Posts Tagged ‘Tuva Novotny’

EXIT PLAN: 1 ½ STARS. “plan to hit the exit button on your remote.”

The name “Exit Plan” sounds like one of those 1990s direct-to-VHS action titles that might have starred Don ‘The Dragon’ Wilson or someone with a famous last name like Don Swayze, Frank Stallone or Chad McQueen. That this movie, new to VOD this week, stars Nikolaj Coster-Waldau, he who played Jaime Lannister on the blood-soaked “Game of Thrones,” would further suggest chills and thrills.

Instead, it is an anti-action, minor key movie. A film so stark and dreary that you might want to plan to hit the exit button on your remote.

Coster-Waldau plays Max, a mild-mannered insurance investigator who shares his life with wife Laerke (Tuva Novotny) and cat Simba. His latest case, the disappearance of man, presumed dead, leads him to a place called the Hotel Aurora, a Scandinavian resort where people go to meet their “beautiful end.” It’s a fortuitous turn of event for Max, whose attempts to hang and drown himself were unsuccessful. He’s suffering from an inoperable terminal brain tumor and wants to end it all before the pain becomes too much for him and his family to bear.

But, what seems to be the answers to his problems raises some very troubling questions in Max’s mind.

“Exit Plan” deals in some heavy human dilemmas but is as cold and angular as the glass and steel that make up the façade of the Hotel Aurora. The mix-and-match of real and illusory makes Max’s existential crisis hard to grasp, impossible to care about.

Even the meaning of a late-stage mystery twist, as Max decides he wants out of the hotel, is obscured by flashbacks and dream sequences, leading to a conclusion that promises to make a point but fails to deliver. Add to that obtuse dialogue like, “You can go but you can’t escape,” that sounds like a rough draft of the “Hotel California” lyrics and you have a movie that promises much but delivers very little.

BORG/MCENROE: 3 ½ STARS. “wisely focuses on the journey, not the destination.”

Shia LaBeouf’s reputation serves him well in “Borg/McEnroe.” The story of one of the all-time great sports rivalries, this film from Swedish director Janus Metz turns the actor’s hotheaded persona into a terrific performance as John McEnroe, the “superbrat” of tennis.

A non-traditional sports movie, “Borg/McEnroe “ ends with the Wimbledon matches in the 1980 final but spends the vast amount of its running time as a behind-the-scenes character study of polar opposites. On the court their games were as much psychological as they were physical, and this movie delves into the backstories that fed their individual styles.

We learn of McEnroe father’s unrelenting push for perfection. Whether it was doing complicated math tricks for dad’s friends or on the court, young McEnroe developed a perfectionist streak that lead to extreme discipline and a hair trigger temper when his lofty standards weren’t met.

In public life Björn Borg (Sverrir Gudnason) was nicknamed the Iceborg, a play on his chilly demeanour but flashbacks to his early life with coach Lennart Bergelin (Stellan Skarsgård) reveal a similar upbringing to McEnroe. The difference between the two competitors came with Borg’s ability to suppress his anger, unlike the combustible McEnroe, who became famous for his on-court outbursts. “They say Borg is an iceberg, keeping it all in,” says one commentator, “until he becomes a volcano.”

The film digs deep, accentuating the similarities between the two players, not their differences. It’s an unusual take for a sports film. Typically sporting films play up the differences between competitors to amp up the conflict but this isn’t a standard sports story. It’s more an existential drama concerned with the why’s of their personalities not the how’s of their game. Many people will know how this story ends—and no, it doesn’t rewriter tennis history—so director Metz wisely focuses on the journey, not the destination.

Perhaps of his own history of public behaviour LaBeouf brings fire and empathy to his portrayal of McEnroe. A performance that could easily have drifted into caricature instead offers a nuanced look at the demons that fuelled the champion’s antics.

Gudnason is a dead ringer for Borg and does a nice job of hinting at the self-doubt that was always just under his icy exterior.

“Borg/McEnroe” gives insight into the lives of these two gold star athletes, revealing the men behind the game.