Posts Tagged ‘Colm Feore’

Colm Feore channels Lenin in The Trotsky RICHARD CROUSE METRO CANADA May 13, 2010

Given Colm Feore’s habit of playing historical figures — he’s starred as everyone from Pierre Trudeau and Glenn Gould to Admiral Husband E. Kimmel on screens big and small — you’d imagine in a movie about the reincarnation of a Soviet politician called The Trotsky, he must be playing the legendary Bolshevik.

“I looked at Trotsky and he had hair, so that was out,” Feore laughs.

In fact, in the film the actor plays the authoritarian principal of Montreal’s (fictional) Jacques Parizeau English School who tries to prevent Leon Bronstein (Jay Baruchel) — a student who believes he is the reincarnation of revolutionary Leon Trotsky — from unionizing the school’s students.

“I was between episodes of 24 so I hadn’t shaved,” he says, “and I thought, ‘Why don’t I just keep not shaving? I’ll present myself to (director) Jacob (Tierney) and say, ‘Would this work for you? I think this would this give us a certain Lenin-esque feel.’ I thought, ‘I’ll go Lenin, he’ll go Trotsky and it will be eerie.’”

Feore — who sprinkles his conversation with words like “supercilious” and self depreciating comments — has more than a passing resemblance to the Russian revolutionary.

“We had this huge Lenin poster behind Jay’s head at one point,” he says. “Jacob framed the shot so that when I turn away I’m perfectly framed in the poster.”

The actor, who jumps back and forth between big budget films like the upcoming Thor, TV work and small films to fill in the gaps was taken by the script the moment he read it.

“To me it seemed very springy,” he says. “It has a bouncy intelligence to it. Particularly since it came from young people. Right now I am surrounded by young people. I have my kids and I think, ‘What would flatter them in reflection?’ If they see themselves as smart and able to change their world, this is a message I would like to be able to send. There is something heroically quixotic about the way Jay’s character forces his way down his path.”

The movie has earned comparisons to Ferris Bueller’s Day Off and other American teen comedies, but Feore says it “probably couldn’t have been made anywhere else. The Canadian-ness of this film is our genius for subversion while playing it straight. It’s not tongue-in-cheek. … I like that the gags are layered in and it works on a second viewing. There are political statements under the political statements.”

BON COP BAD COP: 3 STARS

Bon Cop Bad Cop is an interesting hybrid of a film. As the title suggests it is bilingual, blending both of Canada’s official languages and shining a spotlight on our two solitudes, while taking it’s cues from American action films.

When a dead body is found draped over the sign that delineates the border between Quebec and Ontario, the two provincial police forces are forced to work together to find the killer. We meet Martin Ward (Colm Feore), the WASPy Ontario cop who plays by the book and David Bouchard (Patrick Huard), his free-wheeling French counter-part who threw away the rule book a long time ago. They don’t like one another but over time they embrace the other’s differences and become a team.

If that sounds familiar it should because it is the basis of literally hundreds of buddy films from Lethal Weapon onwards. We’ve seen most of this before, but placing it in Canada against the background of French-English relations gives Bon Cop Bad Cop most of its zip. The movie pokes fun at the clichés that Ontarians are uptight and overly polite while French-Canadians are wild and laissez-faire, treating the differences with humor.

In this the movie is aided greatly by its French lead actor, Patrick Huard. A noted comedian in Quebec, Huard has an easy charm and rubber face that can flip on a dime from good-natured and goofy to hard-edged and dangerous. He’s a great choice to play the rule-bending cop who has both a light and dark side to his personality. Also well cast is Colm Feore as Martin Ward, the Ontario cop. Feore ensures that his character isn’t simply a cliché but a well-rounded person who slowly realizes that underneath it all feels that he is better than his French neighbor. Together they have good chemistry.

The best part of the film is definitely watching these two actors work together and they are so good they deflect criticism away from the preposterous story. It turns out the body draped over the border sign was just the first victim of a hockey-obsessed serial killer who has set out to kill hockey executives who are selling Canadian teams to American owners. It doesn’t get more Canadian than that. What’s next, the Maple Syrup Madman?

Bon Cop Bad Cop is an attempt to do something that is done all too rarely in this country—make a homegrown film that will appeal to Canadians. It is a blatantly commercial film that has all the elements of American blockbusters and poutine jokes.