SYNOPSIS: Six years after the events of “Deadpool 2” comes “Deadpool & Wolverine,” a new superhero movie starring Ryan Reynolds and Hugh Jackman, and now playing in theatres.
Now working as a used car salesman, Wade Wilson (Reynolds) has retired his wisecracking mercenary Deadpool persona. His life is up-ended when the Time Variance Authority (TVA) enlists him to undertake a new mission with another reluctant superhero Wolverine (Jackman).
“Wade, you are special,” says TVA agent Mr. Paradox (Macfadyen). “This is your chance to be a hero among heroes.”
CAST: Ryan Reynolds, Hugh Jackman, Rhett Reese, Emma Corrin, Matthew Macfadyen, Paul Wernick, Zeb Wells. Directed by Shawn Levy.
REVIEW: If the word bombastic took steroids it might come close to describing the R-rated “Deadpool & Wolverine.” Vulgar, gory with a “whiff of necrophilia” and irreverence to burn, it’s a showcase for the bromance stylings of its stars, who pull out all the stops to lovingly put a cap on Fox’s Marvel movies. “Disney bought Fox,” Deadpool explains, “[so there’s] that whole boring rights issue.”
At the film’s start, it takes some doing to explain Wolverine/Logan’s return from the dead—“Nothing will bring you back to life faster than a big bag of Marvel cash,” Deadpool says to Wolverine’s remains.—but once that convoluted (but action-packed) set-up is out of the way, the film barrels through plot with both fists flailing.
Before, during and after the big, bloody action sequences the movie cheekily blurs the line between on-screen and off-screen life. Deadpool obnoxiously calls Logan “Hugh,” and even takes a jab at jackman’s recent divorce. Later he leeringly mentions “Gossip Girl,” the show that made Reynolds’s wife, Blake Lively, famous.
That fourth-wall-breaking riffing suits Reynolds’s trademark delivery, and sets the self-aware “Deadpool” movies apart from other superhero films. ““Fox killed him,” Deadpool says of Wolverine. “Disney brought him back. They’re gonna make him do this till he’s 90!”
Humor has a place in the Marvel Cinematic Universe (MCU), in Tony Stark’s one-liners, in Taika Waititi era “Thor” movies and “Guardians of the Galaxy” to name a handful of examples, but none of those subversively poke fun at superhero movies and themselves in the way “Deadpool & Wolverine” does. What other MCU movie would self-deprecatingly admit that the characters are entering the multiverse “at a bit of a low point”?
Jackman mostly plays it straight, acting as a soundboard for “the Merc with the Mouth’s” one liners. Filled with regret over past events, the self-loathing Wolverine is a hard drinking mutant, in full comic book costume, who reluctantly embraces heroism.
Wolverine provides the story’s heart as a counterpoint to Deadpool’s constant quipping.
Both characters may be physically indestructible, but their psyches aren’t. Both are tortured, and when the movie isn’t gushing blood or cracking wise, it’s about lost souls and their search for redemption. That story chord is a grace note that often gets lost amid the film’s cacophonic action, but is a welcome relief from the constant clatter.
A love letter to the now by-gone Fox era of superhero films, “Deadpool & Wolverine” ushers in a new epoch overstuffed with overkill, cameos, Easter eggs, juvenile humour and a villain who reads minds by thrusting their fingers into their victim’s heads. It’s fun fan service, and a good time at the movies, even if the experience of watching it sometimes feels like being on the inside of a blender set to puree.
SYNOPSIS: “The Ministry of Ungentlemanly Warfare,” a comedic Guy Ritchie World War II movie starring Henry Cavill and Alan Ritchson, and now streaming on Amazon Prime, is the mostly true story of an outlaw band of violent rogues and outlaws put together by British Prime Minister Winston Churchill to neutralize Hitler’s fleet of German U-boats during World War II. “We both know that I’m not very popular with the administration,” says Gus March-Phillips (Henry Cavill). “The reason they find you unattractive,” says Brigadier Gubbins (Cary Elwes), “is the very reason I find you attractive.”
CAST: Henry Cavill, Eiza González, Alan Ritchson, Henry Golding and Alex Pettyfer. Directed, co-written and co-produced by Guy Ritchie.
REVIEW: This story of charismatic rule breakers doesn’t break any new ground for director Ritchie, but it does deliver the kind of slick spectacle you expect from one of his films; the violence is exaggerated, with the kind of body count usually reserved for John Wick movies, the dialogue is cheeky and there’s pyrotechnics to spare. It’s a World War II movie via breezy comic book storytelling, so don’t expect a history lesson, expect the kind of charismatic antiheroes Ritchie has made a career of documenting, with a nod to “Inglorious Basterds.”
The ugly work of killing Nazis is performed by an undeniably handsome, square-jawed cast. Now on the other side of the DC Universe, Cavill lets loose, launching the same kind of charm offensive he first displayed in Ritchie’s “The Man from U.N.C.L.E.” reboot. His take on March-Phillips is all roguish, devil-may-care charm and deadpan delivery. His star power is equaled by Ritchson, who, as Anders Lassenn, a.k.a. “The Danish Hammer,” cements his bonafides as an action star who can also deliver a funny line. In the midst of the film’s deadly mission these two, in tandem with Eiza González as Marjorie Stewart, the film’s femme fatale and sharpshooter, bring some personality to the bombastic action.
“The Ministry of Ungentlemanly Warfare” is kind of predictable. It’s a simple story of good vs. evil with a twist, the good guys are, to put it mildly, ungentlemanly.
But, Ritchie understand that people love a heroic rascal, and the more ungentlemanly March-Phillips and Co. behave, the more enjoyable the movie becomes. Their antics, accompanied by composer Christopher Benstead’s peppy Morriconesque score, have the bluster that made Ritchie’s early films like “Lock, Stock, and Two Smoking Barrels” and “Snatch” so much fun.
All the Guy Ritchie trademarks that made so many of his other films so much fun are visible in “Operation Fortune: Ruse de guerre,” a new action adventure now streaming on Amazon Prime. Jason Statham comes back for a fifth kick at the can with the director, bringing with him the gravelly voice and fisticuffs first made famous in Ritchie’s “Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels.” There’s also some comedy, outrageous crime, slick cameras moves and a bangin’ soundtrack.
Why then, does it feel been there done that? Is it that familiarity has bred a certain kind of contempt, or is Ritchie coasting on his merits?
All-round action man Orson Fortune (Statham), tech genius Sarah Fidel (Aubrey Plaza) and sniper J.J. Davies (Bugzy Malone) are members of a top-secret British government agency run by Nathan Jasmine (Cary Elwes). Their latest assignment involves retrieving something called “The Handle,” a gewgaw—we’re not really told—that could cause a rift in the world order.
“We don’t know what’s been stolen,” says Nathan. “That remains a mystery for you to solve. But we need to stop it from getting onto the open market. Threat’s imminent.”
Before it can be sold on the black market, the crew must infiltrate billionaire arms dealer Greg Simmonds’s (Hugh Grant) inner circle. Their ticket in? International movie star and Simmonds’s favorite actor Danny Francesco (Josh Hartnett).
“The best agents are stars,” says Orson, “and the best actors are movie stars.”
“Operation Fortune: Ruse de guerre” feels like a Xerox copy of the movies that made Ritchie and Statham famous. The world-ending stakes are a bit higher, and there is more lifestyle porn—like private jets and global locations—but the fast pace, the late movie reveal (we eventually find out what The Handle actually does) and the “colourful” characters that have populated his movies from the get go all return but the glow is a bit dimmer this time.
Hugh Grant’s Michael Caine impersonation is a blast, and Ritchie still knows how to move a camera during the action scenes, but because we are so familiar with so many of the elements in play here, “Operation Fortune: Ruse de guerre” almost feels like a sequel to a reboot of a sequel. It’s the law of diminishing returns. The further away you get from the source, the less effective the movie will be. In this case, the sum of all the parts is a bland espionage story that is, at best, serviceable.
A remake of Nicolas Boukhrief’s 2004 French film “Le Convoyeur,” “Wrath of Man,” now playing in theatres and coming soon to VOD, is a revenge/heist flick that sees director Guy Ritchie reunited with his trademarked tricky storytelling style, Jason Statham and the ruthless violence that made his early movies such eye poppers.
Statham plays “’H’, like in bomb,” a man of few words with a mysterious past. Big surprise there. They should call him Gazpacho because he is the coolest of cool cucumbers. No matter what, this guy’s pulse rate never rises above 50 beats per minute.
When we first meet him, he takes a job as a security guard for Fortico, a Los Angeles armored car company. A recent robbery left three people dead and made the surviving guards edgy and uneasy. “Do you have any idea how dangerous this job can be?” a coworker named Boy Sweat Dave (Josh Hartnett) asks him. “We ain’t the predator, we’re the prey.”
When some very bad people attempt to rob one of the company’s cash trucks “H” reveals a special set of skills to the shock and awe of his co-workers. “It doesn’t feel right,” says security guard Bullet (Holt McCallany). “It’s like he wants the trucks to get hit.”
As the bodies pile up “H’s” lethal past is exposed and it becomes clear that he didn’t take the gig at the armored car company simply because he needed a week to week pay cheque. “I can do in two weeks,” “H” says to the shadowy Agent King (Andy Garcia), “what you wish you could do in twenty years.”
Told on a broken timeline and sectioned-off into chapters with names like “Bad, Animals, Bad” and “Scorched Earth,” the movie’s plot can be boiled down to one line. “I do bear a grudge,” “H” says, summing up the film’s raison d’etre as bullets fly and bodies pile up. A nihilistic story about revenge decorated with a tense heist subplot, it’s a riff on Statham’s earlier work in which he usually played either Character #1, a “loner with a past who must protect a loved one,” or Character #2, the “loner with a past who must protect a youthful innocent.”
Here he shakes things up by showing a disregard for the lives of some while avenging the loss of a loved one. Gone is the jokey Statham of “Spy” and his over-the-top “Fast and Furious” work. This is a back-to-basics performance that sees him settle on one facial expression, as though his chiseled face is encased in amber, to convey the character’s one deadly motive. The taciturn thing has worked for him before and it works well here. “H” is no laughing matter. Danger follows him around, and Statham’s coiled spring performance, no matter how basic, suggests that ultra-violence could erupt at any moment. It gives the movie much of its edge as Ritchie navigates the grim but stylish goings-on.
Are there plot holes? Yes. I can’t go into them without giving the story away but let’s just say “H’s” resilience is impressive.
Somewhere buried deep in the gunplay there is an elegance to “Wrath of Man.” Ritchie’s tough-talking film is tautly crafted, and, for those expecting “Snatch” style editing tricks, quite restrained.
The editing, not the violence.
Shot through a hail of bullets, the movie builds to a tense “Heat” style climax that doesn’t waste time or ammo. The jittery atmosphere is amped up by an angrily effective score from composer Chris Benstead.
On the downside, Ritchie’s taste for macho posturing doesn’t add much to the film’s early scenes. There are barely any female characters, save for Niamh Algar’s security guard Dana and assorted wife characters, and the hard-boiled dialogue between the often men borders on parody.
“Wrath of Man” is bleak and the characters are all, at best, anti-heroes, but for those with a taste for adrenaline pumping action set pieces, “Wrath of Man” delivers.
Anyone who thinks the Guy Ritchie of old has disappeared, crushed under the weight of the huge box office grosses of the family-friendly “Aladdin,” need look no further than the blood splattered pint mug of “The Gentlemen’s” opening scene for proof to the contrary.
Highly stylized crime comedies like “Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels” and “Snatch” made Ritchie the king of fast-paced, politically-incorrect stories of life on the streets. The big budget movies, his Sherlock Holmes series and “Aladdin,” among others, made more money but lacked the visceral thrills of his early work. His new film, “The Gentlemen,” starring Matthew McConaughey, Henry Golding, Michelle Dockery, Colin Farrell and Hugh Grant, feels like a hybrid of the two phases of his career. A spiritual cousin to “Lock, Stock” and ”Snatch,” it brings Ritchie back to London’s underworld, a place populated by Saville Row suit-wearing tough guys, ruthless tabloid editors and henchmen who speak like down-on-their-heels Oxford drop outs.
Matthew McConaughey is Mickey Pearson, an American who built a weed empire in his adopted home country of England. Intelligent and ruthless—qualities matched only by his wife Rosalind (Dockery)—he’s now middle-aged and looking to cash out. His offers to sell the business to billionaire drug lord Matthew Berger (a very mannered Jeremy Strong) for $400 million attracts unwanted attention from Dry Eye (Golding), the ruthless youngest nephew of an aging crime lord.
There’s more, but this is a pretzel of a story, twisted and tied in knots.
“The Gentlemen” is not a sequel or a reboot but it feels like one. The hyper-masculine story telling style, inventive use of swear words and spider-web plotting, while audacious, will be very familiar to Ritchie-philes. It’s “Snatch 2.0” with the same kind of big name cast who seem to be having fun mouthing Ritchie’s profanity laden dialogue but no amount of fast cutting and fast talking can replace real energy. As rock ‘n rolling as the filmmaking is, the story acts as an anchor, bogging things down as it gets more and more convoluted.
It’s too bad because Ritchie takes pains to create the very specific world his characters inhabit, and it is a colourful place but it seems that he never met a plot twist he didn’t love. As the plot thickens, and it does thicken almost to the point of impenetrability, the movie begins to feel overstuffed. To help the audience along Ritchie binds everything together with a silly framing device involving Fletcher (Grant), a private eye/blackmailer who unfurls the complicated story to Pearson’s right-hand-man Raymond (Charlie Hunnam). It’s time consuming and adds little to the picture except for Hugh Grant’s exaggerated accent as he delivers flowery lines like, “Our antagonist explodes on the scene, like a millennial firework.”
“The Gentlemen” feels like an exercise in nostalgia, back to era of Ritchie’s frenetic jump cuts and outdated attitudes about race disguised as quippy dialogue.
Based on a 1927 science fiction/horror story by H. P. Lovecraft, “Color Out of Space” is a strange film starring everyone’s favorite purveyor of strange performances, Nicolas “Dad’s been acting weird” Cage.
Cage is Nathan Gardner, a former artist living on his late father’s remote farm near the fictional town of Arkham, one of Lovecraft’s favorite settings. His family, Wiccan practitioner Lavinia (Madeleine Arthur), weed aficionado Benny and youngster Jack (Brendan Meyer and Julian Hilliard) and mother Theresa (Joely Richardson), leads a quiet if unconventional life until late one night when a meteorite crash lands on their front lawn. Unsure of what it is, Nathan calls the police. “I’m sorry about the smell,” he says. “Can you smell it? It’s like somebody lit a dog on fire.”
The smell will turn out to be the least of his problems.
The meteorite disappears over time but the effects of the crash landing linger. The Gardeners and their animals—they raise alpacas—begin acting strangely. Mom cuts her own fingers off as psychedelic hallucinations shroud the family’s thoughts. Hydrologist Ward (Elliot Knight), in the area surveying for a future dam project, thinks the water is poisoned but the real answer is a little more out there, as in outer space alien brain, out there.
Directed by Richard Stanley, who hasn’t made a feature since infamously being fired from 1996’s “The Island of Dr. Moreau,” “Color Out of Space” is a trippy, darkly humorous descent into madness. Lovecraft has proven tricky to adapt to the screen but Stanley does a good job here, building a sense of unease with a clever mix of CGI and practical special effects that build upon the natural disorienting nature of the story. Add to that body horror and cosmic terror, each heightened by the committed—read unhinged—performances from the leads and you have a movie that keeps the viewer as off-kilter as the characters they are watching.
“Color Out of Space” is a little uneven, cramming too many ideas into the mix, but the mix of two gonzo artists like Cage and Stanley offers up a movie that amps up the cinematic anxiety in unpredictable ways.
Richard Crouse interviews Mena Massoud, the Canadian star of the Disney live action remake of “Aladdin.” They talk about working with Will Smith, why he switched from neuroscience to theatre school and supporting ethnically diverse Canadian artists.
Coming hot on the heels of Disney live action reboots of classics like “Cinderella,” “Beauty and The Beast” and “The Jungle Book” comes “Aladdin,” Guy Ritchie’s reimagining of the all singing, all dancing, all powerful Genie made famous by the late, great Robin Williams.
The story begins when “street rat” and thief Aladdin (Mena Massoud) helps a beautiful woman (Naomi Scott) he believes is a handmaiden to the daughter of the Sultan of Agrabah (Navid Negahban), escape from the police after a misunderstanding in the market. After a wild chase—part musical theatre, part parkour—they spark, bonding over the vagaries of their own circumstances. She’s trapped by palace life, he by a life of poverty. “It’s kind of sad having a monkey as the only parental authority in my life,” he says of Abu, his kleptomaniac pet monkey and constant companion.
She is, of course not the handmaiden, but the Princess Jasmine, a woman who longs to take over for her father but is stymied in her ambition by tradition. The law says she cannot take the throne and must marry a prince. When one royal suitor compliments her on her beauty she says, “We have the same titles but are never described the same way,” before dismissing him.
Meanwhile back at the palace, the Sultan’s power-hungry advisor Jafar (Marwan Kenzari) also has his eye on the throne. Using hypnotism he controls the ruler, but wants more. More, in the form of a magic lamp hidden deep in the Cave of Wonders. “Once that lamp sits in my hand I will sit on the throne,” he cackles. Trouble is, everyone who ventures into the cave dies. Jafar needs someone with serious skills to get in, grab the lamp and get out. When he meets Aladdin, he uses his access to the princess to strike a deal. “Retrieve the lamp from the cave and I will make you rich enough to impress a princess.”
The perilous journey to the lamp reveals the star of the show, a magical blue Genie with the power to grant three wishes to the keeper of the lamp. There are some catches though; he can’t make anyone fall in love with him or raise the dead. He also cautions against wishing for wealth and power the very two things Jafar and Aladdin covet.
Despite all its pomp and circumstance the live action remake of the beloved animated “Aladdin” does not exactly transport us to a whole new world. Ritchie fills the screen with colour and pageantry, staging large scale Bollywood-style dance numbers and, in the case of the Genie’s signature tune “Friend Like Me,” a maximalist CGI orgy that gives Flo Ziegfeld a run for his money. Even when he is more restrained, he isn’t that restrained. The rendering of Princess Jasmine’s big solo “Speechless,” one of the new songs by the “Dear Evan Hansen” composers Benj Pasek and Justin Paul, plays like a Bonnie Tyler power pop video from the 1980s.
Style has never been Ritchie’s problem. His camera is always in motion, caressing the screen with acrobatic shots and tricky editing. His movies make your eyeballs dance but often at the expense of the characters who get lost in the theatricality of the presentation.
He’s in fine form in “Aladdin” although overcooked CGI overwhelms the finale in a rush of animated imagery. The characters work hard to sparkle but get lost amid the ruckus and with them gores much of the film’s heart. The ending is loud and large but fails to make an emotional impression. Sometimes less is more.
As Princess Jasmine, Scott has more to do than in the original and does so in much more modest clothing. No animated bellybuttons here. Massoud gives the social climbing Aladdin a certain impish charm in an energetic performance. More baffling is Kenzari as the monotone villain Jafar. All scowls and surly attitude, he’s the least interesting villain on Ritchie’s resume.
The screen is filled with people but, let’s face it, the character everyone is most interested in is the big blue Genie. He’s the star of the show but in many ways it’s the film’s most thankless role. Robin Williams made the Genie his own in a performance that still sparkles with life more than twenty-five years later. Smith battles against some unfortunate CGI and the memory of Williams to make the character his own. He’s part match-maker, part magic-maker and part mirth-maker. Fortunately for Ritchie Smith’s charisma elevates the performance from merely mimicking his predecessor.
“Aladdin” is not so much a remake but an up-dating for a new generation. Some of the revisions are welcome. Jasmine is a now fully rounded character and some unfortunate lyrics, like “It’s barbaric but hey, it’s home,” have been removed. Other changes don’t work as well. Can someone explain why Iago (voiced by Alan Tudyk), a comedic highlight from the 1992 film, has been reduced to a few squawks and repeated phrases?
Despite the updates and the pomp “Aladdin” feels underwhelming by the time the end credits roll. The songs frequently interrupt the flow of the story, creating a stop-and-go feel that sucks some of the film’s momentum away.
Guy Ritchie’s films have entertained me for years but I’m afraid he didn’t find me very interesting.
The incident happened during my press day with Ritchie and Charlie Hunnam, the director and star of King Arthur: Legend of the Sword. I first spoke with them for television. Hunnam answered my opening question about the film Excalibur, a precursor to their movie, enthusiastically. But I could feel Ritchie disengage. He sat back and went into autopilot, answering my questions by rote. The rest of the interview flew by in a flurry of quips and tossed off answers.
Half-an-hour later I sat with them again to do a longer interview for print.
“I’m glad we can make amends,” said Hunnam as I came in the room. “It seemed like you wanted to have a proper conversation and we were having a bit of a jolly up.”
The whole experience was an example of the yin and yang of movie promotion. The yin was Ritchie, an intense man who refers to the walking a red carpet as “a dog and pony show” before adding that’s not what he’s here for.
The yang is Hunnam, an engaging actor who said, “We don’t make these things to live on in obscurity, we make them with the hope that people will see them and this is one of the ways we can help manifest that.”
The duo have been all over the world talking to media people with perfectly coiffed hair and big smiles, answering the same questions on repeat. By the time I get them there’s nothing new to ask about their update of the Arthurian legend. But there is an unspoken contract between my interview subjects and me.
Whether it’s for television or for the paper you hold in your hands, the deal is the same. They say something interesting and I report it. They get publicity and I get a story that my audience will hopefully enjoy.
As Ritchie sat with his arms folded across his chest, I thought about our “contract” and the difference between the two men.
Despite his tabloid appeal — for a time the British press made a sport of reporting on him — Ritchie strikes me as a private person. He’s more interested in what he’ll be working on next than the film he spent years making and has now signed off on. Or perhaps it’s that, as a director, he’s used to being in control and in these situations he has to cede power to the interviewer.
“We both know why we’re doing it,” Ritchie says, “but the red carpet last night, I’ll tell you, I felt soulless after that. After ten minutes get me off there because it takes me hours to recover.”
Hunnam, the performer, is immediately warm and open. When Ritchie talks about losing patience on press days Hunnam jokes, “Guy Ritchie leaves the room and Johnny Nasty shows up.”
Luckily, Johnny Nasty never showed. By the end of our time together the ice broke, Ritchie’s arms unfolded and he smiled. I’m not sure what happened other than he seemed to warm up to me when we talked generally about film and not specifically about King Arthur.
We traded stories, discussed King Arthur, an actor’s connection to their director and not being imprisoned by fear. Maybe it was just me but for a moment it felt like we were talking over a beer in a bar and not fulfilling our respective contractual duties. It was, in his words, a little less of a dog and pony show.
“I feel more satisfied now,’ said Hunnam as I left and another press person walked into the room to repeat the process. “I really felt bad after the [television] interview [with you]. I thought, ‘Man, that’s a serious cat and we really just f–ed around for four minutes.’ I’m glad we got into some of the nitty-gritty.”
