Helen Mirren seems to be in a new phase of her career. The English actress, best known for her Oscar winning portrayal of her majesty in The Queen and for recently taking top honors in the L.A. Fitness body of the year poll at age 66 is now also an action star. In “Reds” she was an ex-CIA agent alongside Bruce Willis, wearing pearls and shooting AK47s and this weekend she’s an ex-Mossad agent with a secret.
When the movie opens it is 1997. Retired Mossad agents Rachel, David and Stefan (Helen Mirren, Ciarán Hinds and Tom Wilkinson) are heroes, acclaimed for their brave capture and execution of a notorious war criminal in 1966. But when new information about the case turns up, it threatens to expose a long held secret. Cut to an extended flashback sequence detailing the real details of the operation (with Jessica Chastain, Marton Csokas, and Sam Worthington as the younger versions of the trio), including the romantic entanglement that complicated the mission. Back in 1997 Rachel comes out of retirement to uncover the truth and repay an emotional debt.
The flashback sequence makes up the bulk of the film so it’s fair to say this isn’t Helen Mirren’s film, but her character Rachel’s. Dame Helen and Chastain (in her third film this year) provide the movie’s emotional core. Unusual for an espionage movie, the story is told through the eyes of a woman. Rachel is as tough as the men, but adds depth to what is essentially a pulpy spy story with a twist.
Performances are top notch (although some dodgy accents appear) but Sam Worthington, last year’s it boy, underwhelms. Luckily Mirren, Chastain and the film’s powerful sense of suspense pick up the slack.
“The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel” is predictable and a bit stuffy but it is hard to dislike this movie’s lost in translation story because it is so obviously aiming to please.
Featuring a cast which includes most of the senior members of British Equity, the movie quickly introduces us to Evelyn (Judi Dench), a widower whose husband left behind a great debt, Douglas and Jean (Bill Nighy and Penelope Wilton), a retired couple without a nest egg, the infirm Muriel (Maggie Smith), Supreme Court judge Graham (Tom Wilkinson) who impulsively leaves the bench, aging lothario Norman (Ronald Pickup) and Madge (Celia Imrie), a much married woman in search of a sugar daddy.
Their common link is uncertainty over how to spend their golden years. Individually they come up with he idea to outsource their retirements to a senior’s hotel in Jaipur, but what looked like an Eden on the brochure turns out to be a dilapidated guesthouse run by the feckless Sonny (“Slumdog Millionaire’s” Dev Patel). Together and individually this band of ex-pats explore life in their adopted country.
“The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel” offers up of fish-out-of-water clichés—“If I can’t pronounce it, I’m not eating it!”—mixed with a story about rebirth, regrets and the Kama Sutra. Despite the setting, it’s a bland blend, but the likes of Dench, Nighy, Smith and Wilkinson salvage some real humanity from the script’s saccharine offerings.
Wilkinson, as a gay man who travels back to India to find his first love, is particularly effective. He effortlessly underplays the character of Gordon, the staid lawyer who bears guilt for an indiscretion that may have ruined another’s person’s life, portraying a man who sat in judgment of others all the while judging himself. It’s a marvel of subtlety, richly detailed, yet simultaneously delicate.
The rest of the cast of old pros hand in good work, but aren’t given the same caliber of material to work with.
Perhaps it’s because there are too many stories colliding on screen, filling up the running time with details and unnecessary scenes–in addition to the retiree’s stories there are also Sonny’s subplots about love, family and trying to save the hotel. Or perhaps it’s because the filmmakers are tying to present something for everyone, but “The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel” feels like there is a really good movie hidden away in the layers of the film struggling to get out.
