In the Grey (2026)

 

For a large number of years now I've had an affinity for the films of Guy Ritchie. His English gangster films are the most intriguing with clever plots and hard-nosed dialogue written in a style that is amusing enough to keep me entertained even when I'm not quite familiar with the British vernacular. I've even enjoyed his Sherlock Holmes movies and the remake of Aladdin.  In the last few years however his output has been a little less consistent. I was not a big fan of “Operation Fortune”, and I had my suspicions about this film, given its apparently turbulent distribution problems. (Although Guy Richie's The Covenant" was my favorite film two years ago)

I can say off the bat that this is not my favorite of his films but it is also not the worst of those movies that he's made. The major flaw in this film is the first 45 minutes, where we get the kind of narrative provided in voiceover that tells you that this might have been an intriguing novel but was maybe a little too intricate to show cinematically. Usually Richie gets around that by narrating things that have already happened and then going back and showing us what it all meant. The structure of this film’s narration however seems to be contiguous with the events that are taking place. So we get an omnipresent voice explaining what's happening on the screen, almost continuously for the first half of the film. I found it quite irritating. Yeah it helps clear up what's going on on screen, but it was  pissing me off having to listen to this voice keep telling me what should be clear from watching the events on screen. The narration is needed to clarify things but it just doesn't work the way it has worked in previous Richie films.

Now that said, once the action part of the movie kicks into gear, the film works really well. We have a very clear idea of what's coming because elaborate plans were laid out in the first half of the film. Richie has always played with the timeline of his plots, but this film seems to have done the most surprising of things, stuck to a chronological narrative, and followed through on things that were set up in the first half of the film.

The two biggest stars in the movie are Henry Cavill and Jake Gyllenhaal, both of whom usually have enough charisma to carry a film on their own. The problem with this movie is that they are not really the stars of the film, they're the secondary characters who carry out the plans of the main lead. Eiza González plays a high powered Financial fixer/lawyer who's trying to reclaim a billion dollar loan given to a shady South American who is either a drug lord or a dictator,  we don't really know for sure. All we know is that he is scurrilously unwilling to pay back his debt, and has already killed people in the process of protecting himself. Most of the film  consists of a high stakes set of financial traps, being perpetrated by  González's character with the assistance of Cavill and Gyllenhaal. They seem to be equally ruthless, but we are clearly on their side from the beginning. Rosamund Pike appears as the financier, who contracts with  González s character, but who may be trying to short her in the payoff.

Sid and Bronco are the two tough guys played by Cavill and Gyllenhaal, and their loyalty to González is explained partially on screen, but mostly it's assumed because of the way the dialogue flows. I don't want to seem sexist , but I think it may be possible that another one of the faults of the film is that it puts so much of Richie's Macho based banter into the mouth of the main female character. Rachel, the character played by González, is supposed to be incredibly bright, accomplished and ruthless. All of that comes out in her demeanor, but when the dialogue tries to reinforce it, it doesn't quite sound as true. Jason Statham, Matthew McConaughey, Hugh Grant and a dozen other British actors have made Richie's dialogue crackle over the years, González just makes it sound like exotic conversation, not like petulant threats or braggadocious chastisements. To me the thing that doesn't work in this film is using her point of view to tell the story.

We know how well prepared the team is to carry out their plan when they originally visit the island of their nefarious counterpart. We were shown step by step the plans that were being made to protect Rachel and to extract themselves from anything that might have gone wrong. When Rachel and her team accomplished their objective, you might think that all of that setup was for naught. Of course it's there for a reason. Eventually all of the three Escape Routes that were elaborately laid out for us , get used in some way because of the usual last minute double cross.

Bronco and Sid are the stereotypically competent to the extreme accessories to what would be a heist film, if the main objective here wasn't just blackmail in Leverage. Once the chase starts everyone is cool, calm and deliberate. Even when a sacrifice is being made, it is done in a very professional way, reinforcing the old saying it's not personal it's just business.  

I never saw much marketing on this film and I'm not exactly sure how they would sell it anyway. The heist is not really a heist but more a series of stings designed to create leverage to get somebody in a contract to comply with the terms of their loan. I suppose they could lean heavily on the action scenes and half of the film, but it takes a while to get there and the humor that is usually strung throughout a Guy Richie film seems to be much less frequent than usual. Cool shots of the composed team are all we have to keep us going until the guns start coming out.

Don't get me wrong I enjoyed the film, I just found it to be less of what I wanted and more of something else . There were probably ways to fix this movie, so that it would more closely resemble some of the earlier gangster films that Richie is responsible for, it just seems like everybody was a little lazy and wanted to do it in shorthand. And then they realize that nobody reads shorthand.

Hector and the Search for Happiness

If you saw the Ben Stiller version of "The Secret Life of Walter Mitty", you will find yourself experiencing a strong sense of deja vu when watching this film. The concept is very much the same. A man who leads a good but maybe not fulfilling life, sets out to discover what is missing. It involves a lot of world travel and adventures and ultimately it leads back to love. I do want to give a shout out to the AMC Stubbs program for providing a coupon for two free tickets. Word of mouth will probably not turn this into a huge hit, but the offer did a good job filling up a theater for an early afternoon screening.

Simon Pegg has been in some of my favorite films in the last few years. He is comic genius in the Star Trek films and also Mission Impossible series. He is also the lead in the so called "Cornetto Triliogy" of "Shaun of the Dead", "Hot Fuzz" and "The World's End". He is able to mix his low key humor with a certain amount of pathos and channel it well in this film in which he is the principle character and on which the film focuses for it's entirety.

The movie does not break any ground but it is shot in some nice creative ways. There is a subtle use of animation for transitions between the episodes and the camera usually holds steady instead of floating around as it did in the Walter Mitty film. A combination of video screens, skype, CCTV also add a little bit of creativity to the way the movie is told. However, the movie is a very straight drama with some big slices of humor and there is nothing too surprising in any of it.

Hector's trip to China starts things rolling with a canard that everyone will be familiar with, befriending a lonely rich guy. Hector being naive in the world does not see the twist in his story that we see coming. His take on love ends up being sadder than he expected, but exactly what we expect. The most mundane part of the film involves his seeking enlightenment at a monastery in the lower Himalayas. This section has one of the two best jokes in the film, let's just say, check your calender before you climb the mountain. The most surprising section of the film involves his time in Africa, where he goes from supreme satisfaction, to fear, joy terror and joy again. The shortest segment and the one that works the best actually takes place on a plane. Even though the idea seems to be a stretch, it plays as the most thoughtful moments in the film.

The cast is full of names and faces that you will recognize.   Stellan Skarsgard is a banker, Jean Reno a drug lord, Toni Collette a lost love and Christopher Plummer is a fellow psychiatrist studying the same issue as Hector but with a very different approach.  Rosamund Pike is Hector's long suffering girl friend and she is lovely as usual but not nearly as compelling as she was in her other film this fall, "Gone Girl". The platitudes are nicely revealed and undermined and then confirmed as the story demands. It will leave you mostly satisfied, although not nearly as nourished as you would hope.
 

Gone Girl

Thrillers are a genre that need quality people in them to excel. Once in a while a film that has been tossed together will leave a mark, but true works of suspense need the kind of professional touch that comes from confidence in the field and the contributions of skilled actors and technicians. In the mid part of the last century we had Alfred Hitchcock. In the early part of the new millennium, David Fincher has stepped forward to supply the kind of bubbling, slow burning , suspense piece that audiences will crave. In the last twenty years he has made a half dozen films that rely on tension more than action, plot more than flash and performances that reflect reality more than theatricality. "Gone Girl" is another success in this line of suspense films with clever plot twists and a creeping sense of isolation as the story moves toward it's resolution. This movie is backed by several strong performances and a visual style that makes the audience feel haunted like it was a cloudy day, even when there is bright sunshine around.

The screenplay was written by the author of the novel that the movie is based on, Gillian Flynn. Adapting a novel to screen is always more complicated than people think. I'm not sure what her attitude was toward making a film out of her story but she has done an admirable job in forging an effective film. With the exception of the last five minutes , I could easily follow and appreciate the plot twists and story line. The tone of the ending seems right to me, especially given several foreshadowing scenes in the film. It was just the final motivation that fuels that exit tone that was not entirely clear to me. After having spent almost two and a half hours setting it up, the exit felt rushed and much less comprehensible than all of the main parts of this story filled with reversals. The director has the shots right and the mood is appropriately foreboding, but the script leaves it unclear why our main character makes the final decision that completes the film.

I have always enjoyed Ben Affleck as an actor. I know he is often criticized as a callow personality, overwhelmed by the material he is in, but he also has charm and a winning face and that has rescued him many times. His most serious role in his own "Argo" is a demonstration that he has chops and not just good looks. He uses both of those gifts in this film and helps make a convoluted and potentially unbelievable story much more grounded. Nick Dunne is a fairly likable guy who gets the Scott Peterson treatment from the media when his wife Amy vanishes. The film starts off without giving us any clues as to whether he really is involved or not in the disappearance. As events play out we discover that he is not as affable or admirable as he first seems. We learn that he has secrets, but also that his secrets probably have little to do with the event, but that will never be the way it is seen by the media. A large part of the tension in the film is driven by the tabloid like coverage of his wife's vanishing. A Nancy Grace doppelganger pursues the story and leads the social media lynch mob that is ready to convict Nick in the killing of his wife. As the film unfolds we do get some rival views of the marriage itself. It seems to have gone sour in the economic turndown and  Amy has her own demons that fuel those problems. Since I made the decision not to read the book before seeing the film, I think it is safe to say that knowing the story would undermine some of the pleasures of the film. There are five or six smart twists that all work without undermining the things that come in front of them. Those who read the book can admire the adaption, those who went in blind like me can thrill at the surprises.

The technical choices that help make the movie work as a suspense film will be recognizable as Fincher specialties. The camera movements are slow and steady and fluid. There is stillness in a great many sequences in the movie. The background score by previous collaborators Atticus Ross and Trent Reznor is moody and dissonant. The color and lighting are crisp but subdued to just this side of muted. When there is violence, the camera does not look away any more than it did in "The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo".  There are two or three great scenes where a character tells us everything we need to know without it being shown, It would have been easy to let the camera fill in as a character narrates, but Fincher chooses to let the voice and face of the character tell the story and it works really well. A long interlude at a decrepit motel reminded me of the basement scene in "Zodiac". The characters we encounter are sometime more than they first appear to be. I won't give away anything but I think audiences who responded to those earlier films will not be disappointed here.

Special mention must be made of the performance by Rosamund Pike. She has been given one of the great female characters of the last few years to play. Her work as a chilly upper east-side elite, drawn into a warm romance with a misplaced mid-westerner is very believable.  Even more believable is her emerging brittleness and renewed frost as the marriage seems to fall out of the narrative that she has in her own head. Her character's mother took her weaknesses as a child and turned them into a fictional alter ego that became world famous. That makes what follows seem almost inevitable and Pike sells the sense of entitlement and superiority perfectly. There are a number of male leading roles that have been touted already for awards season, this is the first woman's role that breaks out of the pack and will demand a salute from her fellow actors at the end of the year, well done. Others in the cast are also excellent; Carrie Coon who plays Nick's loyal twin sister, Neil Patrick Harris is flinty and disturbed as a former beau ill used by Amy in high school, Kim Dickens portrays the detective pursuing the evidence rather than the man and she seems very authentic.

This is an audience pleasing suspense thriller assembled by the modern authority on that genre. If Hitchcock, DePalma, Lynch and the Cohen Brothers are on your regular watchlists, than you will be glad to spend two and a half hours puzzling out the plot, admiring the performances and feeling satisfied with the logic of the twists in this terrific film. If you have not read the book, stay away from any stories that might contain spoilers. The most satisfying parts of the experience are the the clever turns that all drive the story rather than merely shifting it's narrative.