War on Everyone

John Michael McDonagh’s third film as writer/director attempts to mash up the concerns of his first two films, The Guard and Calvary, with intermittent success.

Terry Monroe (Alexander Skarsgard) is rarely sober. His work buddy Bob Bolano (Michael Pena) is rarely polite. But that doesn’t matter because they literally have a get out of jail free card, they’re cops. But they won’t be cops for much longer if Lt. Stanton (Paul Reiser) doesn’t see them rein in the lunacy. Dialling down the public drunkenness and excessive force is a huge ask when Terry and Bob stumble, via their CI Reggie (Malcolm Barrett), onto a complicated heist. Dazzled by the prospect of acquiring riches; and on Terry’s part, Jackie (Tessa Thompson), a moll at a loose end; the dirty duo unwittingly put themselves in the bad books with an unlikely mastermind after one beating a suspect mercilessly too far. Lord James Mangan (Theo James) is the nemesis fate has set up for these cheerfully corrupt detectives.

War on Everyone does not live up to the high expectations held for it as while it features any number of hilarious lines and ideas it never truly gels. It doesn’t rattle along like an absurdist procedural with philosophical tangents, but it isn’t an episodic tale in service of a larger philosophical meditation either, so it falls between the two stools of The Guard and Calvary. Lorne Balfe’s score is heroically in thrall to 1970s brass, funk and bombast, while Terry’s preoccupation with Glen Campbell finds full tuneful fulfilment on the soundtrack. The New Mexico locations are strikingly captured by Oren Moverman’s regular cinematographer Bobby Bukowski, a highlight being a distant tracking shot capturing Skarsgard chasing a perp. And in a delirious scripting touch Terry’s constant outrageous drinking is shown wreaking havoc on his memory and his ability to work.

War on Everyone is a memorable film, not a great one, but a patchwork that uses to the full its licence to offend is preferable to any cookie-cutter banality.

3.5/5

Tarzan swings in to Bloom

Warner Bros. have commissioned multiple Gold Medal Winners Liat & Oliver Schurmann to create The Legend of Tarzan Garden which will be unveiled as part of this year’s Bloom 2016 Festival on June 2^nd. Inspiration for the garden comes from the upcoming adventure film The Legend of Tarzan, starring Alexander Skarsgård as Tarzan and Margot Robbie as Jane, which swings into Irish cinemas on July 8^th 2016.

The garden invites visitors into a verdant African jungle, which incorporates an overhead canopy of foliage and a sparkling water feature, truly a magical place that will inspire the imaginations of children and adults alike. In the distance, an army of gorillas reflects the wildness of Tarzan’s tropical home. The hanging mist and mysterious sounds transport the visitor into the rain-forests of Africa, to experience in person the atmosphere of Edgar Rice Burroughs’ beloved creation. Liat & Oliver Schurmann run Mount Venus Nursery in Dublin, a specialist nursery for unusual perennials and grasses. They have supplied plants to Buckingham Palace, and have won many gold medals for floral displays and exhibits. They design gardens in the public sector as well as providing consultancy and giving talks, and have a reputation for extraordinary design, combining practicality with sustainability.

Bord Bia’s Bloom event will take place in the Phoenix Park, Dublin from Thursday 2^nd June – Monday 6^th June. This year marks its 10^th anniversary, and as Ireland’s largest gardening, food and family festival it is now a key feature of the June bank holiday weekend; with more than 100,000 visitors last year. The annual showcase for Ireland’s horticulture and food industry will feature a range of impressive show gardens, food features, and family entertainment. Tickets are on sale now on www.bloominthepark.com and kids go free. Visitors to the garden will have the opportunity enter a competition to win tickets to the European Premiere of The Legend of Tarzan in London on July 5^th.

The Legend of Tarzan finds Tarzan leading a gentrified life as Lord Greystoke with his beloved wife Jane at his side.  But, invited back to the Congo to serve as a trade emissary of Parliament, he becomes a pawn in a deadly game of greed and revenge masterminded by Belgian Captain Leon Rom (Christoph Waltz), who has no idea what primal fury he is about to unleash… The question of whether it’s wise to use the unimaginable horrors of the Belgian Congo as so much cod-historical backdrop for an action romp is probably not one that concerned screenwriters Adam Cozad and Craig Brewer. Harry Potter main-man David Yates is directing, not Nicolas Roeg or Francis Ford Coppolla, so such ahistoric set-dressing was never going to yield to an agonised cri de couer like Heart of Darkness.

The East

Fight Club meets Point Break by way of Revenge as Brit Marling’s undercover corporate security operative infiltrates eco-terrorists led by Alexander Skarsgard and Ellen Page.

Sarah (Marling) is a former FBI counter-terrorist agent now working for Hiller-Brood, a corporate security firm led by the formidable Sharon (Patricia Clarkson). Audacious and well-resourced eco-terrorist collective The East have uploaded the first of four promised ‘jams’ punishing corporate boards for the sins of their companies. Sarah is tasked with infiltrating them, and drops out of suburban DC life to drift thru national parks and hop train carriages like a 1930s hobo looking for East fellow-travellers. Just as she’s despairing she is introduced to the group by Luca (Shiloh Fernandez), and welcomed by leader Benji (Skarsgard) but disdained by his lieutenant Izzy (Page). Sarah manages to maintain her cover long enough to be implicated in a vicious jam of Big Pharma, but falling for the charismatic Benji, and his principled ecological ideals, sees her devotion to her mission wane…

Marling co-wrote the script as a starring vehicle but the film is all about Ellen Page. From the arresting opening in which Page threatens a Big Oil CEO, over horror imagery of oil seeping out of his mansion’s air-vents and sinks, she is extremely menacing. And this despite one shot where director Zal Batmanglij hilariously forgets to hide the massive height difference between the tiny Canadian (5’1”) and the mighty Scandinavian (6’6”). Marling is a better writer than actress and she and co-writer Batmanglij skilfully portray the group as dangerous lunatics akin to Martha Marcy May Marlene’s cult before deepening the portrayal. This is exemplified by the devastating drip-feed of information about Doc (Tony Kebbell), but Page benefits greatly as the forceful Izzy is so enigmatic as to appear without moral limits, but is actually almost mythological in her convictions.

There is an awful lot of Tyler Durden in Skarsgard’s Benji, who proves his devotion to the maxim “the things you own end up owning you” by squatting in a decayed mansion. Batmanglij eschews the visual bravura Fincher brought to Fight Club because despite initial similarities to the work of its Mischief Committee the jams here lack that joyousness. Durden was unburdened by self-doubt, but these characters, despite the Big Pharma jam having the elegance of an Emily gambit in Revenge, do not take her joy in retribution but are troubled by their actions against Paige Williams (Julia Ormond) and the other directors. This doesn’t convince and never feels like anything but a sop to PG-13 morality. It weighs down a third act being almost fatally dragged under by a flight of characters, infuriating politico-economic naivety, and an unnecessary twist.

The East’s third act doesn’t do the rest of the film justice, but this is an absorbing thriller whose slow-burning character studies are a welcome relief in blockbuster season.

3.5/5