge Awards - should lead to an ongoing expansion of her roles rather than repetitive and limiting ones. The Spanish-Swedish actress should really stop playing physically and emotionally tormented women on screen. She undertook such an insignificant and totally dispensable role as the gypsy in Sherlock Holmes: A Game of Shadows. In Dead Man Down, she once again plays a physically-abused, but tough woman seeking revenge.

Along the same line, Colin Farrell's talent as an actor is also not maximized. Having seen his performance in Phone Booth, I continue to wonder why he continuously chooses action-hero roles with very few facial expressions required. I can only say that the star power of Oplev and Rapace had to be the only reason why there's a cast of renowned actors in very minor, supportive roles in this movie - Oscar-Award nominee Terrence Howard, French actress Isabelle Huppert and the always charismatic Armand Assante.

The Swedish version of The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo may be more successful, but Rooney Mara has moved on beyond her Lisabeth Salender role whereas Noomi Rapace still has not.

Building A Positive Future Trumps Chilean Dictatorship

As a marketing professional, I'm particularly interested in the Spanish-language film No directed by Chilean director Pablo Larrain. Like Argo, the film is based on history, albeit an overdramatization of what happened during the 1988 plebiscite. The premise of the film is very simple - an advertising executive devised and implemented a campaign to defeat Augusto Pinochet in Chile's 1988 referendum peacefully after 15 years of dictatorship.

The film was nominated in the Best Foreign Language Film category at this year's Oscars but lost to the French movie Amour. Its simplicity drew many criticisms, but I think it's the simplicity that resulted in a nomination. The ad campaign drives home a direct message: both politics and marketing are built on dreams of the future. Pinochet's camp and its Yes marketing team didn't get that and underestimated the opposition. General Pinochet's administration further tried to suppress and intimidate the No team with oppressive moves.

The movie was filmed video-style to give an impression of a documentary-like cinema piece in the 80s. Of course, we all understand that it took more than an advertising campaign to overthrow the Pinochet autocracy, but the message of a happy and promising future free of dictatorship was too irresistible for Chileans. Yes, the ad campaign might be tacky and plagiaristic at times, but the marketing goal was ultimately achieved.

The film is successful because it's serious and funny at the same time. We see the real footage of the oppression and the intimidation. At the same time, we also see the strengths and weaknesses of what marketing can and cannot do. We also witness the power of third-party endorsement when real footage of Hollywood celebrities showed their support for the No campaign - Superman Christopher Reeve, Jane Fonda in her activist mode, and Richard Dreyfuss expressing his support on TV in Spanish. 

But the film's success is largely attributed to its lead actor, Mexican superstar Gael Garcia Bernal (The Motorcycle Diaries), who's renowned not only for his acting talent, but also for his choice of roles. Bernal expressed in fluent English in a London TV interview that politics is very much part of everyday life in Latin America, and this became the essence of the movie No. Even though he started his career as a TV soap opera heartthrob in Mexico, Bernal became the first Mexican actor to be accepted at the Central School of Speech and Drama in London at the age of 19. His acting is a combination of emotional intensity with the authenticity of an everyday hero. Bernal is a thinking woman's Romeo in Latin America - no wonder Natalie Portman dated him for several years before moving on to others and marrying ballet dancer Benjamin Millepied.

This movie is an intelligent production, but like the Academy Awards jurors, I prefer Amour even more.

A Stunning Hitchcockian Thriller

I've not seen such a masterpiece in the thriller genre for a long time - watching Stoker today was like simultaneously reading a poem and a suspense novel!

South Korean director Park Chan-Wook's first English-language film is a stunner - visually mesmerizing, sumptuous in imageries, and Hitchcockian in suspense! No wonder the film garnered a lot of attention at the recent Sundance Festival. Park is famous for stylistic violence, but with this English-language film debut, he has ascended to superstardom. Park's background is so interesting - a former philosophy student and a former film critic, he decided to try to become a filmmaker after seeing Hitchcock's Vertigo. After winning the Grand Prix at the 2004 Cannes Film Festival for his film Oldboy, he became famous for The Vengeance Trilogy. It's not surprising that director Quentin Tarentino is a huge fan of Park's.

Like Chinese-American director Ang Lee, Park used an interpreter on set even though he speaks English. But Park's accomplishment with Stoker is obviously supported by many other pleasant surprises, First and foremost, there is a total of eight producers including such famous names as Ridley and Tony Scott and Wentworth Miller, the hugely-popular leading star of the TV drama Prison Break. A Princeton graduate who majored in English Literature, Miller also debuted with his screenwriting talent in this movie, proving that he's not just a pretty face.

The cast is absolutely excellent - Mia Wasikowska (the lead actress in Jane Eyre) as the 18-year-old India Stoker; Nicole Kidman as her unhappy, self-destructive mother; and Matthew Goode (from Woody Allen's Match Point) as the ultimate creepy charmer, Charles Stoker. British composer Clint Mansell also wrote a mesmerizing score for the film.

For thrillers to be successful, they need to make the audience guess what's going to happen next. Stoker not only makes our brains work fast, it also makes us crave more - that's the creepy success of this masterpiece!

Best Oscar Show In Last Decade

The Academy Awards live broadcast finally has a dim of hope - last night's Oscars show was probably the best in the last decade. Seth MacFarlane proved to be an excellent choice as the new host - he was comfortable in his own skin, self-deprecating and not afraid to make some bold jokes. The authorities picked him because they thought he might attract a younger audience with his Family Guy and Ted fame. While we're still waiting for the Nielsen numbers to see whether the desired demographics tuned in or not, this boomer and others were glued to the TV set last night. In fact, it was quite difficult to get up from the couch and do other tasks such as taking a shower or going for a bathroom break.

MacFarlane even looked good in his white tux. I read that he has consulted veteran host Billy Crystal who has given him some tips. I've always liked Crystal, but let's not forget - MacFarlane is much younger, looks good and can sing!

Having Captain Kirk (the very overweight Canadian William Shatner) beamed in to offer his two cents worth and inviting First Lady Michelle Obama to announce the Best Picture at the end were pleasant surprises. The song and dance portions, including goddess-like Charlize Theron dancing a number with the Hollywood 'it' boy at the moment, Channing Tatum (Tatum strutted his stuff in Magic Mike and the Step Up movies while Theron was trained as a ballet dancer and performed in New York productions of Swan Lake and the Nutcracker); the entire principal cast ensemble from Les Miserables performing on stage; Barbra Streisand singing The Way We Were in memory of the late Marvin Hamlisch and for the first time at the Oscars in 36 years; Dame Shirley Bassey performing for the first time ever at the Academy Awards; all added to the glamour and pizzazz that the Awards show should represent.

Because it's MacFarlane writing some of the materials, the show was also fun for the first time in years - Mark Wahlberg and his teddy bear buddy cracking a few jokes (Ted was a successful Seth MacFarlane creation); Joseph Gordon-Levitt performing a duet with Daniel Radcliffe; and the muppets reenacting the cockpit scene in Flight were all good fun to watch.

I also like the pairing of the presenters - children of film legends who are now legends themselves (Jane Fonda and Michael Douglas); the lead cast of Chicago celebrating its 10th anniversary in film; the lead actors from The Avengers (but where's Scarlett Johansson?); the physically-opposite Charlize Theron and Dustin Hoffman. These are the people and the reasons why we love to go to movies. Obviously there was the usual protocol to expect - last year's award winners respectively gave out this year's Oscars. But the ceremony seemed to be shorter this year even though in duration, it was still three-and-a-half-hour long. The program also wisely shrunk the tributes and lifetime awards into reports from earlier ceremonies rather than having the actual ceremonies live.

The only surprises of the coveted Awards were only good ones - Life Of Pi won Best Director, Best Original Score, Best Visual Effect and Best Cinematography - and most of them associated with Canadian artists. I was also overjoyed to see my favourite director Quintin Tarantino winning the Best Original Screenplay for Django Unchained, a brilliant movie on slavery emancipation.

The evening's best-dressed awards should go to Charlize Theron with her stunning short hair and in a white Dior gown and Catherine Zeta-Jones in a gold-sequined Zuhair Murad gown. Overgilded, according to some fashion critics? Well, they have no idea what glamour means!

Was the show perfect? Of course, not. In celebration of the 50th anniversary of the James Bond franchise, they should have all lead actors of the Bond movies all appearing on stage. I'm also tired of Jack Nicholson and his sunglasses. The production team of the Academy Awards show, get rid of Jack Nicholson and Meryl Streep next year, keep MacFarlane as the host, and surprise us even more: then perhaps your show might even be a resounding success in the near future!

Painful But Honest Masterpiece About Power of Love

I finally got a chance to go see the critically-acclaimed Amour. And I'm now convinced that this will win the Academy Awards' Best Foreign Language Movie.

The film, directed by Austrian Michael Haneke, deserves to sweep the 2012 Palm d'Or at Cannes, two awards (Best Leading Actress and Best Film Not in the English Language) at the 66th British Academy Film Awards and four awards at the 25th European Film Awards.

What a great salute to senior film-makers and actors - director Michael Haneke just turned 70 and the two principal actors in the film, Jean-Louis Trintignant and Emmanuelle Riva, are both in their 80s. This is particularly a big feat for the director to have successfully brought Trintignant on board as the actor has retired from films since 1998! Emmanuelle Riva is not only beyond excellent in her role as the dying Anne, but she's also stunning at 86, both with or without clothes.

European movies are always more subtle and potent than North American ones, but this film manages to invite us, the audience, to participate in and observe the long and painful process of the body withering away. Ninety percent of the film was shot within the elegant Parisian apartment and we're witnessing just daily chores of what could be happening to ourselves or to our friends' families. But the apartment, as well as our bodies, could be prisons and the film is painful to watch because all of us either have experienced this kind of pain or, even worse, to see the cinematic mirror reflecting the imminent winter of our our own aging bodies!

The director is honest and minimalistic, but at the same time, brutal and raw in depicting the pain and truth of mortality. What's happening with the well-cultured and well-to-do octogenarians could happen to many, many others in different parts of the world. The couple has always been self-reliant throughout their lives and until the very end. Unfortunately, boomer kids are depicted as useless and only enhance the burden of the helpless couple. Yes, life is cruel, but it's also beautiful according to Anne (played by Riva)who's leafing through her photo albums during her last days.

We're never told what exactly happened to Georges (played by Trintignant) towards the end; but this is where I'm interested in comparing notes with my friends because the conclusion is subject to different interpretations. And, of course, the metaphor of the visiting pigeon and how Georges described it in his letter.

We learn from this movie that love is passionate, caring, routinely and fun; but more importantly, it's cruel, poignant, strong, violent and it eventually does come to an end like our frail bodies!

Tackling Mental Health In A Warm, Funny Way

I've been meaning to blog about Silver Linings Playbook for a long time. Having seen it twice now, I can conclude that even if you don't like any of the principal characters or actors, you are going to like the movie.

Mental health is a serious issue and many, many movies have chosen it as a main theme, but with a very serious and tragical treatment. With the stigma attached to this illness, comedies about the subject matter are difficult to succeed because any jokes will not be kindly taken. But director David O. Russell (The Fighter) adapted the novel by Matthew Quick into a wonderful warm, funny and touching movie.

The biggest irony of all is that even though the two lead characters in the movie are both former mental illness sufferers - Pat (played by Bradley Cooper) suffered from bipolar disorder and Tiffany (played by Jennifer Lawrence) is a former sex addict - the people who are really currently mentally ill in the movie are all those around them. The key message here is obviously this: let's not discriminate or stigmatize mentally-ill patients because, in reality, all of us may not be as mentally healthy as we think we are.

I've always been a big fan of Bradley Cooper and in addition to playing this role in such a warm, genuine and honest way, he is also the producer of the film. Jennifer Lawrence has already swept both the Golden Globe and the Screen Actors Guild Best Actress Awards for her role. At 21 when she was shooting the movie, the makeup director had to put extra liquid eyeliner on her to make her look older. Lawrence apparently fought very hard for the role because both Russell and Cooper thought she's too young to play the 'white trash' Tiffany. Now at 22, Lawrence has proven that she can take on any roles with gusto. She's excellent in this movie, but I thought Jessica Chastain is even better in Zero Dark Thirty. Nevertheless, Lawrence will definitely win the Oscar as well.

The entire cast is great and funny, but I've not seen Robert De Niro so good in a comical role in a long time. As Cooper's father, De Niro is not only extremely funny, but he's also an emotional jock with obsessive-compulsive habits. This movie was shot in Philadelphia where Bradley Cooper grew up in real life. De Niro, with his standard New York accent, was asking Cooper's visiting uncle for help when reading the script to make sure that he got the Philly accent right.

At the SAG Awards event, we also learned from Jennifer Lawrence that David O. Russell was drawn to the story because of the connection to his own son, who is bipolar and has OCD. What a great work of art and let's hope the movie will help motivate all mentally ill patients to get better!

Entertaining But Confusing 'Broken City'

In spite of bad reviews, I found Broken City quite entertaining, particularly if you're a Mark Wahlberg fan. The problem with this flick is that the writer Brian Tucker and director Allen Hughes (The Book of Eli, From Hell) are trying too hard. They make the audience work their brains out and we still can't figure out what the sub-plots mean at the end of the movie. In fact, my friends and I have concluded that some of the sub-plots are just superfluous.

Without being a spoiler, the Police Commissioner Carl Fairbanks (played by Jeffrey Wright) is totally confusing. You never know until the end which side is he playing with. While the hot Natalie Martinez (CSI New York) is still sexy playing Wahlberg's girlfriend, the story line around her is kind of weak. It's not even convincing that they've been together for seven years.

Then, there are the four principal characters: Mark Wahlberg, Russell Crowe, Catherine Zeta-Jones and Barry Pepper. Wahlberg, as usual, plays a damaged former cop trying to fight the bad guys under any circumstances. As I've posted before, Wahlberg needs to take a break on this kind of character trail and should maybe try playing an evil guy. But he continues to produce and perform such roles as the alcoholic Billy Taggart in this movie. While women like to see him taking his shirt off - he did it again in this one - this kind of character just doesn't earn him additional respect. Wahlberg is one of the hottest producers now as both Entourage and Boardwalk Empire are hugely popular. But he needs to break new ground by trying a different genre soon.

There's no actress nowadays that is as glamorous and as good with acting as Catherine Zeta-Jones. There's no doubt that she's done some face work, but even though you can detect those flaws on her face, she's still drop-dead movie-star gorgeous in every scene!

Having just come out of a terrible role at Les Miserables (I meant he literally can't sing), Russell Crowe is actually quite convincing as the crooked mayor of New York, Mayor Hostetler. But it bothers me that except for Canadian actor Barry Pepper who plays Jack Valliant, and perhaps Wahlberg, none of the principal characters seemed to be making any effort in putting on a New York or even American accent. And this is just plain sloppiness! Pepper who played Robert Kennedy in the TV drama The Kennedys,
is so strong an actor that he's mesmerizing in every role he plays including this one.

If you like the principal actors and don't mind being confused every now and then, you will find Broken City entertaining.